Response to Gloveislove

Day 1,793, 05:39 • Published in India India • by ArawnLives
This is a response to this article

This is Glove's challenge: Who or what had the most impact on you from this game? This can be an event, a person, an idea, or something more.

This question only fed a recent question that has been burning in my mind. I'm a busy law student in real life, often struggling to manage to make academic deadlines or personal ones. I have personal commitments, a loving girlfriend and many other distractions that on the face of it would seem to be more compelling and more attractive than this make-believe world.

My standard answer is how valuable the community is, and that is certainly an important factor - but I needn't work so hard or long at this game, I could merely work through IRC or in-game PMs. Why do DOs matter so much? Why do I feel such zeal or passion for a few pixels for a map?

The answer is a bit long. And indirect. So bear with me.

India, in RL, is a country that is blessed in many ways. With great resources of all sorts - natural, demographic, cultural, scientific and social - there is no reason why India shouldn't be a world power. The actual status, of being a third world nation with several problems, are not commensurate. My entire life I have been instructed that the blame is to lie at the door of the colonial era - that much of our wealth was sucked out by the evil excesses that the White Man's Burden placed upon our subcontinent; and that the resulting lack of education and social awareness have led to an explosion of population that have crippled our ability to deal with these structural problems.

However, about 8 years ago, we saw a mini-renaissance; a growing knowledge economy and investment in new technologies allowed my nation to grow at a blistering rate. However, in our time of plenty, disturbing news reports displayed in an increasingly active news media showcased repeatedly occasions where unscrupulous politicians (unfortunately in a vast majority) had lined their own pockets with these resources. This problem cannot be overstated - currently, Swiss banks have more money from people in India than any other nationality in the world, and all of this is undeclared income. That's disgusting, given that our GDP is a fraction of that of the developed world. Basically, we got done in by corrupt cunts.

This awareness has persisted in the back of my mind for the last two years - and especially in the last 9 months, when I have been a part of this game. In my first few months, I happened to come across instances of vote buying and corruption in eRepublik. I tend to be (as Gloveislove would put it) a Mr. Nice Guy who doesn't actually manage to get anything done - and my reaction to this behaviour was predictably ineffective; I wrote several articles, made several pleas to people. That particular corrupt candidate did win - but it made me eager to participate in the political process in eRepublik, and wipe this stain from eIndian politics as far as I was able. The thought that most struck me was best expressed in a conversation with Alector, who was my mentor in this game. He said something to me that scared me to the depth of my conscience.

We blame our corruption on lack of education and apathy in the real world, he said. And educated Indians are fond of being armchair critics of our political class. We often say that if we were in charge or given the chance, we would not be corrupt. But - here we were, trading favours for fake gold in a game, showing absolutely no shame or care for the ethics of it - how dare we consider ourselves better than any of those disgusting politicians?

Apathy is too easy a response in this world. People's consciences are overworked, and it's easy to not sweat the small indiscretions, the kind of petty and grimy evilness that pervades everyday existence. But it is a more sinister evil - purely by virtue of being so simple and easy. I think no one would, under normal circumstances, be willing to take a bribe to conceal evidence of a cold-blooded murder. But we might all be willing to look the other way for a small theft, especially if we reap some of the benefits. And so it builds, until the magnitude of the wrong we commit is no longer clear in terms of the tangible harms we do.

By now, you're wondering what the point is. And expecting me to answer the question. So here it is - the thing eRepublik taught me was how not to be a hypocrite. It taught me how to try my best to be a fair and even handed person in my dealings with other people, and to be clear about the standards of morality I applied - especially when I assumed positions of responsibility, even if it is a game. I had no business criticizing people or fighting for change when I could myself not stick to the standards I sought to apply to others.

I also learnt that apathy is something to be fought at, in every instance and with all the will and vigour that you can muster. Because there is nothing more disturbing than a good man who chooses to be a passive bystander to wrongdoing - in fact, he is then no longer a good man. For while 'evil' is never something you see in yourself - even Hitler thought he was doing a good thing - if you observe evil, and recognize it as such but choose to ignore it - you are no longer fit to be called civilized.