Join the new world

In eRepublik, war is fun, propaganda is free, and we are all having a blast.

Hooray! for e-America, for e-Canada, for e-Spain and for all of our friends and allies! Drive the invaders to the bottom of the sea! (If I have any PEACEnik readers, kindly substitute your own slogans here.)

But Mama taught you that even a fun game can stir up emotions and elicit things that are not so fun, didn't she? Like nasty comments about peoples' nationality that goes beyond joking. Or brutally violent imagery that crosses that somewhat fuzzy line that separates the intense, but clearly fanstastical, graphics of game-playing and the psychopathology of uber-nationalism.

In the eUSA, where political game-playing and role-playing is very popular (perhaps to the point of distraction for some 🙂, a virtual flood of patriotic imagery and words has been unleashed. It recalls and in the less imaginative cases, simply re-treads, the best-known populist patterns.

This is par for the course, of course, and it occurs largely in a spirit of well-meaning enthusiasm.

Likewise, e-citizens on the PEACEnik side have jump'd at the opportunity of the latest war to ramp up and shop around well-worn and popular critiques of the American behemoth, adjusted to the framework of the game. Some are very funny. Some are tiresome. A few cross the line.

Within the eUSA, and perhaps in other e-countries too, the "joy of e-war" seems to have the potential to un-earth a kind of unhealthy, slightly "over the line" group-think mentality amongst some partisans. An attitude that is fundamentally at odds with free thought. The giant yawn that greeted a recent announcement of the formation of a Fascist Party in eUSA is testimony to how deeply this feeling for free expression of ideas is rooted.



Perhaps this is a good time to recall that equanimity -- calmness of mind, an ability to consider phenomena without having it disturb your emotional state -- is considered a great virtue in buddhist mind-training, and in many other traditions.

Albert Einstein once observed that "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."

As they say in the Dallas Junior League, Well, yes...

But it's really more of a balancing act. Loosen up. Have more fun. But refrain from those words and images that will just end up getting you born into the next life as a cockroach or dung beetle.



Policing anyone's speech or freedom of expression should be the farthest thing from our minds in a game like this. This outpouring of words and images is a big part of what makes eRepublik so intriguing and fun.

My feller e-Americans, why not draw a little deeper into the well? Some songs that expressed the desire for the USA to be a champion of freedom and an opponent of imperialism go back over 100 years, like...

Vot Vas You Up To, Uncle Sam?

"Shall our Starry Flag of Freedom
Be a badge for serf or slave?
Shall it head the grand procession in a "Criminal aggression"
And there for greed and conquest wave?
No, no, no!
Ten thousand answer, No!
It must ever be the Flag of the Free,
The Flag of the Free and the Brave!"
-- Ralph T. Butler, about 1900

...and women have been a part of this fight since the very beginning. Our sisters deserve better than President Harrison's crap "traditions". This is from "Rights of a Woman", published in 1795:

"O Let the sacred fire
Of Freedom's voice inspire
A Female too;--
Man makes the cause his own,
And Fame his acts renown,--
Woman thy fears disown,
Assert thy due. "

While we are beating back the barbarians at the gates in eRepublik, or getting excited about the latest flavor of M&M's,or whatever else it is that upsets our balance today, let's remember to calm the barbarians in our minds too.

Oh. Almost forgot. Please support candidates of the United Left in the upcoming eUSA Congress elections. And if you're bored with being a hired-and-fired work-drone for an e-company, consider joining a workers collective, a co-op or the SFP Commune instead.