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DANGER! DANGER! PHILOSOPHY AHEAD!



"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." -- Benjamin Franklin


Is indiviudal-player-centric e-modernity -- let's call this the whale-oriented mindset -- merely a fraught detour in the long course of eRepublikan history? Or are these virtual giant sea creatures wreaking irreperable havoc on our digital ocean? What do you think?



The eRepublikan community is bustling marketplace of ideas. The game is a place where the players come together to, well, yes, to "murder" each other, but also to create a new world. Ideas are exchanged just like other goods and services.

Your dedicated editorial staff here at I.T. has determined that a deep think is in order on the future of the game which harkens back to premodern understandings. A consideration of the value of old sensibilities may help to find a renewed appreciation of the humanity of the game.


The dynamics of eRepublikan alliances are like the antics of rival football clubs vying for victory. But listen carefully and you'll also hear whispers of philosophical questions inhabiting the remoter corners, for example, of recent articles about the ludic pleasure of belonging to small neutral alliances.

In the angst that bubbles up in perpetuity around the imperial imperatives of the war-mongering module, in the way that winnng by wiping can lead to losing by boredness, when the conquered simply up and leave the game, when that big rock of a wipe splashes a pseudo-national club house out of the existence, particularly one without strong foundations, then that ripple effect disincentivises not only the "conquered" players but also the makers, hoisted on the petard of their own war-wipe design, from being more creative.

And in that way, big picturely, winners become losers. Ergo, philosophy.


In the long run, the game is not a game of war. It is a game, if not of love then of friendship. And if not of friendship then of a search for common ontology. We'll say again, just to be contrary, the game inside the game is not a game of war. It is an exploration of a mutual embeddedness, a dance, a mutuality of co-existent and co-becoming entities.






Staring out to the deep past, using our philosophical Webb Telescope, and harmonizing on that kind of tune in which we bring the Real into the E, one might observe that on much of the planet (the real one) there exists a common and ancient ontology, a foundational belief about the nature of being, which aligns the natural order of the cosmos with the order of the game.

Which is to say that humans are an indivisible part of the greater whole. The quantum field of the game is a crowded dance floor where players move in synchrony, sometimes stepping on each other's toes but ultimately all bouncing around to a colletive rhythm.


Recognizing such as truth provides the foundation for an ethical basis of a harmonious society. Such an understanding of cosmic harmony sees the oneness of all being, in which opposites co-exist and determine each other, never one without the other. All forms and appearances -- not least the individual, the self, the ego, the soul -- are a kind of quantum field, a collection of possibilities, an illusion, that disguises the underyling unity, the dependent arising of all phenomena. All players are inextricably connected.

eRepublik is like a chaotic game of Jenga. Each move affects the stability of the entire tower.

All players are inextricably interdependent. All players are inextricably interconnected. When the wave function collapses in the quantum field of the game, it can appear that a whale has swallowed a player, or a country, or an alliance, but has swallowed the entire universe, which it never left to begin with.


What cosmic forces are at play in our rival alliances? Where are the mythical gods and monsters in all of this? What is the true nature of the game? What is the true nature of the game? What is the true nature of the game?

Hold on. I need more coffee...







There is a modern version of this ancient understanding. In has a simple pragmatic expression that can be written simplly as "living together". The revolution-era U.S. of American wag Ben Franklin, author of the immortal essay "Fart Proudly", was heavily influenced by Renaissance thinking. His famous quip about "hang together or surely we'll be left hanging out to dry like virtual laundry" is a neat expression of the modern idea of convivialism.
Not rationality and fierce indivdualism, but relationality and sociality are the essence of humanity, human society, and ispo facto, playerdom itself.

There is little doubt that Benjamin Franklin would be an avid eRepublik player if he were still around today. And also little doubt about which party he'd be in. Obviously, he'd alternate between the Old Farts and the Socialist Freedom Party! 🙂


The ancient sense of interdependent origination and the modern sense of interconnectedness are not identical. Few things are. They have distinct foundations. The ancient sense of interconnectivity is Godzilla to the King Kong of modern hyper-individualistic neo-liberalism. A clash of titans.

One has an ontological assumption of a primordial connectivity, which tends to have evolved in modern times into a kind of institutional view of civilization, where collectivity trumps emphatic individuality. Whereas neo-liberalism takes the opposite idea to the extreme, one that is sometimes assumed to be the one and only ontological foundation for our game world -- a struggle of all against all, a struggle for the dominant, a principle of hyper-legitimated individuation recognizing only the value of individuals who affirm their singularity in respect to the interdependence with other players, with the makers, with nature, with the markets, both in-game and around-game.

Such hyper-subjectivity tends to be assigned a kind of "natural" status, a kind of "natural" right, a kind of "natural" virtue, and is sometimes extended to other species and even to inanimate objects.

The clash of these views sometimes seems as intractible as "cats vs. dogs" or the knock-down, drag-out debates regarding "pineapple on pizza". Is it a sin or a culinary breakthrough? Is it a crime or a cultural revolution? Is it retro-fifties nonsense or a technological unicorn?




A modern convivial sense has arose as a response to the neo-liberal devolution into what has sometimes been called "zombie capitalism", which is what happens when the invisible hand of the market turns into the grasping claws of the undead.

The appeal of "live together" modernity has accelerated rapidly in the wake of increasing ecological collapse amid the increasingly obvious failures of both the communist and capitalist projects. At first it was a few friests, philosophers, artists, and musicians who posed the possibility of an autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and of players with their environment, as the foundation for intrinsic ethical values. Of course, it has culminated in the invention of eRepublik, the first use of social media to play out a game of human interdependence in the modern sense.


The emphasis on individual freedom as a unique constellation within relational interdependence marks a distinction from the more ancient view of interdependence as a kind of "natural" phenomenon. Long before the climate crisis, the 1960's, Benjamin Franklin, or eRepublik, the origins of such an approach can be discrened prior to the Renaissance, during the early days of the Protestant Reformation, when the concept of light-within originating from a divine Holy Spirit, available to all individuals without intervention by officialdom, became widespread. See Raoul Vainegem's 1998 The Movement of the Free Spirit for a deeper dive on that topic, or if you prefer, as a guidebook for navigating the murkier depths (or heights) of eRepublik.


A critique of institutions is a hallmark of the modern-ish take. The established organs of authority and power are often seen as corrupting the intimate personal epxerience of the incarnate sharing of encompassing beings. Institutions, those soul-sucking monsters, tend to substitute the relational nexus of personhood, of player-to-player life, with a reified, for-sale version of individuation, cut adrift from wholeness and collectively managed instead by strangers as cogs in regime of depersonalized dogma.

Newbies get lost in the trial of Kafkaesque bureaucratic mazes, and the game becomes a kind of "war of attrition" between players stuck in the castles of authority, where they experience their own metamorphosis into cockroaches hoping to surive the catastrophe of the wipe, and find themselves accidentally declariing war on their neighbors.

No longer the e-Amerika of their dreams, they each, in their own way, atomized and alone, find themselves in a penal colony, hungry artists awaiting judgement by anonymous jurors, country doctors trying to treat patients who cannot afford the cost of their care. Like good soldiers navigating their way through a collapsed and decaying empire, like the investigations of dog sniffing out what might have once been the good bits of meal, they contemplate their fate and then burrow in to the shadows, looking to find a way out.





Illness caused by bureacracy is caused by institutionalized "doctors" who have rationalized away the ancient idea of a healthy balance. In the physical world, environmental poisoning is the result of untamed industrial growth. In the e-world, the decay of the social web is the result of a lack of healthy interdependence and an over-emphasis on the "rationality" of "winning the war".

When they pass beyond that ancient threshold, institutionlized social endeavors that defy the reality of relational interdependence become counterproductive.


How to reconcile these two before the law of eRepublikan interdependence involves rejecting neo-liberal concepts, recognizing that truly modern individual freedom is not being a unique shining star that lacks any gravitational interdependence, but is founded on an intrinsic ethical value of personal autonomy realized within unbreakably interdependent relations.






A starting point for the next moment of e-reality, for our observations which collapse the possibilities into a particular function might be the intersection of the intrinsic ethical value of personal autonomy realized within interdependent relations, with the ancient emphasis on leading a virtuous life, self-cultivation and self-correction aligned with the harmony of the natural order.

That's a lot of words, so let us put it this way... Finding a path beyond the collapse of the eRepublikan system is akin to completing an epic quest, where the players must band together to overcome challanges and unlock hidden treasures.


These modern and ancient views are not mutually exclusive. They are not the same but they are parallel, creating in their intertwining not a "clash of civilizations", but a basis for dialogue and mutual intellectual reinforcement. Level up your intellect by contributing thoughs and ideas. The best strategies for conquering the game of life are often found in the collective wisdom of the community. Bring your wisdom mind to bear. Channel that wise old woman inside you. Suggest an alchemy of old and new that will transform the world.


If a tree falls in the e-forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still generate a sound file? But more importantly, who gets the experience points?




Symbiotic interactions will bring about productive and meaningful contributions in charting a path beyond the next collapse of the eRepublikan system. The e-world is neither a vacuum nor a hologram. It is still a living, breathing, interdependent plane of existtence, even if it is also ultimately an illusory, virtual swirl of electrons.











Oh! One more thing... On Feb. 5, vote Custer for Country President on the SFP ticket!