If <whatever> Is A Game Then
by Ric Carter
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Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot. —WarMunkey If POLITICAL-ECONOMIC-MILITARY HEGEMONY Is A Game, Here's Da Rules
Hegemony is fun! Hegemony, like love, means never having to say you're sorry. Hegemony means control or dominance by one group over others - like nations, businesses. clubs, etc - without actually having to own the buggers. Hegemony has nothing to do with hogmanay, Scottish for the last day of the year, as perhaps it should. But I digress. Hegemony is easier than empire but has many of the benefits at less cost. Empire requires that you conquer somebody, and KEEP them conquered. With hegemony you merely buy them, using as your coins the Old Reliables: wealth, power, force, fear. With hegemony you can skim off the cream of the profits, without having to do the handwork of milking those cash-cows; let your agents do the laboring for you, let them risk their own arses for their percentage. THE HEGEMONY GAME
To make a game of this, compare your success-to-loss figures with other hegemons on an annual basis. Whoever scores lowest is devoured; play continues until only one hegemon is left, controlling the entire planet. Supposedly, at that time, divine intervention will vanquish the wicked and restore justice to the exploited, but don't bet on that.
That all sounds like CONQUEST, don't it? Well, it ain't. To avoid being a CONQUEST, don't send YOUR troops in. Just get the locals to do all your dirty work for you. So it's just another form of colonialism, eh? Now check out what Mao Tse-Tung said about this.  PERSONHOOD For Complete Morons
It's very important to be a person. Being a person is more important than being human. And indeed, being human is not required to be a person, nor does being human necessarily make you a person. Consider the basic American (USA) conservative philosophy:
Personhood is all a matter of definition. You can define exactly (or fuzzily) just who or what is or isn't a person, what degree of personhood they have, what rights and responsibilities and priveleges and perquisites they have, et cetera. When you have done so, you have immense power over their lives. Isn't that special?!? As explained in Human Games and Their Rules all belief systems ('Games') have Game Rules by which you must abide if you are to play that Game. For instance, here are some Game Rules defining personhood:
Other Games have different rules. The US Constitution originally defined (white) adult male property owners as first-class persons, (white) women and children and non-property-owning males as second-class persons, and non-whites as fractional persons. Nazi Germany had similar categories for Aryans, Honorary Aryans (Japanese and blonde Italians), and inferior races. Likewise, Soviet Russia recognized Party Members, Other Persons, and Non-Persons. Deep-Ecology Greens and Buddhists and others may extend personhood to sentient animals such as dolphins, chimpanzees, yetis and anarchists; to not-so-sentient animals such as cats, rats, bats and phats; and to non-animals such as redwood trees and AIs (Artificial Intelligence programs). Not to mention larger systems: bays, prairies, rainforests, and GAIA (the entirety of life on Earth). Organizations devoted to such definitions are usually named something like SAVE THE (whatever). You can save something too, merely by granting it personhood. Personhood is not a Game, in and of itself. Rather, it's a product of Game Rules. You can create your own game — Start Your Own Religion, for example — and define personhood any damn way you want. It's fun, it's easy, and I know you can do it if you try, you moron. Enjoy!
IS A FETUS A PERSON?Now we come to the special case of a human fetus. Is a fetus a person? We can consider this from a bioethical viewpoint informed by theology and politics, or we can try science and reality. Scientifically, a fetus is part of its mother's body, and while it may potentially achieve independence, it may also just wither away where it is. And with cloning, almost any part of a human body can be used to create another person. If a fetus is a 'human life', then so is an appendix or tonsil -- removing them is just as wrong. Theologically, politically, morally, a fetus is a person if it is so defined (see above). Again, almost any kind of entity can be so defined, and a fetus can thus be considered equivalent to a corporation, a dolphin, or a redwood tree. Realistically, the tough part of fetal personhood comes in telling whether or not a fetus exists. With a person who's been born, that's pretty easy -- they're rather identifiable. But a fetus is hidden, and even the mother may not know it exists. What to do? What to do? The answer is obvious: there must be some visible signal of the existence of a fetus. To do that, ALL non-transgendered females of potentially reproductive age must be fitted with pregnancy-detection monitors, which are attached to an external signaling device -- maybe an electric choke-collar that glows ·RED· when she's pregnant, ·GREEN· when she isn't (and maybe ·YELLOW· when she's fertile, just to be safe). (Transgendered females are a special case - ponder...) There are zillions of non-transgendered female humans around -- the market is vast -- whoever comes up with the Personhood Identification Surety System (PISS) will certainly make a vast fortune. Get going! In Brief:
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CONTENTS:<== backHEGEMONY Game PERSON-HOOD FETUS-HOOD MANIPULATION COMING SOON: the GO! index next ==> MORE RESOURCESAssassinopoly Buzzwords California Recall nation-Carving Class-Culture War Conquest Conspiring Energy-Politics Hegemony Homeland Security JIHAD! Justice M-A-D N-B-C War Political Spectrum Political Correctness Privatization Redistributing Wealth ReDoing Democracy State Terror Unconventional War, War On USA and see the MemePool POLITICS & CONSPIRACY & WARFARE archives. |
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