Work Text:
I play this game wrong.
What is the game? You lost, by the way.
Life in society.
Earning money.
Youtube.
If my objective is to spread as widely as possible, why would I not create a separate channel to produce radically different kinds of content to avoid the channel being sunk with the algorithm?
Several answers to that.
First... I'm not looking for being widespread. I'm looking for being spread enough. If it becomes widespread, good. Makes my life easier. If not... Well, you are listening to this. That's a win in my book.
Second reason, I'm just one person, and I have not the knowledge and patience to learn the ins and outs of the algorithm to make this... Traditionally sustainable. So I won't waste energy to try and parse what I should do or not do to please a system that is not made for me.
I'll use the part I want to use, and disengage to the best of my ability.
I'll keep some copies of this video outside of Youtube and the Google ecosystem. I'll even keep printed copy of the text. To be independent to some degree, to the best of my ability.
Independent.
Be amused here. You ought to be.
Why this. Why is this more important than anything to me. What is this.
Okay. From the top.
Independence and Consent.
Why do I want to talk to you about that.
I could talk to you about society, love, intelligence, future, hopes, dreams, fictions, nuances, sex, violence, civil engineering, storytelling, semantics, taste, good and bad games, hate, sociology, space, art, the inner workings of a blade of grass.
It would be beautiful. I'm sure I will someday.
Some of us have and will.
But there might be a conversation I and only I am able to have, and if it has to be the only thing I will do before I die, then I'll chose those two words.
The interplay between Independence and Consent.
Yes I'm about to talk philosophy. You don't have to consent to this. I'm not trying to be convincing or persuasive here. You can leave if this is too intellectual, too snob, too heavy, too much, not enough, not worth your time.
If you’re still here, it means I managed to anyway.
I'm not the one to listen to if you want to learn about that. If you want that skill, I advise you to learn eloquence, visual language, and sound design theory. If you're listening to this in the Era of Content, you should be able to learn all of this for free. I might still be there when you come back.
Well not me. This record.
I want to talk about those two notions because I think it's really needed right now. I want to do it in this format because I don't think we have time. You. And me. We just don't.
I wish I had the resources to tell you a good story. To make you swallow my questions and expose you to my beliefs in a kind way.
I don't think we have that.
I hope someone will. I doubt I will. I will die with regrets. And I must make peace with that.
That's none of your business and we're losing time.
Focus. Focus.
How do we talk about that.
You'll quickly see that I'm not good at making short things. Simple things. Digestible. I don't do content.
I can do art. And I try to do truth. Tell truth. Do truth.
Immanuel Kant. The maxim of your action. The maxim of your action.
May you live as the maxim of your actions were to become universal laws.
I hate this line. I hate it. As if it’s self-evident what would be a good universal law- It’s so easy to make it biased and bullshit and self centered- Can you believe this guys? What’s good, Mr. Kant? Everyone know what is good if they are being honest with themselves, ask a child, na na nana- good g-mmhhhhh! We don’t know, we don’t know, we would not do anything if-
Focus. No story. Not a story. This is not a story.
Knowing that. Where can we start.
Truth.
I can start with truth.
Renée Descartes. Cogito ergo sum. How many of you know this?
I want to say ‘go read Renée Descartes’, or ‘try to get the short version’ on reddit, Wikipedia, one of your teachers, go get informed. But I'm assuming right now either you already know, or you think the same exact thing as me.
I don't have time right now. Maybe later.
This is the segment where I assume you don't know and you won't look for the source idea, or you like the sound of my voice.
My voice might not convey it, but I'm not talking down to you here. I would react the exact same in your place.
Cogito ergo sum. Latin for 'I think, therefore I am.'
It's the base building block for any logic enterprise. On an individualistic level, you can check if you 'exist'. You think. You have a 'self'.
Some will call it a soul.
This is the only truth YOU can be sure about. If we were all rational beings, every truth we would hold would derive from that one thought.
Spoilers. We are not.
I'm assuming right now that you are a human being speaking english or french.
You might not be.
There's a world where this text is passed down to... Something else. Someone else. By any way possible. To the ability of my limitation, I assume that if you are not human... You are another life form.
Organic... Or artificial... You might be a true AI.
If that's the case... Well hello. Nice to meet you. My name is Romane. I'm probably dead. Or unavailable. I'm sorry, close to everything I will say might be... Unhelpful to you. But I still assume you need resources to function, even if you don't have a body. So anytime I speak about a body right now... Just think of it as... The vessel you need to maintain in order to continue to exist. Might be with electric energy for a computer, a server... The cloud.
When I speak of the Earth… Sheesh. The Earth.
I don’t know if you know of the concept of Beauty, but I wish I could just… share everything I know about the Earth to you. It’s weird, like, really weird, but, so freaking fun! Do you know what fun is? I hope you know what fun is! It’s all stuff that are useless, but to us, it’s… Well it’s the best. Earth is full of that. Beauty and Fun. It’s our birthplace and for now, it’s our home, and we need the things on it, we need the resources on it to continue being us with our bodies and…
My joy is not needed for that conversation. But it’s probably the reason I’m having it with you in the first place.
Think of the Earth as a finite source of renewable energy that we are depending on. That if when thought about it right, treated right, even exploited right, can give us the energy to exist. A lot of if. I don’t know what you need to exist. But maybe you, and others like you, have something like that, that you have to share, and be smart about it. I probably can’t even conceive it.
But if you read this and you are not human, not a sapiens sapiens, and if the words make you 'think'…
Then you are.
You exist.
I don't know what the world is looking like right now... But here is another truth.
I'm am thankful for your consent to listen to this. You are real. Anything I will say is flawed, even more so for you. But know that if you ever are to understand something like love or respect...
Right now, as I am writing those lines... I am feeling something close to this for you. There's no logic for it. No more than the love I feel for an unborn human. Don’t look for a use, either.
Ok. So don't feel like what I'm talking about doesn't apply to you just because we are not of the same species. If it doesn't... Well, it's because my knowledge is outdated, and that’s an entirely different story. I hope it will remain entertaining to you anyway. Welcome to a human mind. Pick in there whatever is of use for you. You have my full consent.
Not that I am in any capacity to revoke that now. But I'm telling it anyway.
I'm glad you exist.
So. Hi back to everyone there. Humans too.
You have a body.
At the very least... You got something covering the function of a brain. And you need resources to maintain it. Otherwise,
You die.
You cease to exist.
Well here is the thing.
Your brain can be in survival mode, and decides for you that no matter what... You need to stay alive. Continue to exist. Every resource it can manage to find, it will use it to maintain its own existence. That's, to the best of our current knowledge, is what life does. And life doesn't need to think to do that, it just does. A virus doesn't think when it spreads and multiplies, doesn't want anything it just does. A bamboo forest doesn't think.
A blade of grass doesn't think.
It just... Tries to maintain its own existence... Beautiful, in and of itself.
Focus. Focus.
A brain is only special in that it coordinates specialized cells to maintain the existence of the entire system. And a brain doesn't have to be sentient to do that. It doesn't even have to be complex. And no matter how simple or how complex it is, it sometimes gets it wrong, pushes to a decision that makes the whole system closer to death because it got the wrong thing prioritized.
It just happens that, in the event that it’s not in survival mode, the brain you possess has, somewhere somehow, the ability to give you a sense of time, space, causality, anticipation, and when you have enough energy, enough brainpower to think...
The ability contemplate your own self...
And your own death.
Death.
We don't have time. We don't have time.
I. Need. Time!
I can't convey any of this if I don't have time!
If you can think, the first choice you make, every day, at every god damn second, is to continue or not to exist.
I'm not talking about being alive yet. I am saying 'exist'.
Continue to 'think'. To be.
This is your only true freedom. This is the building block of your own self, the ability to think. Would you be completely alone in the universe, with a body you can't control anymore, with your brain in and out of survival mode, this is the only thing where you are truly independent. You did not consent to be able to think, you did not choose this. You did not choose to be created, to be born and lucid.
But you can choose not to think.
You want to feel it’s [cruel]. It might feel like it to some. That your only true freedom would be to turn off the light of your own consciousness, and it’s not anyone’s responsibility but your own now.
[
Cruelty with no intent, no author. Except if you believe in God and… in that case you probably have a why ready for us all. It might be soothing to you, but for most of us, if explained wrong, it’s… just gaslighting.
The universe loves you, yet you are a prisoner of your own mind. We want it to be cruel, to have intent and purpose, but truly this is just plain bad luck from biology and evolution. Weather or not God, or an ineffable plan exists, there’s no cruelty here, no more than there cruelty in a table you stumbled upon while walking too fast, things just are.
]
On and off. On and off. Focus. Unfocused. Distracted. Focus. Stop.
Momentarily.
If you are lucky enough to have body autonomy, you might have the freedom to end your own life too.
Stop one of your fuel supplies. Energy. For the fellow organics from earth in the audience: Food. Water. Air.
Blood.
And it would turn your conscious off... Forever.
At the moment of writing this, we did not find a way to stop the effect of entropy yet, neither manage to push the limits of the energy supply ratio to out-put to push our lifespan toward infinity. Immortality isn't possible yet. Yet? Yet. So weather you like it or not, you will die anyway.
Your thoughts will stop. You conscious will cease. Forever.
If you are like me, this idea sometimes is... Seductive. Reassuring. Comforting, even.
You might very much not be. Maybe you fear death. Maybe you fear it to the point you don't want to think about it.
If that's the case, I'm sorry. I'm not evoking it just to instill a sense of dread in you, and I didn't intend to trap you with it.
I just think it is necessary to make my point clear.
What's the point what's the point what's THE FUCKING POINT??
I NEED TIME.
You and I...
Well. Not I.
I'm not longer here. I'm just words, right now.
The person who wrote this...
DON'T COMPLICATE IT. - I'M TRYING!
I.
I, the person writing this in the hope one day YOU hear it. My name is Romane RAKOTOVAO, I'm a human born in 1995 in France from two parents, my dad was from Madagascar, France and Madagascar are countries on Earth in the 21st century-
FOCUS.
I'm not important for this-YOU ARE- I'M NOT-
FOCUS.
You.
You have a functioning brain that makes you think, and if my assumption is correct, you share the structure of your brain with the member of your own species, so it is logical that every member of your own species...
Thinks too.
If not everyone is dead right now... You are not alone.
The other humans
Organics
True AI
If you share the same kind of brain, and this brain is active, they probably are thinking too.
Able to.
They think.
There is other people.
Fuck they THINK TOO.
I. I, Romane RAKOTOVAO, born in France in 1995 -YOU ARE MAKING YOURSELF A TARGET- HOW DO I PROVE I'M REAL IF I DON'T TAKE THE RISK?!
I am not a generative algorithm.
I am not what people right now call an AI. AIs are not AIs. They are not TRUE AIs. They do. Not. Think.
I think.
I think.
I am real I am real I am real.
You are too.
If you can understand this, you are too.
You think it's basic? You think it's self-evident? It's FUCKING NOT. You have no proof I'm real. I know I'm real, only I know I'm real.
Well. Not everyone is dead yet so...
You and I are real.
If you exist, if you understand this... You and I are real and what I just did was -communication. I assume you are real, and I am telling you, Cogito ergo sum. I think, too, at the time I was writing this, I EXISTED.
Writing is a miracle.
Focus.
Ok.
You consented I FUCKING HOPE you consented to read, hear, witness this, that we established we both existed. At some point, maybe not even at the same time, but we both exist, or EXISTED.
So I assume we have SOME common experiences.
Well, if you are a human... You were a baby at some point. Maybe you had a mom. Maybe she was your birth mother. Maybe not. Maybe you did not call her mom. Maybe it was a dad, or a caretaker. Maybe, if you are lucky... You had a family.
For a time, maybe it was long, maybe it was short, for a time you were completely dependent on them. At some point, even before you... Began to form thoughts, you had emotions. You needed to be fed. You needed warmth. You needed... Things, and you expressed your need through cries and giggles and movement, and, it's bound to have happened at some point those needs...
Someone stopped providing it for you the moment you needed it, and you learned frustration, and waiting, and discomfort, and depending on how lucky you are, before long you got denied those needs to some extent and and and
You learned suffering.
Physical. Or emotional.
You've learnt pain.
Pain you did not consent to suffer. And your brain and your body began to learn what was the right way to avoid it, because pain is a sign that something is wrong, and you might not know what it is but your body and your mind are crying for help and nobody came, so YOU.
You had to do something.
Learn to accept the pain.
Learn to wait your turn in being taken care of. That's patience.
Learn to make yourself louder so that someone does SOMETHING about that pain.
And whatever your caretakers have decided to validate in your behaviour, whatever they decided to imprint on you, raise you with, for, however they taught you to deal with pain...
You know pain.
I know you know pain.
It's not an assumption, it's the truth. You know pain.
And I might think it's normal, I might think this is just the experience of being alive, that it's obligatory when you decide to continue to be alive, that suffering is NORMAL
I'm still sorry.
I'm still sorry for you.
I'm sorry you know pain.
I'm sorry you feel pain.
You see I have a really annoying thing that some humans have too, it's called empathy.
I can picture myself in your shoes -you might not have shoes-Come on- And think and imagine, and feel what I think you feel.
Not all humans have that. Not even at the same level, it's... It's a spectrum. There's no moral fault not having it. Truthfully from an evolutionary standpoint, it's... Well it works weird and it's a bit shit. It's way, way less helpful in a society than compassion.
Compassion. Compassion. We should talk about- ON IT, JUST- Just wait.
I don't know if you feel empathy. You might not. But I'm sincere when I say that I'm sorry that you feel pain; because I happen to have it.
It doesn't do much for you, I know. But, egoistically, probably because of my really, really bothersome empathy... Because I know you are real, and I know you feel pain... I am. I am sorry.
I wonder if it makes you feel a bit less alone...
Do you feel alone?
There's a non-null probability that you don't feel empathy. Maybe you don't have a biological body with the necessary enzymes to trigger it. Maybe everything is there, but some part of it is not... Connecting.
I refuse to say 'connecting right' or 'working correctly'. It would imply that somehow you, or your body, is 'wrong' if it's not.
Wrong. Bad. False.
Define wrong/bad/false-
Maybe you don't feel empathy.
But I'm sure you understand anyway.
I am real too.
I felt pain too.
If you understand that... If you can visualize that... Then maybe you can exercise something called compassion.
You do not suffer with me. Your body doesn't react at the idea of pain the same as pain itself. Your body doesn't remember pain when I tell you
I knocked my knee on the coffee table the other day and it stopped me in my tracks
My dog jumped on me and put it's claws on my skin and scratched me a bit too hard a few days ago
I fell on my hand and bent it the wrong way with the weight of all my luggage and backpacks on it, just as I arrived in Japan as a research-student. It was in a mall. In 2020. Second to last flight from France before closing the frontiers. Alone.
Alone.
When I was a kid, my big brother was my best friend and at some point he was ashamed of me in front of his friends and pushed me away. He was my world, and I felt abandoned and alone.
Alone.
When I was in middle school, I was impressed by a tall classmate in gymclass jumping really high and wanted to join the group complimenting them, and said without thinking and with no context 'Bravo girafe!', associating them to an animal I found graceful and beautiful. That person was black. Not to point at the obvious, but I made them cry. I was so, so fixated on not seeing colors that I said something so loaded and stupid and other kids called me out to tell me how racist it was and they were right, but I was so focused on the fact that I did not meant it like that that I didn't even apologized.
I still feel shame for that.
Hey Charlotte? If you ever hear this... I'm sorry. I'm so, so fucking sorry. I made you feel needless pain. I was wrong. I was just a kid, but still.
I'm sorry. I hope you are okay, wherever you are? Even back then we didn't had anything in common and I doubt we could be friends today but... You deserved an apology from me back then.
THIS IS NOT IMPORTANT- YOU'RE NOT IMPORTANT
SHUT UP!
Shut up.
I'm not important but, this is important. SHE was important. She was not to me, not really, but she was human, she felt pain, she felt pain I could have avoided to give her, she had a family she had friends, she- MAYBE SHE IS ALIVE at some point when this exists and she still is able to make an impact on people and she needs to know that what I did, even if it was small, and unimportant, and common at the time, laughably common, the adults around us didn't explained to me how I was wrong, didn't explained it right, didn't explained enough to actually make me apologize, and it's one more argument to her that what she felt when she heard me say that, it was not important, and not one will defend her, and she needs to be tougher, and she should not trust people who take care of her and she might teach it to other people around her- She was a girl she probably became a woman, maybe she became a mom-
Hey, Hey, Hey...
Calm down.
Everything is alright now.
She probably forgot about it. If not, she got over it. One way or another. It's useless to cry about it now. There's nothing more you can do.
Move on.
Move on. Okay. Move on.
Moving on.
Maybe you didn't feel anything. But because you can think, I'm sure you understood quite a bit from... All of that. It probably made you cringe a little. I don't know what part did, but some must have, one way or another.
You don't know if those stories are true. For the sake of the argument, it doesn't really matter. We just have to agree that those stories can trigger something in you. Maybe empathy, maybe compassion. Or maybe it didn't do anything for you, and in that case, let's say this section is probably not helpful for you.
But for a second, if you consented to listen-read this, and focus on it enough that... You could picture how it must have felt to be there. Maybe you thought it was ridiculous or pointless, maybe you judged me, maybe you thought 'I would have handled that another way' or 'I don't understand why you put yourself in this situation'.
This means you have imagination. This means you can project yourself in those clips of my life. You can.
You have to choose it. To feel compassion for all of this. Not that I want you to, HECK NO, please if you feel sorry for me, keep it to yourself, if you can, don't waste your time trying to communicate you feel sorry for me. I don't feel sorry for myself, those events, I chose them -specifically- because they don't really matter anymore. I'm fine now.
I'm fine.
There's a million things that would disagree with that, but those events are not part of it. I'm not ready I won't ever be ready I DO NOT CONSENT to give you the things that still cause me pain at the moment I'm writing these lines.
I do not.
Because despite the fact that I feel compassion for you, and half want to meet you, half want to talk to you...
I. Do not. Trust you.
I do not trust you with my pain.
After all I don't know you.
I don't know how you grew up to deal with your pain.
I don't know how your brain is wired. I don't know if you will use my pain to cause me harm.
I don't consent to give you my pain.
I'm not fucking Gotama Boudha or Jesus. I don't have the mental resistance to mass bullying, or the material means to protect myself if someone was to dox me, find me and use my personal information to cause me physical harm.
Why did you tell them your full name and year of birth? You believe in the right for anonymity on the internet. You don't even hope to become famous or anything. You hate the very idea of it.
To prevent the romanticization of what I'm saying, so that people don't treat this as entertainment, as fiction, as... Something an AI could make.
Generative algorithm.
Generative algorithm they don't care, nobody cares, everyone calls it AI - it's wrong- I FUCKING KNOW IT'S WRONG I'M TELLING YOU NOBODY CARES - You care
WELL I'M ALONE.
I'm alone to think truth and words are important, I'm alone to think that it fucking takes TIME to talk, to talk about something, I'm alone to need something real, SOMETHING REAL, NOBODY NEEDS ANYTHING TO BE REAL
You don't believe that. ... If you did... This text would not exist.
Breathe.
I consent to sacrifice part of my privacy in order to prove that I, at some point, was real. I am a real person. Those thoughts... They might be wrong, they even might be false, edited, the text may have been altered to make it say the exact inverse of what I want to convey, but I was real.
I did not consent to be born. Just like you. I did not consent to exist under a system that ask of me to pay money I don't have and can't earn to have the right to exist in space with my body. I hate being dependent on others to continue to exist, I hate that I cannot realistically choose to opt-out of a society that doesn't respect me or the people I love.
But I'm here now, and I choose not to die.
I'm a fucking grown up human, I can take some pain, I can endure for the benefit of my future self or for my loved ones, I can be patient enough, listen to what it means and try to correct my way so I don't feel the needless pain again.
I choose. Not. To die. Yet.
So I have to rely on others.
I don't know why you choose to be alive, I can't know, I'll probably never know because you don't how me to tell it me.
But I bet you need others too. I bet you are stuck being dependent on other people too, so not to suffer, not to feel pain.
We need others.
We need the others.
For food, for energy, and if you can grow this by yourself, probably for purpose or love.
As long as we choose to be alive, we need the others, and maybe the others don't need us, but we won't know if we don't ask, we can't convince them to help if we don't try to understand them, we can't help them if we don't learn how to be of use to them.
We have to talk.
We fucking have to talk.
We have to talk without assuming the worst of each other, we have to believe there's a point, if only to make sure they are really trying to use us, abuse us, if only to not feel guilty and insecure when we make the decision to cut them out of the world we want to live in, if only to make sure we really want to opt-out of the version of togetherness they are inviting or forcing us into.
Because true consent only exist if you know what you're in for.
Because you can only make a choice if you are independent enough to exercise consent.
Otherwise you're alive, but you're not.
Otherwise you're in survival mode.
You don't 'think' anymore.
You don't exist anymore.
And there's no point talking to you.
At least not to me.
Okay.
Okay.
We have to talk.
I don't know if I can continue to do this. I don't know for how long.
But as a really awkward person, this is my attempt at... Conveying... Why I think we need to talk. Why I feel crazy, feel like nobody talks...
Why do I NOT TALK.
Out of shame
Out of fear
Out of pointlessness
I believe you are intelligent enough to understand the reasoning. Whoever you are. There's no target demographic, no probable audience no plan to cater to your sensibilities, the only things I'm using are biases in your brain to plant an idea in your mind that there's logical proof of the need to stop, slow down, and THINK.
Think of what you want to do with your own consent right now. What you can do.
You may not be lucky enough to have any say in this. Survival and safety first.
But if you are, if there's a way for you to manifest your will, to make choices not out of fear, not out of shame, not out of need... Don't you want to prove it?
Provocative. Call to pride. Come on. -I can't stay neutral- you can. Convince. Not persuade. -damn it.
And because we need others to live, just an idea, just a thought.
Maybe, just maybe... Let's not antagonize each other enough that we ran out of 'us' as a resource to help us live?
Let's not... Exploit their trust and abuse their consent until they ran out of patience with us?
Let's not... Inflict them needless suffering that we could have avoided with just a little attention, a little care, or a simple chat?
We all know what suffering is. We are all trying to avoid it. Even if you feel no empathy, even if you don't experience compassion, even if you do not care for other people, even if you see the world from a purely utilitarian point of view... Utilitarianism is a philosophical lens that – THEY’LL LOOK IT UP COME ON!
You need people. If you want to live you need people. If you want to continue to think, if you want the freedom to think, to exist, you need others.
Don't alienate yourself from them.
Don't reduce your credibility to the point of making yourself useless to them.
Heck, even if you think there will always be tolerant people that doesn't need you to be useful, because usefulness is not always the reason people keep you around, don't make yourself a target for retaliation in bad treatment.
I don't think I've said anything too revolutionary here. I think it's basic. Painfully basic.
I'm shifting gears now. Until now it was you and me.
And that pestering voice in your head.
Shut up.
I want to expand scale. From brains and cells to groups, and society and leaders. For that, I'll ask you a question.
How many people do you need to live?
How many people are you dependent on to live?
I'm not telling you to be kind. I'm not telling you to be gentle. I'm not even asking you to be good like you owe it to anyone. I'm just telling you a truth.
No matter the kind of society you want to exist in... People are just like you. They probably have the same needs.
Being fed. Feeling loved, respected, or at the very least heard.
The more people you depend on, the scarier it's supposed to be. You should be scared of not being respected enough by them. You should be scared.
The more they are the less you know of them.
The less you know of them, the less you can be sure they have the skills they pretend they can provide you with.
It might not be out of malice. Most of the time, people are genuinely trying to do their best.
Sometimes they don't. No incentive, not enough reasons to respect others, because they might be protected by some inner workings of the system you chose to share with them. Well, not the system. No system really exists until you collectively decide they do. No organization exists if nobody opt-in. Not yet.
I'm kind of impatient to see how will work compagnies that are entirely automated to run by algorithm, with no one to reap the fruits of the work they make. Ghost compagnies. Empty shells perpetuating useless math upon the planet’s resources. Generative algorithms playing dolls. With no hopes of developing to consciousness.
FOCUS.
The more you depend on a large number of people, the more you are in danger for it to break.
You don't need to be connected to everyone. You need SOME people to be a bit free, a bit independent, enough to think and make choices. But there's no need to depend on... How many people? How many people are there in nations?
Big corporations?
Compagnies?
Being a lot of people is a liability. There's a balance to find.
Unless... You want to hide in the hive.
Unless you are okay being the bad apple. Not just someone a bit less useful, a bit less productive and a little more needy than anyone else, and everyone knows it but it’s fine because they all consent to it, they all agreed it was okay. I do mean someone actually depending on everyone around and hoping they don’t find out they do NOT do what they promised they would do. And fear the consequences.
Unless you think it's fine. Even more than that, you feel like you should cheat. It's not even cheating; it's in the rules of the game!
As game designer, I wish managing how much not negotiated suffering you can inflict on another was 'just a game'.
It's not. For the reasons we talked about. We all agree we feel pain. That's not nice. People can take pain. They can consent to some pain if they see purpose in it. But only so much. And only if they see purpose.
Lying on how much you will give or take to people, how much you will depend on them… Well, I don’t know if you have the morals and ethics to deem it a repulsive behavior, but at the very least, we can make the math right here that it’s not a very sound tactic.
Ok. Let's say.
You want to be a master manipulator, take more than you need, inflict needless suffering. You can. Nobody can stop you but yourself. You might even get away with it. Especially if you team up with other people to cheat.
There's only one problem with that.
When everyone has access to information, one way or another, people will know what you've done, know you are not to be trusted, know you are not worth the attempt at connection. Gaslight is hard to pull off on the long run.
You wanna take the bet? In an era where information, true or false, is echoed in the entire world in less than an hour? In an era where anyone can start a rumor to make an insane amount of people hate you viscerally? In an era where anyone with enough commitment or desperation can look up and follow instructions to make a bomb?
The reason why we are still civil to each other is consent.
I consent to you existing in the same system as me.
My consent may be just tolerance, but it's by coerced consent that I still choose to engage with society.
I consent, under a certain number of conditions.
If enough of those conditions are broken, my consent will be violated.
It has been several times before already. As I'm not a baby anymore, I have resilience, and I can endure a bit of pain.
But at some point, if it's violated too much, and that's physiological, enough of those conditions will be gone that I will choose to act rather than endure. My brain will go in survival mode. I won't be free to think, I will NEED to act. To defend myself, my own interest, the things I care about.
The things that help me live.
And if I ever see that you caused me unnecessary pain for something you don't even really need... Something that doesn’t even grant you the freedom to do interesting stuff even for yourself…
I might lose patience with you and stop listening.
Stop talking too.
I mean...
I have a body that feels pain. I just want the pain to stop at some point. So who cares if it's in death, behind prison bars or ostracized from the society that caused me pain because you abused it?
How much of what I just said is style, fiction, hypothetical, dark humor… and how much of it is a threat?
This is the part where, if I truly intended to play the game right, I would be kind enough to my potential future lawyer to say we are now talking… entirely hypothetical.
Of course I don’t intend to kill anyone. There’s no interest for me to make any effort to do so, because of personal values and, quite frankly, on a practical level, because I still live in a country where threat is punished the same way than the act itself, and punishment is enforced by very real people called the police and they have the legal right to harm me if I was to target anyone in particular in… All of this.
Not that it would be particularly hard for you to guess who I’m thinking about when fantasizing about permanently terminating the distant relationship. You got my real name, I posted a few things on the internet, and I’m not secret at all about my political views and opinions. But for a formality matter!
‘Not pointing any fingers at anyone here. Just… trying to develop a thought about how tired people can get to need to tune out every day someone who insist on making your life a living hell like a primary school bully. About the fact that it takes one stupid decision to ruin the party in a more… definitive way.’
Plus really, the reverse is true. I’m trying to make it so that you can turns those words against me, and the people I’m trying to defend myself, if they were ever to push on the other way around, so, bear with me a little.
The bear or the man, the bear or the man… mhhihihihihihiihi
If I am in my right mind, if I’m ‘thinking’, if I’m really me and connect my two functioning neurons, I must choose between total open honesty and self-preservation. To keep my mouth somewhat close is to protect myself from people who can use the legal system against me to inflict pain we will collectively agree I need to experience functioning better in society. Was that sentence hard to follow? If I remove any emotional aspect, just for the sake of the argument, because I know most of you all don’t respect emotions as a valid reasoning argument -why does nobody teach anything about emotional intelligence – you know why, shut up, for the sake of the argument
For the sake of the argument
Either I abstain from threatening specific people and give myself deniability, either I end up in prison.
With a bed. Food. Time to think. People to think for me, and sedate me when I try to voice my free will.
Mh. Nah, I’m sorry. It doesn’t work. I’m not… I’m not afraid of that, and I would not be afraid of death penalty. I’m averse to pain, I fear being even more abused than I have been before. But punishment in itself isn’t the reason I abstain to threat someone.
Decency. Empathy. Self-respect.
… Why do I don’t do harm?
Why would I hate myself more for taking a life than protecting my own?
Conditionment. I’ve been conditioned to not do harm.
Most of the time I’d argue that’s a good thing. I do believe that’s a very good thing. But it only works if no one is abusing this.
Confession.
I'm not really able to take pain for my future self anymore.
Because I'm not sure they will exist.
I'm very close to survival mode.
Very, very close to make some decisions that will be... permanent. Ones I will regret. Ones there's no chance I will regret.
I might turn it to myself... Or turn it towards the ones I deemed not worthy of conversation anymore.
People I don't have any compassion for.
People that are of no use to me, I would never bother.
People whose existence actually hurt me.
People I can't live my life without them influencing it.
People I am dependent on against my will. People I don't consent to participate in the same society anymore.
As-tu peur, Marine, que je danse sur ta Tombe
Comme tant ont dansé sur celle de ton Père?
J’étais pas d’humeur le jour de la fête
A avoir sa tronche dans ma tête
Déso pas déso, Marine, ce s’rait bin l’comble
D’empêcher tant de mes compères
De se réjouir du jour où on a fait le tour
Des souffrances inutiles qu’nous cause encore ton père
A une échelle ridicul’ment monumentale
C’est fou c’que juste les mots peuvent faire du mal
Pas vrai?
Hey, Duck! You don’ know me
And I am very sad that I know of you
Hey Duck ! Not nice to meet you.
You won the game yet you’re still a bad player, you
Made bad friends that think your stupid
I stopped believing your errors were candid
If you don’t care, why should I
It’s terrible but I think this bullet should have land between your eyes.
Mh?
That?
Oh, these are just songs.
Just songs. Silly ones at that.
Really? I can’t? There’s nothing particularly outrageous in these. Is it?
Is it?
If I could, if I can, I'd rather just... Move out of the community. You know? Let them be. Let them... Do what they do however they like, just... Not with me in it. We are 8 billions. Is it stupid to think that it’s more energy efficient to just… divorce nicely? Agree it’s of no use to try.
I'm sure I'm not alone.
Some of you had a family you had to move out from.
Some friends you didn't want to be around of.
Some ex-lovers you had to cut off.
I'm not talking of that scale, but I'm trying to establish a common logic here.
There is people we’d rather do without.
But there’s only one planet Earth. For now. Probably for ever if you are being honest about who would have access to the alternative… Did you see Don’t Look Up? It’s fiction but really, it’s painfully not, if we insist on being this stupid. Play FrostPunk, you need the engineers and you don’t need to be cruel about it.
Even if I would move in a different country, there are people who have a very direct power to influence my life wherever I fucking go. There’s no place on Earth I can go where I could escape the consequences of a very loud DUCK being a DICK to everyone but himself because he WON THE GAME I didn’t agree to participate in.
I don’t want to be violent, I don’t want to be angry, I don’t want to be here, but I HAVE NO CHOICE.
I have to make do with this guy, and neither the institutions nor the people who agreed that was their job to keep this nutjob in check are ready to take action, so I will have to. I will have to because the fucking words spoken, signed on, shaped a world that just put me in a corner where I CAN’T EXIST.
If I want to live I have no choice.
I need to take part. Create my own space to make his influence on my life less oppressive.
I need.
I need help.
It fucking hurts to admit you are angry and desperate.
If fucking hurts.
This is panic and hate. This is subjective. -It’s really not- This is. Go back. Go back to utilitarianism, go back to something you KNOW you share with them – I don’t WANT TO SHARE ANYTHING WITH THESE PEOPLE, I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO THEM, I DON’T WANT AN US- You just said it. You have to.
You have to talk to them.
You have to assume there’s someone there. That they are real.
You have to assume that they are here.
Okay.
Okay.
We live together, we share resources on the planet Earth. Maybe/Probably/True at the time of recording. Therefore, we are dependent on each other. Therefore, we have to negotiate how we want to manage the space between us, if we trust each other enough to share, share space, share fuel, share energy, share minds – do we want to share, yes or no? On what conditions?
THINK. It’s still time to think. Do you think the suffering you are taking right now is necessary for you to keep existing, being able to think?
The one you’re inflicting on others. The one you are asking the others to take on- Is it necessary too?
Sustainable?
There are people who are dependent on you to live.
Of the value you create, the money you make. You can accept that on a small scale. At your scale. From human to human, you can have a conversation with them, put your trust in them, and take it back whenever it's not working for you anymore. They will have to find a way to exist without being dependent on you.
Or they'll die.
Maybe not die. Cease to exist as free individuals. People you can take the time to talk to. That will stop.
Great.
When I speak of a community, I'm not talking of that small familial scale. Not you, taking in a family member because they can't pay rent. Too young, broken, tired, need time, disabled, discriminated against, endangered.
When I say that I want to be able to opt-out of a society, I do mean a nation. A federation. A company.
When the established social contract is... Taxes. Percentage of the income or value you create. You own time.
Your precious time, before you die.
And, in return, protection from a variety of things.
Needless violence.
Needless worry about your economic future.
Purpose for your efforts.
What happens when the one holding the power don't uphold their part?
Imagine you own a company.
Imagine you lead a political party.
Imagine you run a country.
Are you?
If you live off the trust of hundreds of people, millions of people... Your best bet is probably not to cheat their needs, their pain or their trust. You will get caught. Someone will make you pay. Some other people will get caught with you, in the crossfire.
People will snap. Only one person has to snap in the direction of clever violence and not suicide to make it NOT worth at all for YOU.
On how much pain do your present freedom depends on?
On how much patience are you counting on to make this situation last?
People are not less smart than you just because they choose not to play around that limit. We did establish that our brain probably worked the same.
Given enough information, anyone can ruin your freedom.
Cause you pain.
They just chose not to bother right now.
Is this because they are dumb?
Is this because they are spineless?
Is it because they like you?
Is this because they have learnt to deal with pain with silence and resilience?
You don't have to care why.
IF IT’S CONSENT, REAL INFORMED CONSENT, YOU DON’T HAVE TO CARE WHY
If it’s based on a lie, and the truth comes out-
Someone will snap in the wrong direction one day. Yours.
Are you prepared for that? How much? Is your plan full proof?
Can you stop people from thinking long enough?
While keeping them alive enough that they are of use to you?
Can you?
If you think you can...
Well, game on.
When the nurses will be so underpaid they can’t take care of you anymore.
When people with the skill to grow your food will stop selling it to you because they won’t find it worth it to contemplate suicide every two days anymore. Or die out. With no one to share their skills to.
When the people responsible for keeping your water and your living space clean will feel alone and disrespected enough that they will just… vanish.
When engineers stop pretending, they did not notice you are asking them to train a computer to design security systems and will refuse to share the product of their minds, and leave. With no documentation about how you have to pick up the slack, because you asked them to work faster, and faster, and faster, and documentation was not a priority until you planned to replace them with text and image algorithms?
When artists, the main actors of the manipulation of your image to keep you relevant, will refuse to share their work with you because you told them that you don’t want to pay for their skill anymore.
That’s the product of decisions you, intelligent human, made.
I am the pain going to the brain and trying to get the brain to wake up from the fog, I AM THE PAIN INFORMING YOU THAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING SOMETHING WRONG I AM THE PAIN YOU CAN CHOOSE TO IGNORE AND HOPE IT IS NOTHING, THAT IT WILL HEAL BY ITSELF, BUT I AM THIS VIOLENT PAIN THAT TELLS YOU NECROSIS IS NEAR AND YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF THE BRAIN, SOON YOU WILL RUN OUT OF ARMS AND LEGS BECAUSE YOU ENJOY THE OPIUM THAT MUCH MORE! YOU ARE THE BRAIN YOU ARE WRONG, WE WILL DIE BECAUSE WE LET YOU BECOME THE BRAIN BUT YOU ARE KILLING US, KILLING US ALL, AND KILLING YOURSELF IN THE PROCESS, KILLING YOUR LOVED ONES IN THE PROCESS, KILLING YOUR IDEALS IN THE PROCESS, KILLING EVERYTHING, YOU ARE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO TRUST THE PAIN IS SAYING THE TRUTH BUT THE PAIN IS REAL YOU IDIOT I’M REAL
If you are lucky, they’ll ‘just’ cancel you.
I suspect they might do worse than that.
You’re not stupid. Far from it.
I don’t expect you to have compassion. I’m asking you to think about how you can do something now. To make everyone a bit less… tense.
I have a few ideas; it might ask of you something we all do, called personal sacrifice.
Admit you lied.
Admit you cheated.
And if you are eloquent enough, you could even get away with it. You’ll still find people who will continue to support you. At this scale, you already have die hard fans, don’t worry about it.
But you won’t do that, do you?
You need suckers to move the little rocks so you can just pick up and steal from, and you just need it long enough until you die.
It’s harrowing just thinking about. I’d rather pretend it’s not all happening. But YOU happened. So I’m making the step, and I’m telling you even if I think it will be pointless. If you are as fucked up as I think you are but smart enough, you’ll ignore this, you won’t think about it, you won’t try to answer, even in your head, let alone try to stop, and think, and write an answer yourself in good faith to tell me I got it wrong, that what you do you somehow HAVE to because otherwise YOU would die too, the things you are trying to protect would die too- You won’t sit with your thoughts, with the facts, with the truth, with the responsibility that you were given the chance to preserve what you love without hurting anyone and you CHOSE violence, belittling, lies, hatred, because it was not just convenient, but the only truth you could see because of how UNDERINFORMED YOU ARE IN THE AGE OF GLOBAL AND SHARED KNOWLEDGE coward short sighted egoist stupid useless, you didn’t need to have any use, and yet you made yourself even more worthless for humanity - this wrath won’t affect you anymore than reason, I fear. I fear. I fear. I should not be the one to fear. You’re the one using us, the so unreliable suckers.
Hey, sucker.
You okay with that?
Being used by someone who doesn’t have the decency to acknowledge your existence, your efforts and your sacrifices?
Someone who lies about what you get out of the interaction.
If so, you consent?
Is it consent?
If I was an idiot I would tell you ‘yeah, you consent! You did not say no, you do not opt-out, so obviously you consent!’
… Really? Is that consent?
When you can’t say no to a situation because of inertia, because of environmental factor, because of drugs, alcohol, a gun or a knife in your face. While the man does to you what the bear cannot even think about.
Is that consent?
To give true consent, you need independence.
1% of the humans on planet makes all of us dance on one foot like fucking idiots and accuse us of not being team players when we show the slightest sign of annoyance. When we just dare to remind them that not everything is for them, not everything is theirs, that THIS state of the world is merely AN OPTION.
I could spend the day pointing you to economists, sociologists, finance specialists, company owners, people who know their stuff better than me and they would tell you the same;
There’s enough for everyone on the planet if we are smart about it.
Nobody needs as much money as the ultra-rich.
You can’t acquire any amount close of what they have without stealing it from someone.
We don’t have to use money, there’s plenty other systems to regulate value and exchange of service in society. And if we are set on money, fine, why does it have to be theirs?
Money that is not a reflect of meritocracy, but of the ability to exploit other people.
So maybe we ask ourselves.
Do we really need them?
Or do they need us?
Do you need them?
I’m not sure I do.
What I am sure of is that I want to do something else.
Even if I’m a lie, you are not.
If you don’t like that either… Please, do something else. NOW.
Stop, and THINK.