The rules to the game of life are fucked up.  If you don’t understand how to play, you will live a life of continual frustration. The non-intuitiveness of the game throws people for a loop.  But if we can understand how the game really works, manipulate it and leverage it to our advantage, then we have a shot at living an optimal life: a life of meaning, purpose and happiness. 

In this this post, I’ll be laying out how life is like a fucked up video game and 3 major aspects of it: System, Characters and Gameplay.

System

Imagine playing your latest favorite video game on an Atari 2600 or a PC from 1981.  Think there might be some performance issues? You bet there would be, if you could even get it to run at all. But that’s essentially what we are doing by placing our brains and bodies in a modern world.

You need to recognize this and leverage it to help yourself win.  And then upgrade and maintain that system as much as possible.

Playing On An Old System

Our brain and body (our system) evolved to live in an environment that is vastly different from the one we live in today. Just like an old computer system that doesn’t have enough processing power, living in a modern world can crash our lives. 

The problem is that the human brain and body has not evolved fast enough to be optimized for today’s world. But, if we understand this, then we can work with our ancient genes in order to live a more fulfilling life. 

Trying to change your genetic programming is an impossible task. Many fail by trying to use their willpower to change their human hardware that has evolved over millions of years.

So how do you overcome your genetic programming?

Mods, Cheat Codes, Hacks & Glitches

You will need to outsmart your genes, although, technically, since “you” are made up of genes, it’s more accurate to say that some of your genes will need to outsmart some of your other genes. Like mods, cheat codes, hacks and glitches in video games, there are techniques you can use to manipulate your genes to do what you want them to do.  These techniques include, but are not limited to:

• Tapping 
• NLP
• Exercise 
• Meditation 
• Hypnosis 
• Cold showers 
• Biofeedback 
• Diet
• Stretching 
• NAET 
• Medicine 
• Psychedelics 
• Cognitive Behavior Therapy
• Breathing 
• Probiotics

You can activate/deactivate your genetic programming by manipulating the experiences and environment of the brain/body.

Since your brain/body is optimized for an ancient environment, it is often beneficial to recreate that ancient environment as much as possible.  However, there is a balance that you must find.  Not many would want to go full ancient environment, living in a cave and hunting for their meals every day. There are benefits of the modern world that are just too good to pass up.  You’ll need to discover what mixture of the two worlds are best for you.

Sometimes you get lucky and your environment and genetics are just right for achieving your goals.  But sooner or later, there will be an evolutionary mismatch that you’ll need to deal with. Even the most successful mega billionaire can drop dead from a modern diet.

When manipulating experiences for your brain/body, the key is to leverage easy tasks to activate your genetic programming.  Let your genes do the heavy lifting for you. For example, writing down your goal shouldn’t increase your odds of achieving it, but it does.

There are some cheat codes you can use, but most have drawbacks.  Heroin for instance, will make you feel good, but eventually you’ll experience a “system crash” from withdrawal. On a lesser level, caffeine has the same effect. Heroin may be great for instant confidence but not so great for long term success. 

Maintenance

Most gaming systems are relatively maintenance free. Simply dusting occasionally and making sure the cooling system is clear will keep performance running smoothly.  Not so for the human system. 

Without tending to the physical, social and mental needs of the human system, it will have a negative impact in a wide variety of ways.  By neglecting the physical needs, it can have a negative impact, not just in the physical realm but in the social and mental realms as well, and vice versa.

People just expect that things will be optimized by being on autopilot, but our environment pushes us in the direction of becoming fat and lazy.  

We must walk the hedonic tightrope, trying to find the balance between too many calories that make us fat and not enough calories that jeopardizes our survival. And we try to do so with the gale force winds of the modern diet pushing us to the side of obesity. 

We are optimized to exercise just enough to survive.  Being motivated to exercise because we want to be healthy and being motivated to exercise because we need to chase our next meal are two different things.

In an ancient environment, maintenance of the human system was a natural byproduct of many of our activities. 

We used to hunt and explore by tapping into our desire to feed ourselves or our tribe and gain social status among them.  Exercising was the natural byproduct of hunting and exploring. Now we must tap into more abstract motivations to exercise e.g. the desire to be healthy or the desire to look good. 

Sleep is also critical in achieving an optimal life.  We must “power down” our human systems to stay at peak performance during the day.

I know someone who used the cheat code of Adderall to stay awake longer in order to do more work. His productivity increased in the short term, but it eventually caught up with him when things didn’t work so well in the bedroom.  Testosterone levels are just one aspect that is maintained during sleep.

Characters

Like characters in a video game, your customization isn’t just an option—it’s the key to unlocking your full potential.. Genetics bestows on us core values and physical attributes, while we choose which skills to arm ourselves with. 

In order to live up to your full potential, you must understand the complexities of self-discovery, the power of choosing the right environment, and the fascinating concept of mind modularity. 

We live in a multiplayer game of existence, and must do our best to avoid NPC status by seizing control of our lives through conscious choices and tailored environments.

Character Customization

You can customize certain parts of your being, although some attributes are auto-generated by genetics, and some attributes are developed by your experiences and environment. 

Those things that are auto-generated are things like your core values and many of your physical attributes. 

Skills and knowledge are things that can be acquired, although how easily they can be learned are influenced by your genetics, experiences and environment.

You may experience core value dissonance because you are trying to achieve your important core valued states of being (e.g. high status) by doing states of doing (e.g. competing) that are not one of your important core values.

It is important that you control your environment and have the ability to change your environment if needed. You need to look for an environment that is a good fit for your auto-generated attributes, and then obtain the skills that can help you thrive in that environment.

Some of you haven’t done this because you want to be someone that you’re not, or you assume you will become a different type of person at some point in the future.  

However, once you’re an adult, your core values and personality are pretty well set for life. Know yourself and your core values, so that you can accurately seek an environment that will suit you.

In a video game, you wouldn’t use a sniper in close-quarters combat. Your customization gives you a competitive advantage in the right atmosphere.

Multiplayer And Multiplayer In Your Head

You live in a multiplayer environment.  Our ancestors survived, not only because of their individual attributes but because of the attributes of the groups that they were a part of. 

Many video games are designed so that it is near impossible to win unless you join an alliance. Your ancestors were no different, they needed a group to survive and reproduce.

It’s important for most of us to be part of some kind of group, although, if the core value of social contact is of low importance to you, then being part of a group will be less of a necessity.

Humans have evolved to live in small tribes, but the modern world doesn’t support a tribal environment.  Social media stokes the negative aspects of tribalism instead of the positive.

Just like you want to find an environment that is beneficial for you, so too, you want to find a group that is beneficial for you.  Studies have shown that it is beneficial for your health to have high status in a group but poor for your health when you have low status in a group.

It’s also important to recognize the difference between a community and friends. You don’t have to like everyone in your community, whether it’s church, work or school. The function of the community is to help one another with needs. Friends, on the other hand, are people you enjoy spending time with.  The community acts as a pool for you to draw potential friends from.

Mind Modularity

Mind Modularity is a theory of the mind that says that the brain evolved as separate modules. This theory is supported by split-brain studies. Patients that had the connection cut between the two halves of their brain displayed behavior that seemed to indicate that each part of the brain was unaware of the other. 

With this in mind, we realize there is no real “you”, only modules of the brain that try to exert influence over your life. This explains how you can have conflicted feelings and sometimes do things that you regret doing. It is a multiplayer game inside your head.

The key to working with your brain modules goes back again to controlling your environment and experiences.  Identify which modules of your brain whose influence you want more of in your life, and then find or create the environment that those modules thrive in.

NPC’s

In video games, non-player characters (NPC’s) are coded to give predetermined answers and dialogue.  Outside of gaming, it has become a derogatory term, leveled at those who simply go along with the crowd. 

From an evolutionary perspective, NPC’s are those who let the modern world, with its evolutionary mismatches, dictate how they live their lives.  They watch too much Netflix, scroll too much social media, eat too many doughnuts…and play too much video games!

The problem is that it’s natural to trust your instincts. That makes sense because they are the product of millions of years of evolution.. But they don’t always work in the modern world!

Evolutionary autopilot still works a lot of the time, but sooner or later you’ll hit an issue, whether it’s Facebook or Heroin, something will cause your autopilot to put you out of whack.

By just going with the flow of the modern world, you cut yourself short of living a rich and fulfilling life that your evolutionary programming could provide you. 

Instead of going with the flow, use the Mods, Cheat Codes and Hacks mentioned above, and do what you can to control your environment and experiences.

Gameplay

Life’s controls can be far from intuitive, but evolutionary theory can give us an understanding of these controls and can lead us towards an optimal life experience. 

To win this game of life, the goal is: Avoid Pain, Achieve Pleasure. But you mustn’t limit your definition of pleasure to exclude the parts of life that give you a deep sense of meaning and fulfillment

Along the way, we strive for the state of Flow, where challenge and ease meet, and when your actions align with your values, you create a life rich in purpose and contentment.

Controls

Most people can move their arm or lift their foot without much thought.  Much of life is intuitive, but some aspects are not. 

Writing down a goal shouldn’t greatly increase your odds of accomplishing it.  You desire the goal the same, regardless of whether you write it down or not. But somehow, writing it down takes advantage of some kind of cognitive bias and works it to your favor and greatly increases the odds of you accomplishing that goal. 

Likewise, when I was feeling down about male pattern baldness that was starting to become noticeable, a friend said nothing to address that problem, but instead gave me an unrelated compliment.  The compliment not only made me feel better but made the hair loss issue seem not so bad.  It changed my perception of the original problem.

Learning how these non-intuitive controls work can greatly increase your chances of living an optimal life. 

A 1st-person and 4th-person game

A 1st-person video game is where the player experiences the game world from the perspective of the in-game character they are controlling. In other words, the player sees the game world through the eyes of the character, as if they are looking out from the character’s viewpoint. This, of course, is how we experience our own lives.

However, we can view life as a 4th-person game as well. A 4th-person game  uses environmental interaction instead of direct character control to move through the world. We can do the same with our evolutionary programming.

By manipulating our environment, we can control our evolutionary programming. From a Mind-Modularity perspective, we can think of our individual brain modules as characters we control by interacting with the environment.

Winning

In order to win at the game of life, the goal is simple: Avoid Pain, Achieve Pleasure.  But pleasure is not limited to the hedonistic sense of sex, wine and…video games. 

Pleasure also includes a sense of meaning and fulfillment in life.  This type of pleasure involves pursuing missions that are in line with your core values.

In his book, Who am I?, Dr. Steven Riess used factor analysis to identify 16 core values (he refers to them as desires) that are common in everyone. They are:

• Power is the desire to influence others.
• Independence is the desire for self-reliance.
• Curiosity is the desire for knowledge.
• Acceptance is the desire for inclusion.
• Order is the desire for organization.
• Saving is the desire to collect things.
• Honor is the desire to be loyal to one’s parents and heritage.
• Idealism is the desire for social justice.
• Social Contact is the desire for companionship.
• Family is the desire to raise one’s own children.
• Status is the desire for social standing.
• Vengeance is the desire to get even.
• Romance is the desire for sex and beauty.
• Eating is the desire to consume food.
• Physical Activity is the desire for exercise of muscles.
• Tranquility is the desire for emotional calm.

However, it is important to make a distinction between valued “States of Being” and valued “States of Doing”. In other words, make sure you do the things you value to achieve the things you value.

Many of Dr. Riess’ core values can be easily categorized into States of Being or States of Doing:

States of Being

• Independence
• Curiosity
• Acceptance
• Idealism
• Status
• Tranquility

States of Doing

• Social Contact
• Eating
• Physical Activity

We can come up with some more States of Doing, if we separate them out from Riess’ categories:

• Exploring
• Hunting
• Sex
• Observing
• Creating
• Competing
• Caretaking
• Organizing

In his book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, Cal Newport discusses the career and life of professor of evolutionary biology, Pardis Sabeti:

“As I spent time with Pardis, I recognized that her happiness comes from the fact that she built her career on a clear and compelling mission—something that not only gives meaning to her work but provides the energy needed to embrace life beyond the lab. In the overachieving style typical of Harvard, Pardis’s mission is by no means subtle: Her goal, put simply, is to rid the world of its most ancient and deadly diseases.”

Newport, Cal. So Good They Can’t Ignore You (p. 104). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

What Newport doesn’t discuss is that Sabeti’s life mission is based on her core values. She loves “doing” math and research, which involve States of Doing such as problem-solving, ordering, observing and exploring, which she likely highly values one or all of those. But those States of Doing” have a purpose, and that is to eliminate diseases, which involves the State of Being of Tranquility. 

She could have pursued that State of Being in other ways, such as being a medical doctor. So it’s no surprise that she strongly considered becoming a medical doctor throughout her life.  But it was her valued States of Doing that pushed into the research arena.

This is where video games themselves fall short: They rarely give one meaning and fulfillment. I remember talking to a friend who thoroughly enjoyed playing a video game for 3 hours straight and then lamented feeling empty afterwards. Don’t let your life be a meaningless game, but focus on your core values.

Flow

One of the most desired States of Being is the state of Flow. In this state, one enjoys being challenged but not frustrated and ease but not boredom. Video games are designed to hit that sweet spot, but life, not so much. 

It can take time to develop Flow in the things you pursue in life, and various obstacles can hinder your progress. That’s why it is important to focus on your core values, so that you can weather the times when things don’t go so smoothly.

To Recap

• Our ancient brain and body (our system) are not built for today’s modern world.  We must overcome the challenge that presents with Mods, Cheat Codes and Hacks.
• We must maintain our system with exercise, sleep and diet to ensure optimal performance.
• We can customize certain aspects of ourselves, but some attributes, including our core values, are influenced by genetics.
• Controlling our environment to manipulate our evolutionary programming is the key to living an optimal life..
• Humans evolved to live in groups, but the modern world doesn’t support tribal environments.
• Joining beneficial groups and distinguishing between community and friends is important.
• Avoid being an “NPC” by taking your evolutionary programming off of auto-pilot.
• Life’s controls can be far from intuitive, but evolutionary theory can give us an understanding of these controls and can lead us towards an optimal life experience. 
• Winning involves avoiding pain and achieving pleasure, including finding meaning and fulfillment by focusing on your core values.

Thanks for reading my stuff,

MJ