I'm surprised that HN hasn't applied some version of the standard critique of Capitalism already. It's practically de rigueur in fashionable intellectual circle

I'm surprised that HN hasn't applied some version of the standard critique of Capitalism already. It's practically de rigueur in fashionable intellectual circles. And in this case it's so easy, an amateur like me can make a decent stab at it. First of all, we enter the text with a remark about "mistakes of ego". One ego mistake is to conflate "life" with some activity that is taken to be "life-defining" or "the meaning of life". This is a Western preoccupation that stems from Christian spiritual angst with respect to the relationship between "good works" and salvation (this is very complex, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S... for details and note the differences between the Catholic and Protestant teachings. The psychological implications of the doctrinal differences are far beyond my ability to untangle). So here this is applied as follows: conflating life with the process of gaining salvation through good works which in a Capitalist society translates into "game playing" a.k.a. using capital to innovate and earn a return on investment. Of course none of this helps when it comes time to contemplate mortality. It doesn't matter how much you play nor how many times you win, you'll still be stuck with this over-developed existential angst which was the thing that prodded you to work so hard in the first place. > When you lose a game of chess, you don't go and jump off a bridge, you reset the pieces and do it again. > It's a game The game playing, the "reset the pieces", the conflation of life with the game, and the talk of suicide seem to suggest an element unacknowledged in the text, the idea of the cycle of death and rebirth. It may be a coincidence, but I think the attitude of the Buddhists with respect to this cycle may be connected with their attitude toward games vs. the process by which wisdom arises, but who knows? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Buddha_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Buddha_games OK, that's my critique. How did I score?