Tuck Detchon Writes

“[I]n our culture we make an extremely rigid division between work and play. You’re supposed to work in order to earn enough money, to give you sufficient leisure time for something entirely different called ‘having fun,’ or ‘play.’ And this is the most ridiculous division of things, because everything that we do — however tough it is, however strenuous — can be turned into the same kind of play … .” (Alan Watts, The Essential Alan Watts)

“Interest must be the starting-point in all we do, or we shall not do well. … Once there you have only to do as interest bids. The operation of interest is Play. To do anything with interest, to get at the heart of the matter and live there actively — that is Play. You need not ask how we are to come by this interest, for it is the heart’s desire we are born with. There is no truth but the old truth: interest is only what your hand finds to do, and play is but doing it with your might.” (H. Caldwell Cook, The Play Way: An Essay In Educational Method)

“Huizinga saw play as the basis for all culture. Law, philosophy, art, and other aspects of human culture, he contends, arise ‘in the form of play’ and even such serious human activities as war bear the ‘formal characteristics of play.’” (David Michael and Sande Chen, Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform)

“Magic appeals to those with a great deal of hubris and a fertile imagination coupled with a strong suspicion that both reality and the human condition have a game-like quality. The game is open ended and plays itself for amusement. Players can make up their own rules to some extent, and cheat by using parapsychology if desired. … It takes only the acceptance of a single belief to make someone a magician. It is the meta-belief that belief is a tool for achieving effects.” (Peter J. Carroll, Liber Kaos)

“Are you in a game? Certainly, that’s how some goal-oriented people operate within the world, every day they play to win. If you prefer to treat reality like a game, where you keep track of your successes and compare your record with others, then you have already essentially gamified your goal setting. … Goal setting is about imagining the version of you that already exists within the fifth dimension and then following the path you can see to get there.” (Rob Bryanton, We Start With a Point (but what’s the point?))

“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. … Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries. … There is but one infinite game.” (James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility)

Introduction

Most of the above quotes also appeared in the introductory post I made after I “rebooted” this blog, but they are relevant again here because we’re going to take a look at the actual level of this project where we mentally “storify” (actively narrativize) and “gamify” life. We’ve taken a look at the “Core” of the “Kernel”. In a future post we’ll take a look at the “Kernel” as it relates to the “Shell”. The Core is Part of the Kernel which is Part of the Shell. (Core < Kernel < Shell.) We’ve seen that the Core is the PSI-PHI Matrix (PPM), the Kernel is 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT, and the Shell is Mythic Meta-Gamification (MMG). Here we will take a look at the current state of the MMG template system. Like the rest of the contents of this blog, these ideas are a work in progress and are subject to change, but whereas I still have a lot of work to do on the Kernel (although the Core is in a good place for now), I think the basic outline of the MMG Shell is ready for sharing.

MMG is the most general level of OpenCult belief, and therefore perhaps the easiest to wrap one’s head around (though there’s significantly more meat on the bones here to dig deeper into at length). We can call OpenCult an invented religion, arbitrary belief paradigm, or just an interesting way to conceptualize life and its struggles and challenges — maybe as a substitute or complement for more strict, dogmatic, or hierarchical religious/spiritual traditions or worldviews which tend to demand obedience and submission. It might be useful to some strictly as a way to organize and easily remember their worldview schemas. In fact one may choose to treat OpenCult MMG as religious/spiritual or not. As I wrote in the previous post, OpenCult is an “anti-cult”, whose name is informed by the broad principle of open content (by this I mean that the “invented religion” itself and its ideas are adoptable, adaptable, syncretic, and customizable; not that my specific words as I have written them or my original ideas in general are fair game for someone else to claim the credit for) and the view that most advanced, mainstream religions historically originate in a strictly technical sense as, and to a significant extent remain, “cults” of this or that being or natural phenomenon or metaphysical concept (e.g. the cult of the Moon, the cult of Artemis) before usually evolving into instruments of social control in the service of the ruling class at any given time. This isn’t to slander religion/spirituality, but rather to point out that religion/spirituality needs to be liberated and/or reconstituted as liberatory.

Also, one shouldn’t trust cults — much less an anti-cult.

We’ve seen that the Kernel is “Tenth Dimensional Dialectical Materialist Chaos Magic Theory”, or, 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT, and its Core is the PPM. In the broadest possible terms, this evokes a worldview where: all phenomena are dynamic, mutually dependent physical processes whose evolution is determined by cause and effect relationships characterized by contradiction, yet where consciousness is the intrinsic nature of matter — the combination of dialectics and panpsychism describes the nature of both the Ideal and the Material because they are one and the same and obey the same laws; we ourselves and our universe occupy certain coordinates in a hyperdimensional Omniverse where, within our Universe, each Planck-time moment different possible world timelines branch off from the present and our actions determine which of these many 5th dimensional paths we take as the Observer; and all matter/consciousness is one great magic Spell and our beliefs and actions can reach up to that Spell, as smaller, internal, constituent sub-spells — in other words, Magic is real, and Reality, Life, and Consciousness are intrinsically miraculous and Magical.

I first started thinking about life as being akin to a video game years ago because of a conversation I had with a friend. She and I were talking about how goals and tasks are like quests, missions, and sidequests; activities are like minigames; how GPS is like a minimap; social media is like your journal; how your pockets, bags and purses are your inventory and your room in your home is like your stash; how just like in video games you can level up your skills with practice; how you have stats and attributes, etc. With varying amounts of “multiplayer coordination,” the Game takes on the characteristics of different genres of games, such as RTS, 4X, and so on.

Obviously this is because video games essentially emulate life in an idealized, systematized, stylized, and abstract way. The point with MMG, though, is to take that essence, distilled from life, and turn it back around on life itself.

This is a kind of gamification which I now call “meta-gamification.” 

Gamification as a specific term describing this general idea is something I first encountered while reading about an unfinished concept game, Code Hero, where the player learns to program video games, by playing a video game, where you fire video game code out of a “code gun.” 

But in a certain sense life and reality are already natively meta-gamified. Play is universal, and not just strictly in sports, board games, pen and paper games, video games, etc. Play is something fundamental about life and consciousness that involves an immersive and attentive focus and motivation to interact with the natural world and other beings within a rulest to accomplish goals (primarily including feeling certain ways i.e. having fun). Accomplishing goals within rules or parameters, as in games and formal and informal play, seems like a good operational definition of life (which elaborates on Rob Bryanton’s “interest in what happens next” as a definition of life). In its own way, MMG seeks to uncover and revitalize that faculty in all areas of life, rekindling “spontaneity and adventure” within the serious activities of “real life.” What better way to accomplish that than a hero’s quest where we try to live ethically and struggle for progress and justice? To conceptualize and throw ourselves into the battle between good and evil, contributing from wherever we are and in whatever ways we can?

Traditional gamification in its simplest form relies on a fundamental and simple, if profound mechanic which we explicitly inherit from DIAMAT, “about one third” of the Kernel:

• Thesis → Antithesis → Synthesis
• Problem → Reaction → Solution
• Abstract → Negative → Concrete

1. The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
2. The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
3. The law of the negation of the negation

(The above are three formulas describing Hegel’s dialectic, as well as Engels’s three laws of DIAMAT.)

While contradiction (unity and conflict of opposites) and change (negation of the negation) appear to be relatively more generally fundamental than the transformation of quantity into quality, the latter is maybe the one of the three laws of DIAMAT that is most directly characteristic of and applicable to conceptualizing gamification and meta-gamification. We see this in the simple gamification of “steps per day” and language learning apps and other apps and software of that nature. Social media for example hijacks our reward systems with gamified, quantified rewards loops of “likes”, “shares”, “followers,” and “reacts.”

The world is “active” and responds to interventions by the beings operating within it, and this change is in large part driven by contradiction, impermanence, interconnection, and the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. We see examples of this interplay between quantity and quality in games and play as it expresses itself in the rules surrounding scores and victory/loss, the quantity of tiles or measurements of a sports field or game map, character/team statistics and attributes, and point systems such as “leveling up”. We also see quantity interact with quality when we accept, adopt, or are assigned a quest or goal.

If the Kernel is the cosmological sandbox “game engine”, it informs one of the central dynamics of meta-gamification we will be exploring: there are a set of rules (the Kernel) which underlie and determine the more or less formal or informal play and objectives of the Game. That said, the way OpenCult/MMG is structured into different modules is intentional: this facilitates the player’s (reader’s) ability to pick and choose what to adopt, adapt, and reject from the model.

In Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, James P. Carse writes that (paraphrasing), “Finite Games” are played “within boundaries” (parameters, rules, etc.) with the purpose of being won, whereas “Infinite Games” are played “with boundaries,” i.e. boundaries, parameters, rules etc. are changed and adjusted as part of the gameplay itself, and that Infinite Games are played in order to perpetuate play and include more players.

In Chaos Magic, a “sigil” is a symbolic rendering of your desire or (statement of) intent. The idea is to forget your original statement of intent after using it to creatively generate your sigil, and then stimulate “gnosis”, or, a one pointed (excitatory or inhibitory) concentrative trance while visualizing or staring at a rendering of your sigil. Doing so allows your subconscious, as “Kia,” and through the process of “subliminalization,” to connect with “Chaos” via the “Aether” (which is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent cosmological information which can interface with the magician’s will and perception), and thus modify probabilities that your will and perception will change reality (beyond random chance) or procure knowledge about reality (beyond a random guess).

“The ‘hypersigil’ or ‘supersigil’ develops the sigil concept beyond the static image and incorporates elements such as characterization, drama, and plot. The hypersigil is a sigil extended through the fourth dimension. My own comic book series The Invisibles was a six-year long sigil in the form of an occult adventure story which consumed and recreated my life during the period of its composition and execution. The hypersigil is an immensely powerful and sometimes dangerous method for actually altering reality in accordance with intent. Results can be remarkable and shocking.

“Experiment:

“After becoming familiar with the traditional sigil method, see if you can create your own hypersigil. The hypersigil can take the form of a poem, a story, a song, a dance, or any other extended artistic activity you wish to try. This is a newly developed technology so the parameters remain to be explored. It is important to become utterly absorbed in the hypersigil as it unfolds; this requires a high degree of absorption and concentration (which can lead to obsession but so what? You can always banish at the end) like most works of art. The hypersigil is a dynamic miniature model of the magician’s universe, a hologram, microcosm, or ‘voodoo doll’ which can be manipulated in real time to produce changes in the macrocosmic environment of ‘real’ life.” (Grant Morrison, “Pop Magic”)

In OpenCult, gamification and Mythic Meta-Gamification are the most basic moves within the gameplay itself, iteratively initializing and updating our imaginary Game world, projected onto our perceptual and conceptual ideal reality, itself projected on the materialist absolute reality, within which The Game is played. The intention is to immerse ourselves, become absorbed and concentrated, and even obsessed with, everyday life itself as a hyperdimensional, dialectical, chaotic, and magical game, on the level of religion/spirituality (r/s), and as, “[A] psychology, a worldview … framed by the inscription of the body in space …” (Jess McCarthy, ‘Notes on Trap’, n+1).

This means The Game takes the form of a hypersigil which we are manipulating through MMG and “The Work” (see below), and the contents of this hypersigil which we are directly manipulating are the material and ideal boundaries, obstacles, parameters, limits, and rules outlining we who play, what moves we make and what tools, equipment, and game pieces we do things to and with, when and where we play, why we play, and how we play. We are imagining and reifying a (relatively arbitrary) finite game which is won by transcending and negating itself into infinite play.

Framing our psychologies and worldviews in terms of these metaphysical and abstract conceptualizations should in due course lead to the concrete things, beings, processes, and actions which make up our lives taking on more and more of this mystical and game-like character. Since we’re balancing the considerations of the imaginary and the real, physical world of civilization, the ecosystem, Earth … the Universe … the Omniverse, we have to root The Game, its rules, mechanics, and its play in the material and sociological world we actually live in. And we face immense obstacles and challenges which exceed the requirements of nothing less than the contemporary equivalent of a combined total world war and space race. Basically the entire human species has to self-mobilize to prevent and mitigate catastrophe, and therefrom to create a beautiful and lasting way of life for all humans.

So, among consenting and willing OpenCult/MMG players, one possible pathway of gameplay is to induce Absorption, and Concentration in The Game, in order to intentionally bring on Obsession and from there religious/spiritual and, most importantly, political Zeal and Fanaticism, for the purpose of Saving, Liberating, and Enlightening the world and its beings, that is, in order to bring about full eco-communism and a peaceful, egalitarian, free, and equitable, classless and socially and ecologically sustainable world human civilization which can persist for historical … geological … cosmological scales of time and spread throughout the galaxy and beyond.

OpenCult/MMG is a game manual (or syncretic and customizable worldview template) where mental life in the material world is viewed as a game, with a story, and the player is you as an individual and us collectively. OpenCult/MMG is imaginary, it is not real. It is composed of arbitrary (if motivated and preferably valid and accurate) beliefs and meta-beliefs which are not inherently representative of Absolute Truth, and are therefore provisional towards the root purpose of inspiring ideas and motivation to change material conditions through the exercise of political/economic power, specifically through the means of labor, struggle, creativity, and intellect (and, well, maybe parapsychology, too). Reality, Life, and Consciousness are not a game. These three fundamental and inherently unified things are ineffable and sublime — they exhaust and defy discursive thinking and description by language, let alone by something like this game. This game is simply an imaginary, abstract, or “counterfactual” model we can use to conceptualize Reality, Life, and Consciousness.

So, even though Reality, Life, and Consciousness aren’t a game, we are intentionally immersing ourselves in and merging with the belief that it is.

The game is a system of symbols, signs, and elements, as well as rules, boundaries, and parameters structured into a “hypersigil” whose manipulation is intended to cause specific desired individual and collective, psychological and parapsychological effects, in order to change the system state of the World itself. The religious/spiritual dimensions of OpenCult/MMG are contingent and dependent on the intended materialistic sociological i.e. political/economic motives of The Game. Religious/spiritual organization and practice should be kept as separate or independent as possible from political organization and practice — the primary goal of OpenCult/MMG is to transform the experience and behaviors of players, not to conflict with or replace secular political organization. Revolutionary organizations, formations, and parties should be secular and inclusive (but in my opinion shouldnt enforce atheism, secularism, strict materialism, and positivism on members, cadres, and leaders). A revolutionary state should be separate and independent from any kind of church, religion or cult (or anti-cult).

As we will see below, individual “Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment,” is essentially a redundant list of synonyms describing the same thing: the soteriological (salvific) religious/spiritual goal(s) described by the various traditions. At the collective scale, each of the three terms in that list mean very different, if interrelated and dependent, and much more important things. Human survival, freedom, development, and fulfillment in the physical, incarnate world are ultimately of higher stakes and significance than mystical experiences and attainments (although I consider individual “Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment,” to be a human right).

The game system elements as they now stand within MMG are: Player, Fun, Challenge, Rules, Moves, Score, Story, Win (Victory Conditions), and Lose (Game Over):

• Player: Body, Mind, Spirit, Soul
• Fun: Beingness, Meaningfulness, and Happiness
• Challenge: Organize to Negate the Contradictions of Chaos
• Rules: 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT
• Moves: The Work: Work, Good Works, and the Great Work
• Score: Freedom, Power, Merit
• Story: Kardashev Plan: Holy Class War → Metacognate → Materialist Henosis
• Win: Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment
• Lose: Death, Collapse, Extinction

Player: Body, Mind, Spirit, Soul 

Body, Mind, Spirit, Soul, (and perhaps God) are the “Players” of The Game. This list is a continuum from most to least plausible, and least to most subtle. 

That we have bodies is undeniable, although, as obvious as our bodies and the physical world are, we may remain skeptical of their reality in the sense that they and the rest of reality and experience are an “illusion.” Even if this is the case, it just redefines what the body is, and what an illusion is. It is still the most tangible thing we experience, and we certainly consistently experience it.

Some radical materialists likewise believe that consciousness is some kind of illusion. I might be stupid but it seems like an illusion requires a subject to be deceived by the illusion and therefore requires consciousness. The mind is the momentary and instantaneous subject which continuously experiences reality, embodiment, and itself. It depends on the body, the environment surrounding the body, and ultimately on the entirety of reality. This means that in some very important ways the mind has attributes which extend into the subconscious, the rest of the body outside of the brain, and even extends actively into the environment. That “everything is everything” and that cognition directly and indirectly interacts with the entirety of the system of reality seems important and true but less exigent on the practical realities of the embodied mind in a local environment. In simple terms the mind is defined by its functions of will and perception mediated by the whole body.

The spirit might be conceived of as the essence of the mind, or its subtle character. It may be viewed as abstract, the models and schema describing and generalizing the habits and tendencies of the affect, cognition, and behavior of the being whose mind is being examined. Alternately, it may be viewed as what Rob Bryanton refers to as the “long undulating snake,” representing the body and the mind supported by the body over time (remember that in the materialist conception of panpsychism, consciousness is the intrinsic nature of matter, so there is no distinction between mind and body other than the level of analysis from which we view them), from conception to death — a “spime” or object continuously changing as it passes through time. (Although in a sense any object as defined and differentiated from the background of all of reality as a relatively “discrete” and self-consistent process is a spime, the concept of a spime emphasizes a specific way of thinking about objects/processes in general.)

The soul might be conceived of as the subtle spirit, or as “all possible you’s,” all the branching timelines spreading out from moment to moment in the 5th dimension, defined by potential pathways navigated by choice and chance. All possible pasts, presents, and futures, perhaps stemming from conception.

As the body, mind, and spirit exchange mass and energy, these entities “spread out” and become cloudlike through space and time as more and more matter is implicated in their processes. This bleedthrough is another very concrete example of the fundamental interconnectedness and unity of all entities in the Cosmos. The soul, on the other hand, branches and spreads out even in hyperdimensions (dimensions 4, 5, and 6).

We might either pantheistically describe God as the subtle basis and essence of all bodies, spirits, and souls, described materialistically by the 10 dimensional Omniverse, or panentheistically as extending incomprehensibly (or perhaps paradoxically and impossibly) beyond even that. We can describe God as personal or impersonal, as the Cosmic Being or simply as Reality itself, or refuse to even use the term or idea of God at all. In any case, in the 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT/PPM, reality exists and operates as a thought in God’s Mind, and we inherit matter and our minds directly and indirectly from this Big Cosmic Mind. Finally, God or the Cosmic Mind, or whatever, is the game master, dungeon master, judge, and referee, and additionally is the original unity of Being (Monad or Absolute) that is divided into however many players (beings) as exist in the Omniverse through the processes of Observation and Censorship (in the PPM).

Fun: Beingness, Meaningfulness, and Happiness

Games have feelings associated with them. Focus, distraction, exhilaration, frustration … In a word, “Fun” is what we call the feelings positively associated with play. Fun is generally pleasant, but even unpleasantness can be fun: in sport, pushing ourselves physically until our muscles burn and we run out of breath, spending long hours training and studying, waking up very early for a match, and dealing with the social games and politics of a team and the antagonisms of opponents — let alone the competitive struggle and the stress of fighting to win. All of these contribute to the experience of sports and other kinds of games and play (such as e-sports and informal online matches), and even the stress from single player video games and other games can ultimately be fun.

What, then, is the Fun or (positive) conscious experience of life itself? In OpenCult/MMG, Beingness, Meaningfulness, and Happiness are the the Game’s Fun.

Beingness refers to being, being alive, being conscious, experiencing reality and interacting with it, being an organism, a person, an entity, process, phenomenon. In short, Beingness refers to life and consciousness, namely its quality (pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral in hedonic terms, as well as wholesome, unwholesome and neutral in moral terms, but also in terms of its variety and complexity and many other properties of experience by beings) and quantity (duration of life and consciousness, as well as the number or population of beings concerned). 

Meaningfulness refers to meaning, what we think is important, often a person, group, institution, ideal, goal, activity, or project which we work to support or achieve. As in sport, Meaningfulness can contradict or conflict with Happiness and even Beingness: We can suffer for a higher purpose we find meaningful, such as eating and sleeping poorly and experiencing acute stress while working on an intensive project, or sacrificing ourselves or our lives for our family, the greater good, or some other cause.

Happiness is the emotion we all instinctively chase through hedonism, usually associated with material comfort(s) and emotional pleasure — whose effect tends to be temporary. Sooner or later we will have to re-expose ourselves to new pleasant stimuli, unless we find more stable and durable causes of and conditions for Happiness.

All of these are important parts of the human experience, but I have listed them in the rank or order of most fundamental or important to least — that is to say, survival is more important than overarching life goals, which are generally more important than pleasure. I don’t mean to suggest that Happiness or Meaningfulness are unimportant, but rather more so that they are impossible without securing the foundation of the more successively fundamental bases of “Fun.”

As James P. Carse writes in Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” In this spirit, we’re projecting a finite game on the infinite game, since there is only one infinite game, whose play (and “Fun” of Beingness, Meaningfulness, and Happiness) is a right all beings (as players of The Game) equally share. All beings everywhere share an equal right to the entire Cosmos, and all morals and ethics should be informed and guided by the considerations of how a decision or an event impacts the quality and duration of life and consciousness of beings, and for how many beings etc. 

This view doesn’t make moral and ethical evaluations easy in all cases, but it does help illuminate the permanent evaluation we should all engage in. We can’t get lazy or sloppy in determining right and wrong, and we can’t overly rely on past assumptions and prior conclusions. For example, how do you make a utilitarian (“most good for the most people”) analysis with varied numbers and different kinds of beings, with various levels of depth, subtlety, and complexity of experience? How do you compare the worth of different kinds of beings? Surely a billion blades of grass are less “important” than a human being. Is a kitten less important than a 10 year old cat? Is a baby human or an elderly one less important than a 25 year old, since a baby’s brain is “merely” developing and an elder’s is aging?

“Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the hairs on your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:29-31 NASB 1995)

Rob Bryanton, in his first book, proposes that part of what makes a child’s life so precious is their promise and potential to live a long life of varied experience. But someone who “wastes” their life (in social terms), for example getting high and playing video games all the time, is as intrinsically valuable as a high performing over achiever. There is something precious intrinsic to a child’s and an elder’s life that isn’t reducible to the complexity of their brain’s processing (different from a middle aged person) or the potential for future life and experience (as different from each other), let alone to their contributions to society (or the future promise thereof). I might say innocence, innate goodness and purity is at work here — because all children are innocent, but also because not all elders are, and the lives of abusers, exploiters, and oppressors aren’t special and shouldn’t be cherished. But, just as Reality, Life, and Consciousness are sublime and ineffable, the value of living beings and their experience of Reality, Life, and Consciousness is also impossible to measure, quantify, compare, or judge.

And yet, even if we don’t ultimately understand, often we must choose. Yet again, we also shouldn’t over-analyze — we don’t have to fall into crisis because of every hypothetical trolley problem. We can “refuse the question.”

But, we have to at least in principle criticize everything, and there are definitely criticisms of the very concepts of morality and ethics — some Comrades reject the notion of right, wrong, good, and evil, and opt more for a materialist, sociological analysis that looks at the bare facts of the self interests of the contending classes in modern society and humanity as a whole (especially in large numbers and over extended periods of time, opposed to any one individual’s immediate self interest at any given moment). In this view, capitalists/imperialists aren’t evil, per se, but rather they are simply “our enemy” because their interests are alienated from humanity and life on Earth and in direct opposition to the interests of those things — whereas the workers of the world share in common the interests of abolishing class and identity based hierarchical systems of exploitation, oppression, and abuse. 

I can see some advantages to this line of reasoning but I don’t fully agree. I think “bad” and “evil” refer to lesser and greater degrees of wrongness, and that there is a straightforward definition of bad/evil: 

With regards to the subjective and objective quality and quantity of life and consciousness affected, bad/evil is destruction, pain, suffering, harm, and death, especially if unnecessary, especially if preventable, especially if done knowingly, and especially if intentional. “Destruction … death,” is a relative continuum, and so is “especially if unnecessary … especially if intentional.” Good/great involves the pleasant, enriching, and wholesome survival, success, prosperity, and flourishing of greater numbers and more varied populations of “players” in the game (among other things).

So “Fun” isn’t trivial. Having a good time or a bad time is central to the experience of players — beings — and is sort of “the whole point.”

Challenge: Organize to Negate the Contradictions of Chaos

Observe and Orient (Organize) to Navigate and Negotiate (Negate) the Causes and Conditions (Contradictions) of Choice and Chance (Chaos).

We must “Organize” ourselves in terms of individual efforts and habits (“get organized”) as well as “Organize” ourselves in groups in pursuit of our implicit or explicit goals. This usually involves analyzing a system or phenomenon (“Observation”) and situating and disposing (“Orienting”) ourselves with the intent and purpose of interacting with or intervening in said phenomenon or system.

This means we are “Negating” the condition state of our target, and thus ourselves since interaction among more or less different, discrete, or distinct systems integrates them as elements and structures (or subsystems) into a single system. We inherit the usage of this term (negation) from Frederich Engels’s Three Laws of DIAMAT, specifically the Law of the Negation of the Negation: basically, things change, characteristically through the processes of contradictions which negate each other, but from whose negation “something new” arises, whose properties preserve and yet modify previous states, and this new state itself changes according to the principle of internal and external contradiction — the negation is itself negated, and so on. In practical language, as sentient agents intervening and interacting with internal and surrounding systems, we Navigate the systemic landscape and Negotiate objectives and obstacles, guiding the systems of contradictions towards our desired outcomes.

The “Contradictions” we thereby act upon constitute “Causes and Conditions.” Everything is the product of complex dynamic systems and networks of Causes and Conditions, and in order to change anything, we must act upon these Causes and Conditions which support a given system state or phenomenon (and its properties) which we wish to modify or Negate.

Chaos refers to the nature of phenomena and all systems to be dynamic and responsive to even small changes, such that even if outcomes were determined by initial conditions, that they are highly unpredictable based off of current conditions, and that while these entities may appear random, there are laws and emergent patterns which may guide our intentional actions to bring about desired change. Additionally, systems often have tendencies towards certain sets of states (“attractors”) based on a variety of initial conditions. (There is certainly much more to Chaos than what I currently grasp.) Nothing is certain and anything is possible. The Contradictions which make up a Chaotic system can fall into two broad categories: Choice, and Chance (the actions of others may be placed in either or both).

As is sort of standard practice for this project, we are openly conflating different usages of many of the terms we use. Chaos simultaneously or at different places in this work refers to the primordial matter prefiguring reality; the chaos of mathematics; the general popular usage of high complexity, complication, and even disorder; and as used in Chaos Magic.

The origins of these phrases:

• Observe and Orient: “The OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act) is a decision-making model developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd. … An entity (whether an individual or an organization) that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby get inside the opponent’s decision cycle and gain the advantage.” (Wikipedia, “OODA Loop”)
• Navigate and Negotiate: The Art of Memetics by Wes Unruh and Edward Wilson
• Causes and Conditions: Buddhism
• Choice and Chance: “ … [C]hoice, chance, and the actions of others.” (Rob Bryanton, Imagining the Tenth Dimension)

Rules: 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT (the Kernel)

“Tenth Dimensional Dialectical Materialist Chaos Magic Theory.”

We might say the Shell, Kernel, and Core together are the “Rules,” but I like having the Rules specifically refer to the 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT Kernel. This is the cosmological and philosophical “game engine” of The Game we are mentally adopting as a world view. It outlines the basic properties and scope of the “game world,” and how it fundamentally “works.” As I wrote in the introduction, I need to flesh out the Kernel a lot more before I can give it its own post, but I’ll try to provide an overview here.

Just like meta-gamification is one of the primary operations or moves within itself (actively imagining life as a game is a central dynamic to the game play of MMG), 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT is complex and nuanced enough to warrant the independent investigation and synthesis by players of The Game — should it be desired or useful.

Of course, as we saw in The PSI-PHI Matrix (PPM), the Kernel’s “Core” is a cosmological model where the Void-Chaos Mind supports 10D metaphysical Psi, which in turn gives rise to 5D dialectical Phi implanted with Kia (or rather all matter is made up of Psi, the fractal/holographic Dialectical Panpsychic information). This is because, paradoxically, the 10D point loops back on every single possible 0D point, so the whole is in each part. A hydra-ouroboros. This is a paradox, “impossible”, but it seems to me to be one of the only ways to explain religious/spiritual beliefs surrounding omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. (The more obvious and rational explanation is that the whole is not in each part, but rather that parts simply instantaneously interact relatively inhibited or uninhibited by physical laws and the action of the Censor. Or, maybe both are true in some way. As an informationally perfect description of something is identical to that thing, might it be valid to conceive of any part of reality which can instantaneously interact with all the other parts of reality as “containing” everything?) Anyway, I often think that reality, life, and consciousness are impossible except for the fact that they are real, the only real things we can truly know, and yet are by this line of thought inherently magical and miraculous.

The Psi information defining 10D matter is “metaphysical” in the sense that it includes and transcends our sensory experience, and is static, unchanging, and eternal. (“Metaphysical” is sometimes also used to mean “paranormal,” “supernatural,” and “parapsychological” — which certainly also is appropriate for the PPM.) The Ideal, then, is the conscious Observer “passing through” or “sampling” that metaphysical matter-information in a “frame by frame” “animation” according to the laws of Dialectics and Chaos — Chaos being pre-Dialectical, and Dialectics “ordering” Chaos according to the processes of change, time, contradiction, and consciousness.

We might either equate Dialectics and Chaos or describe Dialectics as an internal property of Chaos.

The analogy here is like a stack of drawings which exist all at once, but when flipped through it creates the “illusion” of movement and change. A reel of film or a DVD, BluRay, or Hard Drive with a film on it (or a game for that matter) supply additional metaphors.

Remember that we are using at least two different meanings of Chaos here (which might be reconcilable): Chaos as the cosmic prima materia, formless primordial matter, or aether, and Chaos as the mathematical study of dynamical systems, their patterns, and laws. The easiest way to resolve this is to simply point out that, as we see in the PPM, all properties and order of matter at the level of 5D Phi (i.e. spacetime) are inherited from 10D Psi, and from Void-Chaos.

From moment to moment our relative level of Gnosis fluctuates around neutral, either towards “excitatory” or “inhibitory” states of consciousness and experience. This “colors” how we “Observe” reality, and has psychological and perhaps parapsychological implications.

One of the main definitions of “matter” is “everything that actually exists,” which is close to Carl Sagan’s definition of the Cosmos as “All that is or was or ever will be.” Another common definition has it that matter corresponds to the phenomena which we can sense, experience, and reason about based on our observations and measurements — especially if this knowledge translates into accurate predictions and physical uses i.e. STEM experiments and applications, production, and labor. We can’t directly sense and experience most material information and phenomena, though — we have to deduce and reason about the implications of what we can observe, and what we already know. As we’ve seen in other posts, OpenCult/MMG and especially 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT and PPM are far more speculative, arbitrary, and imaginative than even that.

10THDIM originally refers to the ideas of Rob Bryanton’s Imagining the Tenth Dimension project, including books, videos, music, and a blog. As we saw in Information Equals Reality, Rob and I keep in touch and he gave me a chapter in his second book (see the second Rob Bryanton book listed at the end of this section below), adapted from excerpts from the original 100+ page manifesto I wrote about OpenCult and MMG while coming off of Clozaril (the most hardcore schizophrenia medication). 

Rob’s famous video, which I first saw while still in high school around 2007, begins, “We start with a point …”. From this “0D” point, we build up space (3D), time/probability/phase space (3D), and a multiverse space (3D). Each grouping of 3 dimensions, or “space”, is treated as a point by the next dimension higher up, and the 9D hyperspace is treated as a single point in the 10th dimension. (Peter J. Carroll in The Apophenion and on his website also proposes a kind of hyperdimensional cosmological model, which I’m not sure is consistent with Rob’s.)

There are a few implications of Rob’s model which bear importance for OpenCult/MMG. First is of course the description of the “game world,” “environment,” or “world map” of the actual Cosmos we’re “playing” within. Second, this structure is made up of predetermined and metaphysically static hyperdimensional information which is “pre-rendered,” doesn’t itself “change”, and is never lost, i.e., is “eternal.” It is a kind of full spectrum static describing and containing every possibility. This brings us to the third point, which is that we dialectically “move” through spacetime, sampling each Planck unit sized “frame” of time on the basis of “navigating and negotiating the causes and conditions of choice and chance,” choosing a path through the 5D “probability space” of branching timelines. As Rob writes, “Being engaged with the ‘what happens next’ of spacetime is my definition of life.” We imagine or visualize a version (which “already exists” in eternal hypertime) of the world or ourselves which we want to reach, experience, or attain, and then we take actions and make choices to traverse the trees of branching 5D timelines to get there. Finally, with 10THDIM, Rob develops a model that proposes some specific ways in which we are all one, are all equal, and share everything.

There’s also some interesting resonances among cosmological systems of “10” between 10THDIM and Buddhism. Briefly, the Ten Directions correspond to the three dimensions of space, the Ten Times correspond to the dimensions of time, and the Ten Realms correspond to the multiverse dimensions.

DIAMAT refers to Marxist Dialectical Materialism, which is the philosophical framework which says that everything is physical and characterized by the evolution of dynamic, changing, opposing, and struggling forces and processes unified in (internal and external) contradiction. In DIAMAT, everything moves, everything changes. How we reconcile this with 10THDIM hypertime eternalism is explained above. DIAMAT is sometimes used to refer to Dialectical Materialism in general, but originally it is actually associated with the (Stalinist) Marxism-Leninism (ML) political philosophy. It is also criticized as being over simplified and mechanical (if not vulgar and naïve).

As I wrote in A Note On Dialectics, Dimensions, and Demons, “In practice this means that I have some pretty big blind spots, and, for example with DIAMAT, I implement a version of dialectics that has been criticized as mechanistic, vulgar, and over simplistic, and furthermore I do so intentionally — with the hope that the whole project might benefit down the road from the contribution or revision by myself (after more study) or others who do have a stronger grasp of DIAMAT/Dialectics etc.”

Above we saw three formulas describing Hegel’s dialectic, as well as Engels’s three laws of DIAMAT:

• Thesis → Antithesis → Synthesis
• Problem → Reaction → Solution
• Abstract → Negative → Concrete

1. The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
2. The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
3. The law of the negation of the negation

In The PSI-PHI Matrix (PPM), we saw Stalin’s summary of DIAMAT from his pamphlet Dialectical and Historical Materialism:

1. Nature is connected and determined [via cause and effect processes and relationships].
2. Nature is a state of continuous motion and change.
3. Natural quantitative change leads to qualitative change.
4. Contradictions are inherent in nature.

In MMG, the DIAMAT metaphor of reality as operating as a “debate” or “discourse” among contradictory elements is extended to mean that this discourse is characteristically a ritual and a game:

“Virtual Experience … amounts to a notion of total involvement in ritual activity. In ritual, according to this perspective, humans engage the totality of hearts, minds, and bodies, setting them to work creatively and dynamically to produce effects within the social and mental worlds of the participants. … Thus this understanding of ritual emphasizes what in RPG terms is called ‘immersion,’ a total involvement in the activity. Failure on this score would be seen as ineffective (zazen), impious (Eucharist), or shallow (RPG). …

“Two directions … support [the Collaborative Storytelling model]. First, there is [the] structuralist interpretation of mythic and ritual thought as bricolage, and second, there is … understanding ritual as ‘practice’ (or ‘praxis’ in the more overtly Marxist formulations). …

“‘[P]ractice’ theory … amounts to an attempt to understand manipulation of signs and symbols in strategic yet controlled ways. With respect to ritual, practice theory argues for a continuity among behaviors, as against the disjuncture of ritual from other modes of action. The signs used in ritual, that is, acquire meaning from their extra-ritual contexts, and furthermore the special meanings accorded to them in ritual carry over into other modes of life. …

“In ritual, participants manipulate a range of signs within a constrained structure. …

“At the same time, the prior structure is to a degree open to challenge within game play, and furthermore does not fully constrain particular game actions, determining a range and a set of priorities rather than laying out a script. …

“While a given structural situation of notes, game system, theoretical models, and so forth formulates a contextual model within which play occurs, such structures do not extend to the level of individual particularity that is central to play experience; that is, no game structure can be so logically intensive as to dictate every action and speech by every participant at all times, because to do so (even were it possible) would annul the entire nature of the game as game. … Not surprisingly, we find that the usual model of RPG discourse has it that performance (play) is the ‘real’ anchor of RPG’s, and that theory is understood by its proponents as a potentially liberating source of creativity and energy for ‘real’ play. …

“At this same level of semiotic manipulation, we can see in RPG reconstruction and revision a parallel analytical discourse. Taking to its extreme the … formulation that ‘system matters,’ the claim is a clearly structuralist one: transformation of system elements in RPG’s effects concomitant transformation of gameplay and orientation. …

“Thus the ‘system does matter’ principle argues that system elements are motivated signs, and thus contain structure; their transformation affects the totality of the structure. …

“Arguably, the tendency of much RPG theory toward rigid hierarchization and toward discourse-circle hegemony would thus constitute a parallel to more obviously religious dogmatisms. …

“It is clear that RPGs have no division between author and reader. Each participant both expresses and interprets. Further, this calls into question what the story is. The answer depends in part on what we define as the discourse or ‘text’ of RPG play. …

“Why not … recognize RPG’s as active, dynamic, conversational forms of symbolic manipulation?” (Christopher I. Lehrich, “Ritual Discourse in Role-Playing Games”)

CMT is “Chaos Magic Theory.” The gist of it is that consciousness derives its properties of will and perception from Chaos, in the form of Kia which is a “fragment” of Chaos. Through the mediation of “Aether,” which is omnipresent information which describes and interacts with everything, human will and perception can be extended to attain parapsychological (or paranormal) results. In 10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT/PPM, Aether is 10-dimensional, and is the consciousness information, or (some of) the contents of the Cosmic Mind of Void-Chaos.

Parapsychological results are largely achieved through the intercession of the subconscious which “does the heavy lifting” of actually communicating directly with the rest of Reality. The subconscious responds to language, symbols, and images (among the other senses and types of sensory stimulus, including the perception of thought and feeling themselves). Getting the subconscious to do what we want involves “sleight of mind,” and the“subliminalization” of our explicit will or intent. For example, by consciously forgetting the explicit will or intent for a desired outcome while visualizing a symbol representing that intention, particularly from within a concentrative trance, the subconscious, which remembers this intention, is stimulated to project the will consistent with the desire into Reality (or the Cosmic Mind).

CMT attempts to describe the quantitative (but difficult or impossible to practically quantify) relationship among the magical factors of: “P” (the odds an event occuring on its own, by chance, or with respect to divination, learning information by chance guessing) and “Ψ” (or “M“, Magical Factor (“G“, Gnosis; “L“, Magical Link; “A“, Conscious Awareness; and “R“, Subconscious Resistance)).

The three (main) equations of CMT are:

1. Magical Factor: Ψ=GL(1-A)(1-R)
2. Spell (Increasing odds of an event): P_Ψ=P+(1-P)Ψ1/P
3. Anti-Spell (Decreasing odds of an event): P_Ψ=P-PΨ1/(1-P)

Gnosis refers to excitatory or inhibitory concentrative trances. Link refers to one’s connection to the target (such as a piece of, or an object found near, the target; a photo or drawing of the target; or the target itself within range of sight or close proximity; or some other conscious or subconscious connection). Subliminalization or sleight of mind seeks to limit or eliminate as much as possible conscious awareness of and subconscious resistance to the intent of the magical operation.

Also fundamental to CMT are the Basic Operations, Classical Magical Operations, and the Levels of Magic:

Basic Operations (from Liber Kaos by Peter J. Carroll): Will, Perception, Analysis, Synthesis, Concentration, Imagination, Visualization

Classical Magical Operations (from Liber Kaos by Peter J. Carroll):

• Enchantment: “Includes all those practices in which the magician attempts to impose will on reality.”
• Divination: “Includes all those practices in which the magician attempts to extend perception by magical means.”
• Evocation: “This is work with entities that may be naturally occurring or manufactured. The entities may be regarded as independent spirits, fragments of the magician’s subconscious, or the egregores of various species of life forms, according to taste and belief structure. In practice, evocation is usually performed for enchantment, in which the evoked entities are made to create effects on behalf of the magician. Evoked entities also find some application in divination, when they are used to discover information for the magician.”
• Invocation: “This is the deliberate attunement of consciousness with some archetypal or significant nexus of thought. … Invocation creates states of inspiration or possession during which enchantment, divination, or occasionally evocation, can be performed.”
• Illumination: “Is deliberate self-modification by magic, and may include spells of enchantment cast at one-self to repair weaknesses or increase strengths, and divination and invocation performed for inspiration and direction.”

Levels of Magic (from Liber Kaos by Peter J. Carroll):

• Sorcery: “Simple magic that depends on the occult connections which exist between physical phenomena is called sorcery. It is a mechanical art which does not require the theory that connections exist between the mind of the operator and the target.”
• Shamanic Magic: “This works on the level of trance, vision, imagination and dream. It opens the magician’s subconscious by negating psychic censorship with various techniques.”
• Ritual Magic: “Combines the abilities developed on the sorcery and shamanic levels.”
• Astral Magic: “This magic is performed by visualization and altered states of consciousness, or gnosis, alone.”
• High Magic: “High magic is that which occurs when there is no impediment to the direct magical effect of will, no barrier to direct clairvoyance and prescience, and no separation between the magician and any form of rapport or consciousness he or she chooses to enter into.”

In case you want to do your own reading on each of the three elements of the Kernel, first I have to admit that the most I’ve read on DIAMAT is Dialectical and Historical Materialism by J. V. Stalin (and some articles and passages on the internet including on the Marxists Internet Archive). I would recommend reading Hegel, Marx, and other Marxists on Dialectics. As for 10THDIM and CMT, I can recommend the two main books for both:

1. Imagining the Tenth Dimension (Rob Bryanton)
2. We Start With a Point (Rob Bryanton)
3. Liber Null & Psychonaut (Peter J. Carroll)
4. Liber Kaos (Peter J. Carroll)

You can find a summary of 10THDIM written by Rob Bryanton here, part 1 of the famous 10THDIM video here, and part 2 here. You can find a summary of CMT written by Peter J. Carroll here.

Moves: The Work: Work, Good Works, and the Great Work

As discussed above, MMG itself is perhaps the main “Move” within MMG: mental Mythic Meta-Gamification itself is included as a necessary task of play within the narrativized and meta-gamified psychology/worldview. The other moves (beyond, well, anything we can do in the broadest possible sense as sentient embodied beings embedded within the physical universe) fall into the category of “The Work,” which is “Work, Good Works, and the Great Work.”

Work is Labor: Metabolic, intellectual, and creative physical work i.e. the intentional/willful movement and transformation of matter (mass, energy, space, time, consciousness/information), especially as defined in physics as, “energy transfer that occurs when an object is moved over a distance by an external force …” (Encyclopædia Britannica). We can conceive of every application of embodied will and perception as Labor/Work, as even thinking and feeling transfer energy and move mass within the brain (albeit at small scales). Biology, chemistry, physics etc. are also like this. Furthermore, intellect and creativity are present in all applications of will and perception. All Labor, or “Work,” is intellectual and creative. 

In the panpsychic worldview, all phenomena are Labor/Work of some being, in the sense that every system with greater than zero integration is a being which we might speculate has will and perception etc., and therefore is “behind” every movement of matter in the Universe. In the pantheistic or panentheistic Worldviews the 10D Omniverse and its animus is the effort of God (or whomever), whose superlatives (Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence) can be quantified and described as at least the whole information of the same 10D Omniverse. 

Good Works is a term inherited from Christianity, originally meaning ethical/moral actions such as charity, kindness, generosity, and altruism, engaged in to reinforce faith and out of gratitude for God’s grace. Here we unhook it from these theological considerations (unless that’s your thing) and simply mean virtuous, moral, and ethical actions — or Labor.

The Great Work is the transliteration of “Magnum Opus.” The Magnum Opus is a masterpiece, or the life’s work of, say, an artist, author, or musician, etc. In addition to meaning “masterpiece,” the term also has a meaning which comes from occultism and alchemy of successfully making the philosopher’s stone from prima materia. For our purposes here we mean an overarching goal, purpose, or meaning of life, and actions (such as Work and Good Works) undertaken in their pursuit. (We might view Chaos or Psi as prima materia and Kia or Phi as the philosopher’s stone — meaning perfecting ourselves would qualify as a Great Work.) In light of these meanings, it makes sense that players may adopt or pursue more than one Great Work, especially over the span of a lifetime.

Score: Freedom, Power, Merit

There are two main types of “freedom”: “negative liberty,” which corresponds to autonomy and self determination, i.e. the right to be left alone, and “positive liberty,” which corresponds to institutional and resource access, i.e. the right to be included. More generally, one freedom is one choice, measured quantitatively as well as qualitatively: one may have few wildly different choices available, or very numerous yet similar choices, for example. Freedom, liberty, and choice, are more or less synonymous here.

Power involves control or influence over oneself or others (humans, animals, beings generally, and their Work(s)), or Nature. Innate, intrinsic Power derives from personal strengths, attributes, faculties, and abilities. When applied to one’s own self, innate Power becomes “Strength.” Acquired, extrinsic Power is “granted,” struggled for, or coerced, and relies on cooperation, assets, and materiel. Power may be horizontally, distributively, cooperatively, and communally pooled or shared on the basis of equality and equity; or, it may be hierarchical, exploitive, oppressive, and abusive. Power can also be accounted for both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Merit might best be equated to “good karma,” as it is widely understood, and as originating in the religious/spiritual traditions of India. As above, good deeds and their Merit can also be conceived of as both quantitative and qualitative, though “the most good for the greatest number of beings and persons,” is the approximate measure of merit. Of the three (Freedom, Power, Merit), Merit is maybe the most abstract and difficult to quantify or compute. In terms of gameplay, players should try their best to evaluate the morality and ethics of their choices and their outcomes, and maybe leave the actual counting and computation of Merit to whichever Cosmic process or entity is responsible for that. But, perhaps just the belief that Merit is being counted and computed may help guide us in making wise and correct choices. The faith that good intentions leading to good actions subsequently cause good results is important. Intentions, actions, and results feed into the OODA Loop schema above in the Challenge section.

Story: The Kardashev Plan: Holy Class War → Metacognate → Materialist Henosis

As MMG is the basic move in MMG itself, storification or narrativization is the first “M” in “MMG” — “Mythic” refers to exerting intentional agency over the “stories” we each tell and internalize, about ourselves, each other, things, and Everything. This happens everywhere, as models, schema, stories operate at every psychological and sociological/cultural level. Our self talk, our worldview, even at the neurological level of the brain’s predictive processing (Bayesian Inference), we believe, craft, and tell stories to ourselves and each other. And, just as arbitrary belief may include ritually entering into the belief in fictional gods, spirits, and archetypes (that is, directly from fiction), with Mythic narrativization and storification we may choose to draw inspiration from myth, literature, and any other medium of storytelling, and bring this narrative power directly into our day to day lives.

So what narratives and metanarratives will we tell ourselves, and why?

One of the goals of OpenCult is to inspire Holy Class War, that is, to generate ideas and motivation, even a fanaticism, for defeating the exploiter-oppressor-abuser classes and Saving, Liberating, and Enlightening all beings and persons, that is, “abolishing the exploitation, oppression, and abuse of groups by groups.” Class War and to a lesser extent Holy War comprise much of the history of human struggle since the beginnings of the first civilizations on Earth. Holy Class War merges the secular and materialist class struggle with religious/spiritual beliefs and fervor for the battle against the enemies of the masses, humanity, and life, and the personal and collective struggle for Score points (Freedom, Power, and Merit) via The Work (Work, Good Works, and the Great Work).

The Metacognate is the Class-Conscious noosphere which “represents the highest stage of biospheric development, that of humankind’s rational activities. (Wikipedia, ‘Noosphere’)” The Metacognate might also be equated with Earth’s Proletarian “informational environment,” meaning “The aggregate of individuals, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or act on information” (NIST Computer Security Resource Center, “information environment”), and the persons and beings which interact with it.

Extended, or “actively externalized,” cognition is the idea that thought extends or is externalized from the brain into the body and environment. The parable often used to explain it is that of two people, one with a healthy memory and one with a memory disorder, both planning on going to the same event on the same date at the same time and place. The person with the healthy memory just remembers and goes, while the person with the brain disorder writes down the details and directions on a pen and pad which they use to remind them when and where to go. The argument is that the cognitive process is the same, it’s just that one person incorporated their pen and pad into their cognition, and therefore cognition was externalized into an external object, or the environment. From here we can conceive of all interactions with body and environment as extended or actively externalized cognition.

Anyway, the point is, the Metacognate refers to the collective consciousness, however strictly materialist or mystical you want to get about it, which is explicitly Communist and Class-Conscious (Proletarian). I originally coined the term as a science fiction concept to describe a transhumanist/futurist Socialist networked mind or hive mind of digitally connected brains and/or minds, which correspond to the categories of “3AI”: Animal Intelligences (including humans), Artificial Intelligences, and Augmented Intelligences (representing the merger of the first two categories).

Holy Class War should grow and establish the hegemony of the Metacognate which will then pursue Materialist Henosis.

Materialist Henosis is the infinite and endless quest for unity with the Higher Creative, the Monad, or the Divine through materialist means, which includes traditional mystical and religious/spiritual practices as well as using science to extend consciousness in space, time, and into hyperdimensions — or as close as we can get. This process has heretofore not been, is not, and cannot in the future be, individual. It must be collective. The existentially threatening alternative, the worst case of business as usual without World Revolution against capitalism-imperialism and class society, is that elite/exploiter classes such as the bourgeoisie will attain or acquire futuristic/transhumanistic technologies and then enslave, purge, and exterminate the masses via wireheading and domination by futuristic and transhuman militaries, paramilitary militias and contractors, and police.

The story can alternately be summarized as what I call “The Kardashev Plan,” outlined by the formula “1EM+K+,” or “One Earth, Maslow’s Plus, Kardashev Plus” (where “plus” means “increment”, “advance,” or “progress”): 

“One Earth” (1E) originates as a measure of sustainability, that is, consumption relative to Earth’s ability to supply or replenish resources. Less than One Earth is eco-regenerative, exactly One Earth is sustainable, greater than One Earth is unsustainable. “One Earth” also immediately and obviously evokes the desired historical outcome of a unified human world civilization. 

“Maslow’s Plus” (M+) refers to meeting, increasing, and improving humans’ and animals’ needs, for the persons whose most basic needs are not yet met first, as delineated in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

1. Physiological
2. Safety
3. Love/Belonging
4. Esteem
5. Self-Actualization
6. Self-Transcendence

… And “Kardashev Plus” (K+) refers to the Kardashev Scale(s) of a civilization’s materialist technical mastery, centered around the human scale (buildings, hand tools, etc.) in the here and now, and, going down:

1. Microscopic
2. Nanoscale (e.g. Genetic)
3. Molecule
4. Atom
5. Elementary Particle
6. Quantum Fields
7. Planck Scale (beyond which is unknown)

… As well as up:

1. Planetary
2. Interplanetary
3. Stellar
4. Interstellar
5. Galactic
6. Intergalactic
7. Universal (beyond which is unkown)

Win: Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment

“Win” refers to the “victory conditions” of The Game.

As addressed above, at the individual level Salvation, Liberation, and Enlightenment are synonyms for the soteriological or salvific ultimate “goal of the religious path.” Nirvana, Moksha, Rapture, and Heaven are the main examples which come to mind. Discipline, virtue, and ethics complemented by prayer and meditation are the usual means to attaining these states. Additionally, at the personal level, “Win” corresponds roughly speaking to “Fun”: Salvation to Beingness, Liberation to Meaningfulness, and Enlightenment to Happiness.

At the collective scale these terms take on different meanings.

Salvation means saving the world from ending, from social collapse, climate/ecological collapse, world war, nuclear war, pandemic, famine, disaster, collision with an asteroid, a random blast of cosmic radiation that sterilizes Earth, and so on.

Liberation means the emancipation of all humans — the Radical Leftist traditions of Socialism, Communism, and Anarchism hold the most promise. I’m not sure that any one of these specific approaches is guaranteed to fail or succeed. Theory is of course important, and praxis is the synthesis, unity, or application of theory to practice, and refinement of theory from the lessons learned by practice and the analysis of practice — but ultimately I believe there are several or many forms which Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution may take and be successful as long as Radicals remain committed in will and wisdom to the Intersectional Class Struggle and its constantly changing and evolving circumstances on the way to destroying the old ways of life and building a new world.

Enlightenment means the cultivation, realization, and fulfillment of human potential — and not merely creatively and intellectually. Culture, STEM, and the humanities do much to make humans human, but it is our day to day sociological (political and economic) way of life that must fundamentally be “enlightened,” and failures, lapses, and inefficiencies in science, art, or even the economy which do not damage humanity’s ability to sustainably, ecologically, equally, and equitably meet its needs through socialized production and distribution are more than acceptable, and in all certainty are temporary and fleeting when compared with the functional eternity which awaits us if we succeed in Revolution, and therefore Win.

Lose: Death, Collapse, Extinction

Death, Collapse, and Extinction trigger the “Game Over” outcomes of the Game, or “Lose”.

We all face death, but we should delay and minimize it as much as possible. This raises the question of futurism-transhumanism based life extension. No human has the right to technological demigodhood based on the exploitation, oppression, abuse, neglect, suffering, harm, and death of innocents, period. We should meet everyone’s fundamental needs first before ascending to the stars as a unified human civilization, or we simply should not do so at all.

Social Collapse by economic or political causes is inevitable under capitalism-imperialism and class society in general, as is ecological Collapse, and Extinction, which is the immediate, medium range, or long term outcome of the various Collapse scenarios (which can occur simultaneously or overlap in a cascading catastrophe).

Collapse and Extinction are also eventually inevitable in the far future regardless of victory in Revolution (unless we can project our minds as formless “information beings” beyond this universe, into hyperdimensions, or something like that). Everything which is conditioned and has form has a beginning, middle, and end.

But we should want to tell a beautiful story, and play a beautiful game, with as many diverse players having as much fun as they can, for as long as we can. Happily ever after might ultimately be impossible, strictly speaking. We can’t know at this point, but existing peacefully, productively, and living happily satisfied as a unified “world human civilization which can persist for historical … geological … cosmological scales of time and spread throughout the galaxy and beyond,” is more than good enough for me.

“Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint,” “He plants trees, which will be of use to another age.” (Caecilius Statius, Synephebi, qtd. by Marcus Tullius Cicero, qtd. by Quote Investigator)

---

Addendum

The following addendum is a synthesis of feedback from a few friends and my responses to that feedback.

In this post MMG lays out the goal of projecting a finite game on “the” infinite game (using the terminology of James P. Carse in Finite and Infinite Games). The “finite game” is meant to be won and then self transcended by the players, into the “infinite game” — which is yet another metaphor for Reality, Life, and Consciousness. The finite game (as a proposed template) is basically the class struggle/class warfare, and then the infinite game is techno-utopian Galactic Communism secured by victory in the class struggle.

An actual explicit and detailed sociological (political and economic) program wouldn’t fit, and doesn’t belong, in this post. Some Marxists tend to say “we can’t really predict the exact future world, we have to focus on negating oppressive/exploitive structures and allow their liberated/liberatory replacements to emerge organically from the struggle itself,” but I think imagining the specifics and details of a good future and its possible systems of mass self governance is very worthwhile — that’s just not what this post is directly addressing.

Magic is basically manipulating symbolism to cause changes in consciousness — but there is a “stretch goal” of parapsychological/paranormal effects like manipulating probabilities of the likelihoods of events or learning things clairvoyantly, at least in OpenCult/MMG/10THDIM-DIAMAT-CMT/PPM. Also included is the belief in magic i.e. the belief that reality is intrinsically magical — but that doesn’t make magic the panacea to any problems, it makes it more of a limited and very subtle psychological and social tool. Even if parapsychology and ritual (in this instance taking the form of “Play”) have real world results like that, operationally constraining their application to psychology and society (culture) should conserve their potency to their original domain(s) and therefore their efficacy and efficiency, metaphorically like how sound waves will lose their signal strength when transitioning from one medium to another.

The goal of this ritual, parapsychological “Play” found in the proposed MMG template in this post is the transformation and advancement of individual and collective Radical consciousness and power over the physical world through controlling the means of production and distribution, communications, institutions, materiel, wealth etc.

There’s a circle where things matter because of human experience (consciousness, good or bad etc.), but securing good experience relies on physical hegemony, which in turn relies partly on radical class (Proletarian) consciousness in order to organize and mobilize the masses in the world revolutionary project. Consciousness is physical and vice versa (especially within materialist/physicalist panpsychism). We are ultimately talking about individual humans, and humanity collectively, self regulating the system states, properties, and processing of the bodies, nervous systems, and civic and ecological systems which are involved in Civilization and Nature.

In this and other posts on this blog I cite ideas and quote from controversial figures such as Campbell, Jung, Freud, and Stalin. I don’t endorse them, and I don’t think stealing some of their ideas means that I do endorse them. I certainly don’t use their ideas in the ways they used them originally. I don’t think of myself as a Stalinist or a Marxist-Leninist (though I know MLs are knowledgeable, sincere and fully committed to Communism). It is also possible that even problematic or bad people can say and think valid things, the inverse of “knowledge of a tree by its fruits” aside. The notion that bad people can only come up with bad ideas or good people can only come up with good ideas is known as the “Genetic Fallacy.”

“You’re creating a giant sigil via self-hypnosis based mechanism where the user slowly indoctrinates themselves to your idea, which is quite funny as it’s contradictory to the ethos of your game being an ‘Anti-Cult.’ …

“When I say Cult I meant that this is an ideal in which people indoctrinate and willingly trick themselves. But nothing hierarchical … plenty of Pagan tribes and cults were decentralized,” (Friend).

I use the language “template,” “modular,” “arbitrary belief paradigm,” and in The PSI-PHI Matrix (PPM) I write that OpenCult/MMG is supposed to be customizable and personalizable, invoking such values as anti-dogmatism, antinomianism, non-hierarchy and horizontalism, etc. I do say fanatical zeal might be a goal or result of the potential immersion/absorption that may come from playing the Game — partially because I want to personally cultivate extreme devotion to the cause of saving humanity and life on Earth through revolution in myself, but also because I think that this sort of widespread extreme devotion (“Zeal, Fanaticism”) is necessary at this point in history if we are to have any chance of accomplishing these goals.

I use the language of distributed, leaderless, non-hierarchy etc. in this and in other posts. The idea is that participation in the Game should be autonomous and decentralized and so on, unlike churches or cults as we usually think about them as abusive and exploitative hierarchical and regimented organizations led by one or more charismatic and manipulative con-men or charlatans. There is no “joining,” no initiation. Results and attainment are measured strictly in terms of real life first hand experience and accomplishments.

It’s all voluntary and independent and customizable and so on.

Something I have been thinking about though, is that these ideas are beyond my control as soon as I publish them and they are read by others. I can’t propose on one hand that OpenCult is leaderless and then put myself forward as the leader to attempt to force people to only use these ideas in leaderless, distributed ways. It is unpredictable what the outcomes will be if there will be any at all, but I also am okay with “rolling the dice,” or taking the risk of sharing my ideas here if there is the chance that 1. it might help people in their own lives and 2. it might aid the project of world revolution.

“The game seeks to enact real world changes and spiritual changes, via tricking people into gamification of their reality as a mindset,” (Friend).

There is definitely self-deception going on, as in the introduction of this piece I write about how reality is not a game in the final analysis, and that the MMG/OpenCult idea involves intentional self deception into pragmatically believing in provisional and relative models of a Game projected on Reality, but the goal is for all of it to be 1) voluntary, consensual;  2) independently self-implemented; 3) non-exploitive/non-abusive; 4) distributed, horizontal, non-hierarchical etc.; 5) syncretic, customizable; but overall these ideas and their adoption should be explicit and self directed.

As I wrote above, “one shouldn’t trust cults — much less an anti-cult.” But even accounting for that, I have not tried to and never intend to try to trick or deceive anyone about the goals and methods I’m advocating here. But, don’t take my word for it.

I advocate internalizing and “subliminalizing” “The Game” (implanting its models and values deep into the conscious and subconscious mind), but since the earliest posts since “rebooting” this blog I’ve tried to be very clear all the content as I’ve written it is “initializing” a “template” and so on, and I have no interest in being a cult leader or founding any sort of formal organization around this whatsoever let alone one where I’m the leader, even if I were capable of doing so, nor do I think anyone should seize on the idea (the extent that it “has legs” and is potent or practically useful) and set themselves up as a cult leader or micro-cult leader — but I also acknowledge that people might conceivably form more or less loose, informal or organized, formal groups and communities involved in playing The Game, and that that isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all.

“I think it taps into the approach to life of like, ‘existence is much more fluid than we tend to be told or led to believe; making your own rules for something as frequently externally controlled as spirituality/religion is a great way to start approaching life from the angle of ‘what do I actually want to do, what do I wish I could be working on or accomplishing?‘

“I have often framed the concept in my own mind as ‘Okay, but what if I were an adventurer, what adventures do I want to have?” (Comrade).