“Life is like a play, and a play like life” is an old saying. This metaphor is very apt—on the stage of life, each person is both audience and actor. On the one hand, one must find one’s role correctly and act it brilliantly with one’s whole heart; on the other hand, one is also a spectator and applauder of this drama.
“Life is like a play” can also be interpreted from a negative angle: for example, life is false just as acting is false, and being a person is hypocritical just as actors are hypocritical; one can only honestly follow the script and obediently play the role arranged for oneself. This interpretation holds that life is neither free nor real. But more often, the view of life implied by “like a play” is a more positive one: it highlights human initiative and suggests the richness and brilliance of life.
Another phrase places more emphasis on a kind of untrammeled, carefree view of life, namely “playing about in the human world.” Here the character 戏 does not mean “to act,” but “to play with” or “to toy with.” Using “play” as a metaphor for life expresses an attitude of worldly detachment. Such excessive casualness and dissipation are of course problematic, but just in terms of the attitude of “play,” it is undoubtedly still quite positive.
The meanings of these two phrases are originally completely different, and even less do they have anything to do with “money worship.” Yet what will happen when the 戏 in “life is like a play” turns into “play,” and when “acting” also becomes “play”?
The games popular today are very different from those of old times—or rather, from those of several decades ago, even from those of a dozen years ago. In the past, children’s games came in all sorts of varieties, such as hopscotch, kicking shuttlecock, rubber-band jumping, hide-and-seek, cat’s cradle, rock-paper-scissors, and so on. These were all “play for the sake of play.” Although games in general mostly involved winning and losing, children played only for the joy of it; they did not care much whether you won a few rounds or I won a few rounds. This way of playing was consistent with the carefree spirit of “playing about in the human world,” which values process over result. Games are always cheerful: they are all frolicking, running, and jumping, with no complicated hidden meaning. A game is just a game.
But in just the last few years, teenagers’ “games” have suddenly gained another important type—“video games.”
Do not underestimate video games. Their significance in the composition of today’s entire social culture is extremely important—not only because they can reflect the cultural characteristics of the present age, but also because they themselves have become an influence on culture that cannot be ignored.
Video games are far “more complex” than those innocent little games of the past. They can simulate every kind of real or surreal activity—warfare, martial arts, shooting, flying, racing, romance, killing… They are simply too “rich”!
Among them there is a category of games that combines “acting” and “play,” namely “RPG”s—the so-called “role-playing games.” In RPGs, players can take on any real or surreal role and throw themselves into a real or surreal story.
The rise of online games has made the form of RPGs even more “rich”——many players can take on different roles and enter the same story, interacting, competing, and even deceiving and slaughtering one another. Friends, enemies, family, masters and servants… all real and unreal social relations can be simulated in games.
The emergence of role-playing games makes it possible to revise the saying “life is like a play, and a play like life” into “RPGs are like life, and life is like RPGs.”
Traditional drama has only “expressive power.” Through artistic means—exaggeration, implication, satire, or praise, and so on—it can “present” human nature, the love and hate, good and evil of the human world. But drama itself does not provide a new “standard of evaluation”; the standard for judging whether a character is right or wrong, good or bad, superior or inferior, still comes from the audience’s own values.
RPGs are different.
Since it is a game, there must always be victories and defeats, and standards for evaluating the player’s performance. Especially in the case of online games, different players can choose different roles—for example, knight, swordsman, mage, and so on—but there must still be a unified standard by which to evaluate which player is more “advanced.”
For this reason, video games created two concepts: Exp.—“experience points,” and Lv.—“level.” Completing a task, killing an enemy, or staying online for a period of time will all earn corresponding “experience points.” The things done may differ, but the final “achievement” is measured entirely by the granting of “experience points.” Accumulating a certain amount of experience points allows one to level up; the higher the level, the more of a “big shot” one is, the more of a “boss.” Of course, specific games have different designs—for example, subdividing “strength,” “intelligence,” “charisma,” and so on—which seems a bit more diversified, but in essence it is still Exp. that has the final say. In short, the common feature of all games is—“numericalization.”
As video games, their “evaluation system” can only adopt a numerical method; otherwise, how would one design them? Yet precisely here lies the point of “life is like a play”: the characteristics of popular games are exactly the characteristics of modern society—“numericalization,” “quantification”!
Some say that modern culture has shifted from pursuing “quality” to pursuing “quantity.” This formulation hits the nail on the head.
There are not no standards for evaluating people, but rather too many. Human beings are diverse; there are many ways to “succeed.” There should not be a single unified standard, and there is even less reason to have to numericalize standards of evaluation. However, quantitative thinking is the habit of this technological age, and people have gradually come to believe that only quantification is a perfect standard of evaluation, and only “comparing sizes” is a reasonable method of comparison.
People do not accept diversified and non-quantitative forms of evaluation, because those are “subjective,” arbitrary, and uncertain. People pursue “objectivity,” or rather, worship “objectivity.” Only unified, quantitative standards can provide the kind of “certainty” people demand. Only “success” obtained with such “certainty” can convince others and satisfy oneself.
Numbers dominate the modern world—just as Exp. dominates the world of games! All those this-“merchant” and that-“merchant” things are inventions of modern people, while what is most common, most unified, and easiest to measure in reality is precisely the numerical form of “money.”
Thus money is worshiped merely as a “symbol.” People strive to make money, and then more money, and their purpose is no longer simply to use money for consumption, entertainment, or enjoyment. Money has been endowed with a meaning that transcends reality—a standard for evaluating people. Just as in the world of games, no matter whether you are a strength-type or magic-type, in the end whether you are a big shrimp or a greenhorn depends on how high your Lv. is—on how much Exp. you have accumulated. And in the real world, whether you are in business or research, whether you are ultimately a “successful person” depends on how thick your “net worth” is—on how much money you have made!
In “money worship,” money is no longer just the intermediary medium in commodity exchange; it has a higher meaning—as the standard by which life is evaluated.
This money-worshipping view is often used by pyramid-selling promoters to inflame people’s hearts, and it is indeed very effective.
I have already mentioned earlier that the theory of money worship is capable of making sense within itself; a “self-aware” money worshiper is very hard to persuade with ethical “sermons,” because they have a view of life that is not contradictory. To oppose extreme money worshipers (or nihilists, rigid contrarians, and so on), one must not presume oneself to be “right” and then lecture them from a position of superiority. Thoroughgoing money worshipers, just like thoroughgoing relativists and thoroughgoing nihilists, are impossible to refute. What we can do first is explain the matter clearly, hoping that those who are unconscious of it—those who have become money worshipers or who hold similar value systems merely because of the influence of their era and social environment—will reflect on themselves. In addition, the “opponent” of reflection is not some particular money worshipers, but rather the modern culture that gave birth to money worship as a fashion.
September 25, 2006
Latest Comments
unic 2006-09-25 23:20:48
And students’ grades too.
Behind the pursuit of objectivity and quantification, is there perhaps an implicit global sense of crisis or insecurity?
Isn’t there also a very close connection with instrumentalism, pragmatism, and extreme scientism?
And behind these philosophies, what hidden force is there? Or what is it that is missing at a deeper level?
I am glad I was born in 1990, because when I was born, computers were not yet widespread in society. That meant a way of life and a feeling somewhat different from the 1990s themselves; it meant a precious connection with the 1980s and earlier eras.
The difference between the modern age and the 1980s is surely not just computers, is it?
Values.
I am somewhat nostalgic. I am especially interested in the 1980s.
古 2006-09-26 10:55:12
Your thought about a “global sense of crisis or insecurity” is quite interesting. But so-called crisis can refer to many things. The masses have their own sense of crisis, and philosophers have their own sense of crisis. Still, certain kinds of crisis or insecurity are indeed characteristic of our era. In fact, crisis itself is a good thing, because crisis arises from reflection on the normal state of life, so thinkers in any era will have a sense of crisis. But once “unease” itself becomes the normal state of life, what is called crisis turns into a kind of conscious or unconscious “restlessness.” This pervasive mood of restlessness makes modern people unable to settle their hearts, always seeking busyness. A major aspect of this sense of unease is fear of “falling behind,” because modernity is an era of rapid development and constant change; whether between countries or between individuals, falling behind even slightly will create a very large gap. Added to this is the idea that “to fall behind is to get beaten” (this phrase is also an invention of modern people; in ancient times it was the opposite, see https://yilinhut.net/2005/12/07/133.html), which has made modern people’s competitive consciousness unprecedentedly strong. Competition consciousness itself is not bad, but once the “standard of evaluation” becomes so single and so numericalized, it becomes very problematic.
In fact, as for the various maladies of modernity, Marx was one of the earliest and deepest critics. The term “alienation” that Marx proposed hits the heart of the matter (this term is ignored in traditional textbooks). Human beings are alienated by the tools they themselves created; it is not people who control tools, but tools that control people, and people in turn become the slaves of tools. And now, people are not only enslaved by mechanical production tools, but also by monetary tools of exchange, and by tools of communication and entertainment such as media, film and television, and advertising… Human beings created those tools, yet are in turn controlled by them; it is not that tools revolve around people, but that people revolve around tools and prostrate themselves before their own tools…
Modern people’s thinking and habits are deeply influenced by modern mathematical and experimental science, and of course this has a direct connection with instrumentalism, scientism, and the like. As for “pragmatism,” as a philosophical school, it does not mean the everyday sense of “profit-seeking” or “utility” in ordinary understanding.
What is implicitly lacking behind these thoughts, first of all, is “human beings.” Tools have been deified, while people have been forgotten. Humanistic concerns, human nature, human feelings, people’s plural perspectives… all these factors are either forgotten, or intentionally removed because they are “subjective” and not “objective.” In the history of modern philosophy, the current of thought opposed to “scientism” is called “humanism.”
unic2006-09-26 21:15:20 what I said last time about “human-centered” also has this meaning
Qiyibaihe 2007-06-21 21:41:44 Anonymous 124.116.240.132 I think “money worship” is not something that started only recently.
For example, Zhang Kejiu wrote some lines like these in his Yuanqu:
Drunk Peace * Thinking of Antiquity
All people resent the misery of fate; who does not treat money as dear? A crystal ring falls into a pot of wheat paste, and once it sticks, it rolls about. An essay is pasted onto a granary for storing money; the gate and courtyard are turned into a maze that confuses the soul. Integrity is demoted to sleeping wontons. The gourd is held upside down, steady as can be.
Back then there was simply no term “money worship.” Was everything not still a modern-day replica? Yet then there are also new old things appearing!
古雴2007-06-22 10:40:20 No “ism” is entirely new.
Gaozi had already promoted the idea that “appetite and desire are human nature.” Worship of money, praise of greed—of course these have existed long ago in history. It is only in modern times, however, that this value system has become dominant, even the “logic” underlying capitalism. Such a situation did not exist in ancient times.
As a true pluralist, I do not oppose money worship itself; I would even defend it: https://yilinhut.net/2006/02/01/261.html. The problem is not whether money worship exists, but whether, besides money worship, society also recognizes different value systems; whether, apart from using money and “net worth” to evaluate a person’s achievement, there are any other ways.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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