Am I a tin ear?
Or am I a horn by which
Your voice is made great?
The future will be worse, or so we hopeWe hope to see it come to pass --Perhaps it's genuine, perhaps but copeCoping with what must come at last --But it is a foolish thing, to any wiseTo curse yourself even if in jestTo predict your ruin, your own demiseIs it a thing you know the best?Surely not, but all we must speakIn half-truths in tyranous timesEnemies all 'round, and we but weakLying is added to all our crimes;But should criminals we becomeBecause the evil days are here?Lying to convince? Are we so numbThat we have lost our holy fear?The future is unwritten yet -Else I would be the GovernmentEke the cycles I know, no fretAs God wills, I'll be content.
I have had hardly the time to write anything recently, my days have been full with ordinary things. Yet, there is a topic I think that needs to be written about and I have short time to write about it, so here it goes.
A topic most of you are probably familiar with is Game Theory, that is, the mapping of human behavioral patterns to kinds of 'games'. They have rules, they have defined roles, etc. Usually they are descriptions of patterns of behavior that re-contextualize what people are really deciding to do, which gives a picture in general why people are doing things that may seem to us irrational.
While everyone and his uncle knows the Prisoner's Dilemma (and its iterated variant) I think it's a shame that few seem to know about the Rescue Game. I confess I didn't know much about it until recently, and even then I only learned about it by chance. It is however a piece of extraordinarily valuable information concerning public behavior in our current time.
Here is a link to the original article which I read quite recently, but it has parts to it that are distracting and quite frankly, useless exosemantic signaling. Yet the meat of it is important:
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/american-narratives-rescue-game.html
If you can skip past the 'song of his people' (aka some sort of hybrid liberalism) you might come to this part:
The accepted mainstream narrative about race in America today can best be described as one of those latter category of wholly dysfunctional games. Fortunately, it’s a game that was explored in quite a bit of detail by transactional analysts in the 1960s and 1970s, so it won’t be particularly difficult to break the taboo and speak about the unspeakable. Its name? The Rescue Game.
I'll just quote from him to describe it:
Here’s how it works. Each group of players is assigned one of three roles: Victim, Persecutor, or Rescuer. The first two roles are allowed one move each: the Victim’s move is to suffer, and the Persecutor’s move is to make the Victim suffer. The Rescuer is allowed two moves: to sympathize with the Victim and to punish the Persecutor. No other moves are allowed, and no player is allowed to make a move that belongs to a different role. [...] when a group of people is assigned a role, all their actions are redefined as the move or moves allotted to that role. In the Rescue Game, [...] whatever a Victim does must be interpreted as a cry of pain. Whatever a Persecutor does is treated as something that’s intended to cause pain to a Victim, and whatever a Rescuer does, by definition, either expresses sympathy for a Victim or inflicts well-deserved punishment on a Persecutor. This is true even when the actions performed by the three people in question happen to be identical. In a well-played Rescue Game, quite a bit of ingenuity can go into assigning every action its proper meaning as a move. [...] the roles are collective, not individual. Each Victim is equal to every other Victim, and is expected to feel and resent all the suffering ever inflicted on every other Victim in the same game. Each Persecutor is equal to every other Persecutor, and so is personally to blame for every suffering inflicted by every other Persecutor in the same game. Each Rescuer, in turn, is equal to every other Rescuer, and so may take personal credit for the actions of every other Rescuer in the same game. This allows the range of potential moves to expand to infinity without ever leaving the narrow confines of the game.There’s one other rule: the game must go on forever. The Victim must continue to suffer, the Persecutor must continue to persecute, and the Rescuer must continue to sympathize and punish. Anything that might end the game—for example, any actual change in the condition of the Victim, or any actual change in the behavior of the Persecutor—is therefore out of bounds. The Rescuer also functions as a referee, and so it’s primarily his or her job to see that nothing gets in the way of the continuation of the game, but all players are expected to help out if that should be necessary.
This is clearly what is going on, and probably also describes the activity of a number of highly ideological groups working out their holiness spirals. It also reminds us of Munchausen's syndrome? It is an interesting beast. We can think of a number of examples, but his two examples are the old Deep South (Whites = victims, Blacks = persecutors, Affluent politicans = rescuers.) The modern state of things just reverses victim and persecutor, but is otherwise untouched. (We can also reflect on the presence of a number of confederate statues in highly Democratic cities as an artifact of this older iteration of the game.)
More detail:
The assignment of roles to different categories of people takes place in the opening phase of the Rescue Game. Like most games, this one has an opening phase, a middle period of play, and an endgame, and the opening phase is called “Pin the Tail on the Persecutor.” In this initial phase, teams of Victims bid for the attention of Rescuers by displaying their suffering and denouncing their Persecutors, and the winners are those who attract enough Rescuers to make up a full team. In today’s America, this phase of the game is ongoing, and a great deal of rivalry tends to spring up between teams of Victims who compete for the attention of the same Rescuers. When that rivalry breaks out into open hostilities, as it often does, the result has been called the Oppression Olympics—the bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred struggle over which group of people gets to have its sufferings privileged over everyone else’s.Once the roles have been assigned and an adequate team of Rescuers attracted, the game moves into its central phase, which is called “Show Trial.” This has two requirements, which are not always met. The first is an audience willing to applaud the Victims, shout catcalls at the Persecutors, and cheer for the Rescuers on cue. The second is a supply of Persecutors who can be convinced or coerced into showing up to play the game. A Rescue Game in which the Persecutors don’t show quickly enters the endgame, with disadvantages that will be described shortly, and so getting the Persecutors to appear is crucial.This can be done in several ways. If the game is being played with live ammunition—for example, Stalin’s Russia or the deep South after the Civil War—people who have been assigned the role of Persecutors can simply be rounded up at gunpoint and forced to participate. If the people playing the game have some less drastic form of institutional power—for example, in American universities today—participation in the game can be enforced by incentives such as curriculum requirements. Lacking these options, the usual strategies these days are to invite the Persecutors to a supposedly honest dialogue, on the one hand, and to taunt them until they show up to defend themselves, on the other.However their presence is arranged, once the Persecutors arrive, the action of the game is [rigidly defined]. The Victims accuse the Persecutors of maltreating them, the Persecutors try to defend themselves, and then the Victims and the Rescuers get to bully the Persecutors into silence, using whatever means are allowed by local law and custom. If the game is being played with live ammunition, each round ends with the messy death of one or more Persecutors; the surviving players take a break of varying length, and then the next Persecutor or group of Persecutors is brought in. In less gory forms of the game, the Persecutors are shouted down rather than shot down, but the emotional tone is much the same.This phase of the game continues until there are no more Persecutors willing or able to act out their assigned role, or until the audience gets bored and wanders away. At this point the action shifts to the endgame, which is called “Circular Firing Squad.” In this final phase of the game, the need for a steady supply of Persecutors is met by identifying individual Victims or Rescuers as covert Persecutors. Since players thus accused typically try to defend themselves against the accusation, the game can go on as before—the Victims bring their accusations, the newly identified Persecutors defend themselves, and then the Victims and Rescuers get to bully them into silence.The one difficulty with this phase is that each round of the game diminishes the supply of players and makes continuing the game harder and harder. Toward the end, in order to keep the game going, the players commonly make heroic attempts to convince or coerce more people into joining the game, so that they can be “outed” as Persecutors, and the range of things used to identify covert Persecutors can become impressively baroque. The difficulty, of course, is that very few people are interested in playing a game in which the only role open to them is being accused of violating a code of rules that becomes steadily more subtle, elaborate, and covert with each round of the game, and getting bullied into silence thereafter. Once word gets out, as a result, the game usually grinds to a halt in short order due to a shortage of players. At that point, it’s back to “Pin the Tail on the Persecutor,” and on we go.
One note he makes is that if something gets in the way of the ongoing game, say, a black football player misquoting Mr. Hortler but with a remark that is nonetheless targeted at Jews, the players will all agree that it distracts from the work of BLM, or rather, from the game being played, and needs to be shelved. (I'm being tongue in cheek because this recently happened verbatim.)
So this is clearly happening. It probably happens a lot. On a somewhat covert level, people can accuse people who are trying to help other people of playing the Rescue Game. A good example I remember is Zizek essentially accusing Christians of playing the rescue game with the poor, because although we provide for their material needs more than anyone, we never 'fix' their condition. So the poor cry out, we bring them bread, and then, we suspect, there are some capitalist mechanations where usurers or bankers have their fingers cut off for loansharking the poor, and the game continues. His reason for thinking this way is that at least according to the theories he ascribes to, the condition of the poor *is* fixable, whereas we as Christians would assert it's not (according to our Lord's words.)
But why play this game? Well, here is our author's opinion:
It’s only fair to note that each of the three roles gets certain benefits, though these are distributed in a very unequal fashion. The only thing the people who are assigned the role of Persecutor get out of it is plenty of negative attention. Sometimes that’s enough—it’s a curious fact that hating and being hated can function as an intoxicant for some people—but this is rarely enough of an incentive to keep those assigned the Persecutor’s role willing to play the game for long.The benefits that go to people who are assigned the role of Victim are somewhat more substantial. Victims get to air their grievances in public, which is a rare event for the underprivileged [ed: it's a rare event for even the privileged!], and they also get to engage in socially sanctioned bullying of people they don’t like, which is an equally rare treat. [ed: for anyone!] That’s all they get, though. In particular, despite reams of the usual rhetoric about redressing injustices and the like, the Victims are not supposed to do anything, or to expect the Rescuers to do anything, to change the conditions under which they live. The opportunities to air grievances and bully others are substitutes for substantive change, not—as they’re usually billed—steps toward substantive change.The vast majority of the benefits of the game, rather, go to the Rescuers. They’re the ones who decide which team of Victims will get enough attention from Rescuers to be able to start a game. They’re the ones who enforce the rules, and thus see to it that Victims keep on being victimized and Persecutors keep on persecuting. Nor is it accidental that in every Rescue Game, the people who get the role of Rescuers are considerably higher on the ladder of social privilege than the people who get given the roles of Victims and Persecutors.
This is all well and good. Boo-hoo. Rescue games are happening. Clearly, dysfunctional, etc etc and so on. While this tells us why people are behaving the way they behave, a few things should be noted that the author doesn't cover (or doesn't make terribly clear.)
First, is that this Game cannot be Spoken Of, because in general once 'Persecuters' figure out 'who' they are, they quit. So in order to gin up those donations and build that network effect, potential persecutors have to be carefully groomed, even letting it slip slightly that, for example, 'racist' is code for 'white' (and 'racist' is probably the only genuine slur for white people--) can clue reams of potential Persecutors in on the Game and get substantial numbers of them to simply opt out.
Second, because there were previous iterations of this game, players from previous iterations might be angry that their privileges were stripped from them (particularly if they were swapped from being Victims to Persecutors) and may rile up - perhaps accidentally - potential Persecutors thinking that complaining has some sort of real power to it, and cause themselves and others more grief than necessary.
Third, the privileges granted in this game should be considered real in the same sense that Romans had public honors that were granted to them. So when the author talks about 'underprivileged' people, he is speaking his own language (not ours--) in which it's somehow possible to say in a generic fashion that the Victim class has less privileges than it ought to. Those getting those privileges stripped (Poor whites in the case of the switch to 'bioleninism') are justly angry, they were playing by the rules and got reneged on.
Fourth, is that it also appears that Victims do not always know the game is being played. I think how this happens is rather queer, since Victims at least in the description seem to be the ones setting it up (more on that a moment) - so how could they be unaware of the game? Two possibilities exist: The first set of Victims knows the game and sets it up. But as the game progresses, and provided 'who' the Victims are doesn't change for some time, as players get swapped in for new players (generationally, even) new players may not know the 'game' and rather take it for granted that they have the social honor of complaining and being heard, and bullying and being acknowledged. The other possibility, which is more in line with my understanding of power, is that Victims as a bloc never know the Game is being played. It's likely that certain more socially powerful Victims who really do the coordination with the Rescuers do, but general Victims don't know, so the coordination is really among Rescuers, who decide - roughly - which set of Victims (through their contacts who either are of the same class or get that it's a game) are most lucrative for them to give a hearing to.
Lastly, and most importantly, is to try to get a handle on why this game is played at all. It's not enough to say that it is beneficial to some; there are plenty of beneficial things that could be done but aren't. Rather, I suspect that it could be regarded as an aspect of insecure power, and an artifact of certain social conditions.
When I mentioned above Zizek's criticism of charity, we got a glimpse of a key element in what gives us at least the appearance of this game - its structure. That is, the incurable problem.
However, the poor in most circumstances (and in Christian countries) weren't really a problem; certainly they always existed (and will) but in many places they weren't very noticeable simply because ways were found to take care of them. It is primarily in places that are themselves impoverished as a whole that the condition of the poor becomes so notably vicious, and to Zizek's point, simply giving a person in those conditions a loaf of bread doesn't go anywhere to really helping them. The solution is clearly that in addition to continuing charity, that society needs to become less poor itself; how that could be done is not part of my consideration here.
But mostly people who are helping poor people in India, for example, are not getting much out of the Rescue Game, to the extent that it goes on (it certainly does to some extent with some charities who 'fight' against the evil persecutors like Monsanto - I've been to the presentations. I've seen people give money. With the right Audience, it's a lucrative business. [Cleft chin was one thing he brought up, as well, which is a more difficult problem in general and probably genetic.])
So a lot of charity may be ineffective materially, at least in its individual acts, but it doesn't itself constitute a Rescue Game unless we have a Persecutor to crush and Rescuers to - let's face it - get paid to do basically nothing for victims. If you look at how much the average American charity actually gives out, for example, you can tell the Rescuers are fat, fat cats indeed. Often there is no Persecutor, in which case it's just normal grifting; the Rescue Game is sort of an extraordinary circumstance. So what triggers it?
I'm of the opinion that you need an incurable (or perceived to be incurable) problem whose character is essentially that of a conflict; in such a case, because this conflict is real with or without the Game, it presents a certain danger to the society. Unnecessary diversity and inclusiveness often invite these conflicts, but I'm of the opinion both of those ideas don't predate the rescue game they are attached to, but are artifacts of arranging actual set-to's.
The problem also has to be at least difficult to solve, or put more bluntly, the conflict must be difficult to resolve. This could be for several reasons, but the most obvious one is that the powerful are not incentivized to solve social problems but rather are in the position where they act primarily as referees whose positions depend on them being able to take advantage of social changes. (In other words, insecure power.)
It is also possible that the conflict is simply perceived as insoluable, and that the Rescue Game can be annihilated by common knowledge of a solution. Whether that is possible or not depends on how cynical the players are, as if the Rescuers are cynical enough, they can ignore the solution even if all the Victims demand it, and perhaps this is the point at which the signal is thrown to reshuffle the deck and look for a whole new sort of Victims.
It then starts when the Rescuers (who are really just some more powerful people within society) decide that the best way to deal with this simmering conflict is to let it happen in a contained way, perhaps initially thinking that the victims will be sated if they get a chance to humiliate or strike at their opponents, these Persecutors. Indeed, a basic understanding of anger suggests that anger will run its course, but since the conflict is of a hard nature, this only makes the Persecutors angry that they are being humiliated. If the ineffectiveness of this is clear enough, non-cynical Rescuers can easily see that this course of action is wrong, but cynical Rescuers see an opportunity. After all, the worst thing to do when you are angry is to make someone else angry; that is how a feud is started. And what better than refereeing and selling tickets to a contained feud to make bank?
Which means that the Rescue Game is a really foolish version of Professional Wrestling, in which there is no kayfabe and playing heel doesn't pay. Sad!
If it did, I'd gladly play heel in any of these games. It does put in perspective the ineffectiveness of a lot what the alt-right was doing and the wisdom of Moldbug's Command: "Do not complain, build." Many whites, rather than desiring a solution to a certain racial conflict (and if you believe in genetic differences at all, you can't deny it's an ancient one, though no 'sin') simply want a return to the previous arrangement in the Rescue Game where white people get to complain and in general make asses of themselves in public, and get to push around any sort of black person they want for any reason.
Yet, the conflict would remain.