Join the new world

Unlike the real world -- more or less, though less lately -- most nations in the New World are constantly at war. War is a welcome and permanent institution of our in-game communities. The game model encourages a never-ending set of world wars between alliances.

The players, in our cleverness, have institutionalized training wars as a way to collect dopamine without having to be too concerned about our favorite e-nation getting wiped.




Stare into the candle, ponder that small light amidst the universal darkness, and questions will arise -- aside from the obvious ones regarding the underlying psychological effects that engaging in this kind of fun may or may not have on our real life immortality studies and on our actual ethical foundations -- interesting questions that are more objectively "ludic", that is, game-mechanical, in nature, like...

* Most fundamentally, is it possible for players to abolish war in eRepublik?

* If so, how so? And, importantly, at what cost? Both in terms of ups and downs of in-game dopamine production and consumption, and to the profits of Admin?

* What would be washed away in a war-terminating scenario? What would be the key and the most likely consequences?



eRepublik offers a rich tapestry for role-playing.

Interesting questions can be framed too regarding the "nature" or "politics" or "ethics" of war within the various popular eRepublikan story arcs, like...

* Can there be, in a literary sense, growth and development of a truly captivating and entertaining theory of "just war" vs. "unjust war" in eRep?

* Is the New World ever really on fire politically?

In other words, how does rhetoric regarding nationalism, dictatorship, revolution, imperialism, anti-imperialism, colonialism, occupation, and anti-colonialism -- or more generally "real war" vs "training war" -- play out?

Do we engage in that kind of play-acting purely for that extra dopamine kick -- the joy of re-affirming our pre-conceived notions in a safe context -- or is there an internally-consistent storyline to this kind of rhetoric? Something that would be recognizable and intriguing to a Hollywood screenwriter?



And then there's the good ol' cosmic question...

From the vast empty desert of our collective hive-mind staring into screens around the globe...

Open, waiting, desiring to be filled with button-pushing-induced dopamine...

Is there a marvelous shift that could smoothly sweep through the elements noted above -- the ground rules, the economic models (both in-game and real-life), the fun and fuzzy inter-zones of user-implemented tweaks and meta-play, the weaving and waxing and waning of epic tales that we recall and re-tell with joy, the attempts to overwrite eRep's rhetorical "manuscript" into a rich palimpsest, a work of art and a historical artifact, reflecting and exploring and capturing the feeling of real life concerns -- can all of that flow into a transcendent or numimous or otherwise extraordinary moment that will be like nothing ever seen or felt before?

And if so, and assuming the old esoteric tricks are known to us, and that some kind of connection to a power outside of ego and shadow is available to accomplish such a thing, then what is it that do we should not do in order to let such an event emerge?








Alas. My dear game-friends (...and Trite), increasingly I have fewer and fewer illusions about my ability to find or conceive of, or the wisdom of seeking, iron-clad categorical analyses. It turns out that our universe is a funnily fuzzy place and I cannot pretend to answer these questions definitively today.

Or any day.




Perhaps a few additional notes may assist in their ponderation...





Regarding war (real real war)...


War is conflict. It is killing and maiming. It is slaughter. Usually with some object of power or wealth or based on some bullshit ideological matrix which, in virtually every case, reduces to a pontifical row-echelon equating, metaphorically, to "my penis is bigger".


War is pleasure. Men love to exercise authority over other men and women. It is a pleasure to live on the produce of other people's labor and to profit from other people's resources. The victors in war are mostly after the booty.


War is impluse beyond pleasure. It is a death drive, a compulsion opposed to Eros, like Thanatos it is aimed at anti-survival, against sex or other creative life-creating drives. It is this impulse that makes war so difficult to do away with. If war were an entirely rational problem, it would have been abandoned long ago.




Regarding e-war (both "training" and "real")


War is not policing. In well-ordered and just societies, the role of police is supposed to be associated with a neutral authority charged with upholding justice, a lawful equity before which all are equal.

In war, on the other hand, parties in dispute choose mass violence.

Of course, this distinction is seldom absolute. The State shoots down strikers and protestors; the State often takes the side of the rich; all too often the State treats dissenters unjustly. And those abuses can lead to Civil War. Although this is a difficult and complex topic to unwind, international affairs benefit from good international policing, which becomes a more peaceful alternative to war.

In eRepublik the popularity of training wars can, perhaps, be understood as a kind of cooperative policing of the war module.



War requires bellicose men. Usually a small proportion of a population, the angry men predict, expect and encourage war and are happy with the prospect. Often reflecting the jabberwocky of real-world pomposities and grandiloquence, this style of stroppy gladitorial biliousness scales up (understandably, it is a game aimed at letting this kind of thing happen safely) by a considerable factor in the make-believe context of eRepublik.

In response, players who seek an "antitode" to e-war, especially with regards to the cosmic question, sneak in as much humor and good-natured friendliness as they can. A quick romp through the international e-press and commentariat reveals that such comedic impluses in fact percolate their way above the chest-thumping quite often.









Well. OK then. That's my Saturday morning screed. Hoping that Brother Custer will promote it so I can get a big dopamine rush.


Now it's back to music practice for me. Here's the first piano piece I've ever composed.
Much like this article, it feels a bit unfinished. But I like it...