Roar of the Lion

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Something I Have Heard Before

Musical introduction: The Lion's Roar
"I'm a goddam fool, but then again so are you."

Daily affirmation: "Today I will be the best PQ I can be."


Hello dear readers!

Last issue we looked at the five great tribes of eRepublik players. Those "tribal" characteristics can take us on a path towards wisdom, on a path towards neurosis, or both.

This time Roar of the Lion explores what are our common experiences in relating to the eWorld.



This is in three parts. The first part covers what I like to call...




The Four Glorious Facts, or, The Straight Dope


Sit quietly for a moment and try to imagine your overall eRep experience. Not your feelings about it, or the particular things you've done, or the various forms that eRep has taken, but the whole sweep of the experience.

I think the following kind of captures it in as few words as possible.


1. eRep is full of distress and wretchedness.

2. The source of this is the game itself. It keeps re-creating distress and wretchedness over and over again.

3. There is a way out of the distress and wretchedness. In fact, eRep can be fun.

4. The way out -- the way to eJoy -- is finding a path to game play that best fits your innate tribal instincts.


In the last issue, I talked about those five large sets of character qualities or tribal instincts. Each type can lead to fun, to happiness, to wisdom, joy, etc. As well as to mental illness, bad feelings, or anxiety of various kinds.

What I mean by #4 above -- finding your path -- is acting in such as way as to get onto the high road. No matter what makes up your particular set of preferences, desires, inclinations, skills and so forth: remember that finding a skillful path is possible.

Winning the prize of good cheer is fine sport and a delight.



The next trick is how to find that path and stay on it. This part I like to call...



The End of Wretchedness, or, PQ's e-Exercise Plan

There are three types of exercises one needs to do in order to find the path to e-bliss and to stay on it.

The three categories of exercise are:
* Not being a dick
* Paying attention
and
* Having a vision




Don't Be a Dick




The first category of exercises -- not being a dick -- means the following:


1) Refrain from lying and acting like a complete douchebag when communicating with others. Bullying and slandering people never turns out well. Idle gossip about nonsensical crapola is not particularly helpful either.


2) Be honest. Follow the rules. Refrain from cheating and stealing shit. Also resist the urge to use eRep as your personal porno blog, or as a venue for expresssing your sexual anxieties. Because that's just pitiful. Don't even think about using the game as a way to harm people in real life.


3) Exert yourself honorably. If you can afford to buy gold and that makes you happy, whatever, fine, that's your business. But make an effort to participate in the game as if it were designed to actually be fun for non-gold-buyers.

If you have employees, treat them well. If you help manage a militia unit, pick good battles. If you are in party, participate in its campaigns. If you like to write, put some original effort into it within the game context. If you are elected to public office, do your job. If you are two-clickers, two-click earnestly.




Pay Attention




The second category of exercises -- paying attention -- means putting some effort into developing your rational, psychological, ideological and otherwise cereberal relationship to the eWorld. Like:


1) Try. Yeah, just try. Watch out for slipping off onto the noxious side of things. When you feel yourself slipping into the muck, take a break, get out of it.


2) Be mindful about mis-conceptions and bad feelings and how they arise. Try not to let them influence your game play. This is not a mystery. In fact, there are simple steps to take:

a) Mind your body. Do I have a snack, or a nice cup of coffee, or a frosty Mountain Dew to enjoy while playing?

b) Mind your feelings. Am I pissed off at the moment at someone outside of the game?

c) Mind your mind. Am I too distracted to be playing right now? Is there something I need to take care of before logging in?

and

d) Do I really have the facts? In other words, do I really know what it is I am doing, or do I need to learn a bit more about it first.


3) Concentrate. Ideally, when we act, our concentration is completely focussed on a selected object and we are not distracted by ten things at once, nor by random urges and perceptions. People deal with this in different ways depending on their needs and circumstances. It might just mean prioritizing things a bit. Or maybe you are the type who needs to let things percolate for a while before speaking or acting. Sometimes just remembering to breathe in and out and paying attention to that can be very helpful.



Have a Vision




The third category of exercises -- having a vision -- has to do with your intentions and perceptions:


1) Work on perceiving things clearly. Mentally reviewing the "Four Glorious Facts" before logging in is one way to help do this. Realizing that eRep shits on everyone all the time is, in fact, very liberating. You are never alone in the e-shitstorm.


2) Make a commitment to your path.

Whatever your tribal affiliations... Whatever approach to finding your bliss within the game works for you...

Make a conscious commitment of intention to do the right thing while on your path. In general, resist just appeasing whatever fleeting desires you may have. Resist falling into anger or shutting yourself off from others. Resist being cruel, violent or pompous. Make an intention to stick to your program.




Distress and Wretchedness, Again





Let's return to the very first point about distress and wretchendess. I know that sounds a bit harsh, so I want to explain a little what I mean by that. This part I like to call...


The Three X's, or simply, XXX





eRep constantly regurgitates distress and wretchedness not because the Admin is a bad person or his programmers are undepaid, but because it is in the very nature of such a browser game to do so. In fact eRep Labs suffers in the same way that we, as players, do.

There are three main obliterations, or as I like to call them X's, that mark the very existence of the game. They are:


X #1: Brevity. Yes, e-life is too short. It can never match up to our expectations for a social simulation.

You fans of the Matrix movies may be familiar with Baudrillard's analysis regarding the paradox of the perfect map. No map can ever be perfect because it would then be a complete mirror of the object it is mapping. And the natural world -- the entire universe for that matter -- are in a constant state of flux. And so the map would also have to be constantly changing and shifting to keep up. Yet we get so attached to the map that we start to think it is a substitute for the real world.

In short, nothing is permanent and nothing is real in eRep. That is vexing because we tend to want something to hold onto and we want it to have meaning.


X #2: Pain and Loss. The game -- like much of life itself -- is built around a model for perpetuating constant anxiety.

Will my country be wiped? Will my party fall out of the Top Five? Will I lose the election? Will I lose fake-money on the fake-market? And perhaps even more painful: will the friends I've made on eRep go away? All of these types of loss are a permanent feature of the game. There's no getting away from that.


X #3: Non-existence. You don't really exist at all in a virtual world. You are just a collection of electrons tied to an e-mail address (or to several e-mail addresses if you are a multi).

There is no immutable and permament me within the game. "I" am just an aggregation of avatars, articles, and various kinds of numbers (rank, strength, etc.) zipping around on short-lived IP packages and getting stored as bits occasionally on a MySQL database somewhere. This realization that really "there is no there there" with respect to one's e-identity can be disturbing.






The Horse Sense of No Escape

Some will tell you that there is another shore, a safe landing place on the "other side" of this eLife of distress and wretchedness, where everything lasts forever in a perfect form.

I don't particularly buy into that notion, pleasant as it may be.

I think the "trick" is soaring above the muck and seeing it for what it is, then diving back down right into it like a crazy horse with a great-warrior spirit.





So that's that. I hope you enjoyed the second edition of The Lion's Roar.
Let me know what you think. Or not!

xoxoxoxox, PQ