occasional random and undeserved grace (ladders) or wrath (chutes). This is the way we, in the West at least, have have both rationalized and mythologized our experience of reality. Life is a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. One works towards goals, and God, for no apparent reason rewards some and not others. The abstract nature of God, fate, redemption and damnation are all expressed as real-world metaphors: ladders and chutes (or, in the original game, more biblical snakes). The only real law of nature exploited in the game is gravity: you must climb up, but you can always fall down. For the game to end, there must be a winner and a loser.
Well, this game doesn't provide us with any hints for non-apocalyptic thinking. On the contrary, it renders a fairly precise portrait of the more fatalistic profile of Christian thinking at the end of the 20th century. Everything ends. Life gives into
