In competitive gaming, network rules are modified by system administrators to eliminate the effect of arbitrage as defined by culturally subjective and collectively selected determinations designated by a process of indirect democratic participation of interested parties. Whether by online forum or live-streamed shit-talking straight outta’ Twitch: where exploits render games broken, nerds flip out and coders patch.
Governments run networks too, because humans in their brilliant depravity tend to play best while operating under shared limits imposed by cooperatively constructed systems. The American game was destined for patching, to be conducted by the people through a self-correcting system of systemization: indirect representation, executed by a democratically elected centralized authority. The hope was that its people would be given equal opportunity to take meaningful stake in it, reflecting in a great mass their intent as funneled through channels of communication entrusted to experts dedicated to serving the public interest.
The trending morality has held that one should render intent with less regard than the shape of its physical manifestations. But facial muscle contractions, alien affect, and words, merely reflect energy and ideas, which can be neither embraced nor cured nor adopted by deconstruction. Love must be chosen, and truth subsequently discovered—a process often and easily made manifest in measly old constructs designed to spread it. We know there is a way to bear the burden of subjectivity, even if it is experienced in and as the same medium as and of its apparent beholder: one must sincerely try to understand the intent of the other and respond in good faith. Virtue has nothing to do with belief or decorum. It is the willingness to engage honestly in a feedback loop, and to trust others to do the same, often at the risk of self-detriment, which when incurred is either deserved to one’s shame or underserved to one’s humility. Virtuous action lashes the ego for all but the saints among us. Virtue can’t be codified and claimed, but only known and fearfully evoked. How things seem is not as important as how things are.
But Americans are used to a nominal world. The queen gets a 40% discount on everything from skin care to the divorce lawyer. There is no difference between family and business for castle dwellers. Goodwill is measured as zero when convenient, placed in trust, and triggered to explode on contact with reality after artificial barriers are set in place to absorb the shock. Sweat compounds at a slower rate than wealth—unless of course it flows from the pours of wealth curators or home traders betting on market supremacy. Even when the rich approach death’s door, Solomonic wisdom is applied to ever-densifying dynasty-sustaining masses of energy vacuumed up from the untouchables, recognized finally as flesh and blood only after having been harvested from the other.
The way things seem is the primary concern of a privileged society. For many less privileged around the world, reality demands its reckoning now.
We may want to take this next voting opportunity to choose leaders willing to patch.