Homo Ludus (English edition)
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He noticed this peculiarity of his organism a long time ago: in 1648, when a German village celebrated the end of the Thirty Years' War, the first all-European conflict. Gustav alternately seduced and drove to suicide eight girls in just two days – the general rejoicing was so great that everyone wanted his own happiness, so everything turned out much easier and faster than usual. After a day Gustav began to have white spots in his eyes, that is, his eyes were all right, only in the place where they looked, there was a white spot. And a strange feeling of weakness, as if the body had weakened on purpose, about to surrender to the ailment. Then the former stains passed, and the pain began – it seemed that it was time to die, it seemed that the punishment had finally arrived, and everything would be over. And it was over – the pain was over, and Gustav realized that it was only the price of greed, of time to be reckoned with; that even for him there were limits and a certain line. He knew it well now, though he didn't know the exact boundaries of what was permissible – maybe someone else's suffering was deeper, or maybe the suffering of someone else's death was greater than the suffering of his own loss.
Gustav didn't know how to measure it, and sometimes he just wanted more, so he broke his own prohibitions, suffering from satiety himself. There was a bunker for that.
After putting the car in the garage built into the main building, Gustav went up to the second floor. When he saw his new Carlo Pasolini shoes, he remembered how recently the Labrador puppy he had given to Catherine yesterday had been lying in them, waiting for him. It was the first animal that had ever lived in the same room with him for any length of time. His attitude to animals was somewhat different than to people – animals always show their intentions directly, completely devoid of the concepts of truth and untruth, having only "given", that is, "as it is": to love, to hate, to attack, to defend, to want to eat or sleep, or maybe to play. Animals hide nothing and show everything, and only in proportion to what they are actually experiencing. For this the Irishman respected them very much. While he had been in the house, he had done nothing but try to please him, and during the whole time he had been away he had chewed only on the one shoe that had been set aside for that purpose, and had not touched anything else. Gustav knew what it was like for animals at an early age, what it was like when they were teething, their main weapon, and how important it was for them, especially at that age, not to be left alone. Especially since this chestnut-colored female puppy was the friendliest and most lonely Labrador in the world.
Outside the window, the wind blew, and a row of branches passed at the windows of the house as if to greet the returning host.
This movement of the trees immediately brought Gustav back to his thoughts – the "silent majority", nowadays it is called that. And this majority was formed by the fact that everyone began to reflect in communication, and to build their image in society; relativism in worldview, the very relativism when absolutely everything can be questioned, even that which was once set as a dogma. And on top of that, game semantics, in which any meaning has a game meaning that has to be guessed, but everyone can do it in their own way. And clip culture, in which the development of cognition goes hand in hand with the development of evaluative opinion, closely constructed by a multitude of short clips, colorful and rapidly changing.
Thus, the "silent majority" has chosen two interesting ways of its existence:
either a return to confessional culture, in which many things acquire bright outlines again, having formed a "safety cushion", or the revival of ethno-cultural traditions, within the framework of which it will be not only pleasant to model the new, but also to look at the old with interest and respect, which will give confidence and pride in one's own "I".
At this time, a new concept was even born – "emergence": properties of the whole system not as a sum. After all, it is also clearer and more logical when Indian chiefs go home in SUVs after performing all the rituals, which may be more than one thousand years old; or when a new smartphone of a student in the capital is painted with ancient Russian patterns, and when he drinks milk with honey instead of antibiotics of the 3rd or 4th generation; or when a country house of a newly minted businessman is made without a single nail as it was built 800 years ago. Everything else may look like modernity, but a piece of the old has turned out to be very pleasant to put into the whole, without attaching it to the whole, as if it does not complete the picture, but creates a new one, next to the existing one, but of much smaller size, which makes life more complete.
"The new toys turned out to be much more interesting, and, most importantly, more dangerous than the old ones. – Gustav thought. – Now it's not clear to everyone where the toys are and where you are. It's as if you've become a toy yourself.
These toys were much more fun to play with, and one of them was just now calling. Oksana.
Of course he didn't pick up the phone. What was the point of picking up the phone? She wouldn't tell him anything original or new anyway – it was easy enough to describe her train of thought in such a state.
First, alcohol made her think in terms of a constant "now-now", the frequency of repetition of which is as great as the duration of their existence, so that time ceases to have any more or less distinguishable intervals.
Secondly, the surrounding environment in the form of nightclub bacchanalia with unquenchable deafening rumble completely dissolves the personality and the desire to decide something – you just want to move in the seemingly from the look of it, but useless in its essence, the general rhythm of the raging wave on an empty place.
And thirdly, they did not set any visible or invisible goals and objectives when they went there. They just went together to look at each other. And Oksana showed what she was: unprincipled, willful and untenable as a person. The last one was especially galling, and it was the last one that was going to make her suffer now, especially when she sobered up.
She didn't call for long and only once. Apparently, it wasn't easy listening to the silent ringing either. I wondered if she wanted to apologize for something or just say that the guy wanted to fuck her.
It didn't matter, though it was interesting. What mattered was what she would hear from her the day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, when she wouldn't be suffering from alcohol intoxication and it would be time to think about her relationship.
Gustav climbed up to the tower where he had his favorite view of the "forest waves" and gazed into the twilight – the green crowns of the trees had taken shape, showing all the relatively strong wind blowing. If you looked at the tops of the trees in the distance, you would feel as if you alone knew how that tree felt, and even better than it did. You see how and what influences it, in what direction it will swing now, and what awaits it after that. All this was only knowledge, not influence – in the case of trees it didn't matter, but in the case of people, such knowledge gave real power. If you showed a man that you were interesting, he'd grow ears. It was only necessary to feed him a couple of good advice or just the right words, and he became your friend, forgetting that only another person and no one else can be his most dangerous enemy. If you approved of this friendship, he would open up, giving you undeserved opportunities for his own destruction. And most of all Gustav was surprised by two absolutely opposite features of the man: on the one hand his foolish naivety and trust, and, on the other hand, his ruthless cruelty and hypocrisy. These two qualities seemed to be recruiting each of them to the team of the surrounding reality, and the characteristics of such selection, whether in a single individual or in an entire civilization, could change with astonishing speed and eagerness, going from one extreme to another.
***
Vincent, a recent friend of Gustav's with whom they had occasionally discussed things that were in the back of every man's mind, was due to visit him that afternoon. They usually talked, looking out at the darkness of the forest from the second floor of the mansion.
"Vin, what would you say are the main distinguishing features of the current stage of humanity? Well, for society, for people as a society," Gustav asked.
Vincent, apparently not quite expecting a question about something general rather than about a person as a person, didn't even show any sign of being uncomfortable with such questions, but thought, "You know, you can't really tell. Maybe latency? Striving for balance. The ancient peoples didn't have that. Neither did the Middle Ages. No one thought about any kind of measure – they just took the maximum always. And it always ended badly. As time went on, there was less of this greed. And now, apparently, there is something that suppresses this greed. Latency. Apparently, both society and the state have it. It's just that they all have it to different degrees.
– That's a good point. It used to be really about making the most of things. At least in the example of colonies. In the ancient world, colonies were just part of a state with a special status based mainly on remoteness. In Modern times, it came to the point that a colony could even have its own conventional king, and that the order at the same time in different colonies of the same metropolis could be different. And when the colonial system ended, the system of global lending and investment came into being. Softer and softer, then only to hold on tighter. – Yes, I didn't really think of that… Although what you said about lending is, of course, brilliantly done. It's been working for more than half a century, since the U.S. started implementing the Marshall Plan – loans to those who would renounce communism. Here is a loan for you, but spend it wherever we want, on a factory that will produce what we need and sell it to us at a price we tell ourselves. And the loan itself – "How much do we owe? 2 billion? No money? Pay 2 and a half next year. No money again? Pay next year 3 and a half." Then someone comes to power who doesn't want to do as they say, and they tell him: "Pay now". The country has a crisis, defaults, then a new government. The new government turns out to be "smarter", and they also allow them not to pay their debts on time, just increasing them every year, until someone new and uncooperative comes in. I think it's very simple. And ingenious.