I’ve written a couple of articles lately (here and here) in which I talk about viewing the world as a video game. A game in which power players play for their enjoyment, for their sole benefit, but the non-player characters in the game are there only to occupy space, to distract the players, or to serve as cannon fodder, for example.
This idea of viewing the world as a game really took shape in my brain after watching a video of Douglas Murray and Jordan Peterson discussing Murray’s new book, “The War on the West”. In the opening seconds of the video, Douglas Murray says:
“I think that by this stage it is clear that there is not an aspect of Western culture that has not been assaulted at such a fundamental and dishonest level, that if you were to continue this game, there’s just nothing left. Nothing.”
What caught my attention in that statement wasn’t that Western culture was under attack from all directions, or that in the end, that if we continue on the path we are on, we will all end up with nothing, but the simple idea that this really is all just a game to the top-level players.
Over the last few years, the idea that our politicians have been engaged in a chess match has been mentioned frequently. The person making the claim will usually talk about one politician playing 3-Dimensional or 4-Dimensional chess while his opponents are playing a 2-Dimensional game, for example. You’ll also find the comparison between playing a game of chess to playing a game of checkers, the former requiring a much higher degree of skill.
The idea of a board game in which two players engage in a game of skill doesn’t really rise to the scale or the scope of the problems we have in the world today. The real world is much more complex than two world leaders battling it out over a 2-dimensional gameboard.
To envision what’s happening in the world today, whatever game analog one imagines must not only be multi-dimensional (encompassing both space and time), but it must also be multi-player (possibly with different layers to represent the multi-player dimension - imagine a stack of chessboards, all being played at the same time). It must allow the actions of one player to affect another player in at least four dimensions.
That is why the video game analogy works within the context of my two previous articles - making a single board game fit the story is complicated.
But it is a Chess-equivalent that is being played. A game of strategy and skill.
For the average person who is trying to wrap their head around what they see happening around them, especially someone who has played video games before and who understands the elements of the game and the terminology, the video game analogy works pretty well.
For the person seeking to understand the specific actions that a very small group of world leaders are taking, it probably makes more sense to look back at the game of Chess. It is a game of strategy, played by only two players at a time.
To extend the analogy of a chess game out to the degree that it explains everything happening in the world, it may require having two Teams playing against each other. Or maybe there needs to be two teams playing a master game, with other games being played on the side. To extend the analogy of a chess game out to the degree that it explain everything happening in the world, there must be multiple games being played out at the same time, with all team efforts working toward a common goal.
Maybe it’s not just a game being waged, but a tournament of games.
In my opinion, it turns out that viewing the world as a chess tournament, a tournament of games, makes more sense than viewing it as a single game.
Taken farther, in addition to the Master Game between teams, there can be individuals playing other individuals, there can be individuals playing against sub-teams, and even sub-teams against sub-teams. The combinations and the possible outcomes could be endless.
The world-as-a-chess-tournament concept means that there’s not a single four- or five-dimensional game being played in space and time as many have suggested, there are many different games going on all at once, with members of all teams seeking to win the tournament for their team in the end.
In the tournament, the strong players run the risk of being weakened or exhausted by playing in too many different games at once. It becomes clear that the strong players must be kept focused on the critical matches in order to hope to win the tournament.
In order to have a chance at winning the tournament, the strongest players realize that they have to assign others to participate in the individual or sub-team games in their place. They have to think like a strong businessman – knowing that he can’t do everything himself, he will delegate work to others, based on their abilities.
Yes, I think that the idea of a Tournament of Games could help people understand the challenges we face better than the concept of a multi-player, multi-layered, chess game played out over time.
If you were to explain it to someone, would you find it easier to explain the idea of a Chess Tournament, or a game of 5-D Chess?
Let’s look at an ongoing game between two sub-teams
Imagine two chess teams composed of several members of a larger team. These sub-teams might represent the current-day leaders of countries around the world. On one team, you might have Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and maybe Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. On the other team, you have Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz, and Emmanuel Macron.
On the scoreboard, the teams are only indicated by E and W, respectively.
Before the game starts, it is announced that the winner of this game gets to define the rules of the next tournament, which for some will be the first tournament in which a full Team is allowed to compete directly with an Individual player (kind of like the struggle between collectivism and individualism, you could say).
This would be a very important game to win (or lose)!!!
Imagine a game in which the winner of just one specific game in a tournament gets to define all of the rules of the game for the next tournament.
After imagining what that game might look like, take some time to read the new article by Pepe Escobar on ZeroHedge, “Escobar: The Empire Of Lies, Operation Z, & The New Global Chessboard”. If it is no longer available on ZeroHedge by the time you look for it, you can find it on The Saker with the title “Empire of Lies Eager to Receive Mr. Sarmat’s Business Card”.
There will be those that insist that Escobar’s bias toward Russia means that his views should be discounted, but that is beyond the scope of this article. Some of what he writes is troubling to those in the West - try to get beyond that and view it from the context, or the scope of this article.
The idea that there could be such a thing as “The New Global Chessboard” is the scope of this article.
Is it possible that there aren’t going to actually be any winners?
In the game Escobar describes, the W team is playing by a different set of rules than the E team. The W team “…wants to annihilate…” the E team, leading to the E team adjusting their mode of play toward their philosophy of “Totalen Krieg”, which translates roughly as “TOTAL WAR”.
This new strategy by the E team changes to the direction of the game such that “Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of…” a sub-team of the W-team’s “…economy, with the…” advisor ground for the W team “…merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of…” another larger sub-team of the W team.
I know, that’s confusing to work through. It’ll help if you look at the original wording by Escobar to better understand the teams and their goals. As Escobar wrote in his article,
“Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev:”
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
“So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.’s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory. Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU’s economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO.”
So as the W team sets out to annihilate the E team, the E team deploys their “Totalen Krieg” strategy. That’s the game being played now. Got it?
After all, it’s just one game of the tournament, isn’t it?
While the game described above plays out, another game is playing out in parallel.
In this game, another set of sub-teams competes for money. The W sub-team’s strategy is to cut the E sub-team off from their finances, but the E sub-team’s strategy is to reconfigure their finances such that the W sub-team has no influence at all.
Or, as Escobar quotes Sergei Glazyev, the Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union as saying,
“Experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a two-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble, which should be secured by both gold and a group of goods that are currency values, to put the ruble exchange rate in line with real purchasing power parity.”
Okay, enough of the game analogies – as hard as it is for you to read and understand them, it’s even harder for me to make up the story!
At this point, I’ve named names - I’ve put a face on it this particular game. Sergei Glazyev is a team member on the Eurasia Economic Union team, Team E.
Now to figure out who his opposition is from the West to make sure they are up to the challenge they face when they square off against him.
I hear you on the video games and chess tournaments, but I just don’t believe the Matrix exists.
Different movie. Different idea. Completely unrelated to the point that I am trying to get across. Forget about the Matrix for now… Think multiple games of Chess, played in a tournament between multiple players. Think of the Olympics, where the country with the most combined medals at the end of the competition wins.
The bottom line is that if you view what’s happening around the world today as a game, whether it is a video game, a tournament of chess games, or the Olympics, there are a few things that stand out, such as:
Who are the players?
Who owns the game?
Who designed the game?
What are the rules of the game?
Etc.
The world isn’t a stage. It’s a game.
“All the world’s a stage.” ~ William Shakespeare
I’ll probably write more about viewing the world as a game, but for now, I urge people to start thinking about the world not being a stage, as in a stage on which a play is acted out.
Think about the world as a game.
Then think about it as a game where there are going to be very few real winners and many real losers if we don’t figure out how to play the game better.