One of the first games we play when we are young is the game of tag, a game where one player runs after the others in hopes of catching one of them. This simple game was one of the first forms of group interaction that allowed us to unite. With the advancement of technology, we have reached a point where we no longer require physical presence to interact with each other — like communicating through the internet — but even the wall paintings of ancient cavemen are messages that travelled through time to interact with us.
To put it simply, regardless of the complexity or duration of these interactions, the outcome has always been the same: to unite. Unity is one of the fundamental binary actions of reality, from the scale of the very small, to the grand spectacle of galaxies and galaxy clusters. It is unity that has allowed stars and planets to be formed, life to emerge and our species to come so far.
Life: a game of unity
It is time to dive deeper into the rabbit hole with a new what if...
What if life itself is just an elaborate game?
Let’s assume that it is. Like all games, life would have a beginning and an end. There would be rules and laws. There would have to be a way to measure our progress — like accomplishments — and the outcome would be summarized into a question that we can ask at any and every moment: “Is it over?”. If life is not over, we continue to play. When life ends, who knows what will happen?
To keep track of the score, the game would be based in points. In case of life, there would only be two ways of winning and losing points:
If we experience happiness, trust and ultimately love, we win points.
If we experience sadness, fear and ultimately hatred, we lose points.
If you accept the premise that it is only through interacting with each other and ourselves that we experience happiness and sadness, you will realize that the only way that we can win the game is when everyone wins. And when we lose the game, everybody loses. And I don’t just mean humans. I mean animals, plants, the environment, the planet itself and even extraterrestrial life. Expand the premise to the entire Universe, and we can say that the Universe itself is playing a game of tag with someone or something.
As a species, this is not so hard to understand. Just like a game of football where two opposing teams face each other, the best way that a team has to win, is when all players of the same team are fighting for the same outcome. But when one team wins, the other one loses. If you consider that mankind is on the same team, then then total score of this and every game we play against each other is always 0.
Winning the game of unity: turning 0’s into 1’s
To better understand how the game works, consider people as a one-dimensional stream of 1’s and 0’s as mentioned in Part #1. The longer the stream of 0's that separates them, the harder it is to reach out to others. Similarly, the longer the stream of 1’s that forms their identity, the easier it is to reach out to others. From this, it is easy to understand that to win the game, the sum of 1’s needs to be greater than the 0’s that separates them. It’s simple mathematics.
As an example, consider the ideal and trivial scenario: Person A has an identity and emptiness score of 0001111000. Person B has an identity and emptiness score of 001100. Becoming one with each other, means breaking down the emptiness separating them by converting their 0’s into 1’s. Person B, clearly cannot reach out to Person A, since his identity is not strong enough. Person A on the other hand, can reach out to Person B. If he does, both become one and and ideal scenario of the resulting score would be 111111.
Now Person A and B, forming an identity of 111111, can reach out to someone or a group with a emptiness of 0’s which is equal or less than 111111. This means that two people are always stronger when they are together, as long as they remain united.
This example leads to the conclusion that if everyone is just a stream of 1’s separated by 0’s, interactions are simple and straightforward: just have more 1’s than 0’s and you are capable of uniting with anyone. If that is the case, then why is it so hard to unite with some people?
The mask: no one is who they seem
One of the consequences of having a personal life experience, is that we are constantly adapting to reality in different ways. By doing so, our identities become more of an irregular stream of 1’s and 0’s rather than a straight line of 1’s separated by an emptiness of 0’s. Sometimes, the irregularity is so intense, that it is really hard to become one, as our 1’s and 0’s don’t match with other people’s 1’s and 0’s. It seems like our identity works just like a lock that requires a specific key to be opened, or to use a term that is both used in computing and in social interactions, a mask that needs to be uncovered.
For example, to reach out to a person whose identity can be translated to the stream of 100101101, we need to have a mask of the type 011010010, which coverts our emptiness into 1’s and unites us with them with the resulting score of 111111111.
Lets freshen up our mind by returning to that exciting conversation with that interesting person in Part #1. That person says something nice, you reply with something nice. Extend this conversation to a steady trade of saying nice things to each other, and when the conversation ends, you leave with the clear feeling that the person is nice.
Now lets consider another scenario. Lets say that instead of a steady trade of saying nice things, the conversation progresses through an alternating chain of nice, not nice, nice not nice. During the exhausting conversation which we call “discussion”, we will have a hard time saying with certainty if we like the person or not, because as the conversation progresses, we are flowing through the duality of nice and not nice.
It is only when we pause or finish the conversation, and look back at the conversation to evaluate the sum of nice and not nice, that we determine if the person is actually nice or not. The outcome is usually a subjective feeling that can be either confortable or unconfortable, leading to uncertain thoughts or comments like: “He seems like a nice person.” or “I’m not sure about him.” or “I don’t trust him.”.
Navigating the stream: turning uncertainty into certainty
When we look back at all the conversations we’ve had, it is hard to find a pattern that matches every person. We can try to guess a person’s mask, but we are often either disappointed or even surprised by who they actually are. People might look the same way, dress the same way, you might be sure about them, but then they turn out to have unpredictable or unexpected behaviors. Why is it that sometimes we are so uncertain about each other, or even about ourselves?
If you accept the premise that uncertainty is one of the rules of life, you can explain people and all forms of interaction by using the laws of quantum mechanics, specifically by applying the principles of wave–particle duality and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. To put it simply, these principles are used to measure the motion of atomic particles, such as light, and state that we cannot determine an atomic particle’s position due to its wavy nature, even though when we observe it, it behaves like a particle. Similarly, we cannot be certain who a person is until we actually interact with her. When we do, the mask of uncertainty falls, and her true identity is revealed.
This may seem hard to understand, but it is nothing more than social interaction, which comes very easily to our species. With years of practice, we learn to determine the true identity of every person through interaction. Many times, we are even right about everyone without even talking to them, but it is only after we talk to them that we are sure about it. Sometimes, however, we are terribly mistaken.
Looking into the past: the mask as a reflection of what was
Many times, people are judged by one single action. If they lie once, they are liars. If they steal once, they are thieves. In light of the simulation hypothesis, this happens because life is measured one bit at a time. If that bit becomes imprinted in our memory as a bad, we are certain they are bad people. If it is imprinted as good, we are certain they are good people. Regardless of how accurate we are, that person or group becomes labeled. They become 1 or 0 to us and they will have a hard time changing our mind.
Fortunately, with practice, we learn to avoid labeling people by memorizing sequences of bits. Much like remembering a football game where many goals were scored, our memory allows us to easily understand that the team that won, was not the team that scored the first goal, but the team that scored most goals when the time was up.
Similarly, it is only when you sum up the total score that defines the person, that you can determine with certainty if their score is greater than zero. But since the game of unity is still going, the final score is yet to be determined. This means we never know for sure if someone is good or bad until time runs up. We can simply keep on experiencing the 1’s and 0’s and measuring the total result to know what the current score is.
When it comes to life, it is so hard to be certain about ourselves, because we are in constant change, and it is only when we observe each other that we know who we are. But by doing that, we are always, inevitably measuring who we were, even if a second ago. This means that nothing and no one is certain. The only thing that we can be certain of is what we are experiencing right now. And to accomplish that, we have to embrace uncertainty.
End of part two: catharsis
The beauty of an uncertain life, is that no matter who we were, we can become whoever we want to be. And no matter the person we want to talk to, we can reach out to them without knowing who they are in advance. We do not have to hold the key to every lock. We do not have to guess every mask. In fact we don’t have to know the key or mask at all, because they only exist when we measure reality through our memories. They are always in the past.
As such, to unite, we must let go of what we think about each other. Who we actually are will always be uncertain until we become. Understanding that, is the first step to becoming one, because no matter how many mistakes we make in life, we are certain we can be better than who we were, and by doing so, we begin to believe in ourselves.
Understanding that we are all the same is the next step to becoming one, because if we believe in ourselves and we are all the same, we are certain we can believe in each other. And by believing in each other, we learn to let go of the masks and see who we actually are, right here, right now. That is how we can say with absolute certainty to each other at every moment: “You are beautiful.”, “You are kind.”, “You are a good person”. And by saying that, we begin to heal each other. This is how we turn our 0’s to 1’s.
This may seem hard to accomplish, but it is only because reality — our mind included — is subjected to the uncertainty principle. It is simply not designed to experience motion and position at the same time. Essentially, it means that we can either remember who we were, or be who we are, never both at the same time. It seems, though, that we are programmed to focus in the past…
