Interventions for A Better Meta

Day 3,056, 20:01 Published in USA USA by Silas Soule

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Interventions for A Better Meta
OR
Rhapsody for the e-Theater

"Freedom is like religion for us.
"Truant livin' livin' in us, resistance is us
"They say, 'Stay down', and we stand up"
-- John Legend



Hello sisters and brothers! A quick reminder of what drives me to do what I do.

For me, "winning" and "playing" this game are all about finding ways to express PASSION and JOY:

Passion for the destruction of all forms of e-slavery, including (and perhaps especially) mental e-slavery. This is the joy of abolishing boredom. All Power to the Imagination!

Passion for smashing constraints. This is the joy of breaking social taboos. For an Egregious and Extraordinary Otherness! The Power of Love is a curious thing!

Passion for realizing disappointed hopes. This is the joy of transcending the neo-liberal (and neo-conservative) "radicalism" of: "Yes this sucks, but it's the best we can hope for." This is the power of the Absurd, of Turning-Dreams-into-Reality, of Finding Agelessness, and of Discovering-Your-Own-True-Being. This is not "extremism"; it is, according to a number of respected thinkers, our e(xistential)-birthright. And nobody can take it away from us!




OK. And maybe I also play because I enjoy, just wee bit, taking the piss. 🙂









Before I get to my meta-topic, I need to touch on a couple of hot topic housekeeping items.


Firstly, this article is NOT about the CP elections.

First, sure as I love all y'all, I hold that the only good dictator is an overthrown dictator.

And plus-first, I am already signed up to be the President of Vice on PilotPhil's Blacklisted Cabinet. So if by some miracle Brother PilotPhil were to win the CP election, I will have a good deal of VICE to attend to. And that responsibility, as I am sure you can imagine, is keeping me very busy working on The Red List.

Honestly. It is such important work. I spend literally seconds every day pondering how to make it a success.


For those who have not been closely following the SFP Forums: The Red List is so important because it will identify all of those who are in serious need of radical re-education. And since we expect our Great CP, PP, to rapidly get impeached by the BM (Blue Meanies) Caucus in Congress, I need to be prepared to act quickly once the awesome power of the VICE is in my hands.


But my loyal fanbase need not worry. I do have a plan for getting it done. It centers around whipping up a very special batch of delicious freedom-socialist-flavored brownies. In fact, I have already been running a test kitchen for new arrivals to the Party and it is goin well. Just the other day a rather disheartened and diminished new arrival -- practically a Harfoot really -- noted that after mixing a bit of my specially-brewed freedom-socialist-flavors into his Halfling's Leaf, he'd nearly doubled his joy at quoits. I kid you not. And you know how halflings like their quoits.


Anyway. There's that. Just wanted to let you know that I very busy, for moments at a time, studying my Jude Connor Recipe Book so I can get the mix just right and have plenty of pastries to distribute when the time comes. Which reminds me, I think it is time for a study break...











Oh. Hi everybody. What's up? Were we talking something important?













OHHH. Right.. Ummm, hey, speaking of my mission to bring some whoopass freedom-socialist joy to everyone near and far... Oh, GUESS WHAT!!!?



My Mom, who is in her 80s and from West Virginia, told me just the other day that her grandfather was a socialist. His name was Ernest and everybody loved him. I knew that part before. But I didn't know until last week that he was an earnest and loved socialist. So I'm thinking... Hey-eyyy-eyyy, Quinn!!.. If my great-grandfather could be a sexy and popular socialist like 100 years ago in Appalachia, and we all know very well that Socialist Sheriff Andy Griffith, who maybe looked a little bit like my great-grandfather, kindly and dutifully kept good order in Socialist Mayberry for many years in TV Land by deploying much laughter, kindness, forgiveness and dignity, often happily sitting in the cell with them and jamming along with his prisoners, then by gum, I don't see why I can't work a little harder on spreading more socialist-freedom-flavored joy and happiness amongst the poor impoverished prisoners of the eUSA Forum and their faminions!


Yeah!!





Ummm..

So. What else was it I wanted to share?

"Thinking... Thinking..."

Ah! Yes!



Another super-important housekeeping note!



Hot pocket, err, hot TOPIC, Number Two. (MAN, I could devour a hot pocket right now!)



Secondly, this article is also NOT about the upcoming SFP-PP election either. Yes, I am looking forward to an interesting and thoughtful debate on the direction of the venerable Osmanist Party of the Peoples' Revolutionary Volunteers, for sure. But no I am not wading into those waters just yet. I do have a revolutionary idea of my own that I'd like to float past the candidates for Chair of the RC and the revolutionary volunteers as a whole.

But I don't want to get into that here today. Maybe next time.







Oh, while I am on the topic the SFP PP election... DO please pay a bit of attention to this next bit and feel free to share it with any anti-SFP ATO-Terrorist-types that you may run into.

Not that I think any such thing is in the offing, but I will advise, out of the kindness of my heart, and only because I've heard some nasty rumors swirling around, so I will advise any would-be ATO-er foolish enough to attack the SFP that I have been advised that they should just go ahead and assume that there would be consequences of any such action against the Party of the People's Revolution.

According to what I am hearing around the old virtual-water-cooler, such attackers would need to be prepared to face "the just and anonymous wrath of the e-proletariat, if you catch my drift".

Regarding the involvement of own famalamagang in any "We do not forget. We do not forgive" such-like events, I can only share that one of my favorite sons, the one whom Bill and I call William-/b/, has asked me to note that he owns a well-worn copy of the Red Team Field Manual, along with a picnic basket full of some kind of new-fangled pastry called Raspberry Pies.

And he says he knows how to use them both to good effect.

So that's that. I don't really know what any of that means. But I was asked to pass that message along. And yes, Raspberry Pie is DELICIOUS!



Mmmmmmmmmm!! Raspberry Pie!!




But really. Gosh! Look at the time. Enough of this political smack-talk already. Jeez!, elections are so annoying.


What I actually wanted to get into here is showing off some of those mad skillz that cool chicks, cute cubs, bad ol' bears and famacious sisters, baes, bros of all kinds actually dig, you know, stuff that is more in the realm of....






Yes.




Art!






But in order to present my artful concepts, it will first be necessary to review what the word "meta" means... Why this is necessary will become clear shortly.





As most of those familiar with the ascension of the Socialist Freedom Party into the realm of "Top Five"-ness have noticed, a number of SFPers tend to raise a persistent and somewhat consistent critique of certain "meta" aspects of game play in the eUSA.



What I would like to start today is an attempt to hone and refine this critique in a positive direction.



It is my contention that the critique is accurate as it stands: that the eUSA Forum is a cesspool and it does encourage a "meta-lord" mentality in Congress and in departments of the eUSA Governmental and that the so-called "democratic dictatorship" makes this situation even worse.

However, it is quite clear to me that such a critique, while entirely necessary, is not enough. I also admire SFPniks (and others) who want to dive into that particular meta-layer and work to clean it up from within. I wish them all the best.

But I believe that what is really needed is what I am thinking as: "More, Better Meta".

The SFP Forum -- and the communication within the SFP generally, and I know other parties around the nation and the world have similar positive examples -- provides some good examples of "better meta".

But this too, in my view, is not enough.








In the spirit of full disclosure, perhaps I should admit that I am in fact an old, old fart and that I have a number of interests outside of eRepublik.

For example, I have a pretty strong grounding in philosophy (including of course metaphysics), and history, political theory, economics, and mathematics. I have been making my living in computer science, primarily in large-scale data systems, for over 30 years. Due to my upbringing and interests, I also have a strong knowledge of many religious and spiritual traditions, including some occult ones.

And it is fair to say that I have dabbled a good bit in semantics, semiotics, ontology and data theory.

By "dabbled" I mean: I've read all of Saussure and Chomsky on linguistics; I've gone thru the writings of Charles S. Pierce with a fine-toothed comb; I've attended lectures by (and shaken the hands of 🙂 ) both Tim Berners-Lee and C.J. Date; I am delivering a brief lecture in June on graphing databases; and I was at a meeting just two weeks ago with several of the principal leads for the emerging international standard Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO).

I don't mean to brag (OK, OK, OK fine, I do mean to brag... just a little) but I do have, objectively speaking, a fairly secure grasp on what "meta" refers to.




Rhapsody for the e-Theater

I think it is accurate to observe that, in the context of eRepublik, the use of the term "meta" gets bowdlerized sometimes.

In the worst case, reductionists collapse the sense of the word to refer specifically to a particular off-game threaded conversation site of the kind supported by vendors like Forummotion.com or Yahoo Groups. For example, we see this overly-restrictive (and thus incorrect) usage when someone writes "the Meta" as a proper noun, to refer specifically to the "eunitedstates forum".

The "eUSA Forum" is a list-serv type of site that was constructed, if I am not mistaken, originally by PigInPen, and it is configured and managed using the software framework provided by simplemachines.org.



A broader and more accurate usage of the term "meta" within the context of eRepublik refers to the general practice of "playing the game" using software tools other than those provided by eRepublik Labs, primarily in order to enhance the "meaning" of the game and to construct more nuanced and interesting relationships between its default entities.

In this sense, "meta"-systems for eRepublik includes ALL off-game list-serv systems at every level of "social organizing", as well as the wide variety of IRC chat channels, Skype or Facetime sessions, streaming radio and video, and other networking software, including off-game email and texts and so forth, which players around the world use to augment their communications and collaboration and story-telling regarding the game.






I will conclude my remarks for today by noting that a bit of ontological confusion has crept into the interesting and lively debates on the role of "meta" in the e-USA. This confusion aligns directly to the difference noted above and it is easily corrected.

In particular, a false equivalence has been floated between a critique of the use and mis-use one particular "meta"-layer -- the eUSA Forum -- and the role of all "meta" tools. The straw man argument goes: "How can the SFP criticize the eUSA Forum? After all, there is an SFP Forum too!!! What hypocrites they are!! Bwaaa-hahahaha!!"



I am quite sure that any thoughtful reader can see through the logical flaw in such argumentation. No critic of eUSA Forums, as far as I know, at least not in the recent furores around the SFP's interventions in this area, has claimed that "All eRepublik meta-systems are exactly the same and that all use of all meta-software is equally bad."

That is just silly.



On the other hand, my thinking is that, while eUSA Forum is deeply flawed, other "meta"-systems have also failed to fully round out players' need to express their passions and joys.



OK. That is my foundational statement on the critique of everyday "meta".

Next time (hopefully tomorrow!), I will start to float some artful suggestions on what a "more, better meta" might entail.






Until then, please do everything you can to pursue your e-Passions and e-Joys with all your heart!


XOXOXOXOXOXOXXOOX,
PQ