Stop Game Denial

The following is a slightly edited extract from Hanzi Freinacht’s book ‘Nordic Ideology: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book Two’. This is the second book in a series on metamodern thought, a work of popular philosophy that investigates the nature of psychological development and its political implications.

Yet, many of us frequently fall victim to what I call “game denial”: the inability to perceive, or a negligence of, the logical and behavioral rules that regulate human relations. Game denial is when you ignore or “wish away” certain uncomfortable truths regarding human relations and how reality works. Or simply when you deny the realities of life and forcefully impose your own “ought” upon what “is”.

In a subtle sense, your crime is against truth itself. And when the truth has been sacrificed for a few candy bars worth of emotional reward—people start dying as the consequences of your false assumptions begin to manifest. And from there on you are stuck with defending your lala-land from actu­ality, making things even worse.

Game denial is, to this day, ram­pant. And its victims are not nec­essarily dead; it has victims in all walks of life, all scarred by unsust­ainable and un­realistic social relations, expectations and moralistic impo­sitions of “what ought to be” upon what “actually is”. Crimes agai­nst act­uality are crimes against humanity, against all life on our planet.

Since game denial often “sounds nice”, it may be more convenient to def­end in a pub­lic debate (because you can easily take the moral high gro­und), but in actual reality, in a given con­text, it tends to have negative or other­wise unsust­ainable consequences. You pre­tend that the world works by rules which it does not.

Game denial can show up in so many ways because life is always open to interpretation and reinterpretation. And of course, there is not one “set” game in life in which “God” crowns the winners. But the fact that life has ambiguity is a mixed blessing: It means we can make more fav­orable interpretations and save our positive self-images, but it also mea­ns the leeway to deny obvious competitions and conflicting inter­ests is huge. And because there are such strong psychological forces driving us towards game denial, we all partake in it.[i]

It is difficult to overestimate just how powerful these inner pressures are. For instance, if we all of our life have felt oppressed and hurt in soft and sensitive places by norms that dictate how a “beautiful and feminine” wo­man should be, how compelling and satisfying does it not seem to make up a way to disqualify that game altogether, branding it as false, im­moral and ultimately unreal? If we are bad at sports, how good does it not feel to be rid of all anxieties about our physical inferiority by denying that game?

Game denial means to hate the game and try to eradicate it. It can take the form of liberal political correctness or, in its extreme form, crude comm­un­ism. But the game won’t go away. You can’t eradicate it with a “let’s all be friends”. What about me and that other person who wants the same spouse, but only one can get her by winning her heart? Whether or not we have friendly relations with one another, there is a game with a winner and a loser—this is true even in polyamorous relations. It is bound to happ­en everywhere in samsara (as Eastern traditions have named the worldly realm of suffering), all the time.

Recent research has revealed an evolu­tionary struggle even bet­ween the pregnant mother and her fetus—the growing child’s evolu­tion­ary interests are somewhat different from those of the mother (who may increase the chances of spreading her genes by having more children, and hence not be too drained by this particular fetus). No matter how pro­foundly symbiotic and loving a relationship, there is always an inescapable element of strug­gle. A game.

To try to eradicate the game is only a form of individual or collective repression, and it will always produce pathological results—namely opp­ress­ion. Whatever game you want to repress—like capitalism—this can only be done by activating a grosser level of game—like the game for political totalitarian power. Communist states rep­re­ssed the mechanisms of “games for profit” by playing a much crueler game for pol­itical power.

But oppression is not the worst part of game denial. Oppression can be toppled; evil reigns can end. No, the worst part is that denying the exist­ence of the game means that the game cannot be described, taught and learned. The game is hidden away, made taboo. Hence, game denial is in the service of the privileged elite, making the game less fair by serving those who already know the rules and deceiving those who do not. They’ll never know what hit them.

Let’s take some examples of prevalent game denial. This list may insult a lot of readers and offend moral convictions. Brace yourself.

• Free immigration for all! All immigration is always good for everyone in­volved: the immigrants, the receivers, the left-behind!
  • Game denial: All societies have limits to how much immigration they can manage, and which kinds of immigration; and higher immi­g­ra­tion rates often create fiercer com­petition at the bott­om of soc­iety, hence harming its most pre­cariou­sly situated citi­­zens.
• A Universal Basic Income that would cover a lower middle-class wage, the sooner the better! It would free all, and a creative explos­ion of solidarity would occur, and we would usher in a golden age of love and inno­vation!
  • Game denial: The labor market is a complex game of power relations and for people to sustainably per­form less-than-rewarding but cru­cial tasks (e.g. cleaning blood off hospital floors), there must be a complex system in place of penalties, hier­archies and rewards. If you wreck this system, wel­come to the Soviet Union. Stal­inism next. Or worse. (Not saying that all such initiatives are game denial, but many are.)
• The LEFT is good, always and forever! If only the evil powers of greed were stopped, we would have high wages, safe emplo­yments, no unemployment, free immigration, high social bene­­fits!
  • Game denial: Does not compute. If you have high wages, safe employments and high taxes, then bus­iness becomes extremely inefficient, so people can’t really buy anything with their money (hello Sov­iet). If you have free immigration and social ben­efits, the system gets bogged down with costs and fosters resentments in the working loc­als, and you get ethnic violence and the rise of populist anti-immig­ration parties. And if wages are high, the immigrants won’t be able to com­pete to enter the market. The bogged-down economy fosters cli­en­t­elism. Greek eco­nomy next. Or worse.
• Feminism! If only men were kind and polite and respected wo­men and stopped using “master suppression techni­ques” (as described by the social psychologist Berit Ås) and didn’t greedily enjoy the oppression of women by means of patriarchy, this would make soci­ety fair, women unafraid of sexual assault, work-life satisfying and int­imate relations much more functional.
  • Game denial, again: For this line of reasoning to com­pute, displays of male prestige, status and power must stop being sex­ually and emotionally alluring to women and hen­ce desirable to men. As long as these traits are found desirable (as plenty of experimental research suggests is the case: women genuinely prefer high-status, in some sen­se “dominant”, males), men can only stop usi­ng at least some str­a­t­­e­gies for social self-advan­ce­ment at their own expense. The gam­­es of everyday life are denied.
• A wave of spirituality and “higher consciousness” will transform the world! In one way, this is very advanced and complex, in another way, very simple: a kind of perennial wisdom, that people wake up to a simple but profound message of love and acceptance!
  • Game denial: This one (or any version of “millenarianism”) is quite com­mon in more spiritually inclined people, but also, by analogy, in soc­ialists and environmentalists. Here and there, many interesting and intense spiritual movements, waves and rebirths have waxed and waned throughout history. Most of them have been fool’s gold, ending up in grievous mistakes and betrayed hopes. Some, such as Christ­ianity and the other world reli­g­­ions, have caught on long-term and led to some lasting moral trans­­forma­tions. But none of them have been unambiguously good, and none have led to any­thing as fantastic as was imagined. This is because the games of life, with winners and losers, are still there to be played, even if people become a little nicer.
• If people turned away from the materialist competitive worldview of our age, there would be enough for everybody and people would be happy!
  • Game denial.
• A playful, creative schooling system which emphasizes growth and joy rather than the dull reciting of facts! No discipline needed! Ever!
  • Game denial.
• If the US just stops being imperialist/interventionist, there will be a peaceful and solidary international order instead!
  • Game denial.
• Everyone has something unique to contribute in this new economy! There is room for everyone!
  • Game denial.
• If only people learned about animal suffering, they would support the end of animal slavery!
  • Game denial.
• Interfaith dialogue will bring an end to religious conflicts!
  • Game denial.
• No military intervention is ever needed or justified!
  • Game denial.
• All animals (humans) are created equal!
  • Game denial.
• The meek shall inherit the earth!
  • If you mean cockroaches, you might be correct. Otherwise, go to “game denial”.

You get the picture. I suppose a lot of this sounds familiar?

It’s not al­ways easy to tell game denial apart from more legitimate forms of ideal­ism. A rule of thumb, however, is that game denial very often arr­ives in the company of her twisted little sister: moralism—being subtly (or not so subtly) jud­g­­m­ental and self-righteous.

The alliance between game denial and moralism works in cunning ways. They help each other staying in the back­gr­ound, so that neither has to come out in the light and get busted in all their obviousness. For inst­ance, in academia and critical social sci­ence, there is a pre­supp­osition of a pro-immigration, leftist econo­mics, rad­ical fem­in­ism, anti-mili­tarism, anti-disciplinary view of educa­tion and a few other taken-for-granted opin­ions.

When you go to the liberal sociological seminars, listening for inst­ance to Judith Butler’s advanced, learn­ed and very initiated talks about femin­ism, all focus is on the spec­ifics of the argument, on the mas­ter­fully craf­ted critical social theory and research. All of this creates a thick smoke­screen concealing any number of game denials. All the left-wing game denial stays in the background and limits the discussion.

There is no focus on, and no leeway to dis­cuss, all this game denial bagg­age (because it would be seen as morally wrong, and who­ever brings it up is seen as impure). The underlying moralism covers up the game den­ial. And the game denial covers up the moralism because the fact that the gam­es of life are hidden away makes the moralism appear as common sense and decency.

I’m not saying that Judith Butler’s feminism will kill a hundred million people. I’m just saying that other kinds of game denial, like communism, did and that game denial is always a harmful or at least dangerous busi­ness.

Not believing in game denial and its ubiquitous presence is in itself a form of game denial. The reason people do all the game denial is often that it is a useful tool for them to win the small struggles in every­day life: for moral worth, for admiration, for power, money, sex and stat­us—or just to avoid shaming and judgment, or to have the solemn pleasure of shaming and judging others.

Iron­ically, it is because people are always in a game that they can win by deny­ing its existence. Of course, there are other reasons, such as lack­ing intelli­gence or relevant perspectives. But the social rewards of game denial are part of it—and they should not be denied. It is as if many of the pro­gressive intellectuals are “bribed” by the social rewards they can attain by taking part in game denial. These are emotional and cognitive bribes that distort thinking processes, discourses and truth seeking.

Real kindness needs to make sense; it needs to compute. If the numbers don’t add up, they simply don’t. Hence, any kindness that does not com­pute is a disguised form of evil.

But it should also be noted that game denial is not only an intellectual form of self-deceit; there is also such a thing as embodied game denial. For those of us who have suffered from low social status during our up­bringing and may be lacking in the psychological trait assertiveness (being able to stand up for oneself, etc.), we may unconsciously be prepar­ing our bodies and minds for the impact of a social defeat. This sets our minds and bodies up for trying to win over reality by being kind or nice, a part deep inside of us keeps folding over and submitting, trying to deny that a competition or confrontation takes place.

The first victim of game denial is the truth. Its next victim is the inno­­cent child who has to suffer the consequences of your lies. Crimes against act­uality are crimes against hum­anity and all life on our planet.

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Hanzi Freinacht is a political philosopher, historian and sociologist, author of ‘The Listening Society’, ‘Nordic Ideology’ and the upcoming books ‘The 6 Hidden Patterns of History’ and ‘Outcompeting Capitalism’. Much of his time is spent alone in the Swiss Alps. You can follow Hanzi on his facebook profile here, and you can speed up the process of new metamodern content reaching the world by making a donation to Hanzi here.

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[i]. People sometimes invent little games to get around game den­ial. Why do we love sports? After all, the outcome of a football game hard­ly makes any difference in concrete reality—if a ball was in a goal net or not, how many times, or if a Ethiopian guy ran a sprint in 0.1 seconds less than an American did. The reason we love these arbitrary sets of rules is that, in this particular setting, no game denial is possible. Games are fun because they curb game denial; and that goes from chess to Ping-Pong. We are even prepared to engage in otherwise “meaningless” activities, only to get rid of the ambiguities of life in general, where anything and everything can always be reinterpreted in a million ways. Did I win the debate? Am I a good person? Is she a better person than me? Am I worthy? Did I succ­eed?