Governing enterprising individuals, p. 151 (Nikolas Rose, 1996)"The self is to be a subjective being, it is to aspire to autonomy, it is to strive for personal fulfillment in its earthly life, it is to interpret its reality and destiny as a matter of individual responsibility, it is to find meaning in existence by shaping its life through acts of choice. These ways of thinking about humans as selves, and these ways of judging them, are linked to certain ways of acting upon such selves. The guidance of selves is no longer dependent on the authority of religion or traditional morality; it has been allocated to 'experts of subjectivity' who transfigure existential questions about the purpose of life and the meaning of suffering into technical questions about the most effective ways of managing malfunction and improving 'quality of life'."
p. 154
"Enterprise can thus be given a 'technological' form by experts of organizational life, engineering human relations through architecture, timetabling, supervisory systems, payment schemes, curricula, and the like to achieve economy, efficiency, excellence, and competitiveness."
The first decision that must be made in The Game of Life, aside from what color mini-van you wish to use as the representation of yourself, is whether you will start college or start a career. The instructions point out the pros and cons of your possible choice: "college offers more career and salary options, but it takes time-and it puts you in debt!" Regardless, a career is required, and the player receives his or her job by drawing a card. A few spins of the wheel forward (because, "just as in real life, you can't go back in time!") is the Marriage Space, which includes a red Stop sign indicating that all players must get married. Other required spaces on the board include a space which requires the player to buy a house, paydays, taxes due, you-just-had-a-baby spaces, and spaces which indicate that the player has either been fired or is having a mid-life crisis, and either way needs to find a new career. At the end of the winding roadmap of life are two possible retirement locations -- one for the rich and one for the not-so-rich. Ultimately, the objective is to make the most money in the end.
First introduced in 1860, and then later re-introduced in its current state in 1960, The Game of LIFE serves as political propaganda for how the average American is to live his or her life as a productive individual of society. Integrating values such as education, marriage, and career success, and morals like recycling, learning CPR, and saying "no" to drugs (1992), this game instills the ethics that Nikolas Rose lists as the goals of enterprising individuals, and leaves little room for other possibilities.
Similarly, almost every commercial break on TV will include an ad about student loans, a career-college, a house-hold product, ways to save money, ways to spend it, an anti-drug campaign commercial, an eco-friendly commercial, or an ad that in some other way delineates the goals of life and how to get there. Besides this, high school students are bombarded with interrogations of where they want to apply to college, what they want to major in, and what they're doing to make sure it happens. College students quickly realize that if they didn't have plans for grad school before, they should consider making some plans now, because it would seem as though a college degree still isn't quite enough. Regardless of how far one pursues his or her education, there is still an aisle at the grocery store dedicated to magazines, a significant percentage of which focuses solely on weddings, and another percentage on family life or home upkeep. The objective that is pressed into the lives of our society from unending directions upholds two main goals: have a family and make money.
Image source:
http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002338.html
The Game of LIFE instructions:
http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/life.pdf
History of The Game of LIFE:
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