A closed world is a world that has a tight lid on it – the qualification here being that we don’t know that there is a lid. We never see the lid, we never see the limits that are holding us in. A closed world appears to be open, in other words – the fraction passes itself off as an integer, the ‘cartoon character’ wants to be taken as a real live, honest to goodness bone fide human being…
A world that has a tight lid on it isn’t a world but only ‘an artificial box’ and we can’t for the life of us see this – the reason for our inability to see that we’re living in an unreal world being that we have been dumbed down by our virtual environment to the extent that we can’t notice the way in which we are being short-changed. We’ve been turned into dummies. It’s just not just the case that we’re ‘living in a closed-down world’ therefore. but rather that we’re living in a closed-down world as closed-down people, as ‘blinkered’ people, as people whose narrow mental outlook won’t ever allow them to see their true situation…
A shut-down person is a ‘conditioned’ person, which is to say, a person whose perceptions and expectations of the world have been artificially limited. We are told – one way or another – ‘what life is about’ and we straightaway accept what we are told, and because we accept what we’ve been told so unreflectively we never look beyond it. All our resources and intelligence go into ‘adapting to the given reality’ (which is to say, ‘optimising our behaviour according to what the game demands of us) and none of it whatsoever goes into ‘examining or questioning the dull, generic formula that we have been given’.
There’s no such thing as ‘a Closed World’ therefore, only the closed or limited view of it which we project – without knowing it – outside of us onto the opaque screen of the material world. We project our conditioned viewpoint onto the world and then stay within the bounds of this limited view forever (or until some sort of near-miraculous event occurs to wake us up from this state of ‘stuckness’, this state of sleep). We bring our limitations with us wherever we go and this profound lack of interiority means that we never suspect that the problem is actually inside us (and not something that we are encountering in the outside world and can therefore hope to ‘fix’).
We need to bring our limitations around with us wherever we go (like an onerous burden we can’t see) or else developments will take place that will result in us setting off on a journey that will take us out about comfortable but artificial niche into a world that is entirely unfamiliar to us, a world which does not conform to any of our unexamined prejudices as to what it should look like, or what sorts of things it should or should not involve. Our sole mode of inquiry has to be the closed one, which is where we ask questions regarding what we already know about, questions that require answers that fit into categories that we have already created, the categories that we have decided they should fit into. We can’t afford to ask any questions that are open-ended since we really don’t know where they will lead! That’s what ‘open-ended’ means, after all…
I am wearing a nice wooden jumper (let us say) and I don’t want to go pulling on any loose threads in case the whole thing comes undone and I end up with no jumper left! We are constantly afraid of this happening and so we are ‘habitually cautious’ in this way. We have made a habit of not being curious – when we see some kind of ‘loose end’ we are generally very careful to ignore it, we are generally very careful to pretend that it either isn’t there, or that it is of no importance. We explain it away every time and we never seem to get in the least bit suspicious of our own super-glib explanations. We say that ‘it’s nothing but this’, or that its ‘nothing but that’ (and then we go safely back to sleep). This is the Closed Mode of existence, therefore; this is what it means to be ‘a shut-down human being’. Being shut down isn’t a natural state of affairs for us of course (which is to say, someone needs to have done something to us, or we need to have done something to ourselves) but it is nevertheless the default state for anyone who is a member of a social group (since society itself is a garment that we don’t want to examine too closely, or even examine at all, if we are to feel in any way OK about being a member).
Society is a finite game (or rather a set of finite games) that we are provided with in order that we might be able to obtain what we might call theatrical satisfaction. Theatrical satisfaction – we might say – is the satisfaction that comes from thinking that we’ve done something when we haven’t, from thinking that we are something when we’re not. It’s the type of satisfaction offered by a game, in other words. We achieve this (or rather thought achieves this) by inverting the meaning of what’s going on; in order for finite games to work, in order for them to be viable as a game for those playing it, we have to see this tiresome business of coming back to the same old spot time and time again as being significant and positive in a way that it isn’t. We have to (somehow) see this as being a resoundingly good thing – the sort of resoundingly good thing that warrants trumpets being blown and bells being rung and drums being beat. We have to say that what we are achieving is the right thing to achieve, and that all other actions, all other outcomes, are wrong things. This is a completely arbitrary imposition of meaning on our part of course but part of this business of imposing meaning is that we don’t acknowledge ourselves as having any part in this (otherwise our imposed or assigned meaning would be instantly revealed as being frighteningly meaningless).
What’s happening here therefore is that ‘repeating the old’ has been turned into a great virtue, a great virtue that we all seek to outdo each other in. Repeating what has come before has become the great virtue, but this is only because we are (quite arbitrarily) saying that what has come before is the only true value. ‘Resisting all change’ has now become the great virtue, but it can only be seen as a virtue within the distorting framework of the game that’s being played. Outside of this framework, outside of the terms of the game in question, what we’re doing is deeply perverse – resisting change is deeply perverse because change is all there is! Change is all there is but what we’re saying is that when we managed to secure a particular outcome – the outcome that has been nominated as the right one in the game – then this is somehow the very best thing in the whole wide world. We’re saying that this is the most super-fantastic thing ever, bar nothing…
Finite games are perverse. The point of an FG is – as James Carse says – to bring all play (all goal-oriented action) to a close. This is the hope behind our finite play – the hope that by ‘exerting ourselves heroically to solve the problem and never giving up’ we will finally get to do just this and then there will be no more problems ever. There will be no more problems ever because we will have reached our happy hunting ground, because we will have proved our valour in battle (thereby proved our worthiness to have a place in Valhalla with all the other great heroes). All of this sounds very good to us naturally enough and we are – generally speaking – more than happy to get on board with it – what’s not to like, after all? It turns out that we have been tricked, however. We’ve tricked ourselves! Instead of saying that finite games are perverse we could just as well say that they are self-contradictory; finite games are self-contradictory because – whilst our ultimate motivation in playing them is to end the necessity to play (by finally ‘passing the test’, as it were) – all our finite play really does is to perpetuate the need to play (which is to say, perpetuate the pointless struggle). The ‘lie’ therefore is that the ordeal of the struggle will one day come to an end, if we prove worthy enough.
What we’re really doing when we strive to win in a finite game that we are trying to thwart or suppress the basic nature of reality. We’re trying to keep a lid on something that – in the end – just can’t be contained, just can’t be held in and this is thus ‘a job that is never going to be finished’. Denial is a job that is never going to that can never be finished. Denial can never be finished because as soon as we start to ‘relax’ with the task then what we’re so desperate to not know about will start to show itself – it’s only our denial that is keeping it away, after all. We are – with our constant, obsessive game-playing – seeking to protect ourselves from ever having to catch sight of the infinite, the limitless, the never- ending (because if we were to see this unlimitedness then that awareness would change us forever). We would never be able to go back to the blissfully ignorant modality of existence that we had before, we would have seen too much. We’re seeking to defend ourselves from the Vastness of Reality Itself because our petty fantasies cannot stand exposure to it.
Most essentially of all, what we’re trying to do with our obsessive goal-orientatedness, with our unquenchable hunger to ‘get things to be the way we want them to be’, is to confuse everything so much that we never see the truth of what we are doing. According to this logic – the ‘logic of the game’, which is ‘the logic of fear’ – we are trying to achieve something real, something that is an objective value, something that is unquestionably going to be of benefit to us. According to the logic of the game – which we don’t know to be the game – the action we are engaged in so hopefully is not perverse, is not self-contradictory, and if we follow the rules correctly then it will result in an outcome so magnificent, so total, that we won’t ever have to struggle ever again – we will be free from all that trouble and strife, free from the ongoing conflict of the game, free from the afflictions and sufferings that are attendant upon mortal life . The game is a ‘purgatorial state’, in other words – it is a state of suffering which we obliged to partake in if we wish to ever have the chance of redeeming ourselves, if we wish to ever obtain the chance of going beyond the grinding meaninglessness of ‘living mechanically’. This eventuality will be ‘cause for celebration’ therefore, it will be cause for a celebration greater than any we have ever known. It is the cause for the ultimate celebration, the ultimate rejoicing, and that what gets us so excited, that’s what gets us so fired up, so highly (or rather ‘obsessively’) motivated. The logic of the game isn’t actually true however – the logic of the game is the perfect antithesis, the complete reverse of what is really true.
Image credit – excellentstreetimages.com
