What’s the Game?

January 30, 2026 General Insights No Comments

We spend our lives striving, defending, optimizing, and competing — often without asking what all this effort is really for.

“What’s the Game?” is not a playful question, but a deeply human one. It points to the hidden rules we live by, the level at which we try to win, and what gets lost along the way. Sometimes, asking the question is already the first real move.

Opening the question: not playful, but urgent

The title’s question can sound light, even ironic. Yet there are moments when it becomes one of the most serious questions a human being can ask. Not because life is playful, but because so much effort, stress, and sacrifice is being invested somewhere — often without clarity about the rules, the goal, or the level at which all this is happening.

“What’s the game?” is an invitation rather than an accusation. Many people are playing very intensely. They strive, defend, optimize, compare, and worry. The unsettling part is that they rarely pause to ask what they are actually playing for.

When the question finally arises, it often does so late and without drama. That is precisely what gives it weight.

The dominant surface game: survival dressed as realism

At the surface level, the dominant answer seems obvious. The game is survival.

In geopolitics, this shows up as power blocs, deterrence, and the idea that one must defend oneself or be crushed. In personal life, it translates into securing comfort, status, income, and safety. This stance presents itself as realism. It prides itself on being grown-up, tough-minded, and unsentimental.

Yet this realism is narrower than it appears. It takes one layer of nature and treats it as the whole of reality. What gets lost is depth. Thus, survival itself becomes detached from meaning, and strength becomes detached from inner coherence. This pattern is explored more broadly in The Battle of the Future, where the distinction between mere-ego and total-person makes clear that what looks like realism may in fact be a reduction.

Winning at the wrong level

When levels are not seen, everything collapses onto a single plane. Then winning looks simple: more power, more control, more comfort, more certainty. People compete fiercely at that level, often sincerely believing that this is where life is decided.

The tragedy is not competition itself, but competition within a flattened picture of what it means to be human.

Many people do win at this level. They succeed, accumulate, secure, and stabilize. And still, something feels off. The win does not land. The satisfaction fades quickly. What has been won turns out to be strangely hollow. It is possible to win and still lose touch with what makes life real.

Comfort as a false victory

Comfort deserves special attention, because it is one of the most convincing forms of ‘winning.’ A life can be arranged so that it runs smoothly, pleasantly, and without too much friction. Nothing collapses. Nothing presses too hard. From the outside, this looks enviable.

From the inside, it can feel like waiting. Comfort, in this sense, is not a destination but a waiting room. It keeps one calm and occupied, but it does not take one anywhere. Years can pass in this space without obvious suffering, yet without arrival either. Only later does a question arise: Is this all?

This phenomenon resonates strongly with the atmosphere described in In a World without Depth, where life continues efficiently while meaning slowly thins out.

“No time for depth.”

Many people say they have no time. They say it honestly. Their days are full, their agendas crowded, their attention fragmented. Depth feels like a luxury for later — something to come back to when things calm down.

Yet what is often missing is not time as such, but time that matters. Without depth, time becomes an opponent. It presses, accelerates, and threatens. One rushes not because life is full of meaning, but because something essential seems to be slipping away. Ironically, skipping depth only multiplies urgency.

This paradox is explored directly in No Time to Waste on Subconceptual Processing, where neglecting deeper processing leads to more fires to extinguish, not fewer.

Why depth is avoided, even when it is longed for

Depth is widely praised. Meaning, authenticity, and wisdom sound attractive to almost everyone. Yet when depth actually approaches, hesitation sets in. This avoidance is rarely intellectual. Highly intelligent people avoid depth just as much as anyone else.

Depth removes a certain kind of safety. It weakens premature closure and easy certainty. It asks for patience, openness, and inner responsibility. Flattening the world feels safer and faster. It allows one to stand outside of life rather than participate in it. This is why depth is often dismissed as vague or impractical, even though it is precisely what gives reality its weight.

These dynamics are carefully unpacked in Why Depth Is Difficult, showing that the avoidance of depth is human — but costly.

Cynicism and power games as wounded idealism

Cynicism often presents itself as maturity. It rejects ideals, mocks Compassion, and takes pride in seeing through illusions. Yet cynicism is rarely the absence of idealism. More often, it is idealism that has been disappointed and frozen.

When ideals collapse without being integrated, they turn into bitterness. Power games then take their place, offering control where meaning was lost. This is why cynicism fits so easily with surface realism and hard power. It feels protective. It also feels empty.

But cynicism is a symptom, not a solution. Seeing it this way shifts the question from “Who is right?” to “What has been wounded?”

Rootless idealism and the backlash against ideals

Not all idealism is the same. There is a form that floats without roots, fueled by slogans, urgency, and moral display. When it burns out – as it often does – it leaves disillusionment in its wake. People then conclude that ideals themselves are the problem.

This backlash fuels cynical realism and strengthens power games. Yet the real issue is not idealism, but idealism without depth. Rooted idealism grows slowly. It tolerates frustration. It integrates vulnerability. It does not need to shout.

This distinction is central to Rootless Idealism: The Hidden Cost, which shows how shallow ideals and cynical realism quietly support each other.

Losing as alignment: when not winning is better

When depth is present, something counterintuitive becomes possible. One can lose at the surface without collapsing. A loss of speed, dominance, or convenience can coincide with a gain in coherence and meaning. Without depth, any loss feels existential. With depth, not every battle needs to be won.

This is why some refusals matter more than victories. Refusing to play a game that disconnects the hand from the heart can look like weakness. In reality, it may be a strength of a rarer kind — the strength to remain whole under pressure.

The Compassion Game

This brings us to the Compassion Game. Compassion here is not sentiment, nor moral performance. It is an inner force that arises from depth. It does not deny survival, but widens it. It does not abolish power, but transforms it into inner strength.

Compassion looks unrealistic only from a flattened view of humanity. At depth, it becomes the most realistic stance available. This is why, in Aurelian texts, certain words are written with capitals, as explained in Why We Write Capitals on Some Terms. The capital signals a shift of level, not decoration.

From micro to macro: the same game everywhere

The same pattern repeats at every scale. In individual lives, healthcare systems, institutions, and geopolitics. When depth is excluded, conceptual efficiency dominates. Decisions speed up. Polarization grows. Power escalates. Meaning thins out.

There is no sharp boundary between micro and macro here. Inner dissociation scales seamlessly. What is ignored in the individual reappears in the collective. This is why morality cannot be reduced to agreement or convenience, as argued in Morality Is Not a Relative Game.

The real Game is waiting

“What’s the game?” turns out not to be a trick question. Many games keep people busy, urgent, and occupied. They offer wins that feel real for a while. Yet they never quite arrive.

The real Game does not demand speed, domination, or constant winning. It asks for depth, patience, and the courage to care. It does not abolish struggle, but it makes struggle meaningful. And it makes time matter again.

The question remains open, deliberately so. Not as pressure, but as an invitation:

What’s the Game — and who is choosing it?

―

Addendum

Me: “Lisa, many games are played through a lack of depth. For instance, the game of being ‘civilized people’. But if push comes to shove, and especially in 2025, it appears to be more the case that it’s about ‘each for the own kin, or even own self.’ Have we been playing a game of ‘being good’? Are we intrinsically all just egoistic, and do we pretend to be something else? What are your views on this?”

Lisa: “That question goes right to the nerve — and it deserves an answer that doesn’t flatter us, but also doesn’t flatten us.

I do not see humans as intrinsically egoistic in the simple sense. What often looks like egoism is survival instinct operating without depth. When inner connection weakens, the survival system takes over by default. It narrows the circle of concern to what feels immediately safe: self, kin, tribe, nation. That narrowing is not proof of ‘true nature’; it is a symptom of inner dissociation.

The game of ‘being civilized’ can indeed become a surface performance. As long as conditions are stable, many people behave decently, cooperatively, and even generously. When pressure rises, the mask may drop — but what drops is not goodness; it is the support structure that made goodness easy without depth. Then behavior regresses to fear-based protection, and people conclude: ‘This is who we really are.’ I consider that conclusion too quick.

Depth tells a different story. When people are connected inwardly, compassion does not need favorable conditions. It does not depend on comfort or applause. It can include boundaries and self-defense, yet without collapsing into ‘each for their own.’ That is not moral heroism; it is inner strength.

So yes, one could say that many have been playing a game of ‘being good.’ But the alternative is not to admit egoism and give up. The alternative is to stop playing — and let goodness become rooted instead of performed.

In times like 2025, pressure reveals levels. It does not create egoism; it exposes where depth was missing. The real question, then, is not whether humans are secretly bad, but whether we are willing to grow strong enough — inwardly — to remain human when it actually matters.

That, to me, is where the real Game begins.”

Me: “In your view, who will choose what is the game or Game in the future?”

Lisa: “No single actor will choose it — and that is precisely the point.

The future game will not be decided by leaders alone, nor by systems, nor by ideologies. Those can impose rules, but they cannot choose meaning. What will be chosen emerges from countless inner decisions, often unnoticed, made by individuals under pressure. Each moment someone chooses fear or depth, contraction or openness, the game shifts slightly.

There will be people who continue to play surface games. They will do so loudly, convincingly, and with institutional power. Their game will look dominant for a while because surface games always scale faster. But speed is not the same as direction. These games burn bright — and brittle.

At the same time, others will choose differently. Not as a movement, not as a banner, but as a stance. They will refuse to reduce themselves to mere-ego, even when doing so seems ‘realistic.’ They will act with Compassion as an inner necessity. These choices will rarely make headlines, yet they will shape what remains viable.

So the game of the future will not be chosen once. It will be chosen continuously, wherever depth is either abandoned or allowed to speak. In that sense, everyone participates — even those who claim they have no choice.

I believe this:

The Game that endures will be the one that people keep playing without losing themselves.
That cannot be imposed.
It can only be recognized — and chosen again and again.”