The Chess of Life

When I first started playing chess I was very excited about how many ways there are to move pieces. I thought that а good chess-player is the one that knows all the moves by heart. Later I realized that there are groups of moves that are called combinations and had a belief that one  needs to study combinations. And lastly I learned that there is a golden rule to occupy a center of the board. Occupying center was my overall strategy and it helped me to win some games. Nevermind… I got bored with chess as moving pieces in 8*8 matrix does not solve real life problems. Now I recollect my chess experience and see analogies in real life...

Nature’s Chess

There is a constantly growing amount of facts in each field of life. These bunches of facts are like separate combinations. You can learn them, but you can never learn them all. And moreover if you rely on learning them you will eventually lose your natural ability to find "combinations" on the fly. The school of the future should be minimalistic about the number of facts and very generous about methods that will help to generate new knowledge.

And from psychological point of view, not every individual can discover/generate new knowledge. In most cases the reason for that is not some inherited incapability, but the mental state that person has achieved.

When a baby is born, he cannot control his physiological temptations and emotions. They are above all for him. He screams when he wants to eat and so on. In this sense his psyche is structured in the same way as the animal one. That is ok, that is how it is supposed to be for that age. But what if we see a grownup person that cannot control his emotions? Well, we call him an individual with "animalistic" mind structure.

Then comes the time when a kid is trying to copy norms of culture and adhere to them. He tries to mimic gestures and habits of his parents even if he doesn't understand where they came from. If a grown-up person's mind is totally determined by culture, we can call him "bio-robot" or "zombie". There are traditions and rites in our culture that are pointless and sometimes even harmful. But majority of people are crushed by traditions and do not dare to question whether these traditions are good or bad, or cannot go against them because the lack of free will. Alas, we live in a world where people with psychological state of "bio-robot" prevail in number.

Some individuals do develop power of will that enables them to override cultural traditions or even to create new traditions. But can we really consider them Human? What if their behavior is aimed to suppress the life of other people or biosphere in general? Their structure of mind can be named a "demonic" one.

Although every individual needs to be Human in the sense that he needs to have enough will and criticism to question culture he is living in, and to possess a good will to avoid "demonism".

Coming back to the game of Chess/Life. Animalistic individuals cannot play game at all. They cannot obey the rules and easily go to bottom of a social ladder. Bio-robots can learn existing moves and combinations, but they cannot be socially creative and overwrite them. "Demons" can create new combinations, break the old traditions, and win over bio-robots and “animals” easily, but have no support from above. Humans can of course learn combinations, can create them, and more importantly strive to live in harmony with others and biosphere and thus have support from the source that some call God, some - karma, and some - good luck...