Unreal With Bells On

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There were six of us playing, all unreal of course, and we were playing for the highest stakes of all – we were playing for reality, we were playing to be real! And yet this isn’t 100% true because it’s not really reality we were playing for but a conditioned analogue. It’s a group mind thing, in other words. It’s the kind of a thing that has to be understood within the remit of the group mind. As I say, there were six of us playing and we were playing for the highest stakes of all – we were playing to be real. Or rather, we were playing to be real within the terms of the group mind…

 

As I have already pointed out, none of us were real. We weren’t in the least bit real. Not real at all. But the game was that whoever out of us got to play the winning hand would be real – at least as far as the other five players were concerned, at any rate. So when one of won the rest of us had to pay a forfeiture – before we were unreal (and that feels bad enough), but then when we lose the game, if we are unlucky enough to lose it, then we get to be double-unreal. We get to be unreal with bells on it and this really does sting… If to be a nobody, a mere ‘contender for reality’, a mere wannabe, feels bad, then being a proven loser, a definite irredeemable nobody is total shit. Boy does that feel bad – it’s the worst thing in the world and none of us wanted that. Not only does it feel totally rotten, you end up hating yourself for it. You end up despising yourself with passion and all the while the winner gets to feel like a million dollars. They get to feel every bit as good as you feel bad, and that’s exactly the way it works…

 

So those are the stakes. That’s how it goes. That’s what the game is all about. I know you probably think that this is all completely stupid. People generally do. I can never seem to explain it to people in a way that makes sense. People think it’s dumb, people think it’s ridiculous. If you’re playing this stupid game, and you are all unreal, then how can the losing players support the winner with their belief in his or her exclusive reality if they themselves aren’t real? How can their belief that you are now real (when before you weren’t at all) do you any good when they themselves are still unreal, in fact doubly so? If a known liar testifies solemnly that something is true, then what good is this going to be to anyone? And anyway, how can you start off playing the damn game in the first place, if none of the players are real in the first place? How can you win reality in an unreal game? The whole thing is ridiculous. It doesn’t make any sense.

 

That’s what you say. Or that’s what you might say. I don’t know what you’re saying, you probably don’t even give a shit. Why would you? I don’t actually blame you if you don’t give a shit either way. I can understand that. Though why you’d be reading this in that case I don’t know. Our of sheer perversity, perhaps. Maybe you’re reading this even though you know it’s a load of shit so you can turn around afterwards and say that it is. How can I know what your motivation is? Why am I even bothering about it?

 

But the point is this. Games make up their own reality. That’s what they do. That’s the whole point of a game, for God’s sake. We all know that. Everybody knows that. The biggest idiot in ton knows that and so does his uncle. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that (though what’s so great about rocket scientists I have never been able to work out). So games make up their own reality. The player doesn’t, it’s the game that does that. Do you think that the players of the game exist outside of the game? Do you really think that? The players of the game are constructs of the game – a necessary construct, I might add! The game grants you reality, so that just as long as you’re playing the game you get to exist. But not a minute longer. You only exist because the game says that you do. Because the game proves – on its own terms of course – that you do. The game proves that you’re a winner, and the game proves that you’re a loser. It’s the game that decides that, not you…

 

So when the six of us sit down to play the game, this game is the only world there is, this game is the only reality there is. It doesn’t matter if you’re unreal outside of the game – that doesn’t come into it. The game grants us reality. Or rather, it grants us provisional reality. It grants us the chance (the slim chance) of being real (within the terms of the game). And – of course – if we miss this chance then we’re really screwed. We’re not just unreal in this case – we’re unreal with bells on…

 

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