DERR!DA:

I’m not sure if you remember Jacques Derrida, but I do. He pioneered Deconstruction in the latter half of the twentieth century. Arguably, his most salient contribution was in the discussion of race. If you will pardon my flippancy, Deconstruction probably did more for black people than Reconstruction did.

In order to understand Deconstruction, it helps to know Derrida’s backstory. Scholars posit that he was inspired to deconstruct reality because he was rejected from University; well into his later years, he advocated for the rights of high school students to a philosophical education. The reasons for Derrida’s initial rejection lay in his ethnic background; the school had a quota for Jews, and it was over capacity. By contemporary standards, we might say that this brilliant man was a victim of institutional racism; we would even go to considerable lengths in making that label absolutely final. But I have to wonder: had he been born in America, and had he applied to a University here, what would we call it if he was rejected for being white? I mean: CLEARLY that’s just as Absurd, from an Individual standpoint. It would be as if the Individual were no more than the figurehead of its colony, containing all of the colony’s history, but nothing more.

The irony wouldn’t be lost on someone like Camus, but what would Derrida himself have said? The tricky thing is that Derrida went to some considerable lengths to obscure his own public identity; we know not even why, so he remains mysterious to us. Besides: he had quite the temper, especially in regard to public figures who (mis)interpreted(?) his work. Not only don’t we know even what we don’t know about him, but what is more: we don’t even know if we do or do not know that.

This much, at least, we know is true: that Derrida proved, indefinitely but consequentially, that race does not fundamentally exist. His work is often cited as contributive to the end of Apartheid in South Africa. What boggles my mind is this: that even staunch Derrideans who deny the objective quality of Truth still support policies such as Affirmative Action.

Regarding my previous question, I can say with some certainty that the Derridean deconstruction of race can be used to challenge Affirmative Action. If the same man might face the same discrimination for being white as he does for being Jewish, the context of the offence does not matter, for not only DON’T the ends justify the means in such matters, (lest we become proto-Fascists,) but the tendency to classify a man AS either a Jew or a white man is equally “logocentric” in both cases. (Though I must confess that, from a certain point of view, I am speaking as the expression of both categories, and Derrida’s contemporary Deleuze would not hesitate to string my various group identities together in classifying my subjectivity.)

All of this might seem like some graduate-level stuff, but it’s not uncommon as an UNCONSCIOUS tendency, for which poststructuralists frequently act as apologists, far more so than they apologize for them. People who defend Affirmative Action operate according to Group Identity. It used to be the function of philosophy to transcend this tendency, but the problem with the poststructuralists is that they have reached a pact with it. Derrida himself spoke to a group of white, South African college students who expressed a common feeling of guilt for being born white, and yet he did not console them as one would expect a father figure to do, saying: “I did not feel bad for being Jewish.”

Incredibly, the only man I’ve known to even draw a parallel between one form of marginalization and another is Jordan Peterson. Peterson might not understand Marxist economics, but he certainly understands the tendency to render people “irrelevant by pedestalization”, which was how Alan Watts described Jesus Christ and the failures of the Christian Church to imitate their Lord and Saviour. (Watts was applauded uproariously for that observation; if you ever find the audio from that lecture online, you’ll hear it.)

Foucault and Deleuze were perhaps the two intellectual figures who “understood” Derrida the best, often citing him and writing forewords. The new French clique tried to transcend the loneliness of their existentialist forefathers by representing ALL cliques, so Derrida’s methods were employed to deconstruct the Individual Itself. “Man” was reduced to the sum of his group identities, and now here we are; it has become common sense in schools and streets alike.

The tragedy of Derrida is not remembered as a sort of Kafkaesque tale (again, pardon my Jewish leanings) of a rational man contending with an impersonal, Absurd bureaucracy. The Absurd Hero has also been swallowed up in the stream of signification and redefinition. The tragedy was purely institutional. It is as though the victims of institutional racism were not individuals but the institutions themselves, in whose interest “we” (a pronoun Derrida outspokenly shied away from) must reform them. Corporate neoliberalism, of the sort that Charles Reich describes as Consciousness II, at most a cocoon state by which to reach the Hippy Mind, loves to perpetuate itself via Deconstruction.

One has to be a bit suspicious when one attends a stage production wherein half the cast is black and the other half is white. Statistically, this is not a proportionate representation of the State of Nature, wherein black people comprise only 12.3 per cent of the American population, and this is significant considering that the United States is among the most diversified of nations. Now, of course, it is a formal fallacy to presume that the state of Nature dictates the Way Things Ought to Be, though critics such as MacIntyre challenge the identity of the Naturalist Fallacy as a fallacy and writers such as, say, Shakespeare declared, however indirectly, through the voice of an adolescent, that theatre ought to hold the “mirror up to [N]ature”. When you see a cast that is an Oreo (about half-white and half-black), you can be willing to bet that something is artificial, unless of course it just so happened that the casting call was put out in a community with a disproportionate amount of African Americans (through no fault of their own).

It’s one thing when directors tokenize a group by including a few characters of that group, and it’s another when the characters are written to look the part, as in Porgy and Bess, which is almost entirely a black cast. Yet there is something fishy going on wherever, say, a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has an “equally representative” choir. It proves that somewhere, SOMEONE, from a position of influence, decided that this is how the World ought to look: Half-black, half-white, and with exclusion to the middle. It implies that SOMEONE POWERFUL believes in race in a pre-Derridean sense, and though he or she means to champion the end of racism, he or she will use racism towards it. It implies that blacks and whites are fundamentally born separate, that our melanin can be categorized two ways, but that we can go no further, even in an age of subatomic quantum physics that refuses all manner of absolute atomization. Finally, the implication is that this is the state that we are born into, that it is the state of Nature, though Derrida said in an interview that one of his central goals is not to naturalize the artificial world; he even reminded the interviewer and his audience that the very film set which housed the interview was entirely artificial.

Ask neoliberals this: if something as quintessential and universal as GENDER can be called a social construct, why can’t race? Why can we switch gender at will, but we cannot wear face-paint or use regional vernacular belonging to minority groups? Above all, why can the Individual no longer aspire towards a moral objectivity, irrespective of the identity of the speaker, as MacIntyre aspires towards? Is it because even MacIntyre seeks to reduce us to the mere representation of our tribes?

I suppose that this is why Sartre was called the last intellectual; most of his philosophy was used to disidentify. If a school rejects me because it has too many Russians, it’s bad faith to say: “The school knows what it’s doing; let’s rejoice that I am represented by my fellows, to an optimum capacity, so that I might return and please my family to know that our nationality is honoured.”  Only in an extremely privileged society would this even be thinkable; in the Philippines, (I’m told, by Joseph) I would probably be dead, unless I found some alternative to education in order to eat.

The Jungian argument, as employed by Peterson, for which alone we might pardon his reactionary intrusiveness, is to expose the INNER contradiction of Affirmative Action. Yet sociologically it’s not hard to imagine the external dangers. What made the O.J. Simpson trial so outrageous was that it demonstrated that, as Howard Beale declared at the end of Network, some twenty years earlier, “the individual is finished”. The Ideal Law, the likes of which Kim Wexler and Charles McGill represent, in different ways and to varying extents, (though Saul Goodman comes to identify one with the other) in Better Call Saul, promises to protect each Individual Life from the tyranny of institutions, the barbarism of mobs, and the villainy of other individuals. Yet when someone like Johnny Cochran can exonerate his client, who was “dead to rights”, by playing the Race Card, turning a murder case into a racial issue, it’s the ultimate postmodern miscarriage of justice.

This is the Darker Side of Deconstruction: that just as easily as one can deconstruct race, one can RECONSTRUCT it, in a new context wherein the Rights of the Individual and the Individual’s Family have yet to BE Reconstructed. Derrida insisted that a Truth will always re-emerge sooner or later, though his goal is to forestall this for as long as possible. If he had to defend Cochran, as though the lawyer were himself on trial for the criminal litigation, (if ever a criminal lawyer was a “criminal lawyer”, in the Saul Goodman sense, it was Cochran, and that alone allows me to forgive him even slightly, as a conman,) Derrida would probably say this: “It was inevitable that the Race Card would eventually be played, and history ought to be ready to receive it. Take comfort in the fact that, just as inevitably, individual rights will yet again be reconstructed; though you may not enjoy a victory on behalf of your lost loved one today, know that someone, somewhere, will. Yet if we are to prioritize YOUR plight and YOUR nostalgia for the life of an innocent individual victim over the victimhood of an entire RACE, then we will simply be resisting the natural process of differance*, and such an artificial imposition will only ensure that our legal institution will regress to its hierarchical origins as a slave state.”

*Though Word does not recognize this word, scholars ought to.

Of course, it is impossible to put words in Derrida’s mouth, but one can see how the premises play out. The evils of Deconstruction ought not to be understated; any one of us can imagine the institutional and moblike applications. The trick is in this: to use Deconstruction as the Eastern mystics did, many millennia before Derrida wrote and spoke. We must deconstruct illusions such as race, laying them to rest PERMANENTLY, at least until the end of the next Yuga Cycle, while all the while reconstructing Sacred Truths which we can live by. This implies an epistemology whereby artificial forms of divisions are supplanted so as to make ROOM for NATURAL KNOWLEDGE, that ideals such as Justice and Individuality might be regarded as no less, nor even equal to, illusions such as hatred and prejudice, except perhaps in that final state of Enlightenment wherein all ignorance is fundamentally forgiven and the practitioner, no longer physically necessary, passes into Nirvana.

Absolute poststructuralism offers us No Exit, even more so than Sartre[anism] did, and both French schools deny this Transcendental Plane, though one seeks to “confront” Reality while the other demolishes it. Yet it is my feeling and intuition that, despite our mass confusion, our generation is ready to embrace the Domain of the Transcendent Reality Again. Conversations with college students who meditate give me Hope. Thus, I seek to expose the lies while reconstructing the Truths, and even as those Truths are also deconstructed as the lies were I shall cling to them, for they are my approximation of Being. So long as enough well-meaning and intelligent men and women join me in this venture, the results will inevitably produce healing.

[({DM.A.A.)}]

1213 Words:

This poem verily summarized my entire ethic. We MUST be Good, at all times, both waking and asleep, that we might treat Others fairly, and we MUST also be passionate, on behalf of our own needs, that we might treat Ourselves fairly and thereby perpetuate the process. It follows logically that there is but ONE way to get anything you want, and that is by being Good, for Goodness is a constant, as is Desire. Anyone who is Good to you must never be questioned, for those who are Good constantly must always be in such a predicament, and they deserve least to be suspected of insincerity, while those who are insincere must be rewarded so as to BECOME sincere, for they must learn that only Goodness CAN be rewarded. Those who are inconsistent must only be punished for their lapses in Goodness; they must never come to power by evil means, for then they enthrone evil, reducing Goodness to something conditional and treating the condition as though THAT were the measure of a Goodness that TRULY must be unconditional. Life is twofold: we must remain innocent in order to preserve that to which we are entitled by birth, and we must use Noble Means, the likes of which would never contradict our Innocence, to acquire those things which we need but to which we are (somehow, nonetheless) NOT intrinsically entitled. Any lesser way of life is not worth living.

I know that you are proud of me.

Namaste.

Dmytri A.A.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

P.S.: You know what’s wild? When I first typed up the poem in Calibri it numbered exactly 19 pages, and it cut off, just as it does now, with the signature dangling alone on the last page. Now, reset to Bembo, it is 18 pages, but it cuts off in precisely the same manner. NEAT.

It started with an injury.

I had done nothing wrong.

Though no one would give in to me

Nor sing along to such a song.

Instead, the chorus:

They abhor us.

For our vanity.

They say: there is no way

There’s nothing for us

Waiting from humanity.

And I protest:

I past the test!

And I was totally

Devout and true.

And they contest:

Give it a rest.

The world does not

Revolve about just

You.

And I reply:

I know. But I

Was innocent

And undeserving

Of this pain.

They say: you are quite

Insolent to claim you

Owned it. This you

Claim only in vain.

So I explain:

I’ve known that.

But the pain of

Deprivation

Surely must contain

Within it plainly

The entire

Situation.

If, by the denial

Of desire in its

Consummation I

Were thus to be unjustly

Hurt, would you not

Say we must be

Far more trusting

Of the ones whom

We so lustfully

Desert?

Instead: the chorus

Sings the score thus:

We have owed you

Nothing more.

So though you

Had done nothing

To offend us

There is nothing

To defend within

Your store.

And I implore this at the door:

I must confess it to be so!!

But if there’s something I can do

To earn this, do please let me

Know.

For I was innocent

Of all wrongdoing

Yet if doing nothing

Wrong was not

Enough,

Then show me

What I needed to

Be doing and I

Promise I’ll

Be tough.

And yet they say:

There is no way

There’s nothing for us

Waiting from humanity.

And if your vanity

Should peak then you

Will seem quite weak

In strength and sanity.

For you are meek to even ask

If you should seek to bask

Within this glory

Why then even bother

To inquire of the task?

Is it not higher to be father

Of your own, inspired

Story?

And I say:

Okay. But there

Must be a way

That most of

My peers

Play.

How can they get away,

So few in years, with

What they do and

Say?

I never knew

Such cleverness

That could start

Families in teens.

I did not dare to

Sever this pursuit from

My most noble

Means.

But oh, how destitute am I

If every year I die a bit inside.

Wondering why I have to hide

And must abide by someone

Else’s pride.

How is it justified?

If I am snide, then

Please: I’m open wide

Upon my knees just

Tell me how am

I to cure this

Insecure

And self-

Assured disease?

And then the chorus

That deplore us

Simply roll their

Eyes.

And they say something

Of the Human Soul

That I cannot control

However wise.

And still, once more,

They say: there is

No way. No way,

No how. You can’t

BECOME entitled

To the consummation

Of your vital functions

In this day and age.

Not now.

And hence I rage:

But have I not

Been kind? Have

I no mind? And

Is it not

Refined by

Value?

Shall you tell me

I’m defined

By vices I

Had never learned?

The fire of desire

For all those I have

Admired

Left me mired in the

Pyre of an aspiration

Burned!!

And they say:

If you would

Require virtue

To have been the

Wood to fuel your

Flame, don’t be surprised

That those who had

Admired it desert you

All the same.

For shame!! For if you

Would so sear your

Inner good to forge a

Spear, don’t be surprised

When, analyzed,

You will prove to have been

Disguised and insincere.

And then I scream up to the skies:

My Dear!! How can I hence be

Analyzed? I am incensed

By this pretense: that

To tell Truth excessively

Is tantamount

To telling lies.

If am honest in my prime

And I am noble in my deed

If I am all of this and all the

Time, how am I then

To feed my basic, universal

Need?

Such a reversal is absurd:

That having proven

True of word,

My kindness makes

Me less attractive

And I find this

Retroactive:

That for even

Trying to attract

As if defying

Our most

Universal pact,

I’ve rendered suspect

That same circumspect

Intent towards which

Alone I have ever

Been prone and bent.

And they say:

This is why you

Stand alone.

For you demand

It to be known.

That you would never

Sin if you could help it.

But you’d win each time

You yelp it.

Like a whelp, and it’s

Ironic. In your genius

You are moronic.

For you see in this

The irony but you

Refuse to be.

For you confuse

Your dignity for

That attraction

Which we can

Produce not by

Some righteous action

But by breaking rank

And shifting faction

Just by the most

Subtle fraction.

My rebuttal: Yes.

To you, you would

Possess your goodness

As a tool.

And me: I am possessed BY

Goodness like I am its

Fool.

You would easily

Withdraw it

From the table

If it made you

Able to persuade

Each other how

To get along.

But I

I cannot justify

It. So I live

And I die

By it.

And you seek

To quiet me.

But why

Should I thus

Speak to thee?

For everything

That you would say

To get your way

Might be a lie.

You’re right;

There truly is

No way

[To justify it.

Nay.

Goodbye.]

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

WAR GAMEZ:

Video games do reinforce violent tendencies by simulating a reality wherein violence is a viable and strategic option. This may be novel for the sort of introverted person who begins playing games as a way of coping with social anxiety. In so far as the developers themselves are afflicted with antisocial tendencies, the design of the game may in itself be the expression of a violent, antisocial tendency, the likes of which we find in such delusions such as survivalism, as well as the veneration of armed conflict and organized crime, all common cultural themes that have a place in game design as well as a “target” audience (no pun intended) in those adults and adolescents who already exhibit these neuroses as conscious attitudes. It follows logically that it is ridiculous to try to separate the “fantasy” of video games from the “reality”; in fact, that is already a violent line to draw, and often gamers draw it violently.

There is no mistaking the fact that the leading franchises in game development hinge upon Immersion, the sensation of a game’s virtual environment being “real”. In effect, a game cannot be said to be experienced totally without the suspension of disbelief. In theatre, the actor has to suspend his or her own disbelief and identity in order to “disappear into the role”, and it is out of both empathy for the actor and sympathy for the character that auditors forget their own lives, except perhaps by analogy to the simulated world.

Yet can this be called “escapism”? When composers innovated Program Music in the nineteenth century, they abandoned “absolute music” in favour of compositions which “told a story”. Narrative immersion was thus introduced into a medium that previously only explored drama in opera, oratorio, and the occasional lute ballad about crying. Composers wrote programs that were printed for the audience to read and to contemplate as they listened to the music. Hector Berlioz managed to woo a woman who had previously spurned his advances by composing an entire Symphony in her honour. The Symphonie Fantastique used experimental orchestral techniques to invoke the quality of a heartbroken young man’s drug trip; some instruments are even believed to represent the fall of a guillotine’s blade as the vision becomes more and more nightmarish. The effect was miraculous: his light of love was so moved by the composition that she agreed to marry him. (Though perhaps this was more of a testament to the beauty of the music than the plot of the story, since too much immersion might have offended her once she imagined herself depicted as a witch. The marriage ended quickly, probably as the spell faded.)

What’s remarkable about music and what sets it apart from theatre is that it is Imminent. No one goes to a concert just to “escape” reality; one goes there to experience reality more intensely and immediately. Every note is Absolutely What It Is, even if the music is not “absolute music”. When you hear the percussive crash, you may imagine a falling blade, but there is no denying that a cymbalist smashed two cymbals together; everyone in attendance saw it. Nothing is truly “hidden from the audience” in formal music; even something as Byzantine as Mick Gordon’s sound experiments for the Doom Soundtrack did not take long for audiophiles to unriddle, with hilarious dramatic irony.

This hints at an important trend known to philosophers as “naïve realism”. When gamers tell you that they can discern “reality” from “fantasy”, hoping to save the integrity of the fantasy by disidentifying with those who cannot adequately comprehend “reality”, they are already waging a sort of virtual warfare, on behalf of their own communities and lifestyles, which is fought on a philosophical battlefield. The pretension that a TRUE gamer CAN be trusted to discern “reality” from “fantasy” is already a form of fantastical escapism. Yet this is not only because gamers MUST escape “reality” in order to enjoy the “fantasy” of the game. I don’t mean to imply that, like a method actor who is too good for his own good, they forget how to “turn off the fantasy”, even though the history of extreme method acting would make this tendency to “leave it on” embarrassingly relatable and forgivable. My contention is a metaphysical one: that this “reality”, as distinct from this “fantasy”, does not exist.

Gamers of an extremely rational temperament already escape, on a daily basis, into the nineteenth century. Rationalism suggests a Hierarchy of Reality that is comprehended only by the most “rational, discerning” adult minds. Roughly summarized, it can be laid out like this:

1.         Hard Facts.

2.         Collective Knowledge.

3.         Individual Experience.

4.         Fiction.

Yet suppose we dispossessed ourselves of this conditioned prejudice. Consider, again, Music: we know it to be REAL; that it makes us feel as though we were somewhere else is no more an illusion than the feeling that we hear a loved one’s voice over the telephone. Sure: we should question the integrity of the medium, as well as those who use it, but perhaps not to the point of outright paranoia. Berlioz seems to have adequately communicated his feelings through his Symphony, and for some short time his fantasy became a socially accepted reality. (Thankfully, minus the witches’ sabbath.)

What if we saw games in the same manner? Philosophers such as Lacan and Zizek attest to the reality of virtuality, even delineating several layers of each. Instead of plagiarizing them, however, I would like to take advantage of the novelty of the gaming medium in order to introduce a model of my own:

The realm of Fact CONTA!NS the domain of Fiction. All fictitious works are produced, reproduced, and experienced in the Real World. What is hidden from the audience, to various extents, is the Fundamental Nature of the Artistic Work. Yet this is ALSO hidden from the DEVELOPER, who learns how to synthesize new realities by entering into established traditions. Often, the point of entry is totally arbitrary. When a college student tells you that she is “learning the basics” of programming, sound design, writing, et cetera, she is bluffing, though she may not know it. There is no “foundation” upon which learning occurs; we just start coding, writing, and composing at some point arbitrated by the teacher. It’s the same way with all languages, and any language plays such a radical part in shaping our “realities” that it seems daunting, if not impossible, to look Reality directly in the face. Life can be understood almost entirely in terms of communications. In context of this, those inputs which we deem to be the products of the “Real World” are no more reliable than those which are produced through the consumption of Art; it is purely a cultural conceit to treat Art as though it had come from the Heavens instead of from Earth. All information passes the threshold of personal Imagination. If there is any Reality to hold on to, it is ensnared not by the force of Reason alone, but by the force of Will.

Now let us return to the question, therefore, of Violence.

Something like Warfare, especially of the Modern kind, may be understood by analogy to the Law. Franz Kafka writes, in his seminal novel The Trial, that no man has access to the Law. This principle applies in Vince Gilligan’s prequel to Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, wherein several young but established lawyers grapple with the labyrinthine complexities of the legal system and what it means to them.

The same can be said of war. There is no true “specialist” in armed conflict. Young men and women are “thrown into” a war zone, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, with only their orders and their national identity intact. Even the highest-ranking members of any military cannot say for certain what the Absolute Nature of violence is; they have become so accustomed to it as a justifiable means, whether noble or a necessary evil, that their very instincts have become biased in its favour, and any universalizing philosophical claims which they might make about the Gods of War and where those Gods might stand within a larger Pantheon are bound to be the product as much of willpower and conscience as of deduction.

This is why war games have so much replay value. It’s become a joke between myself and my sister that most first-person shooters are practically the same game: you parachute into a warzone and you shoot things. Very few games in the industry, such as Doom, BioShock, and Half-Life, deviate from this format. It’s not just because this format works as a recognizable design formula; the REASON that it works is because it mirrors the actual conditions of (the) military occupation so well. Everyone is “thrown into” it without much preparation; bootcamp is only a tutorial, which is offered as sort of a stand-alone demo in the form of R.O.T.C. training. Why, then, would you play a game over again, if each time you must start from the bottom ranks? (so to speak, at least.) Wouldn’t the novelty and the mystery wear off by the end of the first playthrough? The answer is an overwhelming “Sir!! no, Sir!!”

The truth is that reaching the final objective and dispatching the last enemy are not sufficient to comprehend the experience. Yoko Taro uses this to ingenious effect in his masterpiece Nier: Automata. The same story is presented in the first two playthroughs from two different perspectives; a previously nonplayable character switches places, so to speak, from our perspective as mere players, with the principal heroine. By the end of each consecutive playthrough, the same conflict is revealed to be more absurd than it had appeared previously, and the same ending is made to appear less heartbreaking only to the extent that the final, disillusioning blow has been forestalled for a short while longer. Players watch adept soldiers, overwhelmed by armies and monoliths, turn into seasoned warriors, only to become powerless before the sheer meaninglessness of the entire crusade for which they were designed to fight. Nier: Automata is the sort of game that can turn a pacifist into a freedom fighter, only to spite his commitment to the cause by using the same initial pacifism against the heroes in a tragic fashion whose brutality is augmented by its cosmic and ironic justice. In the same manner, most other war games, such as Call of Duty, can give a young man who never stood a sizeable chance against bullies the experience of killing terrorists and becoming a hero to the ostensibly Free World. It’s not a fantasy that one can easily dismiss in the contemporary media; entire dynasties pledge themselves to such a cause, disowning their children who would go off in search of another way.

Yet can a game alone turn someone into a Special Operations officer? Perhaps not. The kid might just as easily become a first-person shooter. Don’t get me wrong; he probably won’t. All that the game supplies is the EXPER!ENCE OF using violence, communicated from the point of view of the Developers and their contributing consultants, through the interactive medium, to the player. The rest is up to the player. Most players are presumably too stupid to comprehend the impact of the games they play upon their own decisions, though in many ways Life Itself is a game which can only be understood by analogy (really, by metonymy) to its various sub-games, only a fraction of which are formally referred to as games and even fewer of which are “video games”. Only the subtlest players will comprehend the fact that, even in the virtual world, they have willingly reduced others to objects and used force and dexterity to silence those objects. Video games can serve the same function, therefore, as combat training, wherein previously conscientious, life-preserving civilians become professional killers by practicing on human-shaped targets.

If it works in conditioning soldiers, can a consumer not use it to the same effect? The clever, metaphysically enlightened players may do so consciously, using the Reality of the Game to warrant the conflict in Actual Life, though they are met with anti-intellectual opposition from law enforcement and clinical psychiatry. The ordinary minds will simply internalize the experience and confine it to the dream realm, until some trying and demoralizing situation compels them to be seized by an unintegrated archetype and they act out a subconscious, violent fantasy with such stunning accuracy that they themselves might not believe it afterwards. Who is the greater danger of these two parties? The jury is out on that, as is the Court Martial.

Games are a wonderful learning tool. Playing through even the first run of Nier: Automata helped me to recover from line hypnosis and abuse at an overwhelming and physically demanding job. My reflexes were heightened; I found within myself the capacity to communicate clearly and efficiently while running from objective to objective within a very narrow time limit, honing in on every moment. War games are not alone in training us. The Curse of Monkey Island taught me to scan my environment, both immediate and macroscopic, for clues and opportunities, though I’d like to say I never stole anything. Braid taught me how to rethink my assumptions, trying the same thing over and over again but in different ways until the underlying secret was revealed. Sonic, one of my first games, taught me how to run and jump, but also when to stop and to pace myself. Beyond the mechanics, a game’s narrative can tell a story that a novel or a film cannot convey. By the second playthrough of Nier: Automata, I was shaky about my place in the Universe; by the third, I had lost all moral and romantic hope for the future. I do not regret this, since several playthroughs later I had the opportunity to make a sacrifice that would at once impact a stranger and test my altruism in the Real World. Though I will respectfully abstain from spoiling this ending, suffice it to say that it’s an ideal example of the Game Becoming Real, in a manner that reveals how it was Real Already. But I’ll leave that up to you to decide, especially because that ending is optional.

I can already begin to imagine the counterarguments regarding violence. Somewhere, somehow, there may be a Navy S.E.A.L. who only plays Animal Crossing. While such news, presented as a retort, would be an impressive observation, it’s hardly a logical argument. It would sooner be an instance of correlation masquerading as causation in an attempt to use an exception to challenge a trend. It is not enough, however, to find one professional killer who only plays a notoriously nonviolent game. One must expose the internal logic of the connection. I have demonstrated, on multiple grounds and through multiple disciplinary lenses, the MANNER IN WH!CH video games and other art forms, including those dating back hundreds of years, can influence human behaviour. The man who kills at work but fishes at home does not prove by so doing that games are inconsequential. Supposing that that same gamer had chosen, instead of a career in the military, to catch rare fish and to sell them in order to pay his mortgage. Such an example would certainly act as overwhelming evidence for my hypothesis, for he can easily be accused of having learned the habit from Animal Crossing, though his defense might attest that the realism of Animal Crossing lies in the fact that you can do that anyway. (In traditional societies, perhaps so.) It is not that games are the ONLY road to violence, nor that they are ONLY a road to violence. Yet a game CAN be a road to violence, notwithstanding, and unlike examples to the contrary my argument illuminates the path and its internal workings. I am almost afraid to do so, knowing how it might be used, though I do not doubt that those who would abuse it have already begun to do so, so I seek to illuminate this as much to expose them as to offer strategies.

In summary: Yes. Games can and do make people violent.

The real question, therefore, is this: ought they NOT to?

Games like Nier: Automata compel us to think of violence in different ways. I am told that the same can be said of games like Spec Ops: the Line, and I can say with some certainty that God of War, Half-Life, and Grand Theft Auto use different styles of storytelling to elicit sympathy for mercenaries. The best war stories tend to be told towards this end, regardless of whether the proffered thesis is a pacifist one or a martial one. What sets games apart is that you do not only watch the simulated violence; you enact it, and you live with the consequences. Considering that modern warfare forces recruits to treat their targets as THOUGH they were mere objects, the microcosm of three-dimensional digital models, animated only by artificial intelligence, is not very far off from the truly postmodern battlefield, and the very nature of postmodernity makes it anyone’s guess where one front ends and the other begins. Between the violence in games and the violence on the streets, who is to draw “the Line”? We have the privilege, in the United States, of marginalizing the threats to our immediate safety as we venerate our representatives in foreign wars. Whenever a civilian snaps and commits violence in the homeland, it is a media tragedy, yet it also exposes the fact that we are never TRULY safe from our own culture, and perhaps we should sympathize more with those cultures whose constituents might have to ban video games to prevent children from becoming extremists. The subtlest thinkers do not presume upon nonviolence, even if they might arrive at it. Yet if we are to defend our generation’s greatest Art Form, let us not underestimate its power to create new, Real Worlds.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]