Jingoism

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My bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R,

My bologny has a second name, it's M-A-Y-E-R...

I love to eat it every day,

And if you ask me why I'll say...

Because Oscar Meyer has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A.

Jingoism is uncritical, emotionally reinforced allegiance expressed through simple, repetitive, celebratory formulas. This is most often done in a political context, but really, any object of allegiance can be subject to the practice, which means any thing that is liked in a widescale fashion can be expressed or explained through jingoism, thus sidestepping the need to actually and legitimately explain the thing.

The jingo above, for instance, which has remained in my head since my learning it from commercials in the 1970s, does not actually tell me that bologna made by the company is better than other bologna; or that because the kid on the dock singing the song happens to like the bologna, I should. No argument is made to explain why I should. It's just assumed I want to be like the kid, and thus being like the kid, I also want to eat bologna, and specifically Oscar Meyer's, because they created a memorable and cute jingo.

The benefit of jingoism as a cultural practice is that it replaces "justification" — the legitimising of a things value or condition through the demonstration of evidence or argument — with blind enthusiasm. Repeated formulas create familiarity; familiarity creates emotional comfort; emotional comfort replaces the need for evidence that a thing should be given allegiance, or trusted, or considered true.

And because of this, when an argument is made to someone who is blindly enthusiastic, the argument fails — not only because the listener does not want to be convinced, but because the listener already has been... by something that in no way did so through the use of thought, the evaluation of data, real consideration or a seeking of proof. Rather, they've embraced the tautology: the thing is true, because I'm comfortable with it, therefore my comfort makes it true. Oscar Meyer is a great weiner... Oscar Meyer itself told me so.

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I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner...

That is what I truly want to be!

'Cause if I were an Oscar Meyer weiner,

Everyone would be in love with me!

Sigh.

Since beginning this D&D blog, I have variously gone off on a number of anti-jingoistic battles that have repeatedly lost me readers and support, simply because I am figuratively pissing on parts of the hobby and it's practioners by doing so. The game is "fun;" the game is "imaginative" or "collaborative;" the game is about telling a "story." The players are "heroes." These are not windmills I'm tilting at. Quixote fought windmills because he thought they were monsters; he had a fundamental understanding what the arms were there to do. I am tilting at the Catholic Church that Quixote praises. I'm tilting at Dulcinea. I'm tilting at everything that's "beloved" about D&D because I do not love the game for these reasons. And I tilt because I don't think anyone else does, either... I think that what they do is lack any actual reason for liking the game, that they do in fact like, because they lack "imagination," so they just invent shit up that explains what the game is. That's what sickens me, that's what frustrates me... and that's what makes it impossible for me to ever really explain anything true about D&D...

Because when I see the bar wench, I see the bar wench... and like the bar wench for what she is. But when you all look at her, you all see Dulcinea. And like Quixote, you don't even fucking know it.

To put it another way, I look at the crude, ordinary, perhaps vulgar thing that D&D actually is and find it interesting on its own terms. I do not need to slather bullshit all over it and then bake it into feces pie, so I can lick my fingers clean and moan, "Ooooooo... home cooking."

Sorry... but that's what I think all the jingoism and the jargon is that's related to this game: pure, unmitigated, unrestrained bullshit. I don't think it makes the game "better," I don't think it clarifies anything, I don't think it helps play go more smoothly... and when I talk to someone who claims it does, I imagine them spewing this shit to their players while they sit there, nod their heads politely and think, "I wish he'd get done so we could play."

D&D is a procedural game where decisions are made by the DM to explain visual and situational elements to players through the use of language, which the players interpret so they can respond with described actions, importing the need for further descriptions by the DM, providing further actions, and so on, in a progressive infinite engine providing play, adjudicated with dice, bounded by rules, limited by the ability of the DM to make things comprehensible and the ability of the player to concoct useful actions. Nothing here is a "fuzzy" description. D&D is not an "adventure." The word "adventure" has no meaning whatsoever with regards to any of the procedures I've just described. An "adventure is a not a situation; it is not a part of a setting; it is not something a player can take an action within or against; it is not an action; it does not as a word or a concept promote further actions or description. The word "adventure" describes an arc of events that cannot, by definition of the manner in which the game is player, produce a RESULT. Consequentially, the word "adventure" is as valuable to D&D as is the word "story."

D&D is often described as an "adventure game." This is jingoism. It doesn't in and of itself explain how the descriptive applies to the game being played. It does not contribute to the game's play. It does not separate the game from other procedural games, as an "adventure" can be the Hardy Boys chasing smugglers, a pair of newlyweds heading off for the big city, a family on vacation or a rocket ship leaving Earth. In no way does the word "adventure" as defined by the dictionary in any way contribute to or benefit anyone in the understanding of D&D. Yet, there it is. Like an unremovable wart on a game that doesn't need it.

Like fun and imagination and story, "adventure" produces an emotional, comforting response. It carries the idea of excitement, danger, novelty, romance, discovery, childhodo, travel, heroism and escape. It conveys an intentionality that is glossed over D&D as though it, and it alone, the word itself, regardless of comprehending how, somehow makes the process described above "better." That is enthusiasm for the sake of enthusiasm. It is a fetish, an object held in the hand and rubbed because it is believed that by repeating the word, the game's success is somehow achieved. Except, it isn't. Because even those who embrace such jingostic words as "proof" of the reason their DMing succeeds, can't say why it succeeds for that reason. It just does. Therefore, like the fetish, it must be rubbed. It just does.

That is how fetishism works.

An object, or in this case a word, is credited with a power that cannot be demonstrated, located or explained. Its efficacy is assumed because believers believe in it, and experience confidence from it, and can name instances where they believe they've witnessed visions of that confidence, which in turn provides greater confidence in the thing that cannot be rationally justified, while overall the belief only grows stronger with time until it subverts all other discussion of the thing to the discussion of how it relates to the fetish.

This is why D&D discussions do not produce valuable results. Because the results the practitioners experience are not results gained through observing play, but experiences gained through achieving comfort from the enthusiasm the play provides.

It is as though we were all on a river rafting trip, during which we encountered rapids, large rocks, dangers, cliff faces, moments of extreme danger and our own resiliency... but that, at the end of the trip, no one but me can remember anything except the simple fact that we did it together. That is what everyone keeps repeating, every time the trip comes up. "Isn't it amazing that we all did it together?" And then, when I try to say, "What did you think about the rapids," there's a sort of dull, bland look that I receive, followed by the answer, "You mean the rapids we all did together?"

And yet, in fact, we didn't. During the rapids, I remember when I was afraid, not when "we" were; I remember when I needed to pull the paddle I dropped by its tether cord so I could get it back into my hands... not when we did that. I remember when the rock almost hit me; when I was almost thrown into the river when the raft tipped; when I grabbed Jacob before he fell off, when Jim fished me out of the water at the end when I did fall out, stupidly. But I don't remember what Sally did, because she was in the other raft, and I don't remember what Jenny did, because she was at the front of my raft and I was at the back. I don't have any memories at all of any collective "we" doing anything except that we were all there... with the caveat that for the most part, there was no time or opportunity to collaborate on anything. YET, when others talk about the journey, it seems almost as if they did, all the time, while I was apparently on some other planet.

It's not that I'm selfish. It's that this is how I experience the world. It must be nice to experience it in some other way, but evidence tells me that none of us do. There just seem to be a lot of us who need to pretend that we do.

The "we" that is tossed about claims a possession of other people's experience that does not exist. "We" are not on an adventure; I am doing with my character what I can while Jacob is doing what he can and Sally is doing what she can. I can offer a plan to Sally and Jenny can correct my plan, and Jacob can offer an addition to it, but "we" are not making a plan in the sense of one entity on one adventure. We are consciously viewing the world through our limitation as biological creatures, where "collaborating" means talking to each other and puzzling things out, not "creating a grand design" in which we all fulfill our comforting D&D destiny.

And stupidly, I think that until we acknowledge that everyone at the D&D table is NOT in fact experiencing the same game in the same way with the same thoughts, everything we can every say about the game is, again, just home cooking.

Further, as a player, if I were one, and I was told by a DM that my purpose in this campaign is to "be on an adventure," I'd either answer, "fuck that," or perhaps more politely, "I'll decide what my fucking purpose is, thank you," while certainly thinking, what sort of patriarchal assumptive bullshit is this DM spewing?  I don't like people taking it upon themselves to tell me why I'm playing a game. I take offense at that.

Because I do not play, and because I do DM, I don't tell my players things like this. I play the game. I start with, "You're here, this is what the place is like, what do you want to do." Everything else... gawd-fucking-dammit, everything else, has gotten to the point where it is just making me sick.

I guess that's why I'm not writing here on this blog very much.