The Rules of the Game
Silas Soule
Live Sharp Look Smart
The following are ramblings of an old fart, echoing things he heard while drinking tea on the back porch. They do not reflect the official policies of the Socialist Freedom Party.
Here is one of the rules of the game:
E-autocrats will continually hound truly revolutionary thinkers. The leaders who aspire to emancipate tyrannized players from mental slavery are always doomed to be sacrificed.
That's the law. It's how things work. Genuinely revolutionary theories are always received with the most savage malice, the most furious spleen and the most low-down and wicked campaigns of lies and slander.
When that fails to destroy the revolutionary cells, and it will always fail to do so, then next attempts are made to convert revolutionary thought into a harmless icon, to canonize and hallow the names of revolutionaries as a consolation prize to the exploited player community, while robbing revolutionary theory of its substance and blunting its edge.
Such vulgarization, doctoring, obscuring, obfuscation and distorting of the revolutionary spirit means that even social-chauvinists and plumb-bourgeois scholars will begin at some point to murmur of the "special features" of the "nationalist" school of Freedom, which, they claim, will prepare the citizenry splendidly for the purpose of waging imperialist war while defending the old fear-soaked and reactionary dictatorship.
So.
In view of the singularly wide-spread and inevitable distortion of revolutionary thinking, a prime task of great spirit warriors is to re-establish what Osmany Ramon and the early e-revolutionaries taught on the subject of the state. This will necessitate a number of long wind-baggy digressions, most of which I will not have the patience to go into here.
But we cannot possibly dispense with all of them.
I will mention a few such fairy tales today. Maybe... I dunno. How about three?
OK then. Here goes...
Myth #1: The state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes.
It just ain't so. The e-state is ...literally... just a dull and pixelated reflection, a distorted mirror of the real life state.
Furthermore states, as such, neither arise nor maintain themselves if it is possible to reconcile classes. As unshakably and e-scientifically established in that e-neo-classical work of Ramonist-Quinnism, "Analysis of Classes in eRepublik", it is the Admin hisownbadself who engenders the autocrat and autocrat-minion classes, who in turn buck up the zombification (remember that phrase!!) of the e-masses and promote the quashing of the revolutionaries, cut-ups, artists, wags, stand-up comedians, poets, pranksters, free-thinkers, merrymakers, pot-smokers, drunks and libertines who are the actual life of the party in eRepublikstan.
Yes, Felicia, the e-state is an organ of class rule.
It is Admin's big stick, used to play the players. It is a channel for routing the subjugation of the majority of classes of players into the despotic pockets of a few.
The state is the creation of e-Order. It is what "legalizes" and perpetuates abusiveness and e-totalitarianism by pretending to "moderate" between the various classes of players.
And it is the profession of the pettifoggering professors of moderation to teach that such an order is meant to reconcile the fundamental contradictions of eRepublicratic social, political, economic and military life.
Listen. They are whispering sweetly into your ears right now that the purpose of the e-State is reconciliation.
But sis's and bro's, it just ain't so. Nah. The state reinforces the oppression of e-nations and the maltreatment of its own citizens, workers and soldiers. The State is precisely what deprives the oppressed players of definite and clear methods to overturn the oppressive game-model once and for all and, literally, prevents us from playing an altogether new kind of game.
Myth #2: Democracy makes the State "Fair".
In a democratic republic, wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely for its clever indirection.
We all know its symptoms. First comes the direct corruption of officials. Secondly we nod our disappointed noodles at the proliferation of multiple means of greasy-palm alliances between government officials and economic oligarchs, and sigh, oh well, that's how things develop, isn't it? Capitalism. What can you do?
So yeah. To stay on that theme...
There is a reason why, after much meditation, discussion and reflection, I now chose to self-define my e-political views roughly as anarchist rather than leftist. This gets to the uncomfortable nub of the problem.
Taking this step was a recognition that even the best-hearted of democratic-socialist states, which is to say one that is not only democratic in a parliamentary sense, but also democratic in an economic and social sense, is still a mechanism for the oppression of classes and sectors of society. It cannot be otherwise. Cause cuz, that's what a state is.
Furthermore, it has been demonstrated over and over again that neither having a good-hearted majority in Parliament, nor even having a so-called "truly communist" or "really revolutionary" party in power, nor having a thriving social-democratic and liberal alliance, nor putting together an alliance of leftist parties that can dominate the electoral system, will, ultimately, in and of themselves, be guarantors of human-player liberation and of healing the e-world and local e-space.
Why, with barely the barest nudge, these types of states are once again enveloped by imperialism and bought-out by the hoaders who guard the stockpiles of the e-exchequers.
It takes the merest flutter of conscience, easily and quickly powdered over with the slightest covering of hypocrisy, for an oligarch to wear a red star or for the most banal revolutionary-turned-capitalist-roader to speak of "justice" and "freedom" and "solidarity" and "democracy".
On an aesthetic level, we can even admire the fine gentlemen who have developed such exceptional arts for their audacity, for the sheer word-twisting bloviatingly bizarre semantics of electronic-age sheep-herding.
Their multifariously clever methods of upholding and giving effect to the dominion of wealth provide for such multiplicity of "democracies" than democracy can even morph, bit by bit, drip by drip, happily into a state of something called "friendly dictatorship".
Heh!
Oh Plato, that old oligarchic dog, he'd be so proud of such a Republic, no?
Oh. Wait....
Right.
To put it even more bluntly: a democratic republic is the best possible political shell for global capital, which is to say for the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. Having gained possession of the best of shells, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no person, institution, nor party arising from within the conventional, hidebound, conservative and philistine common edifice can shake it, or even question it, without being hounded and smacked down.
And then, predictably, all hand-in-hand, in a circle of pristine loving kindness, singing "kum-by-yah", our evolutionary reformists next all agree with one another that the "proof" of the goodness of the e-State is universal suffrage. They earnestly set about instilling into the minds of players that false notion that voting is really capable of revealing the true will of the majority of the working people and of securing their greatest realizations, rather than just another brick in the wall.
You know the old story. It goes something like: "Hey, we voted in this mess, so now we've lost the right to question it."
Myth #3: Revolution Will Emerge from Crisis
Grrrrr... OK. Now here's the self-criticism part.
We leftist revolutionaries are the cuckolds of history. One is always complicit in some way with one's own betrayal. That's painful, so we generally deny it. But...
Marx taught us to believe that crisis would solve everything. There still many of my good pals on the left who believe "The Big One" is just around the corner. (And THEN The Last Judgement will arrive!)
In fact, Capital doesn't fear crisis. In fact, it engenders them to amuse itself.
Setting off a sovereign debt crisis is a normal activity for a salaried man working for a global bank -- and he might do it merely in order to prototype an idea. The continuous restructuring of everything, the rhetoric of change and conflict to break every human tie and to atomize and elevate every possible type of patently false or ridiculous "belief" and promote every kind of hyper-individualized "identity", the stupefaction and dereliction of politics, its reduction to management.
If all of that is revolution, you can keep it.
Our ability to purge revolution-ism of its apocalyptic delusions is revealed in the common sacharine dreams of both East and West, which can be put simply as: Annuit coeptis. Novus ordo seclorum. Translated loosely that means: a prosperous society, run by robots, totally automated and pacified, an earthly paradise organized like a sanitarium.
"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens."
There will never be peace on earth, or in the e-world.
We have, in fact, an absolutely clear field for any decision or initiative as long as it's linked to a clear reading of the situation.
Here's how bad thinking works:
"Why cut the salaries of government officials in half when it would it work just as well to not pay them at all? Rather than save the retirement system, why not just do away with it?"
That is the logic of the permanent, omni-lateral, indefinite suspension of the ultimate collapse, of the perpetual crisis of capital. It frees whoever governs the State from every constraint.
The meme of the zombie apocalypse prepares us for enduring the crisis of everyday bullshit. To ensure the psychotic cohesion of the citizens, anything will make do to make sure the population is ready to defend the system. You don't really need "an evil empire" to oppose. "The terrorists" will do just fine. This official comedy is the script of the modern worl
😛maintaining an endless fear to forestall a frightful end.
The falsity of the entire apocalyptic scenario consists in projecting onto the e-world the mourning we're not able to do in regard to it.
It's not the e-world that is lost, it's we who lost the world and we go on losing it.
By projecting all "freedoms" onto the ideal, visual distant and digitized plane of the Internet, where there's no real friction or actual tears, no odors and no, forgive me for saying so my friends, real death, we protect ourselves from everything reality contains that is unstable, irreducible, palpable, corporal, weighty, hot or fatiguing.
That Google has renamed itself to be the Alphabet and declared the "fight against death" to be a new industrial horizon shows how one can be mistaken about what life is.
The real crisis is neither economic, nor political, military, nor religalous. It is a crisis of presence.
The real deal is that the decomposition of the e-world creates openings for other ways of e-living.
I'll leave you with this fun RL analogy...
When Mexico City was struck with an enormous earthquake in 1985, from the ruins emerged something altogether new : the revolutionary carnival, with the figure of a superhero-wrestler who serves the people as its icon, the legendary Super Barrio.
Similar wonders occurred in San Francisco, in New Orleans, in Halifax, in New York, and in many other places, but they seldom made the news.
Remember: once all hope is lost, a kind of exhilaration sets in.
XOXOXOXOX,
PQ
Comments
Camus nauseates me.
💕
once all hope is lost, a kind of exhilaration sets in.
This adrenaline of my eFreedom flowing in me...its...its eclectic, maddening and contagious! Its about what life is!!!
beautiful read
I'm not one to mind an eloquent person. However, what separates a genius from the common man is the ability to explain his thought in the most simple manner. Yet a common man who aims to come across as a genius will use as many big words as he can think of.
my ePeen is bigger than your ePeen.
I think that clearly explains everything.
xD
brevity has it moments...
Always better use of white space than any other eRep writer.
http://tinyurl.com/ofzfpfy
I like the word "bloviating."
Also, I had to think to read this. That was pretty cool, haven't had that happen here for a while xD
ditto haha
Can I see your spleen?
NO MAGGOT!
Still the greatest writer eRep has ever seen... Well done PQ!
Not quite. He may rank up there with the greatest, but many of those who were greater had come and gone before you arrived.
Fair enough
Where art thou Chutley?
I will say though as far as longevity goes PQ has outlasted all the old greats. He's a kind of "last man standing" of eRepublik writers. Though I may disagree with much of what he says, I would never try to down play PQ'S writing ability. One does not have to agree with what is written in order to recognize the quality with which it is written.
I would like to see what other writer's you're thinking of.
People excelled in different areas. As far as war reporting went, it be hard to top Aeros, or Lt. Scheisskoph. All around writing ability, well Guldan Drak was great before he stopped caring, quit and came back as a Sir. If you are looking for someone who wrote on sort of the same intellectual level as PQ, then you could throw Arjay P in that category. He wrote some pretty deep stuff at times. As far as politics, you have to look at names like Ligtreb, AstraCat, and even Scrabman. If a writer being able to get his audience to get behind what he's trying to convey counts then Emerick, HR, Benn, and Sam pulled that off well. Though the best at that was Dio himself, after all he spawned a movement. Like I said I take nothing away from PQ's ability. I disagree with most everything he says, but he does a hell of a job of putting it into words. You can call him one of the greats and I'll fully agree. But as to who's the greatest, well that's all a matter of perspective. PQ is pretty much the last great standing, so if you want to say greatest still playing, then i can agree there.
SamWystan was one of my favs: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/they-fear-me-1637492/1/20
And of course Jack Flufferton: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/in-defense-of-two-clickers-revisited1-937820/1/20
Both very good choices PQ. I had forgotten about them. It's a shame that there just doesn't seem to be a very deep pool of quality authors these days. I know you guys have a writing program with some up and commers in it, but that seems to be the exception not the norm. Talking about this has gotten me to go back and read some old articles. It brought back some memories reading about those old events again.
mourningblur is consistent; the game use to be better and he knew it...
That's a well known fact. The admin have gutted this game. Most of us hold on simply because we've wasted thousands of dollars and hours here and it's hard to walk away from that kind of investment.
Workers of the world, unite!
Let's start with the expropriation of the expropriators!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Death to oligarchs!
\o/
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
ignorance is bliss, lol
hat off to you great sir.