Re: [Marxism] The ultimatum game.

[Mehmet Cagatay <mehmetcagatayaydin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Two weeks ago I read an article about "Second Life", the renowned virtual
3D world. Then I installed the game client to figure out and experience
the enjoyment of virtual reality. I spent the first hour by struggling to
create an avatar which exactly looks like me, a bald guy wearing t-shirt
and black jeans. And after studying the basic movements I was ready to
vanish in the mist of virtual reality. Unfortunately, it didn't took me
long realize that I was doing the exact same things that I would do in
real life if I suddenly plunge into an unfamiliar environment. I was stone
broke and glazed the showcases of shops, wandered around without any
effort to meet and interact with new people, watched the sunset in an
exotic island, etc. After couple of hours, it dawned on me that I need a
First Life in the first place. Then I quitted the game with the taste of
dissatisfaction.

I am not eager to buy any of two common explanations of how people act in
virtual reality: People tend realize their fantasies or reveal their true
characteristics repressed in the real world by the restrictions of social
order. Both of these are too simplistic and overlook the reciprocal
manipulation processing between the subject and reality. Therefore, my own
experimental fiasco in "Second Life" is largely because of my stubbornness
to adjust my reality to the arrangement and procedure of virtual reality
but not as a result of a lack of any fantasies and unrecognized desires
repressed by social order. For instance, two weeks ago a bizarre scandal
was disclosed about Max Mosley, the president of FIA, who was caught in
the act of sado-masochistic sex orgy with some girls dressed as Nazi
officers. The common diagnosis is he is a regular pervert racist who likes
to get his ass whipped and can only get pleasure from sexual intercourse
with the mediation of fetish objects. But there is another fascinating
feature in this scandal: He knows the mechanism and the order of the
sado-masochistic virtual reality so that he is able to realize his darkest
fantasies in the regulations of sexual role playing game. He precisely
knows the laws and principles of the game; therefore he is capable to
manipulate the virtual reality: "Oh Mistress! Please spank me, I am a
traitor"

When I started to play poker, I was ashamed to bet and raise or
check-raise since my personality obliged me to regard this sort of moves
as an insult to other players. I was a usual tight-passive donkey
constantly losing money for the sake of preserving my dignity. Then I
decided to read the most important books dealing with the game, from
Sklansky, Harrington to Brunson. After I have acquired a fundamental
understanding about the reality within the game, I started to manipulate
and exploit its very reality. I had become a downright hypocrite, cunning,
provocative player making the sneakiest moves comfortably. As long as I
could adjust myself with the rationality of a given table, I secured
permission to act like a complete lunatic, betting with nothing, folding
with something and calling with the nuts, etc. to manipulate the dynamics
of the game. It is not because of the possibility that perhaps I possess a
swindler in me repressed by social reality. But the deceptiveness
enveloping the order of the game had compelled me to adjust my naivety
according to its regulation. After this continuous process of alteration
has become intolerable, I quitted this game as well.

In "18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" Marx said:

"And as in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and
says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles
one must distinguish still more the phrases and fancies of parties from
their real organism and their real interests, their conception of
themselves from their reality."


Mehmet Çagatay
http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/

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