“We are all Socialists, wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly. Even resistance to it wears its form.”
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
The problem is that Rick Sanchez is in every nerd or geek I’ve ever met. And I can’t really say I blame them for this. You find something you love that all the knuckleheads don’t? Yeah, you’re going to feel superior. That’s how that goes. Hell, I’ve got eight months of Star Wars posts that proves definitively that I’m not just exempt, but a personification of the problem! So there’s shattered remains of a glass house around me that I’m throwing rocks from.
So instead of commenting on others’ glass houses I’ll point at the glass in and around my feet.
There was a point in my life where hardly any interest I had wasn’t formed in deliberate contradiction to the mainstream. I’m one of two people I know of that views all nine episodes of the Skywalker Saga as one cohesive story. I didn’t just play Burning Wheel, I played it to the exclusion of all other games for years, two to three times a week. In religion I definitely fit in the more extremely conservative ROCOR branch of the Orthodox Churches, which boasts a “pristine” liturgy and a supposed rejection of modernity. This pattern could go on and on. And it all adds up to one extremely smug nerd. As I continue to mature I’ve come to realize that not only is the smug attitude not necessary but it’s actively in the way of enjoying life.
So when I say I find most geeks and nerds to be smug and arrogant against whatever their perceived mainstream is I say it as a recovering alcoholic when commenting on the negative effects of alcohol. You should take what I say with salt, because alcohol isn’t bad and neither is realizing the mainstream is wrong.
Yes, if you are in the mainstream of thought you are either wrong or the reasons you’re right are incomplete. Collective thinking doesn’t function very well. I’ve found this to be an ironclad law of thought, about as close to immutable as the rising and setting of the sun. Hell, maybe more so, since the sun will eventually go out, but a group of people will never generate a coherent thought together.
Anyways.
Totally not an involuntary Rick moment I decided to keep! Nope!
I think the thing I keep noticing is in geeks/nerds this tendency to just be smug as hell about how “they” don’t get it. Most of my honest conversations with people of the nerd variety invariably wind up in a sort of chortling at being “in the know”, of being the kids who get it, patting each other on the back for possessing that secret knowledge all the unwashed fools couldn’t possibly have. We’re in the minority because we’re better. We’re different. So different, in fact, that communication of our noetical intuitions is impossible. We need to commiserate our loneliness, but acknowledge our destiny together. I try to resist doing this, but every time I succumb I wind up feeling sick, like I just vomited something that I didn’t like eating to begin with.
Now, if you think yourself a geek or nerd and none of that applied to you? GREAT. You’re a better person than I am, and granted that’s a very low bar but criminy a win is a win! Take it! But for those of you who do feel my little blog post accurate… when did we get so bitter and nihilistic that the only thing that mattered was a bad re-enactment of cultural Marxism? And yes, I said cultural Marxism. It’s a real thing, folks, sorry.
Say what you will about that phrase, but it fits the nerd paradigm to a T. Marxism is a paradigm of persecutors and persecuted, along with a promise of “justice”, which is really just bloody vengeance. The persecutors are blithering idiots. Meatheads. Jocks. The proletariat. We are the persecuted. The unfortunate. The noble and intelligent victims who might win out when everyone else realizes how wrong they are. How we’re really the Brahmans of the age. Y’know, when the Revolution happens. And I don't know a single nerd/geek who isn't holding out for "their" way to win out over what they perceive to be the mainstream idiocy. The assumption itself requires rage and resentment. Someday we'll show them! We'll win!
BUT
“Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism.” sayeth Spengler, and so Tuchman shows in the Proud Tower. Marxism, at its base, is a sucker's bet. The rage and resentment that is bred by the ideology cannot be healthy, it cannot express in a positive way, and thus it is easy to manipulate. Throughout most of the 20th century this led to genocides and the creation of invincible/invisible oligarchies that only benefit the rich and powerful. It's not that this is a flaw of Marxism, it is the only place Marxism can go, given that it is the enraging of the masses by its upper class. Marxism in any form has always been a stinging from the upper class on down.... and then it takes over when the lower classes finally react. It is a set up.
And look at how the geeks and nerds have followed the pattern! The persecuted mentality of nerds and geeks has led to its co-opting by corporations, who have squeezed the turnip until our blood came out. Our blood. Not the jocks. Not the conservative idiots who preached that DnD was Satanic. Our properties are being hollowed out by what is actually an evil empire. Our lens has become corporatized and bastardized into a demonic shadow of its former self. And if you don’t believe me, ask yourself: wouldn’t the below scene have outraged your geeky heart as a clear corporate sellout fifteen years ago? Because it still did to me, not even a year ago:
START MID POST CAVEATS
For the record I don’t think Rey is a Mary Sue, in case the idiotic accusation of misogyny comes up. If that's a concern then please find your adult.
Also, I love the Sequel Trilogy. I think Disney did a really good job with it. Seriously. So it’s not even that I think a corporation can do nothing right. Just that, at the end of the day, a corporation is like any other body of people: it wants to survive. And it needs money to do that. And money and soul are almost diametrically opposed. Not quite. But damn close. And so they will squeeze all the crowd-pleasing profit they can out of their properties, so that way you keep coming back to pay them a few more bucks.
END MID POST CAVEAT
When rage is at the heart of your ideology you will be co-opted by the rich and powerful, who will hollow you out and leave you with nothing. The nihilism and resentment shown by Rick has directly led to this day and age, where movie after stupid movie is put out, none of them actually like the source material, but it's pretty! It's got a sweet outside! But there's nothing in there!
This
AAnd THIS coming back to theatres:
I believe to be deeply connected to each other. These people have found the Marxist nothing in our little nerd souls and twisted it to where we'll just dance on a string, if they pull hard enough. Nihilism and resentment don't lead to a noble purpose, or being able to weather the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune, or even to trying to get some form of peace in a world that is manifestly cruel and chaotic.
THIS
Is a parable. It's not a warning, because it's happening to us, right now. And we're the suckers. Marxism is, at its heart and soul, the weaponization of the common classes by a section of the elites against other elites. And then just moving in to take over the pieces. It is not them watching out for the little guy. It is not them trying to help you. The cycle of Marxism has shown this, over and over and over again. They don't want you to hope. Or feel. Or anything.
Just come and watch TV!
Now, the observant... five or however many people read this blog.... will go "Hold up. You're designing a table top RPG. You do reviews of geeky type products whenever the fancy strikes you. You wrote an entire series on specific Power Rangers in Heroes of the Grid." What the hell gives you the right to judge anyone???
To those five people: You're right. I'll get into that before the end. Put a pin in it for the moment however.
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