Valediction –“Well, here at last, dear friends…”

Day 2,146, 09:07 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Damhnaic


“I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness.”
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground.

Dear old friends, old comrades, old enemies,
and all those I haven’t known much but that I perhaps would have learned much from,

I’ve joined this game in august 2009, and I’ve stayed too long. Long enough to see the game dwindles in mediocrity. When I first joined, it was young and dynamic, it wasn’t oriented toward money-hungry competition like today, it was naïve and new. The political module was rich; countries were writing constitutions, creating state institutions and organizations for the other players, etc. Yet, over the years, the admin attention left the areas of the game where there were no profit to be made. First the political module was amputated, then the economical one, for the sole profit of the military module, the main eRepublik money-maker.

Yet, the main reason I am deciding to leave the game is the current state of eIreland, while it is plagued by a Manichean patriotism .

Some factions of eIreland have been progressively more patriotic in the last months, leading to an absurd “us against them” mentality. Whether it be against eUK, or against so called “traitors” or “kunts”, social division has become the norm in eIrish politics. To that, I would like to express myself through one of Merleau-Ponty’s quote on war:

“What defines the philosopher is always the idea that we can understand the other, that we can understand the opponent. Philosophy wouldn’t be what it is if philosophers hadn’t that intent, not only to pose, but to understand what isn’t “them” and to understand if necessary what contradicts them. […] Philosophers aren’t Manicheans. But do you think that the other men are Manicheans, and especially great men? Are great men Manicheans? Do they really believe that there is a good side, theirs, and a bad side, the opponent’s? […] Alain said, I remember it, in a text, that what struck him in the 14-18 war was that the soldiers, on the front, didn’t hate the opponent. At the front, he said, we find courage and forgiveness. And rearward we find fear with hatred. Then I therefore think that the great men, and great protagonists of history, the very same people who played a decisive role, who thus had redoubtable opponents, even so felt that they were a part of the same family than these adversaries who couldn’t have been their opponents at that point if they weren’t, let us say, of the same magnitude.”
–Maurice Merleau-Ponty, radio interviews with Georges Charbonnier, RTF national chain, 26 June 1959 (Translation by me).

Manichaeism is what plagues eIreland, in its party politics, in its foreign affairs, between individuals in congress threads. Whether it is on a national point of view “Ireland against eUK” or on a smaller point of view “Our party against yours”, “kunts” against “ilp”, etc. It is all based on abstract limitations and an oversight that we are all very alike. There is no much difference between the eUK player and the eIrish player, but abstract limits will be placed between them to kindle conflicts. Yet, “Ireland” and “eUK” doesn’t really exist, they are abstract considerations about the individuals that live in the pixel zone and others in another pixel zones. If all “eIrish” players leave eIreland for eUK, and vice versa, who will be eIrish? Where will be “eIreland”?

I am leaving; selling all my facilities will give me a total of over 300g, which will entirely go towards the future new citizen program.

I want to leave while I still have good memories of you all, I will remember my passage as a quite eventful one. But now is time for other things; I’ve grown tired, and I must retire. Books awaits me, water is to be boiled for tea, and I have much to write.

Daignez, amis, agréer l'expression de ma plus sincère affection,

Be all my sins remembered.

Damhnaic O’Morann