Perhaps my favourite concept invented by the ancients is that of the ‘hungry ghost’.
It’s the idea that if a family no longer offers its libations to the ancestors or prays the correct ritual, these spirits will become angry and begin to harass the living until they remember and return to their true path.
Over the summer, I found myself asking: What would the world look like if our ancestors continued to live after death but were angry with us for ignoring them?
Would they be tipping over chairs like petty poltergeists? Would they send lightning bolts at convenient times? Or would they call out from the beyond in more subtle ways for us to return? Would you use the carrot or stick if you were a hungry ghost?
I’m not sure how much I believe in this, but the whole idea made me reconsider the conversation about video games.
On one hand, many well-meaning people consider video games to be mental poison for the players, erasing the good years of young men and (some) women in useless, mindless, click work. For others, video games are seen as an art form and sometimes border on the religious with plenty of engagement at the spiritual level.
But there’s a cliché of gamers as losers for good reason. People with responsibilities tend not to have time for video games. But it’s not entirely true that only winners have a family or a successful business. I’ve known plenty of people with major success and kids who feel their existence is empty. Winning and losing is not easy to judge.
Most of the time, and despite what gamers tell you, video games are generally an escape. This column wants to know if gamers are escaping to something or from something. Most people don’t understand what they are escaping from, and even if they did, you probably wouldn’t want to hear it. But if gamers are escaping to something, then that will have huge implications for the future.
Young men seem drawn to video games because they provide a sense of progression and agency that is missing in their lives. They have almost unlimited comfort and provision but zero sovereignty. Material comfort is a core priority for women. Yet men need adventure, quests and exploration and this world’s myriad regulations and red tape make life tough for young men.
But they still hear the encouraging whisper of their ancestors.
With video games, the masculine urge to undertake heroic adventures, provide for the tribe and defeat an enemy can be satisfied over and over. There’s something about video games that clearly pleases the hungry ghosts who want the best for us.
That’s not to say the virtual world is healthy. During the holidays, I spent a bit of time around relatives’ and friends’ children. Observing their behaviour led me to worrying thoughts about why small children don’t seem to play anymore.
They have toys, sure. But the toys lie to one side while the children gaze eternally at YouTube videos that would appear alien and outlandish to our grandparents. The videos are mostly of other people playing with toys. For example, little dinosaurs play fighting on a table, or rubber ducks going on a swimming adventure around the bath. While watching the kids watch these videos, it struck me: “They are watching the play that they no longer do themselves.”
Instead of creating stories themselves, they watch videos of other people pretending to play. The real experience of playing with toys is replaced by the virtual simulacra of playtime. I then realised that large parts of modernity are simply the replacement of the real experience for the simulation of the experience. The Sorcery of the Spectacle, if you will.
This began long ago. Books and adventure stories once provided a way for people to live vicariously through the stories they read about heroes. Schoolboys could recreate on the playground the tales of derring-do found in books of treasure hunts and ancient battles. This vicarious participation then evolved from books into films and TV shows, and now into video games.
Slowly, slowly, our most basic human needs were replaced by the passivity of watching others do it. We don’t have sex anymore: we watch pornography. We don’t have real friends: we post on Facebook and Instagram. We don’t even work properly: we just push paper around in endless busywork.
Consider the “mukbang” videos. Originating from Korea, these were of people filming themselves eating. Millions of people have watched these videos. Another example is “unboxing” videos where people (mostly children) will watch other people opening presents and taking toys out of their boxes. People also enjoy watching others play video games more than playing those games themselves. Twitch channels and game streamers are evidence of this. You can almost hear the hungry ghosts of our ancestors screaming in frustration.
Let me be clear: play is not a bad thing. Play was originally a simulacra of real adult activities but made safe for small children. Play is meant to be a rehearsal for the real thing. But we’ve moved from real play to virtual play to now passively watching other people play.
The common theme is that at every level, at every age, at every step, we are encouraged to remove ourselves from reality. Creating ever more layers between ourselves and anything that might cause real joy or pain. As an aside, I believe this is one of the key reasons for the rise in autism numbers. By distancing ourselves from anything of real substance, we lose our ability to understand it, like an autist who can’t understand the emotions of others.
The reverse is true, as well. People who are overly emotional don’t know when to stop expressing their emotions because they have avoided any real-life lessons that would have taught them what happens when their sympathy and empathy reached dangerous extents.
At some point, the children I was around were always dragged away from their screens by their responsible parents so they could sleep and exercise. But in a godless world, who will step in and drag the adults away when they’ve spent too long with screens or when they’ve forgotten to eat and rest? Who watches the watchmen?
While these aspects are worth worrying about, it’s always been true that technology is a tool. How a person uses a tool makes it bad or good. And I get the sneaking suspicion that our attentive and caring ancestors know this.
A whole generation of young men have grown up in a feminised society, hemmed in by hectoring schoolmarms and made to kiss the boot of weaponised diversity every day. They are taught about the evils of colonialism, sexism and racism, which are their fault, according to the hate-filled commissars. These young men appear to be soft and beaten and they have been quiet.
Too quiet. The silence of millions of young men is eerie when you think about it. A whole generation of disinherited young men with nothing to live for, no prospects for marriage or property ownership, held back while foreigners are given preference in schools, jobs, careers and everything else. You’d expect young men, with the blood of conquerors in their veins, to burn to the ground this society that obviously hates them.
Yet all we hear is silence and the clickity-click of keyboards. Young men are simply avoiding engaging with the oppressive system. They see how they have been born into a biopolitical prison and have decided to fight back by refusing to perpetuate it. But they are not idle. What are they doing instead?
They’ve been playing games.
Simulated combat; simulated warfare. Experiencing every military campaign in history from every perspective – from the grunt in the mud dodging artillery and trying to get a clear shot at the enemy, to the generals who plan encirclement manoeuvres and manage the supply chain logistics to keep the soldiers fed. Their heads are filled with tactics. Each of them has died in combat 10,000 times, each has thousands of kills and each has conquered the world a dozen times over.
Sure, it’s all just games. A simulation. Not the real thing. But what happens when a leader in the real world comes along, hands these young men a uniform, an assault rifle and a bag full of FPV drones and offers them a chance to go after the people who have been stomping on them for their entire lives?
The hungry ghosts of our ancestors have a plan for us. And they are smarter than you can possibly appreciate. They have floated in the shadows for millennia, watching, encouraging and whispering. I think some of us can hear them through the screen.
I’m starting to think the younger generations will be ok after all.
