... down a hole.

 
 

Men are forced by nature to compete.  Society has institutionalized and intellectualized this burden. 

Within society men engage in chess games of self-interest; the penultimate objective is to mate.  When one has been truly mated, all will to oppose has been crushed and control has been taken, one has been assimilated, no longer posing threat or competition to the winner. 

The winner moves one step closer to the totalitarian regime envisioned and ruled by his ego. Attempts at retaliation by a loser are irrational and will invariably result in further loss of freedom and constitution; the game is over for them, acceptance is the only rational choice. 

And no “rematch” is possible because all worthwhile stakes will have already been forfeited to the winner.  For a woman to be “mated” is just that.  For a man, it is to be castrated and restrained, killed, or having his spirit irreparable broken, anything less will prove the game inconclusive; the illusion of victory or it’s imminence is the playground of deception and the cause of the greatest reversals of fortune in human history. 

Chess games are the structured chance for gain society affords men, otherwise literally, at the throats of other men.  Sport. The dynamic matrices of wins and loses can only be tallied entirely by God, for it's his seat that's sought to be upset. 

Men must understand that chess games are played one after another, continuously.  Victory is ephemeral, only loss persists.

 


Comments

The Siren

Fri, 22 May 2009 15:12:08

But I think men think of themselves as "God" when they play chess. Not kings, not knights but Gods willing their armies to move a certain way to protect the King. And then there's the King, who's mission is to protect "God"'s ego. For if the King falls, so does "God". For his brilliance has just been shattered.

 

ben

Fri, 22 May 2009 23:34:10

perhaps the different kinds of beings form a continuous spectrum, starting with single-cellular microbial life forms, spanning through plant life forms, animal life forms, human life forms, and ending with godly life forms. if so, then man's dilemma springs from his position somewhere between animal life forms and godly life forms: does man strive to be more like an animal or a god? for, a man has the potential to either behave like an animal or to strive towards godliness.

i'd contend that a dilemma results only from thinking that we need to make a choice in one direction or another. the problem is solved by recognizing that one's ability to easily fulfill the plant-like and animal-like desires (reproduction, nutrition, survival) entails that one can progress onward to the greater challenge of becoming god-like. another solution would be to strive purely for one's ascendancy towards godliness, neglecting the plant-like and animal-like desires (e.g. competition for mates), since the satisfaction of the plant-like and animal-like desires would follow from one's achievement of a god-like status.

note that i refer to becoming "godly" or "god-like" rather than "God" itself, since if there is a God, proper, then God = God, and it is improbable for a human to become God itself; so perhaps at best a human can strive to become similar to God by means of god-like thinking, god-like activity, and god-like capacities.

anyway, isn't it intuitively reasonable that if an individual human cannot even meet and succeed at the plant-like and animal-like challenges of reproduction, survival and nutrition, then that individual (or groups thereof) have no hope at all of ever meeting the god-like challenges?

 

ben

Fri, 22 May 2009 23:59:27

now, addressing your analogy between the game of chess and the competitive struggle for one's reproduction:

a precursor to one's ability to mate with an individual of the same species and opposite sex is one's ability to ATTRACT an individual of the same species and opposite sex. that is to say, the competitive struggle for one's reproduction is preceded by the game one has to play to attract a mate at all. perhaps the stage of attraction is an independent and antecedent step to reproduction, or perhaps it is part of the entire process of reproduction itself; this nuance is beyond the current discussion.

but, back to attraction: we can think of attraction in the language of physics rather than of normative ethics or biology or whatnot: in basic physics, particularly in the study of magnetism and electromagnetic forces, there are the concepts of attraction and repellence, so why not use these to explain the dynamics of organismic reproduction?

an organism, such as a human being, will either attract or repel a potential mate. if an organism attracts a potential mate, then the organism necessarily possesses attractive features and properties for the mate to have been attracted to. if an organism possesses no attractive features or properties for a mate to be attracted to, then an organism is neither unattractive or attractive. if an organism possesses repulsive features or properties, then the organism will repel potential mates.

given these conditions, organisms will either seek to enhance their attractive properties and features or to acquire attractive properties and features. and it is this dynamic struggle to attain or enhance attractive properties and features that drives the competitive game of reproduction, as mates size one another up whilst also competing against others of the same sex and same species.

what's intriguing about this competitive game is that it's cyclical: organisms with advantageous genotypes (or attractive phenotypes) will seek to mate with other organisms of the same caliber, thus propagating more organisms with advantageous genotypes (or attractive phenotypes). that is, it looks to be a self-perpetuating cycle. of course, there's also probabilistic mutation that occurs, so two mating organisms with such-and-such phenotypes and genotypes won't necessarily beget offspring who possess the same phenotypes or genotypes.

 

ben

Sat, 23 May 2009 10:23:51

something else to think about is the concept of authority (and the existence of an authoritative entity), which is intimately involved if not wholly determined by another concept, namely, that of a "privileged" perspective. in other words, "authority" is that "privileged" perspective from which edicts are given and judgments made.

solipsism would hold that there's only one privileged perspective: the individual's! the puzzle is that each of us has a perspective, with none of our perspectives being privileged relative to each other, yet each thinks his or her own perspective is a primary one to his or her own self.

and so, this is where we get the underpinnings of self-interested behavior. i do things to my own benefit, where "my" refers to the individual with this single perspective, this window of consciousness on his own self, and i avoid things that are of harm to me. this two-dimensional pursuit of benefits (nutrition, companionship with a mate, reproduction, social status) and avoidance of harms (pain and suffering, loss, etc.) forms the rudimentary impetus of one's everyday actions.

it's only when we depart from oscillating between this basic two-dimensional benefit-harm (or benefit-cost) continuum that we do things that are not necessarily conducive to mere survival and reproduction, such as moral acts for their own sake, or contemplative activity for its own sake.

but yes, the most basic and rudimentary of human actions is the competitive struggle for self-maintenance, self-satisfaction and self-replication under conditions of scare resources, scare time-span, and scarce

p.s. i've been reading up on Chris Langan's CTMU

p.p.s. many prior intellectuals have made stunning contributions to the progress towards knowing without having been accepted or trained members of academia (some examples i can readily think of are David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, Srinivasa Ramanujan)

 

ben

Sat, 23 May 2009 10:24:52

edit:

scarce mates*

 



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