The state of the world

Once the real world becomes poisonous it’s “pick your poison”, and then the process begins of abandoning the real world in favor of improving the choice alternative. Consider the development of video games, which are alternate realities – video games were fueled by the haze of despair the West experienced during the Vietnam War. 80% of mainstream video games feature murder as the primary form of gameplay. Video game murder can be viewed as YOLO – a final thrill before death – and not just as military propaganda as some have argued.

The real world is ultimately all we have, and all other worlds, however real they seem, are wholly dependent on the condition of the real world. But think about a game of poker played in a crumbling building – does one repair the building, flee the building, or try to win the last game? Once one gives up on repair, only two options remain.

Trace back the history of game theory, and we find that it only became popular with the Cold War, which was the first war in human history where total human annihilation was a constant threat. The psychological reality behind the world accepting such a thing was accepting a last game of poker in a crumbling building. In other words, the entire world lost their dignity and humanity merely by engaging in the Cold War. The war itself was a terribly wrong choice. Or in the words of the movie “War Games”, sometimes the best move is not to play.

The ongoing and always increasing global ecological disaster is fascinating psychologically. Because again, the worse the world gets the more logic there is in abandoning it – in giving up. Once one gives up on life itself, there’s no such thing as true morality. Once the choice becomes flight or winning the last game, there’s no longer anything at stake. Or as Freddie Mercury puts it – “Nothing really matters”. This very despair fueled the “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” lifestyle of the popular musicians of the time.

The outcome for normal people of all of this is sheer terror, of course. And the outcome of that is a kind of fearful huddling together, being currently exploited by Facebook and Google. Logically, churches and other religious congregating places should be huddle centers for the non-tech crowd, and that they haven’t been more popular is a curious topic in itself – it perhaps shows just how atomized and de-civilized Western societies have become.

Austerity is an apocalyptic political program, which hollows out human societies in favor of enriching the draconian gated community crowd – the idea being that the real world is abandoned, there’s no long-term future for the world, so the best move in the game is to grab all the loot, fly to the highest mountain, and maximize the time left before the world drowns, either in despair, in torturous war, disease or general decay, or possibly literally in water.

During this process of grabbing the loot the dragons need to keep the unruly masses in their place, so of course a massive surveillance, detention and military apparatus are necessary – therefore the high tech, prison, security, weapons, and surveillance industries are doing very well for the forseeable future.

The way out of this nightmare is quite simple, of course – there’s only one solution – to repair, recondition, improve if possible, and sustain the real world. The real world is all we have, the best other worlds can possibly do is help us deal with the real one.