From The Map Is Indestructible by O.G. Rose
Considering Together the Next Section
Once a “map” emerges, a logic naturally arises that makes it moral to stay in and inconceivable to venture out — a process of insulation and “map-sealing.” Then, we employ “dominate strategies” in life to keep back anyone who would challenge our “map,” an act which also makes us seem right to stay in our “map.” After all, no one is able to pierce it; it’s safe. It should be our home (blood-bound).
I
We explored in the first four essays of this “essay book” why it is natural for us to make “maps” (using the term “map-naturing,” which is supposed to play on the idea that it is “our nature to make ‘maps’ ”), with a critical acknowledgment that we require “maps,” all while stressing their danger. We cannot live on notions alone: we require frameworks. And once we invest in a framework and pour our time and energy into it, we will not give it up easily: to do so could be like suffering a “mini-apocalypse,” per se, and so we will happily use apocalyptic-thinking to protect it. Such changes the “rules” of thinking in a manner that protects us from critique, while at the same time making it right and moral to stay within our “map.” The intensity of apocalyptic-thinking furthermore makes it emotionally difficult and burdensome to consider otherwise, while at the same time making it easy to emotionally overreact toward anyone who would question our “map” (which under normal circumstances, social etiquette might hold us back from so behaving). This suggests apocalyptic-thinking might make it easier to behave like sociopaths, who arguably have advantages in maintaining power throughout various social dynamics, precisely because the sociopath doesn’t care what other people think. Does this mean Game Theory dynamics can favor those who are the worst behaving? I fear so, suggesting why “autonomous rationality” leads to “suboptimal results” — but more on that later.
Someone who believes x “map” must be followed or the world will end is “sealed” within that “map” — it is very difficult to access that person, for all logic, reasoning, and thought has been shifted in favor of that “map.” With this comes emotions, personal offense, and the like — all of these contribute to map-sealing. For the planet is on the line. Humanity is on the line. Children are on the line. Everything — what kind of monster would risk everything? And in this way we can see how apocalyptic-thinking is a supremely “rational goal” for map-making and map-sealing, which again suggests why “autonomous rationality” leads to Nash Equilibria and “suboptimal results.” Furthermore, apocalyptic-thinking can isolate people from everyone except those who agree with the apocalyptic-thinking, forming tribes, generating savior-complexes, spreading pathologies, and/or profoundly intensifying the map-sealing. Furthermore, dealing with people can be hard (“The Real” of Lacan might manifest), but fortunately our “map” makes it clear that we do nothing wrong to avoid people. In fact, we might be saving the world.
Not only does apocalyptic-thinking “morally seal” us within our “map,” but there is another way in which we can use “blood” to our advantage: we can “ground” and justify our “maps” with the sacrifices of martyrs, soldiers, noble people, children, saints, friends, and the like. Blood seals, and please note we will be incentivized to appeal to blood quickly and often, as described regarding “The Game Theory of Conversation,” for the one who implements a “dominate strategy” quickly and first tends to win. And “blood seals” both in that it makes us afraid to “spill blood” in risking the Apocalypse, and in that it makes us afraid we will “dishonor blood” through say forsaking or disregarding the sacrifices of soldiers, martyrs, and the like. Also, our views seem safer “in the dead,” beyond this life where people are alive and capable of critique, which at the same time can make our views feel transcendent and thus a solution to Gödel’s “Incompleteness Problem.”
History is perhaps a story of people using “blood” for (a sense of) epistemic justification (as perhaps perfected by Christ), for blood is how we can gain “a sense of axioms” (which must actually be missing), while at the same time making it “too much to think” that those who gave their blood for those axioms could have shed blood for nothing (we become humble and moral to defer to them, as perhaps we want). And if anyone accuses us of using the dead for our own ends, we can (perhaps genuinely) claim we are only honoring what they died for and thus are living as they would have wanted us (which is to suggest they died wanting to be used as means). If we employ this “dominate strategy,” we can accuse the questioner of being insensitive, cruel, heartless — the benefits of appealing to “blood” are vast. There might even be incentive to throw “blood” at problems that we know we’ve messed up, precisely to hide that error, for who would question it if lives were given up in its name? Perhaps there is incentive to do “the insane” precisely because nobody wants to face the reality we have done something insane (which would unveil the world is a place where insane things can happen)? Are there ways in which we can make “maps too important to fail?” The tricks of “maps” know no bounds…
II
As corporations and banks can find it rational to become “too big to fail,” so “maps” can seek “blood” and apocalyptic-thinking precisely to become “too invested in to be false.” Such an “invincible state” is rational for rationality to gain for itself, which it can then defend by using “dominate strategies” in and through conversation, interaction, and the like. However, as we’ll get into, the very fact that we turn to “blood” at all for our “maps” can suggest a critical truth, mainly our reliance on something “nonrational.” And hence why we can be careful not to look too carefully or closely at what we are doing: we want the benefits of “blood” for our “maps” without noticing what must be true for those benefits to exist (mainly, the distinction between “the true” and “the rational”). We are careful to snatch what we want without looking.
Map-sealing only works if we don’t let ourselves be conscious that we are indeed map-sealing, hence the importance of ethics and morality in making it right that we don’t question what we are doing. As discussed by Herbert Fingarette, how people are capable of self-deception (for example) is always a strange question, for if we know we are self-deceived, we cease to be; thus, for self-deception to work, we must go about it in a way that keeps us from realizing that we are going about it. Likewise, if we are engaged in map-sealing, we can’t let ourselves know we are engaged in map-sealing, for then we could have to see ourselves as engaged in ideological enclosure. To avoid facing this, ethics and morality are a great tool, for we then make it “right” to do what we are doing and so engage in acts of map-sealing.
If it is moral not to question our “map,” if it is selfless to keep ourselves from venturing beyond it, and if it is principled to use “dominate strategies” to keep people from thinking that which could cause the Apocalypse, then even if we do “engage in map-sealing,” we primarily engage in “doing what’s right.” Who cares then if we’re critiqued as brainwashed or ideological? We’re moral. On this point, it should be noted how fear and anxiety also contribute to map-sealing, which are discussed notably in works like “Concerning Epistemology” and “On Worry,” both by O.G. Rose, papers I considered including in The Map Is Indestructible but left for Second Thoughts instead. Still, I wanted to note here how those papers could be read in relation to “map-sealing,” for I believe the ideological role of fear is great.
As written in the Epilogue to the paperback release of Missing Axioms by Samuel Barnes:
‘Martyrs are psychologically invaluable […] for if someone dies for our beliefs, this helps us feel like our beliefs must be true (which we cannot know). Blood stabilizes us, and a world without martyrs might be a world which tore itself apart (as Girard warns might be the fate of a world without scapegoats). Our martyrs help us feel that we have not ignored Socrates, that our city is not arbitrary, that our devotion is not brainwashing, and all of us naturally seek martyrs (Founding Fathers, the soldiers of the World Wars, the saints…). Perhaps only blood stabilizes us, and hence the need for a religion in “The Afterglow West” which focuses on regular practices of drinking blood. […] Martyrdom provides a feeling of Truth (the devil is an angel of light), hence why it is dangerous, the ultimate use of others as a means to an end […] Christ overturns martyrdom as a mechanism to validate values; Christ forces us to acknowledge that we live values that we cannot escape and cannot ground […]’
The epilogue argues that ‘Christ is the ‘martyr’ who overturns ‘the martyrdom mechanism,’ which is to say the social tendency to use martyrs to avoid facing that we are condemned to value and embody a claim on Truth.’ But Christ has not been interpreted this way; instead, Christ has often been interpreted in the exact opposite way, which is to say as encouragement to rely on martyrs. We come to believe it is not only moral to do so but saintly, and so mechanisms of map-sealing are further hidden from us (perhaps behind feeling we do God’s Will).
Please note that I have not meant to say that “blood” is the only way to “seal” “maps,” but I do think it is very prevalent and perhaps the most “indestructible way” to map-seal. Again, every section of this book is meant to highlight case studies to suggest larger movements (map-naturing, map-sealing, map-vanishing…) that easily entail dimensions not directly discussed in this book. Still, the point is so far that we map-make (due to our natures) and then map-seal via “dominate strategies” and “power moves” which we can frame as moral so that we can conceal to ourselves what we are doing (especially if we are fast to employ such strategies). There is perhaps no method better for keeping us within our “maps” than by making us feel like we risk the Apocalypse to leave those “maps,” while at the same time dishonoring the martyrs who died for the “maps” we occupy. The threat of “spilling blood” and “forsaking blood” is nearly unbearable to face (“blood” is the stickiest glue); hence it is profoundly rational for our “maps” to employ apocalyptic-thinking and “blood” in their favor: such moves almost seem to make our “maps” invincible (a point which brings to mind “The Rationality of Invincibility and Self-Destruction” by O.G. Rose on Corporatism). Facing and overcoming this incredibly powerful move of our “maps,” we must do something radically nonrational — but even thinking to do that would require “nonrationality” to be a category in our thinking.
III
Only perhaps Nihilism could avoid being a “map,” but Nihilism is not possible, and even if it was it easily couldn’t be (falsely) “justified” by martyrs (for it is hard in showing to die for something we do not value). Nihilism could strangely enough help us escape “the problem of maps,” but the price is too high: life becomes meaningless. But faced with “maps” and not sure what else to do, Nihilism seems like a valid choice, and so perhaps Nihilism is our response to Ideology, which is to say “The Meaning Crisis” is how we are trying to avoid the totalitarian movements and world wars of the 20th century? Indeed, I think that is absolutely one way to understand the growth and spread of Nihilism: there is easily a nobility behind it. (Un)fortunately, as Mr. Barnes has argued, Nihilism is impossible (and even if it wasn’t, Nihilism might not be sustainable, ultimately leading into something like Antinatalism), which is to say we must go into “the problem of maps” and somehow find a better way to “address” it.
“Blood without givens” is weaker than “blood with givens,” though “blood” is still remarkable powerful and perhaps “practically” identical in effectiveness. I’m not sure, and certainly once “blood” connects with “Desire’s Masterpiece,” it seems unstoppable — but still the point is that there are differences in effectiveness, and if we are to regain something like “vanishing” (which “givens” were capable of in being “thoughtless”), techniques must be employed (as we will discuss next). All the same, the slight change in effectiveness provides a “glimpse” of something through a slight “crack” that wasn’t so readily present until “givens” collapsed. Through this “crack,” we might catch sight of what makes possible “the problem of maps,” and what also might help us sublate that very problem into Absolute Communities.
Looking ahead, though it requires elaboration, “blood” suggests and hints at a crucial reality, which is that ultimately everything comes down to axioms and our choices of which axioms we will ascribe to and which we will not. And this choice seems to come before rationality organizes our thoughts, which begs a question: How do we rationally choose what axioms we live according to if the axioms come before the rationality? What does that say about “rationality” itself? Indeed, these questions linger, and if we must make a choice of some kind — that’s terrifying. Perhaps “maps” and “blood” help us avoid this anxiety? Perhaps “maps” can make us believe we can live in a world where we don’t have to make “deep trade-offs?” Is avoiding a “tragic life” (that we’re then responsible for) one of the great temptations of “maps?” And why shouldn’t we given into that temptation if, once we do, we can “self-forget” that we gave into it (especially if “the map” is “Desire’s Masterpiece”)?
IV
If the world will end if we do not do x, then we must do x, and if x happens to confirm our “map” and seal us within it while simultaneously equipping us with “dominate strategies” that make us unreachable in our sealed “map” — we have no choice but to do what is right. Within my “map,” it also becomes basically immoral to question it, because doing so might tempt us to do that which could prove apocalyptic, unjust, unpatriotic, unloving — we are right to live in our “map” silently and “thoughtlessly.” Ah, but can we be so “thoughtless” if “givens” have collapsed (as argued in Belonging Again)? We certainly will try (which is to say we turn to ideology and fundamentalism to avoid the existential anxiety resulting from the loss of “givens”), and apocalyptic-thinking itself will contribute to us doing everything in our map to make “maps” “practically identical” to “givens” (perhaps never admitting our failure).
That said, as Belonging Again acknowledged, though “blood” is perhaps the most powerful “dominate strategy” for maintaining a “map,” it is still the case that the effectiveness of “blood” is weaker after the collapse of “givens,” for it is easier today for people to question “maps” which defend themselves with blood, given that it seems to people as if billions of people died throughout history for religions and wars which are not true. “Blood” is still very effective, especially in the form of apocalyptic-thinking coupled with other “dominate strategies,” but nevertheless I do think “blood” is weakening. And so something else has raced in to “fill the gap,” mainly the perfection of “the internally consistent system” in “Desire’s Masterpiece” — but we must discuss conspiracies later.
For now, we must examine the next step in how “maps” operate and defend themselves, which is through distraction, redefinition, business, and ultimately “vanishing.” “Map-vanishing” is what all “maps” naturally engage in, and though it’s harder for “maps” to do this without “blood,” it is not impossible, and operations of map-vanishing are still in play. If we are to understand “the problem of maps,” understanding map-vanishing is necessary. And “blood” is still with us — we are not out of “the dark woods” of that problem — and once we map-make, then map-seal, we need to engage in map-vanishing if we are to “totally enclosure” ourselves (“total depravity,” for Kierkegaard, suggesting “self-relating effacement”). Then, we’ll be safe and happy — yes?
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