Instead of life, we are presented with a package, we are presented with a game, and this package or game has two distinct elements to it – the one that we’re supposed to see (which is made up of the formal description or definition of reality) and the element that we aren’t supposed to see (which is the manipulation or spin-doctoring that is going on behind the scenes, or – as we could also say – ‘the machinery that makes the show seem real’). The game that we are supposed to hop on board with is the game in which we involve ourselves exclusively with the manipulated reality, the processed reality, and ‘hopping on board with the processed reality’ simply means not being in the least bit aware of the machinery, being in total denial of it, and so on. We comply with what’s required of us, in other words – we are ‘automatically obedient’, we are ‘obedient without knowing we are’.
The game that we are being pushed into playing is the game of pretending that everything is OK when it isn’t. We pretend that everything’s OK and then we pretend that we’re not pretending. It’s an ‘unspoken collusion’, in other words. We’d swear blind that we’re not pretending and we’d be the first to believe it. The game that we’re compelled to play is a game in which we are against ourselves, a game in which we automatically side with the aggressor, which means that when we feel bad as a result of being neglected / abused we are deeply ashamed of this feeling and try to ignore it, try to cover it up. We turn our backs on the part of us that is hurting, the part of us that is refusing to believe what we are required to believe, the part of us that is refusing to play ball with the system. The part of us that we’re so ashamed of (because we can’t get it to do what it’s supposed to do in order to ‘please the abuser’) is the part of us which is true and therefore not manipulable, the part of us which is authentic and has integrity and therefore not the part that is pretending, not the part of us that has been defined by the game and obeys the game-rules in all things.
Instead of life, which is – we might say – a state of being where we’re not being controlled or exploited, a state of being which is not therefore just the tool or instrument for some exploitative agency, we have to make do with this totally false ‘artificial parody’ of life which we are required to believe in despite our misgivings, despite the fakeness of it all, despite all the evidence to the contrary, despite the fact that being 100% obedient in this way is of absolutely no benefit to us at all. Every advantage goes to the exploitative agency, to the oppressive regime, to the all-determining system, and because we identify with this big, greedy system we’re perfectly happy about this. We’re perfectly happy about all the advantage going to the system because we think we are the system. The predator has given us its mind, as Carlos Castaneda puts it…
The ‘parody-type version’ of the unconditional gift of life is therefore the conditional gift, the gift that comes with all sorts of terms and conditions. We get given the so-called ‘gift’ if – and only if – we meet all the criteria, if – and only if – we satisfy all the relevant requirements. The relevant bureaucracy has to be satisfied and there is no flexibility here whatsoever (bureaucracy is the least flexible thing there is, after all). There’s something fundamentally crooked about this scheme of things but because we are existing in the psychological state of ‘passive identification’ (i.e., the state of mind in which we see ourselves as ‘the abuser’, as the ‘controlling agency’) we don’t see anything wrong with the abuse (or control) that is going on. I falsely imagine myself to be the beneficiary (or at least the potential beneficiary) of the racket that is going on and so I don’t object to it. Far from objecting, I give the established system my fullest and most vocal support (just like a regular member of society might give their full support to ‘the billionaire class’ – a group of people that has not the slightest interest in them apart from ripping them off, apart from exploiting them to the absolute hilt. This absurd supposition (the supposition that ‘the billionaires are on our side’, so to speak) is why we go along so easily with society, why we don’t ask too many awkward questions, and so on.
Faced with the demand that is being made on us we conform, we comply -this is the only way we’re going to get anywhere in the system, after all. The deal – as we have been saying – is very far from being an honest one – but we don’t care enough to look into it since we identify with the abusers, odd thought this might sound. ‘Identifying with the abusers’ is needless to say something we see going on around us every day – it is a deeply familiar phenomenon! None of us like to focus on the fact that we are the meat here, the fact that we are the ‘marks’ rather than being the ones who are set up to take advantage of them. Another way of putting this is to say that we can’t bring ourselves to see that there is no actual justice in what’s going on in the social world and because we can’t bring ourselves to see this uncompromising fact we cling to the belief that the authority which governs us is a benign one, the belief that we are under a benevolent rule rather than a malignant one. To see otherwise would be too big a shock to us – we simply haven’t the appetite to take that onboard. This is the Big Lie Principle – we simply haven’t the courage to see such a thing and thus we are (we might say) obliged to see the crass and uncaring abuser as our benefactor, and doubt ourselves rather than them. If we aren’t doing well then it must be our fault, we say; it must be our fault because – as everyone knows – the system is always fair, always impartial…
What we don’t see – and certainly aren’t told – is that a gift – to be truly a gift and not merely a species of bait – has to come without any conditions, without any strings attached. That’s the way it is with gifts – by definition, they have to be ‘freely given’! The unconditional gift which is life can’t be bought or sold, in other words – it can’t be exploited by a ‘well-placed middleman’ to make a profit. It can’t be taxed; it can’t be monetarized in the way we love to monetarize everything. That would be like someone trying to sell us the air we breathe, or trying to ‘sell us sunshine on a sunny day’. In the super-dystopian world in which we live, it is not inconceivable that – at some point – some vast mega-cooperation will one day take over the world entirely and try to sell us air, to sell us sunshine, to sell us the right to exist, etc, but as far as life itself is concerned, this just can’t be done. We can’t be sold life without that ‘life’ ceasing to be life. Reality isn’t a product and it can’t be made into one. It can’t be ‘broken down’ – it’s free to everyone, regardless of social status. It’s an ‘unlimited source’ – a source that can’t be portioned out or allocated according to whatever societal biases we might hold onto.
No one can ‘monetarize reality’ – we might say – but what we can do is ‘monetarize the simulation’. We can charge for the simulated version of life, the simulated version of reality (we’re in total control of it and so we can ‘portion it out in accordance with what suits us’). No one can sell our own intrinsic freedom to us (since it actually is intrinsic) but what they can do is replace Intrinsic Freedom with its ‘inverted analogue’, which is extrinsic freedom (EF being ‘the freedom to play the game’, ‘the freedom to obey the rules’, and then we can – needless to say – monetarize the hell out of it. No holds are barred, in this case – it’s a capitalist’s wet dream! We can – and do – ‘monetarize the simulation’ and this is precisely what is happening all around us every day of the year, every minute of the day. This is exactly how it works. The real world is replaced by the simulation thereof (in such a way that we never notice it happening) and then the next thing is we are compelled to pay rent for it. Everything now has a price and if we can’t afford this price then that’s just too bad! Being a loser in this scenario means that we don’t even get to exist, that’s the new definition of poverty…
When Yannis Varoufakis (and others) talk about techno feudalism (which is where we pay rent on the digital platforms that business is conducted on, thereby enabling the continuation of a system in which exists entirely for the benefit of an elite class) this makes a lot of sense. We might like to think that we’ve come a long way since those long-ago days of peasants and lords, those with no rights and those with unlimited ones (we would certainly hope so at any rate!) but any changes that we might point at are purely cosmetic in nature. It is however only a short step from talking about paying ground rent for social media platforms (where we can hopefully earn some kind of living for ourselves to keep the wolves from the door to talking in terms of a ‘totally artificial environment’ – the artificial environment which is the Designed World, which is the Consensus Reality, which is the MCVR, which is what Jean Baudrillard calls The Realm of the Hyperreal (which is a ‘runaway construct’ that feeds on itself and grows like a toxic algal bloom, starving out anything that isn’t ‘a hyperreal construct’, overwhelming anything that isn’t ‘a runaway mind-virus’)…
Image credit –vladsnewsletter.com
