Born To Die: Death as Narrative in Shin Megami Tensei 4

“And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown,

A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought,
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot?”

-Charles Wesley, Hymns for Children

                Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare has come under fire recently for its memorably bad handing of a soldier grieving a dead companion. The scene has already been analyzed thoroughly by others and inspired Press E To, a game that tackles the subject with far more gravity.

                You can say what you want about the scene in question, but Advanced Warfare’s attempt to address the finality of death in a big-budget video game may have been doomed from the start. The early history of the medium was built around the assumption that death is never truly the end. Whether it’s Mario collecting 100 coins to gain another life or Arcade machines trading real money for imitation lives, the show always went on for players with sufficient skill/quarters.

                It is not impossible for games to tackle the subjects of death and grieving, but it can be difficult. Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy 7, considered one of the most traumatizing events of many a childhood, falls apart emotionally when you ask “why didn’t they just use a Phoenix Down?” Why doesn’t the friend in Advanced Warfare just respawn? When will he be available as a DLC character? Grief is predicated on the permanency of death, something which game narratives do not generally support.

                There are, of course, games that subvert this assumption. Whether it’s a high-concept subversion like Lose/Lose (where each enemy’s death permanently deletes a computer file and the player’s death deletes the program) or more standard subversions like ZombiU (where player character deaths are permanent), the straight trope of “revolving door afterlife” can and has been avoided.

                As much as this trope has been subverted, it exists for a reason. Video games are a (generally) interactive medium – the player can make the character fail in a way that conflicts with the story. If we assume the narrative of Super Mario Brothers is “Mario hops and bops and defeats Bowser,” we realize just how easy it is to subvert this narrative. The player can refuse to move forward. The player can intentionally kill herself. The player can prioritize collecting coins over saving the Princess. The creators can punish the player for diverting from this narrative (limited time to finish levels, “game over” screens which force the player to restart the game), but they cannot force the player to win.

                If we position video games as contracts between the player and the creator, the necessity of multiple lives becomes clear. The creator has the right to punish the player for an inadequate performance – losing lives, lowering scores, locking off content. However, the creator also has responsibilities to the player. Make the game too easy, and players will tire of it and quit. Make it too hard, and players will become frustrated and quit. Make it unplayable (*cough* AssCreed *cough*), and the player will quit.

                The player also has rights and responsibilities in our theoretical contract. The player has the right to buy or not buy the game, the right to decide she does not like the game and quit, the right to play the game in a subversive fashion that conflicts with the creator’s design. On the side of responsibilities, the player must either accept the game’s design and work with it or accept the consequences of playing subversively.

                Multiple lives are not the only method of cheating death; we also have the save/load system.[i] A creator might be able to reasonably expect a player to finish Super Mario Brothers in a single play session, but what about Final Fantasy 7? Is it really reasonable to expect a player to restart a 40+ hour game after a single death? In these cases, forcing a player to finish the game in a single life and a single sitting would prevent the vast majority of players from ever taking it up, let alone playing it to conclusion.

                Multiple lives games like Super Mario Brothers still present the player with a failure state – the dreaded “Game Over” which forces the player to start again from scratch. Save/Load games cannot force the player to start over from the beginning, just from the last save point. Multiple lives games can punish inadequate performance with finality, Save/Load games can only be lost if the player gives up.

                There is one final right we have not discussed: the right to infinite play. Outside of arcade machines or subscription service games, a player who purchases a game theoretically has the right to play it ad infinitum. It does not matter how many times I fail at Super Mario Brothers and get the Game Over screen, I have the right to try again and again until my game cartridge/NES dies.

                Or until I die.

                This is perhaps the reason why this trope cannot be completely avoided. Even if Lose/Lose deletes itself, I can always reinstall it. My player character may die permanently in Zombie U, but I will get another one. My stupid little brother may delete my FF7 save file, but a new game can be started.  As long as the player remains alive, the possibility of infinite replay remains intact. To remove the possibility of infinite replay is to violate the common contract between creator and player.

                Since games cannot legally kill the player for failure (right? I’m not a lawyer), all games substitute the idea that failure is met with a narrative dead end. Death forces the player to restart the level, to restart from the last save point, to switch to a new player character, to reinstall the game. Failure is met with a frustration, the understanding that the game cannot continue until the player gets her shit together.

                Now let’s talk about Shin Megami Tensei 4. Spoilers follow.

                SMT4 is a fairly standard JRPG and a completely standard Shin Megami Tensei game. Collect and fuse demons, run around a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, make choices that affect your alignment, etc. There are a few nice little twists and some fairly impressive use of the 3DS’s hardware, but if you’ve played an Atlus RPG before you will feel right at home.

                Like most JRPGs, SMT4 uses Save/Load system. When the main character dies, the game can resumed from the last save point. Unlike most games, death does not have to be the end of the narrative.

                Upon death, the player resumes consciousness in the Underworld. The narrative of the game continues as the player meets Charon, the overworked god in charge of ferrying the souls of the dead across the River Styx. Charon, fed up with the “mountains of the dead” waiting to be ferried across, offers to let the player return to life in exchange for money (Macca). If the player does not have enough money, Charon will even offer to open a tab!

Lines After Death: Wait to reincarnate or pay to live again?

                In one sense, this device simply allows a safety net for players who have forgotten to save recently. Instead of losing however many hours of game time since their last save, they can take a financial penalty and return to the entrance of the dungeon where they died. However, Charon also clearly exists within the narrative of the game – the player can receive side quests from him and his two assistants.

                SMT4 combines the Arcade system of “money for infinite lives” and the Save/Load system, while adding a unique narrative flair. Instead of subverting the trope from the usual end (trying to make death more realistically “permanent”), it subverts from a fresh angle (death/player failure is incorporated into the narrative). Instead of punishing the player by ending the narrative, Atlus rewards the player’s death with additional narrative content.

                It could be argued that Atlus is subverting the player’s ability to subvert – not even intentionally “committing suicide” can liberate the player from Atlus’ narrative. However, I feel that it is more accurate to view this as a player-positive feature. While the player is financially punished for failure, they are not narratively punished. Whereas dying in Final Fantasy 7 takes the player completely out of the narrative, dying in Shin Megami Tensei 4 does not interrupt immersion. It is a more feasible to play through SMT4 without ever saving or reloading than the vast majority of RPGs.

                I am particularly inclined to give Atlus the benefit of the doubt on Shin Megami Tensei 4 for a related reason. While SMT4 includes the usual three Law/Chaos/Neutral endings, it also has a fourth option: liberating the entire universe from existence.

                In the “White Ending,” the player decides that the only way to end the suffering of humanity is to annihilate all humans and triggers a chain reaction that destroys the entire universe. This is not presented in game as a “bad ending” (although the linked video describes it as such) but as an equally valid alternative to the others. Finishing the game with the White Ending still unlocks the New Game+ option without any sort of penalty.

                In providing the White Ending, Atlus gives the player a level of choice not many other games can boast. Personally, I found siding with the Angels, Demons, or Humans of SMT4 equally depressing prospects. The White Ending gave me a chance to embrace my feelings of nihilism about the setting and wipe the whole thing out. It felt something like quitting the game, like refusing to side with a faction I could not morally support. The only difference was that my choice was supported by the narrative instead of punished as a poor performance. In destroying that fictional universe, I found some measure of real-world peace.

                Shin Megami Tensei 4 subverted my expectations of video game death in a way that was both unexpected and pleasing. But it did so by becoming less realistic, not more.

                I suppose the question becomes, “Is it possible for video games to address the issue of death in a manner that is both realistic and pleasing?” I’m not sure. Real humans and video game characters are both born to die, but their deaths have very different meanings. When video game characters die, it is usually because the player failed in some way and there is usually a way to reverse it. Real humans die regardless of how they lived and it cannot be reversed for love or money.

                But then, that’s only going by what science tells us, and science isn’t the only game in town. Maybe the theologians are right. Maybe we do get to respawn in a world without pain, or else reincarnate in a new body with a new chance to get it right. Maybe the Death, the Last Enemy, is more like a Final Boss than we ever dared to imagine.

                So whether we get one shot at defeating Death or as many as we need, choose your character class and equipment with care. I hear that Bastard plays dirty.

Waked by the trumpet's sound,
I from my grave shall rise,
And see the Judge, with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies!

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[i] As a friend once said, “Save/Reload is the most powerful spell in any game.”

Men Among the Ruins: The Death of Normativity, Otaku, and Male Power Groups - Part Three & Conclusion

Part One
Part Two


History’s Unmarked Grave – Divergent Responses to the End of Normativity

Database Animals: MRAs vs. Otaku

I have previously mentioned the work of Azuma as a major influence, and I still believe that it provides the most accurate model for the development of the otaku subculture in Japan. Azuma traces the development and change of consumer tastes in narratives from modern realism based in a Grand Narrative (normativity), to hybrid fictional Grand Narratives which provided a replacement for the Grand Narratives lost in society as a whole, to complete postmodern rejection of Grand Narratives in favor of a “database” of affective elements with no Grand Narrative at all.
Much of Azuma’s model cannot be applied to Western MRAs, if only because the historical turning points he uses to define the era shifts do not hold much weight outside of Japan. The 1970 Red Army Incident, the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo terrorist attacks, the end of Evangelion; these are not turning points in the lives of our Western MRAs.

Although some of Azuma’s historical signposts are international in nature (such as the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall), they have different implications for different societies. The fall of the Berlin Wall may have been an alienating, normativity-destabilizing event for Socialists but it was a normativity-strengthening event for Capitalists, a concrete demonstration that “we are right and they are wrong.” 

Azuma himself says that the fall of the Berlin Wall was not as important in Japan as the Aum Shinrikyo attacks. Similarly, while the fallout of WWII shook the underpinnings of Japanese normativity, it tended to reinforce the inherent “rightness” of Americanism for Americans.
To get to the point, both otaku and Western men experienced the death of a post-sittlichkeit normativity, but they experienced it in very different times and in very different ways. For otaku, it was the collapse of the fictional narrative as shown in the 1995 end of Evangelion. An entire generation experienced “Eva Shock” as director Hideaki Anno’s narrative normativity collapsed around them.

However, Japanese narrative normativity had already been decoupled from actual historicity. The end of WWII, the collapse of the 1980s bubble economy, the loss of lifetime employment and the death of the middle class had already reduced otaku narrative to clichéd apings of history. Narratives such as Gundam were not meant to be commentaries on “the real world” so much as pastiches for pleasurable consumption.

By focusing in on the technical details of fictional giant robots and the timeline of the “Universal Century,” otaku were able to assuage their feelings of alienation from “real” society by engaging in a fictional world which still held a sense of normativity. Evangelion merely tipped over a fictional edifice which was already rotten and on the verge of collapse.
Western “nice guys” started out with a fictional normativity (the Monomyth) which still had some semblance of reality. Although Western society saw a similar shaking of normativity in the 1960s and 70s, its effects were not nearly as destabilizing as events in Japan.

America in particular was still driven by an evangelion of progress and free markets, which strengthened normativity in the 1980s with the return of normative narratives – the fight against the “Evil Empire.” While Japan’s economy plummeted in the 1990s, America’s took off. Our narratives were proven right, not wrong.

While Western normativity (particularly American normativity) has weathered history better than Japanese normativity, it seems that no culture can fend off the creeping advance of alienation forever. The long survival of Monomyth-esque normativity, with its emphasis on moral virtue and the triumph of good (nice guys) over evil (jerks) makes it particularly painful for Western men because it is at odds with the sexual revolution. Men who attempt to cling to traditional morality by clinging to traditional gender roles are left exhausted, depressed, and desperate for meaning.

This is the main point of divergence between otaku and MRAs. While otaku have largely moved beyond the need for traditional normativity and Grand Narratives (though there are right-wing elements within otaku circles), MRAs insist on developing alternate models to replace the old.

Ex-nice guys have not continued to the next stage of history, in which mutual recognition becomes the basis for a new sittlichkeit, they have instead developed new Grand Narratives which keep the Other at a distance. PUAs embrace a new social contract which maintains women as objects, MRAs divide the world into “us” and “them,” and the fully alienated who have lost all normative compass lash out with threats of death and rape like the wounded animals they are.
It is perhaps no coincidence that these tendencies are so prevalent in Western fandom, the equivalents of Japanese otaku. From complaints about “fake geek girls” who do not properly conform to male fan normativity to internet crusades against female video game critics, male geek culture is a breeding ground for male alienation.

Like their Japanese predecessors, Western male fans have retreated into the fortress of geek culture and are defending its peculiar normative institutions to the death. For these men, fictional worlds are the last place where men are still active agents and women are still objects, where the hero still gets the girl and the villains still get their comeuppance.

Engaging in prophecy is always a crapshoot, but I feel justified in thinking that an Eva Shock equivalent is coming to the West. The rotten edifice of Western male-driven geek culture normativity cannot stand forever. It is teetering, and headed for the inevitable crash. I do not wish to downplay the negative effects of Gamergate, but it looks very much like The Last Stand of the Monomyth. The very extremes to which these MRAs have resorted, their death threats and organized terrorist actions, show the extent to which they have been driven against the wall. The point is not that we can sit back and let history take its course, the point is that we be confident in standing against the agents of a discredited normativity.

As for MRAs and so on outside of geek culture, they have even less of a supporting edifice. “Nice Guys” are the products of a transitional age, and once the transition is complete (or more advanced), there will be no source to spawn them. When the pool of alienated “nice guys” dries up, so will the candidate pool of potential MRAs and PUAs. The male-entitlement crowd, like the poor, will always be with us, but their days as a culturally relevant force are numbered.

Conclusions

To be honest, I don’t really have much left to say, other than a few words of caution. First, this is perhaps the least academic paper I have ever written (appropriate, since I am not currently in academia). Tracking down and critically analyzing, say, a particular “nice guy” rant or MRA webpage frankly seemed like more effort than it was worth for the current moment. My goal was not to absolutely demonstrate the rightness of my interpretation, but to build a tentative infrastructure for future analysis. I have painted with a very broad brush, caveat lector.

Second, this paper was written as part of a much longer ongoing effort to test the applicability of Azuma’s model outside of Japanese contexts. I have retread a lot of ground, feeling out the space ahead of me carefully before moving forward. I am still figuring out what I’m doing and how to do it, so please pardon the mess.

Third, for all of the respect I have for Azuma, I approach his model from a less Kojevian and more Hegelian angle. The biggest difference, as mentioned, is in the definition of modernity. Azuma (and Kojeve) see the modern as still having normativity; for Hegel the modern is defined by the death of normativity. If anything, what Azuma labels as “modern” should be labeled either “pre-modern” or “pre-modern to modern transitional.”

However, I would agree that contemporary otaku culture is legitimately post-modern, in that moe elements provide a post-enlightenment normative structure which is not subject to alienation. While otaku may still suffer alienation in reference to society as a whole, they do not suffer it within their mutually recognized normative subculture. If anything, their powerful emotional responses to narratives constructed within this mutual framework demonstrate just how de-alienated otaku culture has become.

Last, I would encourage readers not to paint with these broad strokes when dealing with individual MRAs. The main shortcomings of Hegelian criticism manifest themselves when it is over-applied. Just as Newtonian physics break down when applied to sub-atomic particles, broad Hegelian eras can break down when applied to individuals. Transitions between eras are not total “once and for all” events but rather ebbs and flows in a very gradual process. History may have “ended” in 1806 at the Battle of Jena, but not everyone has gotten the memo.

It is under this last point that I understand the Gamergate crowd. As culture becomes more modern and less central, we will all start to move through history at different speeds. It is easier than ever for a subculture bubble to remove itself from society and evolve separately. Social Justice Warriors and Men’s Rights Activists exist in the same time and place, but not in the same Era of History. The current struggle is like two previously separate tectonic plates crashing together.

This is, perhaps, why both sides cast themselves as victims. Some great external force has shaken their way of life. Neither side asked for this conflict, but conflict is inevitable as the two plates grind into each other and shake the people living on them.

Sometimes the mere existence of other normative frameworks is enough to drive humans to threaten, persecute, and even murder each other. We have seen this before. We will see it again. The goal is to truly understand what is happening, why it is happening, and to reconcile with each other – not to defeat the “Other.”

Men Among the Ruins: The Death of Normativity, Otaku, and Male Power Groups - Part Two

Part One

Dead Knights, Dull Armor – Discredited Normativity and Male Rage

This is the second reason I brought up otaku at the start of this article: thanks to the works of Hiroki Azuma, most research on otaku in Japan has focused on a very Hegelian (via Kojeve) theory of the death of normativity in Japanese society.

In a nutshell: the evolution of the otaku subculture neatly demonstrates a parallel development in post-war Japanese society as a whole, namely, the move from pre-modern normativity to modern industrial rationalist normativity to postmodern ‘database’ animalist non-normativity. While I have my gripes with Azuma (not the least of which is his portrayal of modernity as normative), I cannot help but draw parallels between the death of social normativity in post-modern Japan and the broken social contract which motivates MRAs.
I won’t spend too much time explaining database animalism in this section. The critical point for the moment is isolating the reason why the rhetoric of entitlement resonates so powerfully with male-power groups. It is not enough to simply say that they are wrong, not when the message travels from host to host so easily. And in a sense, they are right. The social contract has been violated, it has been rewritten – not by devious women, but by the conditions of modern society. Much like the study of cults and racist organizations, the point of interest is not the ideology in itself, but rather how it can motivate rational beings.

Hegel’s Three Stages of History

I just did a summary on Hegel’s three stages of history in this post, and he hasn’t written anything new on the subject since then. Let’s move on.

The White Knights: “Nice Guys” vs. Hegel

I would place the “nice guys” into the transitional period between the pre-modern and modern periods because of the sense of betrayal they feel at not being rewarded for following what they see as the social contract. Indeed, on the internet, individuals of this type are often referred to as “white knights,” acting out a misplaced sense of chivalry on forums and in online games. While these individuals may not belong to the late pre-modern/early modern period in other facets of their life and worldview, in the area of sexual politics, they are either relics of an earlier age or intentionally affecting as such.

The White Knight in his natural environment

Certainly, the internet posts and forum rants of this type express a longing for gentler times, unaware (through genuine ignorance or intentional ignorance) of how rose-tinted their glasses are. The image of the white knight swooping in to the rescue is appropriate, for “nice guys” seem to model their relationships less on reality than on fairy tales. They exhibit a version what Azuma refers to as “fictional realism,” applying the normativities of fiction (white knights and princesses, gentlemen and ladies) to reality. They are not interested in returning to the realities of pre-feminist gender relations, but to an idealized fictional version which rewards moral virtue with romantic satisfaction.
When this fails to materialize, “nice guys” feel betrayed. They have done everything right, and yet other men (who are less virtuous) are rewarded with the princess. They are gallant knights, and yet women choose the cur. There is no reward to virtue, no “fairy-tale ending,” no proper output to the proper input. Hence the common lament that “women love jerks.”

“Style,” one of the most popular PUA gurus, comments on this very same phenomena. He tells a story about a friend who courted a woman for years, while attempting to live up to the ideal of the gentleman. He bought her flowers, asked her father for permission to marry her, took her to the best restaurants, refused to have sex before marriage, etc. – only to walk in on her in bed with a “jerk.”

This story may very well be apocryphal, but it gets the point across. The social contract which “nice guys” are operating under simply does not exist. Or rather, if it does exist, it exists only on the side of the “nice guys” who profess it, not those whom they expect to receive a reward from.

As silly as this may seem, consider it from the nice guys' position. They see this gallant normativity as a form of self-sacrificial love, as a willingness to expose themselves to the ridicule of a crass and unromantic world for the sake of another person. There is a truly pre-modern element to this, an understanding that they are operating according to a higher truth than that of our crass modern world.

After all, this is how the movie plays out, is it not? Particularly the part about clinging to belief in “true love” in a world that have given up on it. The hero is called out of the emotionally dead modern world to a higher mission, overcoming obstacles and facing opposition. He is rejected, mocked, and taken advantage of, but in the end love overcomes all opposition. The crass, the craven and lowly “jerks” are given their just desserts and the hero is paired with the perfect other.

This Monomyth-esque blueprint is fine for story-telling, but when we make it a blueprint for our lives, disaster follows. Women are not the prize at the end of a story, but active moral agents. For all of the nobility and self-sacrifice of heroes in stories, when we try to force someone else (female or male) into becoming our prize, we are not the hero but rather the evil sorcerer trying to trap the princess in our tower. Self-sacrifice does not count as noble if it is sacrifice for ourselves.

But take a moment to shed a tear for the noble “nice guy,” who strives so hard to give women what he thinks they want – no matter how little they want it.

I lead with the “nice guy” because MRAs and PUAs pick up from where the “nice guy” drops off. Both PUAs and MRAs recruit aggressively from the pool of disaffected self-proclaimed “nice guys.” This is how most of them started out; trying to scrape together meaning for their lives once the dream collapsed. Once the Monomyth fails, alternate normativities arise to take its place.
Social Animals: PUAs vs. Hegel

Moving on to PUAs, I would position them firmly within Hegel’s modern period, somewhere between the “moral valet” and Azuma’s “alienated normativity.” Much like the moral valet, they have seen the inherent silliness of the “nice guy” normative system and reject it. And just like that cynic, they paradoxically find moral superiority in rejecting a morality based on nothing more than human prejudice. It is the last moral stand of those without morals, a refusal to accept a system of morality that has no true basis.

However, PUAs are not pure moral valets, for they do operate according to a normative understanding of the world. Their ideology is not built around mere nihilism, but rather on a system of techniques for bringing order to that most “other” of the others: women. They construct elaborate timelines from initial meeting to sex, with detailed phases, shifts, checks, balances, and so on which purport to offer a fail-proof method not just for seduction, but for controlling female mind. This, more than sex, is the draw of PUA systems. Any person with a will and a weapon can physically force another person into sex. The desired goal is not forced sex, but to control a woman’s perceptions.

For example, one common PUA technique is “value-building.” Value-building consists of presenting oneself as an object worthy of a woman’s attention without overt bragging. It consists of little things – intentionally ignoring a conversation partner, “reluctantly” telling interesting life stories, and a thousand other little methods of establishing social dominance. They key is not forcing a woman into sex, but manipulating the social atmosphere so that you appear as a person worth knowing. By explaining tricks and tips of this nature, PUA guides claim to unravel the mysteries of the female mind.

Style’s mentor “Mystery” begins The Mystery Method with a rather telling introduction which situates his perspective on “The Game.” In his mind, PUAs are nothing less than the next step of evolution. Whereas the Darwinian goal of sex is to produce offspring, the advent of contraception and sexual liberation has changed the nature of success. PUAs are clever social animals, intent not on reproduction but satisfaction, running circles around the clumsy dinosaurs that still operate under the obsolete model of marriage and childbirth.
This model may be pure drivel, but Mystery sets it at the beginning of what is perhaps the most influential PUA guide ever written in order to provide context. While neophyte PUAs make be initially attracted to the idea of limitless sex, they are hooked by the idea of unraveling the mysteries of the Other, and then indoctrinated into a new normative system which provides meaning to life.

It cannot be emphasized enough that the PUA movement’s main driving force is not sexual conquest, but rather a total life system for bringing order and meaning to the lives of disaffected men. It is a structure which provides meaning, order, and even a sense of enlightenment; a sense that one has surpassed their previous, limited self. As Style later said, “The point was women; the result was men.”

As I said, it is best to position PUA ideology as a product of the modern period. It is not seen as part of an eternal order of the heavens (as in Antigone), but as one of many normative systems which atomized individuals can freely choose between. PUAs may consider their system the best and most true, but it is not an eternal, unchangeable dogma. Mystery presents it as a part of evolutionary theory, a step in a system of change. It is, however, difficult to say whether this new normativity is genuinely held by its practitioners (and is thus a hybrid modern-pre-modern ‘transitional’ normativity) or is held in a detached, ironic fashion (and is thus an ‘alienated’ normativity). I suppose it all comes down to the individual practitioner. All that can be said for sure is that it is not a truly sittlichkeit normativity.

 
Social Justice Warriors: MRAs vs. Hegel

It is no coincidence that the MRA movement has also arisen in the modern world. A pre-modern individual would not be able to conceive of rebelling against the existing order, but a modern individual can attack it as unfair human innovation which can (and should) be changed. While there have been what we might term “proto-MRAs” in the past, fighting against first-and-second-wave feminism, they largely took the role of protectors of what they considered to be the natural order. It was natural for the man to be the head of the household, it was natural for the man to work and the woman to raise the children. These were not seen as the most convenient order, but as the only possible moral order.
Conversely, MRAs do not generally position themselves as upholders of a lost moral order, but as subversives, as rebels fighting against a woman-made social order which is unfair to men. In an attempt to sound reasonable and impartial, many will even admit that the previous patriarchal society was unfair to women (although the more vitriolic consider women to be worth less than animals). The rhetoric is not that we must restore the natural order, but that we must restore the rights of men to a changing, mutable order.

Many MRAs do not consider themselves to be enemies of women, just enemies of those evil, scheming women who wish to dictate the behavior of men. The tired term “Femi-Nazis” is tossed around and the lunatic fringe of feminism is claimed to be normative. Gynocratic conspiracies are seen lurking behind the most mundane issues. Around dyed hair, beware indeed.

Oh, I get it!

I mentioned racist groups earlier, and MRAs resemble nothing so much as white-pride activists (as distinct from white-power activists). White-pride activists do not (publicly) claim that the white race is superior or that whites are destined to dominate and control all other races. They claim they only want the same dignity that other races are afforded; after all, if we can talk about “Black pride” or “Asian pride,” why not “White pride?”

MRAs and white-pride activists both see themselves as correctives against civil rights movements gone too far. In their minds, the civil rights push for equality has reversed itself, and a once-dominant group has become persecuted on the basis of their gender or skin color. By recognizing (begrudgingly, but still) the legitimacy of previous civil-rights movements, they seek to establish the legitimacy of their own complaints. More importantly, by not positioning themselves as “haters” and mimicking the language of egalitarianism, they feel justified in attacking their perceived enemies. After all, they don’t hate women, just those women. They don’t hate minorities, just those minorities.

In a bizarre twist on Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, these groups claim to judge their enemies, not on the color of their skin or gender, but on the content of their character. Of course, the “content of their character” is here defined as “whether or not they agree with our ideology.” By claiming they are fighting for equality, they are able to position anyone who opposes them as enemies of equality. Simply denying the validity of the group’s more bizarre claims or even defending a target of their abuse is seen as ample proof that an individual is the enemy of true egalitarianism.

Turning back to MRAs exclusively, it is not unusual to see MRAs lambasting their opponents for not upholding the values of feminism. For example, they may engage in “slut shaming,” claiming that a woman has slept their way to the top, and thus provides a poor example for other women. Alternately, they may attack anyone seeking increased representation for women in media where they are traditionally underrepresented (or represented as giggling nymphs). By treating calls for equal representation as calls for extraordinary representation, they position themselves as resisting “inequality.” This of course echoes white-pride resistance to affirmative action policies or teaching non-European-male history in classrooms as “unequal” representation.

For MRAs, the “real” issue is not whether or not women are underrepresented in, say, video games. Even if they are underrepresented, any corrective action or public statement in support of better representation is seen as a demand for extraordinary representation. In their minds, “Women should be better represented in video games” and “Your main character must be a independent womyn or we will use our female sorcery to cut off your dick while you sleep” are equivalent statements.

MRAs are without a doubt cynical, in that they view normativity as a battleground which is up for grabs. However, it is difficult to portray them as fully alienated, in that they still operate according to an overarching normativity and still display moral outrage. This outrage, this bubbling anger over the disparity between the real world and ideal world positions MRAs at the middle of the modern era, not at its end.

Next Time: History’s Unmarked Grave – Divergent Responses to the End of Normativity

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[BoRT Nov. 2014] Lebensraum and Ichsraum: Self-Portrait in Civilization 4

Nov. 2014 Blogs of the Round Table           

 “What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.”
           
            -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

            -Flavor text for the Superconductors technology, Civilization 4

            Confession: I am not what you’d call a homemaker.

            My apartment only has two pieces of furniture that I actually own – a bed and bookshelves. The walls are completely bare unless you count white paint. I take the time to throw my clothing in the closet, but everything else I own is in cardboard boxes strewn across the floor. I sit on couch cushions because I can’t be bothered to buy a couch. Form does not follow function in my living environments, functions follow functions.

            I have a sizable collection of coffee-table books, but no coffee tables.

            This lack of concern for living environments is reflected in how I play games. When Skyrim’s Hearthfire expansion came out, I had more fun collecting wood and stone to build houses than decorating/living in the house. My Sims houses are storage containers for skill-improving items and showers. For me, houses are places where you put stuff you don’t want to carry around, not an end to themselves.

            This does not mean, however, that I do not carve out spaces for my own.

By posting this image,
I have doomed myself
To a 30-hour marathon

                Enter Civilization 4, the 2005 game that has consumed more of my waking hours than any other form of media. If you’ve never played a Civilization game, I cannot recommend it. If you don’t like strategy games, it will be a waste of your time and money. If you do like strategy games, it will steal the bulk of your free time for the rest of your natural life.

                I was briefly able to escape the lure of Civ 4 for a glorious year or two by uninstalling it and destroying the game disc. Then a well-meaning friend bought me a Steam copy. Le sigh. Now I can never truly escape it.

                But in a sense, I do not want to escape this game. It’s like an old sweater or a beloved pair of jeans. The moment I hear the music of the opening video, I am already enthralled. When I select the “New Game” option, my mind is whirling with the possibilities, all of the possible permutations of options, maps, nations, and leaders. Even before the game starts, I have my moves planned out a hundred steps in advance. I know each modifier, just where to put the slider on the scales to create the exact experience I am craving.

"The same thing we do every night, Monty.
Try to take over the world!"

                The basic concept of Civilization is simple: you are put in charge of a group of nomadic humans who are ready to settle down and start a family civilization. You will guide these people, or rather, this people-group, from learning how to hunt and fish all the way to space ships and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Along the way you will come into contact and conflict with other civilizations. As each civilization’s borders spread, land and resources that can be peacefully exploited run out and war becomes inevitable.

               

               Even without the material issues of land and resources, Civilization 4 also raises tensions between civilizations that have different government civics and religions. And of course, some leaders are simply more war-like. Though there are many different ways to win the game (technology, culture, diplomacy, conquest, and highest score), the easiest and fastest way to win is to exterminate or subjugate your rivals. At the end of the game there will only be one civilization which truly stands “the test of time.”

                As I play a game of Civilization 4, my nation, my people become a reflection of my personality. I make choices which impact the virtual lives of my subjects – I choose which buildings to build, which technology to prioritize, what type of government we will have, which religion we will follow, and where to expand our borders. Changes in government are called “revolutions,” but whether my civilization is a slave-holding fascist theocracy or a liberal democratic ecotopia depends on one person’s whim. Governments can be overthrown but the Leader, the central governing consciousness, cannot. I am the incarnate spirit of a nation, of a people.

                I tend to build civilizations with strong culture and technology, not because I am dedicated to peaceful victory, but because being strong in these areas makes it easier to wage war. With strong technologies, I can exploit resources faster and build more terrible machines of death. With strong culture, I can easily hold on to the gains of war and push back the borders of my neighbors. And by owning the Holy City of the largest religion, my civilization generates enough income to fund my reckless expansion.

                I do not engage in diplomacy to find common ground or to ease tensions, but to orchestrate elaborate alliances against my rivals. I goad my enemies into attacking me first, making them the aggressor and myself as a hapless victim who is forced to subjugate their cities. I bribe my allies into joining these wars at strategic points, splitting my enemy’s forces and forcing them to fight on two fronts. My civilization, the representation of my will in this world, topples enemy after enemy, swelling from a single city into entire hemispheres.

                As a pacifist, this is all extremely disturbing. I used to play the game in line with my personal moral values, but turning the other cheek is not a valid strategy in Civilization 4. My allies declared war on me along with my enemies and laid my token defenses to waste. I tried engaging only in Just Wars of defense and showing mercy at the soonest opportunity, but this left my people weakened without adding any new territories. I tried trusting my allies, and they used this as an opening for betrayal.

                I have spent more time in Civilization 4 than any other fictional space, but it can only ever be home to my worst instincts. The instinct to control, the instinct to destroy, the instinct to make my ego-consciousness spread over the earth and crush all opposing voices. I wonder if my civilization truly represents any “people” as it spreads from Asia into Africa, from Europe to the New World, as it crushes a half dozen unique cultures and absorbs them into my spreading mass.

                In the end-game statistics, I see that my people were not the happiest, healthiest, or best fed – just the ones with the most cunning and ruthless leader. I neglected my own people in order to crush other nations that were more capable of caring for their own. My people have been subjected to millennia-long war efforts in order to expand my Self.

                Oh, it is true that I would have been attacked even if I did not engage in war. Some other leader would have marched across my people’s land, burned their crops, ravaged their cities, and subjugated them to some other regime. But the result would be the same. A third leader would look upon my people’s conqueror with envy and another war would begin. Allies would betray allies, and the wars would continue until a master dominated all. There is no passive resistance in Civilization 4, only the self-eating snake.

Yawn.

                As the game progresses, I start to become bored. There is no longer any question of if or how I will win, only when. I have already toppled any rival who presented a credible threat. All that remains is the bullying of progressive weaker nations, until I am crushing feudal societies with tanks and attack helicopters. In a particularly well-played game, I will be building an interplanetary space ship and nuking defenseless cities, not because I must, but to stave off boredom. And yet the game rewards me for this senseless slaughter of innocents by raising my score. I have more totally dominated my rivals. I have more completely imposed my will on the world.

                The longer I have played Civilization 4, the more adept I have become at using both the sword and the plowshare to dominate my rivals. My power grows and grows, but there is little resistance left to overcome. I feel a strange sense of pity for my computer-generated rivals. I tweak the settings, shuffle the maps, install mod packs, and set arbitrary goals for myself to keep the game interesting. But I must face the truth eventually – I have grown to fill every nook and cranny of this home. Every modification to the scenario simply expands my power over the total set.

                It’s that Old Hegelian Rag, the Tragedy of the Master. The more power I have over my rivals, the less I see them as human, the less meaning I find in their overthrow and defeat. There is no glory in defeating a slave, in nuking a feudal city, in running a knight under the treads of my tanks. I am the boot on the face of humanity, but it gives me no joy.

                This, perhaps, is the sad lot of the immortal master. When the game announces “The End of History,” the world is filed with the sacred silence that my self has wrought. I can choose to keep playing the game out into a speculative eternity, but there are no more worlds to conquer, no descendants to pass the fruits of my conquest on to, just a solitary blue planet to rule over forever and ever, Amen.

                Or, I can start a new game.

Men Among the Ruins: The Death of Normativity, Otaku, and Male Power Groups - Introduction & Part One

[Let's set a new land speed record for shark-jumping.]

Introduction

In this series, I will compare Japanese otaku with another subculture that at first glance may seem worlds apart: Western Men’s Rights Activists (MRA). I will also discuss two related male power groups, generic “nice guys” and Pick-Up Artists (PUA), due to the fact that all three groups seem to stem from the same stream of male dissatisfaction with modern life.[1]

Note that all of these groups are highly decentralized and have no formal requirements for claiming their respective titles other than self-identification. As such, I will treat them less as formal groups and more as trends.

There are two motivations for this project. First is my ongoing efforts to expand on the critical apparatus of Hiroki Azuma into non-Japanese contexts. Second, there has been a recent rash of debate on misogyny in Western geek culture (particularly the video game industry).

While I will focus more on MRAs in general than geek culture in particular, given that the video game controversy is being portrayed as a clash between pro-feminist “Social Justice Warriors” and pro-masculine “Men’s Rights Activists,” the applicability should be clear.

While my main goal is to get to the normative root of the issue, I think that there is no better demonstration of this issue than the ongoing “Gamergate” controversy. While Western geek culture is generally seen as transgressive and anti-establishment, Gamergate has revealed a strong undercurrent of rightism. This has provide a prime example of the fact that “anti-establishment” and “leftist” are by no means synonyms. 

My goal is not to demonize the right or Western geek culture as regressive or discriminatory. It is to build a critical apparatus for understanding where this trend is coming from without succumbing to the Middle Ground fallacy (i.e., everyone is equally wrong). The goal is to understand, not to excuse or accuse.

There are two points of similarity and one point of divergence with otaku that I would like to explore: Non-Traditional Marginalization, Discredited Normativity, and Divergent Responses to Alienation.

Non-Traditional Marginalization

So, I did my graduate thesis on otaku studies. This should tell you two things: I clearly had nothing better to do with my time and money, and I'm used to critically interpreting social groups that have been non-traditionally marginalized.

What do I mean by non-traditional marginalization? Otaku do not represent an oppressed social class on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or even financial status. Otaku are one of the few social subcategories with relative financial stability in post-bubble Japan.
Despite the stereotype of the hikikomori shut away from society in their parent’s house, Japanese otaku earn more on average than their non-otaku peers and are no more likely to be “parasite singles” than their peers. While anything approaching a true demographic study of “otaku-ness” would be difficult, our average out-of-the-closet otaku would be a male, politically conservative, heterosexual, relatively financially stable member of the predominant racial group of Japanese society.

If we are to speak about discrimination against otaku, we are not talking about social class but social status; a group discriminated against because of their chosen consumption patterns, not because of an oppressive social structure.

MRAs and Japanese otaku share the distinction of being a non-traditionally marginalized group whose members become marginalized by voluntary association. While it would take the stretchiest of stretches to claim that Western heterosexual males represent a discriminated-against group (though this is in fact the claim MRAs make), identifying oneself as an MRA carries a level of stigma which lies somewhere in the neighborhood of declaring oneself a hipster, otaku, or Nazi.

While we may safely dismiss many of the claims made by MRAs, there is still a legitimate point of interest in the existence of MRAs. To describe oneself as an MRA drives a wedge between oneself and society. Why would a person chose to do this?
Just as otaku are often assumed to be psycho-sexual deviants or Peter Pans who refuse to graduate into legitimate adulthood, there is a tendency to assume that MRAs are MRAs simply and only because they are spoiled, entitled misogynists jealous of the attention paid to minority issues. After all, being a western male CIS gender heterosexual is about as far from being an oppressed group that you can get without also being a multi-billionaire (and we might as well throw in being a white Protestant aristocrat – so basically, the King of Sweden).

Of all of the labels that get thrown at MRAs and related male power groups, I think the term that most legitimately applies is “entitled.” Whether we look at the rantings of MRAs, self-proclaimed “nice guys,” or PUA guides, a base-line theme emerges: I am entitled to something I am not getting.
This is most easily seen in your garden variety “nice guy rant.” “My behavior (niceness) entitles me to an expected reward (romantic fulfillment), but society (/women/liberals/the gynocratic conspiracy) has failed to fulfill its end of the bargain. The problem is not on my end (I am nice); therefore, the problem must lie somewhere else.” MRAs and PUAs come in to explain the failure of the social contract. In the case of MRAs, the problem lies with feminists, political correctness in general, or simply with those deceitful Delilahs, women.

PUAs have a (surprisingly) more nuanced approach: for PUAs, the problem does in fact lie in the “nice guy’s” understanding of the social contract. In PUA ideology, nice guys (or AFCs, “Average Frustrated Chumps”) are living in a fantasy world. Women do not “owe” sex or romance to nice guys, but rather to those who have manipulative social skills – those who give women what they “really” want. Until nice guys discard their obsolete social contract and change into PUAs, they will remain unworthy of the attention of women.

Now, I hope no one will to take the above to mean that I support PUA ideology. What I want to point out is that they are simply replacing one social contract with another, one way to “deserve” sex with another. Sex is still seen as the inevitable output of the proper inputs, of the proper application of a skill set, instead of a mutual activity in which women are equal participants.

MRAs represent the opposite end of the spectrum. Simply put, the motivating fear is not that women have become equals (or, God forbid, were equals the entire time), but rather that women have become dominant. MRAs position men on the passive side of relationships, as objects and not as agents. Men are outputs, not inputs, who are pinned and struggling under the power of women.

Despite the threats of murder and rape breathed by the more extreme MRAs, the ultimate goal of your average frustrated MRA is not the domination of women, but to avoid becoming women themselves – objects, outputs, means instead of ends. This is why MRAs can un-ironically claim they are fighting for equal rights. In their minds, this is exactly what they are fighting for.

This then is the situation as I understand it:

	Perceived Social Contract	Perceived Problem
“Nice Guy”	Nice men receive romance	Women do not uphold the social contract
PUA	Cunning men receive sex	AFCs do not understand the social contract
MRA	Women control men	The social contract is unfair to men

This is why I have emphasized the concept of “entitlement.” In all three cases, there is an assumption that a normative social structure dictates interactions between men and women. In two cases (Nice Guys and MRAs), women are perceived as the source of the problem, breaching normativity/the social contract or enforcing an unfair social contract. In one case (PUAs), the majority of men (AFCs) have failed to uphold their end of the social contract and have only themselves to blame. But in all cases, men are in some way entitled to women.

Naturally, when speaking about phenomena as diverse and decentralized as male power groups, we will have to deal in generalizations. Your mileage with this rubric may vary when dealing with the writings or the mindset of a particular individual, but I feel comfortable enough with it as an overall snapshot to push forward to the next point: where did the “nice guy” social contract come from, and why is it such a powerful motivator of male behavior in contemporary society?

[For the record, I consider myself slightly to the right of Hitler. That socialist ninny.]

Part Two: Dead Knights, Dull Armor - Discredited Normativity and Male Rage

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[1]I will be using the terms “pre-modern,” “modern,” and “post-modern” in line with their original Hegelian sense of “pre-enlightenment non-alienation,” “post-enlightenment alienation,” and “post-enlightenment non-alienation.”  These definitions differ from the common historiographical and social science definitions, which style our contemporary world as “post-modern." Not that there's anything wrong with that usage of the terms, they just have different definitions in Hegel.