Being Played
Hey friends,
I am wishing you all well. :)
Tomorrow’s events:
Shame Breakthrough Bootcamp w/ A.J. Bond. Every Thursday @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
The Gift Economy w/ Andrew Taggart. May 7th @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
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May 6, 2020
I took a cold shower this morning. This is the first time I have taken one in a while. I used to take cold showers dogmatically every day, in order to build a relationship with pain. I think I am going to restart. Modern Stoics call this practice voluntary hardship. If we are going to be virtuous, we are going to need to be in the right relationship with pain.
What a fucking game
I hate this fucking pain
I love Tricky, and I love listening to this song on repeat right now. I also like the feeling of being tricked. Yesterday, on a felt-sense level, I felt like I was being played, and I courted it. I will not write about the details, out of respect to the player. It is a gross feeling, the feeling of being played. It feels like being used, and there is a disgust associated with it, a visceral repulsion, towards the player. It is hard to like someone who encourages others to be blinded to the game they are playing. That is an ugly way to play.
I was never fully played, though. I am a player myself, after all. These days, I am pretty good at doing the bait and switch at just the right moment. Pat Ryan sent me a quote from Dune that he is fond of, which I am fond of as well: You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap. There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap and endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.
I still experienced feeling played, though, and it is not something I am interested in having as a recurring feeling, nor do I want others to feel that they are being played either. That is some Game A shit, and we metagamers are in the process of designing a new game, one that is as close to omni-win as possible. In the new world, we will feel like players playing a game together, one that is experienced as delicious for all.
There was a period when I wanted to hurt the player, to make them feel pain, with the adjacent desire of justifying the infliction of this pain by reflecting on the trail of existential pain they had left behind for others. I feel for the others. Only a spiritual beta male would do that though, and any desire to be a spiritual beta male has left me. Indulging in the desire for spiritual revenge is not something that a virtuous man does. The best way to play the metagame is with a truthful innocence, without attempting to engineer an outcome—that is the greatest trick of all. The karma ends here. With me.
My desire and capacity to inflict pain are ever present, and I am going to keep them close, but not so close that I become dangerous in the wrong way. My Christian proclivities are now coming online and I feel a desire to believe in redemption for all. I want to believe in it even for those who feel ugly and do not believe that they are redeemable.
Maybe this player I am speaking of, with their manipulative ways, has been making the moves they needed to make, in order to receive the lessons they needed to receive. Maybe they are playing the long game themselves, I do not know, but I am the type of man who chooses to believe in beautiful stories.
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Gift Economy / The Stoa currently operates through a gift economy. We are offering the Stoa as a gift, for people to freely use during these troubled times. If you are inspired to provide a gift to The Stoa, email thestoa at protonmail dot com. Your gift can take the form of money, support, services or ideas. If you wish to gift money, you can do so here or here for ongoing gifts.