Art, Life, and Reality:

I find it incredible when people say, “oh, video games are not REAL. They are simply an escape.” It’s not just video games which are subject to this sort of treatment. Films, television shows, and even books fall under similar attack. One might even drag music into this, given its recorded or synthesized nature; after all, many of those media I’ve listed often INCLUDE music, far more often than not. One can hardly hope to become a professional musician yet to avoid those dramatic forms.

So, the question naturally arises: if these things are not “real”, then what IS Real? Morpheus insists that Reality is more than sensory perception, as does Plato, but supposing we disenfranchise the heroes of both film and philosophical treatise, what remains, and who remains to speak upon it with authority?

The plainest and most redundant response is: “well, Life. LIFE is Real.”

Oh? “Life?”

That I cannot contest, since I only recall that which I’ve seen whilst I have been alive, or so I think. Yet what sort of a “Life” is one devoid of Art? Certainly, it’s not one that I would have known, but if I had to fathom it, perhaps I could.

What Life, then? Would it be that “Life” wherein my ability to reproduce depends upon the size of my triceps? Or that “Life” wherein my right to eat is governed by the expediency with which I can clean some stranger’s plate of leftovers? Is it that “Life” wherein I lose a thousand dollars’ worth of musical equipment in one day, all because I stored it in a locker on a college campus?

Maybe that is not YOUR Life, but I have no reason to think YOUR Life is governed by a higher Cosmic Order. You might say, regarding Life, that I’m a “loser”, yet that only serves to prove my point: you see Life as a Game. To you, Games are not mere “escapes”; they are the ESSENCE of Existence. Your mistake is in believing this: that since LIFE is the Game, then Life goes on without games, and it’s far more satisfying AS a Game than games are in and of themselves. Yet this is false and foolish. Life is not a Game, but rather it’s a sum of games; if it is greater than this sum, it’s only by their virtue that it can be.

Do not get me wrong: I do not mean to say that Life is “boring”. Life, even at its most banal and absurd, may be considered exquisitely interesting, yet it is only AS interesting as our means for EXPRESSING it. The life of the skinny dishwasher who lost his trumpet to a crook might certainly be transformed into a fascinating interactive experience, but only with sufficient Craft and Vision. It is Art which RENDERS Life rewarding, and whenever Life is INTRINSICALLY rewarding, it is only rewarding insofar as that reward can be consummated within its representation in Art. Art is not an “escape”. Life is not something to BE escaped, and Art is an integral pillar of Life which renders attempts to escape unnecessary and futile.

What would such an escape attempt be? One such attempt would be to burn one’s copies of World of Warcraft, publically, as a testament to one’s “newfound freedom”. Freedom to do what? Certainly: not to play World of Warcraft. Yet why presume that Life will automatically offer anything of surpassing value, reward, and “reality” in Warcraft’s absence? One might always give up the simulation for that Reality which it seeks to simulate. Yet if Adolf Hitler had been addicted to World of Warcraft, perhaps we would never have seen a second World War!! (Let us just assume, for the sake of argument, that that was, as the Russians might put it, an “unfortunate” sequel.)

The simple fact that games appeal to an Intrinsic Drive does not ensure that their alternatives will satisfy the Human Soul more fully. Often, it is not the war game which is an alternative for the war, but rather the opposite is so. The true escapists are not those who collect virtual achievements, but rather those who seek achievements in the “Real World”.

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature by contending that Human Life was intrinsically absurd and that we ought to live “without appeal”, whereby all activities are theoretically neutral. The professional World of Warcraft player and the professional gymnast are relative in Camus’ view. His conviction was so pious that even as a Nobel Laureate he maintained that his Life had no overlying Meaning. He even went so far as to prophesy his own premature death; the story goes that he declared a car accident to be the most absurd way to die, weeks prior to his fatal crash. That this might indicate that there’s a God is not out of the question; that such a God must surely have a Camusian sense of humour is unequivocal.

Life is a Joke; that’s why we have comedians to celebrate it. Yet to live a Life in protest of comedy is to sap it of its intrinsic humour. So it is with Art, and so it is with games. The ascetic rejection of video games is merely a neurotic sublimation. It is tantamount to those violent protestors who, in the name of Justice, Peace, and Non-discrimination, slay police officers with prejudice. They may be indiscriminate in WHOM they kill, but WHAT they kill is the target of their own prejudicial hatred.

Yet this is not even the root of the problem: the root lay in the notion that one COULD have “Justice” outside of a Justice Department. Oh? Is that so? Can one find Meaning outside of Literature and Language? What sorts of Achievements did Camus unlock before it was Game Over for him? If Life is LIKE a Court, a Novel, or a Video Game, or if, as Jordan Peterson contests, those are “like” Life, then it is poorly written.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]