“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.”
– Albert Camus
Last week, I wrote about something that I think about often. If someone was given the reigns to lead a population, how would they, or even myself behave? Since I was a child, I was obsessed with strategy games. The usual point and click type of civilization builders. The stress of how to manage local resources like food, wood, money, and people was always incredibly thrilling and really helped shape my world in a rather strange way when I was a kid. Having an understanding of the basic building blocks of humanity certainly helped me in my early development. However, video games are not reality. I have learned that managing any complex system takes more than a single person, let alone a team of trained individuals dedicated to their task.
The notion of clicking on a group of people, then clicking on a resource to collect seems so simple at such a young age. There was no programmed response for the people you are clicking on to complain, or to voice any hardships they may experience from their new objective. They simply walk to the resource, and begin to collect for the greater good. Like a trail of ants they would endure any plight to complete my original demands. I imagine many people in places of leadership wish their subordinates would behave similarly.
I realized rather early that if everyone followed the orders issued, then the people who get to play the game would benefit greatly, without the individuals (or Non Player Characters; NPC) understanding or even caring about the larger implications of any these actions. They would simply collect the resource and go on trusting that those in command would have a reason for their compliance. If an enemy attacked their civilization, they could be transformed into warriors to help defend the prosperity of the community they were part of; not in any way worried about the sociological implications of their lack of free will. The life of the NPC is incredibly vapid. It’s just a video game after all.
I believe part of the maturation of the young video game addict is to realize the disconnect from reality as soon as possible. You simply can’t just force any one individual to collect the resource, nor can you force them to fight on your behalf. In order for the serf to comply with any action, they likely would require some sort of incentive to do so. Money seems to be a catch-all for this incentive. Otherwise, there is a strong chance you will not be having your resource collected at the rate you desire nor your enemy leaders crushed by your overwhelming forces. I wish more leaders realized this sooner.
However, in real life, there is a rather complicated relationship the leader often commands; the well-being of the individual who is issued the order. If the leader has reigns over the means of survival for the individual such as food, water, and shelter, then the individual is highly likely to behave the in same fashion as the NPC video game character. If the leader needs to tighten their grip on the individual, they often need to restrict access to any of these basic human needs. Or even just give them more of what they needed to begin with.
“For the first time the peasant has seen real freedom – Freedom to eat his bread, freedom from starvation.” – Vladimir Lenin
In our world, this is pretty clear from the start. There are leaders, and there are followers. The leaders issue a decree for what the followers are to do, and the followers do it or risk repercussion. So long as you follow the orders, you are likely left alone to go about your business. But when you hear the knock on your neighbor’s door, you had best be quiet for fear of invoking the same wrath that is being bestowed upon them.
In older “more barbaric times” the punishments for ignoring orders would be quite severe. Everything from private torture, to public execution. An absolutely frightening thought. Imagine clicking on one of those poor NPC civilians, and deleting them in front of everyone to force their compliance. (Luckily most games are not programmed in this way, or we would likely have a large spike in sociopaths). This sort of understanding helped the leaders issue further commands, because the serfs below feared the consequences of “treason”.
But luckily, we live in an “enlightened” future… right?
I might propose that while our times are less like the dark ages – the truncheon remains the same, if not more psychologically damaging. If you were to ignore an order from our esteemed leaders now, your business could be shut down and your livelihood destroyed. This would effectively leave you ostracized from the benefits of society as you would have little-to-no productive value to trade ideas effectively in today’s culture. There is a sad unspoken truth that those without a livelihood are simply not considered part of the conversation in today’s day and age. I mean, if you are homeless why would anyone listen to you?
If our glorious leaders were to strip you of all of these things, they would be able to silence your thoughts on how to proceed in troubling times. You would have no way of convincing society at large of how you were put into such an awful position; a thought that frequently keeps me awake at night. How can anyone know what to watch out for if the failures are the topics we aren’t allowed to speak about?
However, what If some individuals attempt to speak up about this power imbalance? What if local communities band together to lead themselves through the chaos? The whispers of a national divorce become more like a dull roar as we start to see more and more positions of leadership coming into question. All around the country, and even the world, some of the people who hold everything up are starting to deny the orders they are given. Medical freedom aside, the ability for anyone to protect their means of existence in society is something worth fighting for. If you are given an order that you do not agree with, I believe the best response is…
Nothing in life is ever as simple as point and click.