1. Do not aim for the party hat. (First the myth then the moral)

[The Myth] It is not hyperbole to say that the partyhat in RuneScape is the ultimate symbol of status. The partyhat was originally released as a celebration of Christmas. It was later made discontinued and thus over the many years, appreciated as the most expensive of the wearable “rare” items, and came to cost on the order of 1 billion+ gold pieces. This may be jumping ahead a bit, but when I bought my first partyhat, I spent 1.3 billion gp, which I calculate to be roughly equivalent to 1,300 hours of grinding (with perfect efficiency), the highest money-earning methods at the time. Such that, when I wore that partyhat upon my head, I was showing off 1,300 hours of embedded labor.

When you first play RuneScape, everyone is a noob. Long before I had my partyhat, I was also a noob, and when you play a game with predominantly male teenage player-base, you tend to know this rather harshly. This is what it feels like to be at the bottom of the social dominance hierarchy, you wear it like a heavy chain. You cannot escape it. It has been shown that if one is barely clinging to the bottom of the social structure, their brain will interpret any anomalous occurrence as a catastrophe and it has been shown that relative depravation counts more than absolute depravation. Meaning that people at the bottom of dominance hierarchies tend to die earlier, regardless of absolute wealth or quality of life. This is because when you are at the bottom, your body defaults into emergency preparation and you become generally stressed or anxious, and increased basal cortisol makes you older than you are [9].

Relative status is another thing we keep track of in a built-in way with brain circuitry, it turns out, that is as old as crustaceans (300+mya) [10]. Nobody likes being low in status. When you’re high in status, your brain serotonin levels go up and you become less irritable and experience less negative emotion per unit of stress. When you lower someone’s status, as far as their primordial circuit is concerned, you alter the system regulating emotions. Depressed people act as if they are low status, or at least as brain circuitry is concerned, it is expressed in the same way. It is also expressed the same way with slumped posture and aversion of eye contact, and are prone to riskier behavior [11]. Depressed people are typically not depressed about one thing, but are depressed about everything. Marginally unfavorable events in their lives become increasingly likely to set them overboard.

Antidepressants work by lowering the rate of serotonin re-uptake. The same antidepressants that work on humans also work on crustaceans [12]. This means that the brain circuitry that works for crustaceans is in us, and it is over 300 million years old. Crustaceans have been extensively studied, because of their showy fight displays, but also because they live in dominance hierarchies. If a lobster gets beaten in a fight, it won’t fight for another 20 minutes, unless given antidepressants, in which case it will fight again right away.

The status structures fundamental to what we all share, and underlies your very being, is as old as crustaceans. [13]

Still not convinced? Think there are too many dissimilarities between us and crustaceans to make comparisons at the level of the neurotransmitter? Well, then your doubts are contrary to one of the central dogmas of the science of evolution: that continuity, not discontinuity, best explains convergent phenomena [14].

The Myth [con’t…] Back to RuneScape, I recall wearing the partyhat around and getting lots of attention everywhere I went. I recall the feeling of exaltation that came, apparently, with ownership. I felt superordinate and accomplished with it on my head, this virtual paper hat! Except, of course, I had spent every last gold piece purchasing it, so I was left with very little in my bank. I had my partyhat for the greater part of a year. And I remember slowly coming to the realization that the feeling of accomplishment was waning. I began to have nightmares of logging in only to find my prized partyhat was gone, or that maybe Jagex would drop them in-game once again, making them virtually worthless. Most people would think nothing of these nightmares, and cast them solely as thoughts entertained by a silly youth. But, upon deep examination, it is clear to me that large material possessions will do this to anyone. They cast a large shadow, and the burden of possession becomes increasingly blurred between person and thing, who possesses whom?

You see, the myth was that the partyhat was happiness, esteem, virtue all in one.

I have been alive long enough to know that you don’t mess with the structure of your own being, and that shortcuts and loopholes are rabbit holes masqueraded. What do we do when we take all of our hopes and dreams, symbolized, crystallize them into a symbol, and wear it on our head? The only place after paradise is complacency.

[The moral] There is a phenomenon called The Sisyphus Effect, and it states, broadly, that if your orientation is to go from one goal onto the next, A to B all the time, you’d best not place your reward in the attainment of said goal, but in the pursuit of it, for that is where happiness lies. Actually getting somewhere is a small part of happiness, but all the positive dopaminergic response is experienced in relationship to the pursuit not the attainment of the goal [15]. Thus, perhaps you should establish a relationship with a transcendent value, such as the pursuit of noble (almost unattainable) goals, because it never runs out of motivational power. And a lifetime of pursuit towards a noble goal is better than a lifetime of meaningless transitions from points A to B. Long story short, I sold my partyhat. With the money I accomplished all of the things I ever wanted to do in the my virtual life, and now am a retired virtual player. And whenever I want, I can glean insight from my experiences playing a game that I was once very invested in.

Ask yourself: Is there a precedent in your life, past or present, in which you aimed solely for the ‘party hat’? Did you achieve it? How did you feel immediately afterward, and in the long run?

2. Don’t sell your soul for gold pieces. As humans we get to decide what we place atop the value pyramid. Don’t let money be your ultimate end. Because once this is achieved, the only alternative courses are: 1. Hoard more and more money, or 2. give up on growth. The former is arguably a detriment to the economy as a whole, and has created the income inequality we see and the latter is a state of lost orientation and purpose which can break most any man. Instead, choose a transcendent virtue to aspire to.

Ask yourself: Have you ever compromised your value system for money?

3. Instead, marry yourself to a great and terrible purpose, one whose aim is high enough to be noble but essentially unobtainable. By developing a relationship with an ideal, you learn to fall in love with the journey, and not small accomplishments. Once you set your eyes on the journey, success or failure is met by answering the question: Am I working toward my ideal? Thus, on a day-to-day basis, even if you did not get from A to B, you at least can say that you are further along in your journey toward fulfillment. If life were a waveform, this type of motivation is more lasting, and less prone to undulations.

4.How to achieve it? Outwork everyone — everyone! This one is self-explanatory. What’s stupider than working to achieve the unachievable? Working harder than anyone else in the process. When we procrastinate, we don’t even enjoy ourselves in the interim — that’s because we have an all-seeing eye in the back of our minds which keeps track of what we ought to be doing. The only appeasement is equated in hours of labor.

5. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re wasting your time. Each journey must be respected for what it represents to the quester. And each feather on his cap, each skill mastery emblazoned on his cape, ought be respected for its context-dependent meaning. Be wary of following a path laid out for you, or following too closely a road you believe is the right one for you in the eyes of others. Learn to what end a road meets, and adjust accordingly.

“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere.” -F. Herbert

Ask yourself: Is your path your own?

6. The hydra, representing life, has not one face, but many faces. Each a unique obstacle. Life is a set of iterative games with similar structures, dominance hierarchies, virtues, vices and goals, and the best adaptation to assure victory across any set of infinitely variable starting conditions is to be generally aware. The best chance you have of adapting to any set of conditions lies in your ability to observe the rules of the game and observe everyone else’s winning and losing moves.

Advice: I like to devote my Sundays to what I call Chess Day. It is a time that I set aside to change course if it need-be. I have a set schema or structure about which I go about each week, but Sundays I devote to observation. My powerful Sunday ritual consists of reading top content-creators’ work on medium for 3-hrs, researching the most up-to-date changes and updates in my spheres of influence, doing social media outreach, keeping in touch with my scientific community, and my blogosphere here on Medium. This is also the time I set aside to read non-fiction, self-help type books, of which I always have a copy on my ‘currently reading’ shelf (currently Gladwell’s Outliers).

7. There is an end hidden in everything, for those who look for it. Times of monotony, like pointing and clicking, and away from keyboard tasking on a video game, are actually times for deep insight. You never know what you can learn from these moments, if you just dig a bit deeper.