All about the game

Note: this was sat in my drafts from 16th February 2014; published 27th August 2015.

Some of the thinking has been partially eclipsed by new info I've come across or - discovered? - regarding reality processing (for want of a better term) and systems of aesthetics, but that'll be for a later post.


Just spent half an hour trying to do a blog post expanding on 3 tweets, only to find that the tweets said it better.  Oh Twitter, you have ruined me for proper written communication.

I'll try it again, as there's obviously something in there that needs to get out.  (That may be the only warning you get.  Take heed.)

Recently I've been thinking about philosophies, and other systems of belief - be they religious, spiritual, scientific or political - and have come to the realisation that the most of it, in any given system, is window dressing.  It's not about truth, or reality, even when the philosophy alleges that as its reason for being (why, hello Buddhism - fancy seeing you here!)  All systems seem to be set up by idealists, interested in truth, how things work, and how to make things better in general or specific terms.  But most people aren't idealists; and even the well-meaning tend not to want to work - or think - that hard.  So, over time, all systems become filled with people who are, at some fundamental level, at odds with the philosophy they espouse.

In short, it becomes all about the game.  Humans - the male ones, anyway - seem so desperately status conscious that they have to find reasons why Humans Are Better Than Animals.  Every time they find something, someone else finds an animal that also does it. Laughing, crying, tool use, tool creation - none of those define humans.

Games do.  We're a gaming species.  Gaming can be defined here as "creating and then following a set of arbitrary rules".  There are a couple of points about that definition.  First, the rules are arbitrary - they can be anything.  Second, no end-point is required.  You can specify one, to make it more likely for people to join in, or to make participation seem less pointless; but no end-point is required to start.  The power (and hence status) of your game depends on how many people play it; so it becomes an end in itself to force others into the game, whether or not it has an actual benefit to you or them. 

This has been highlighted in British politics over the last 25 years.  In the early 1990s, a political system espousing real benefit to a large number of people based on sound principles changed leaders, from someone who believed in those principles to someone who took his status from the number of people playing in his team.  Didn't matter if they were principled players or not; only the number counted.  So he got rid of the principles to make the team more appealing to players on the other side. 25 years later, and the only differences in those two teams are the name and the colour they play in.  It's all about the game; lots of shouting, lots of hot air, lots of trashing the other side.  Both teams want to win, but neither have any principles or truth any more; just dogma they use to justify following their own set of rules.

This also affects science.  You can see it in the press and on the internet: the "winning team" is currently perceived as science, battling against religion. So people want to be seen to be on the winning side, without actually know the rules of the game or even what it's about.  Science is a tool. It makes a poor philosophy and a shitty religion, but it appears it's actually a religion - gamified philosophy - that people want.  The real casualty in this particular fight is science: people don't know what it is, what it can do, what it can't do or how it works, so they won't support it in any meaningful way. 

The longer a system is in existence, the more the games-players within that system seem to predominate.  Humans love complexity.  They love organising the complexity once they've got it.  They'll make assumptions, or create something out of whole cloth, then when someone calls them on it, will make more stuff up to justify their assumptions, creations or personal theories.  Because it's no longer about truth, it becomes a pissing content; people fighting their corner about their own personal theories or dogma.  (Did Eve sin with the apple, or was that just misogyny?  Did that really lead to her sin being passed down through the human race, or was that just social control to justify a priest caste?  Was Mary really born without "original sin", or was that a fudge because, oh shit, the priestly caste created this story and shot themselves in the foot with it?  What would've happened if Mary had said no?  There would've been a whole class of people running around who didn't need baptism. God knew Mary would say yes?  What about free will, then? And, lest you think I'm just having a go at the Christians, you can do this with pretty much any religious theory, and I would hazard to say all the ones regarding social control.)

We create, we refine, we "perfect", we keep adding to systems till we lose sight completely of the original aim.  In the same way that, on the internet, inability to address someone's argument can lead to an obsession with their grammar, so a lack of philosophical insight leads to fixation on the details of created complexity.  The guru says, "fly!" and followers a thousand years down the line spend their lives in darkened rooms reading books on aerodynamic theory.

That's the real problem.  This complexity gets in the way of truth.  The window dressing blocks at least part of the light.  And, in as much as people fixate on and defend the complexity, they block the truth.  At best, they will see only the truth their own brand of complexity lets through.

These systems are seductive.  They promise things - inclusion, co-operation, support - which humans, as social animals, need.  They provide meanings which give us reasons for the games we play.  But philosophies are like languages; they're defined by the people who use them.  If you're not content to go with the flow, if you regard being at "the top of your game" as still essentially missing the point, then I don't think any one philosophy is going to help.  You'll have to go your own way and dig those truths out for yourself; not just selecting, but actively searching.  That means you're on your own.  The compensation is, that's probably the safest place for a thinker to be.