Poemifesto [ Part 3 ]

III.

The Economy is a Game. The Game is played for market share. He who controls the most market share is winning the game. Since it is equally as effective to destroy the other guy as it is to win the consuming public's money/time/support we can attack, consume and absorb with the ultimate hope that one day all things will fall under one name. Is this not the curse of Caesar, or the hope of St. Paul? Nothing short of unifying everyone under one name would cure everybody of their desire to attack one another. (Is that really so?) Paul perfected a perfectly contagious replicating process for a new set of social values built upon the sacred martyr; upon humbleness, compassion, and the willingness to sacrifice your life for your God, because that is exactly what he did for you.

Paul, at once a salesman, a philosopher, a mystic, a man of social standing, articulate, intelligent, cunning and powerful, went from city to city, replicating the Christ-mandate, and a handful would always be so moved as to adopt the faith and would die before submitting to false images of God. They would become martyrs just as their savior had martyred himself for them. Their message was simple: do what you want with my flesh, my spirit will live forever. So they endured the worst kind of torture both in honor of their faith but also afraid that if they didn't, they would not get to go to heaven. Thus did the vision of Jesus become warriorized, with warriors who would not fight, but neither would they submit and thus not even torture was a deterrent.

Because it could not lose members, it would never be supressed. Only genocide would work, and either because there were some things that not even the Romans would do, or perhaps because the Romans felt that converting everyone to a religion of people willing to die for their religion was a distinct tactical advantage, Paul's tactics worked en masse. The Roman gods were crushed by a Jewish peasant named Jesus, and so titled by Greeks Christ, the anointed one.

The desire to replicate our own values in the consciousness of another human, is not merely an allegience in name only, but the promise of predictability within the system. The Christian's formed in the shadow of the excesses of the Roman nobility, which was saturated in vice, viciousness, sexual indulgence, and petty cruelty. All this became a symbol for the great Satan, the Beast, Nero, the man whose name is signified by the 666 in the book of Revelation.

And so a religion was born that believed the world would end in the same conditions in which it found itself now. But was that ever really the intent? Those who literalize Revelation would argue so. And any sign of its return, those very sins of pleasure aforementioned coupled with the punishment of an irritated God would forever mark the End.

Our money, like our religion is backed on Faith. A problem comes into play when it's only God you trust. But where is God? He is either somewhere in the word-salad of nominal dyphasia, a pattern superimposed over chaos, the continuity of 0 and infinity, a voice in the head of people who think that they can do anything, or the cold gaze of the psychiatrist looking upon a specemin.

The Economy is always a game for control. Politics figure into this more than ever now. Donation cache becomes a sign for one's overall approval. Corporations figure heavily in the stream of donations. Candidates are promised huge sums of money . Agendas are no different than genetics. Agendas breed and mutate, they grow and divide. They compete for survival, but not merely to survive, rather, survival depends on winning the game. Because as long as someone else is winning the game, you are at risk of being devoured or destroyed.

The laws of man's most basic nature are thus revealed in an economy of pre-Fall apples. All is at once both forbidden and indulged. We vacillate between satiety and desire, forbidding and indulging. We vacillate and thereby we maintain a balance. Because the choice is always between more or less. More government, or less government. And so too the government ebbs from more to less, from less to more.

The Economy protects itself via the law. The law constitutes the rules of the game. Corporations are always vying for both less laws on the economic and more laws on public conduct. So is the Christian Right. Like the Christian Right, the corporations desire the conversion or your name into their's. Conglomerate. Everything is in a state of conglomerating.

This is basic viral narcissism. The desire to convert the entire world into our own reflection has dominated western reason since it was old enough to reflect back on itself. The nagging voice of it would remain as a justification, a mandate, the imposition of a demand.

When would it ever end? Could we ever learn to play together on different teams without trying to annihilate the other? Without the fear of losing control? Knowing all the while it was just a game.

The game is never won completely. When the “winner” takes control it merely splits into a new half. In effect doubling itself in the shadow of its negation.

It is a new mechanism for restraining the demands of change without interfearing with its trajectory. It slows the process. That which ensures a vacillation between less and more.

The Government none the less retains its old shape. Bombastic changes are made up front. New initiatives, new agendas are introduced. Old agendas wither away and die. Agendas speciate, and then pair off. Alliances are made. Issues become confused, and inalienable from one another. Their pairing spawns baby agendas attended to by others. Agendas conglomerate.

In Corporations, agendas become strategies. Strategies for production, strategies for control of the market share, which of course is a finite sum set at a ratio to 100.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-10-03/news/school-of-shock/