Deus Ex Invisible War DC Dention ending...

[Hexen]

On the comments of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeboqg4t9vs) which is one of the endings of a computer game called "Deus Ex: Invisible War" as you can see here, is this what socialists/communists trying to accomplish or is just a metaphor based on capitalist fears of socialism being a "hive mind". If look at the comments below which I go by the name "Gannok130" which I was recently trying to debate this guy named "ikosabre" which I might as well post his quotes here.


this ending simply introduces an idea of a system that eliminates "generalities" that are used to rule human society and ultimately resrtict equality. In that sense it speaks of partial elimination of individualism but has very little to do with socialism. Socialism imposes equality by elimination of proletariat and public ownership of means of production. This ending envisions an instantenous, individualistic democracy which apparently leads to both political and economic equality
I do not believe that in socialism induvidual is free from hierarchy. If you look at history of socialism, socialistic countries have always been dictatorships or very authoritarian, with history of political oppression. In socialism, the proletariat rebel against the capitalists (Sorry about me confusing proletariat with capitalists in my last message) and create the public ownership of means of production in order to eliminate class society.
in this ending the helios bridges the gap that is human ignorence of other people,s minds. The idea is that human,s inability to understand other humans forces human society to be ruled by "generalities" of human understanting. The helios doesn,t requier generalities to rule bacause it uderstands individuals in a very individual level, thus making instantenous democracy possible. Socialism has very little relevance to this game,s ending
Look, I,v heard all this before. How USSR, China and the rest of the happy bunch weren,t really REAL socialist countries and how there has never been a true socialist country. Well heck, neither has there really ever been a true, pure capitalist country. Besides all social theorys look good on paper but real life implementation is all that matters. Capitalism has all it,s flaws and I really don,t support all that rethoric about efficency and importance of free markets, but socialism didn,t
really have all that much going for it either. As for your theory that fall of socialism was due to corruption or capitalist influence. Do you really believe that yourself even. That socialism failed because of outside influence and not because of inherent flaw in the ideology itself or it,s misjudgement of "human natture" You really think Soviet-Union, DPRK, and all the rest went down the sewage because of influence of capitalist, imperialistic US. You give capitalist too much credit here
To me, blaming it all on capitalists or misguided dictators who failed to implement socialism propely, isn,t really an honest analyzis of what happened in USSR, China or in the rest of themHow do you respond to this?

[commyrebel]

How do you respond to this?
well first off he says that we say there has never been a true socialist state which is true i don't know why he refuses to believe thats a factor it kinda shows he's ignorant and not being a full socialist state how can you still judge them as one? Also when he says that communism/socialism eliminates the individual that is only true on the economic scale not on social yes it will effect it by making everyone equal but people will stay the individuals.He also says that there has never been a completely capitalist economy which is hard to define because of course there is no such thing as a full capitalist society and no one has theorized it not even adam smith well adam smith still wanted no government control over the economy which has almost happened but it failed when the work unions and worker rights groups in the 1800's came in and fought for the government action in the workers conditions, so he does need to research some. So i say continue to debate

[Tatarin]

First of all I must vent my anger at the sequel compared to the first game (called simply "Deus Ex"). However, as a stand alone game it is okay, and some discussion within it is interesting, like this example.


This ending envisions an instantenous, individualistic democracy which apparently leads to both political and economic equality.

I think this is right. Nowhere is it mentioned that the means of production will be available to all, only that everyone will have the same abilities as well as direct insight to whatever political process there will be. It is never quite clear how society is to be ruled, but the first game hints on a benevolent dictator that simply reads the mind of everyone and does what the majority wants.

However, as most people are workers, the Helios/JC entity will be forced to change society in their direction sooner or later. Then it will be up to the majority of the people to really implement the changes, or for JC to show up and change physical reality with his mind, as he did in Antarctica and Liberty Island. :D


I do not believe that in socialism induvidual is free from hierarchy.

Perhaps not as socialism has a state and a purpose to redistribute the wealth. But it is a far smaller heirarchy than capitalism. The goal of socialism is to establish communism, so it is really a transitional stage and not really a political system that can last for millenia.


If you look at history of socialism, socialistic countries have always been dictatorships or very authoritarian, with history of political oppression.

And western "democracies" have never oppressed anyone? What about Iraq and Afghanistan? When did the people vote to attack those countries? Or vote about surveillance or unwarranted searches? Or downloading media from the Internet for personal use? It only seems we can vote for a set of parties who somehow share the same kind of politics, not the vital issues themselves. How is that much different from the so-called "socialist dictatorships"?

Political oppression? Sure, say that to union organizers and immigrant-rights activists and you'll see how easy it is for them. As long as you don't have money, you don't have any rights. When you do have cash, then maybe your voice can be heard in some backwater dungeon radio no one listens to. That everyone has the right to walk the streets and whistle their thoughts is present in any country, Nazi Germany to the USSR to the USA and the rest. But what good is freedom of speach and press if the mainstream media ignores it? Why would anyone want to look at your speeches and writings?

Then you realize that the only other thing to do is to go out on the streets and hope people will listen. And it is then the friendly forces of the police show up to "keep the calm". Ask yourself; what freedoms do we have? Which do we have left?


Socialism has very little relevance to this game,s ending

Again, I don't think so. With the same abilities and instant change and information flow, society would very rapidly move towards progress instead of profit. Most people on this planet wants more free time, more pay, more job security and protection from losing the job. Helios would be forced to steer the world towards a very generous state if not outright democracy and socialism. But yes, socialism itself isn't present, but the progress towards it is.


Well heck, neither has there really ever been a true, pure capitalist country.

Not true. Most people have hooked on the lie that "real capitalism" doesn't exist by all kinds of talkheads and media moguls, paid to the teeth to propagate for "less state, more privacy". A state is absolutely necessary for capitalism: who else would legitimise corporate entities? Who else would enforce the "law"? What would prevent a group of people from marching in to a refinery and take control over it? Thus, there must be a legal body to make that kind of action illegal. So there is a state. But the state must function in the interest of private capital, who in turn is incahoots with the state. Otherwise, capitalism can not exist. What we live in today is what capitalism is and will always be. The exploitation of human beings and their labor.


Besides all social theorys look good on paper but real life implementation is all that matters.

Another argument I'm soon about to puke on. Well, space travel looks good on paper. Mars does too. Relativity and chaos theory? Yes, there on that paper also. But wait, what about capitalism? In the 1500's? Sure, looks good there - but it can't be done! Neither can whites and black ever live together! You see, many things have in previous time looked good on paper, from theocracy to democracy, from unions to pensions to immigration and the color your skin.

Real life implementation also doesn't mean that it is one strike and then the game's over. Capitalism itself have had two major strikes (1920's and 2000's), yet it is still standing - despite accurate predictions of high-and-low levels, specifically economic bubbles. We've seen the rise of xenophobia in Europe in the last years, political parties entering the arena for their cake all over Europe, yet it's been over 60 years since the defeat of Hitler and his nazism. Just as fascism doesn't need a dictator from the very beginning in order to establish a fascist dictatorship, communism doesn't have to begin exactly as it did in Russia 100 years ago. Just as democracy isn't really needed in capitalism.


You really think Soviet-Union, DPRK, and all the rest went down the sewage because of influence of capitalist, imperialistic US. You give capitalist too much credit here

DPRK? Still standing, as are Cuba. But yes, infiltration if any played a small part of it, and by and large "socialist countries" did end by themselves in coups, not collapses. Just as the USSR was doomed for collapse as soon as they turned away from the goal of communism, so did China, yet they succeeded in keeping a one-party state alongside capitalism (imagine that, capitalism without democracy, oh how they piss their pants when they hear that sound). Capitalism can just as easily collapse, in fact, any system can. The run for personal profit has no borders, and that is why a society without such endevaours is needed.

As laid out before, the populations of the various "socialist states" were tired of the secret police, the fear and the lack of control over what was going on. Capitalism seemed awfully good, so why deny it and it's agents once presented? What else could there be? A return to monarchy? And no need to point to the polls which indicate that the populations of those countries are tired of capitalism and in fact want to go back to "socialism" (but is that so strange? Free schooling, cheap food and housing, medicine when needed and in an almost crime-free society?).


To me, blaming it all on capitalists or misguided dictators who failed to implement socialism propely, isn,t really an honest analyzis of what happened in USSR, China or in the rest of them

Yes, that is correct. Capitalism can't be blamed for everything in these so-called "socialist countries", and unfortunately much do come from the countries themselves. Putin, as an example, was a former KGB officer, so you would think that he is specially schooled in Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh if not the dark magic of Joseph Stalin himself, yet he seems to have no problems with rampant capitalism in Russia. Or take Jeltsin, Gorbatcheff and the rest of them. Thus obviously, there was something wrong with a system that put those characters to the positions they were in, and they were certainly not chosen of their excellent knowledge of socialism, let alone communism.

Obviously, the need for a continual revolution, globally, is something to keep in mind. Socialism is not intended to be long-lasting but a transitional stage. Once we get into the great-leader-knows it all-game, then we need to take a closer look.

[Hexen]

There was another discussion (http://www.shadownessence.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=31541&view=findpost&p=465567) over at the Shadownessence forum (which is a World of Darkness forum and this particular one is from a Mage: the Ascension sub-forum) talking about the same video....


[quote name='the giant mantis' date='11 June 2009 - 03:42 PM' timestamp='1244756528' post='465567']
Anyone remember Deus Ex 2?

Somehow, this always struck me as a very Technocratic ending.. I've had massive arguments with people over whether living in such a system would be completely monstrous or utterly awesome, and it's very hard to give a simple answer.

zeboqg4t9vs

There's a brilliant line in that game, 'I have no enemies, only a topography of ignorance.' It's not that the Technocrats are arbitrarily enforcing their paradigm as some manipulative gesture to keep everyone under control.. They're enforcing it because it's true, and those who refuse to recognize it are backwards, or ignorant, or even just dangerously deluded. Biopower is not Marxist power.. There doesn't have to be a super secret conspiracy of social elites trying to oppress everyone. People enforce themselves already through notions of truth, they don't even <i>need</i> to be told what to do providing the underlying logic is there to always ensure they do the right thing anyway.

My thoughts have always been that the Technocratic paradigm is based on the idea of one singular, coherent truth. It's not even about 'magic' or the 'supernatural' (which are themselves secular Western concepts anyway, if you actually believe in these things the words don't really have much neccessity) it's about connecting people's ideas together into a coherent framework of stable truth. Science, modernity, centralization, collectivism.. whatever you want to call it, it's about allowing people to function together rather than staying in their own little belief systems and being unable to interact with anyone on the outside.

Yes, it's biopower.. But you're misunderstanding. Biopower isn't bad.. It's inescapable. It would happen no matter how hard you tried to get rid of it. Power is the only thing that makes any kind of human agency, even resistance or change, possible.

The basis of modern society isn't capitalism, it's collectivism and universality.. That was what the Renaissance (and then the Enlightenment) promised people. To me, that's what the technocracy is about. It's not about oppressing people, it's about homogenizing them, removing the grounds on which they can fight each other or oppress each other so they can live harmoniously together with one vision of the truth to guide them. That's not a bad goal.. maybe it's not a good goal either, but it's certainly not lacking in good intentions.

In short.. I don't understand why the technocracy are so bad. They're kinda manipulative and assholish on an individual level, sure, but then the traditions don't generally come out much better.

(Plus it's possible to actually envisage yourself living in the technocratic future.. Living in a world where the paranoid schitzophrenic next door <i>is actually right</i> and park benches really are stalking you and trying to kill you sounds a bit terrifying.)

And you know this how? Actually an AI system makes a lot of sense. Marx suggested that improved technology (industrial revolution) and systems (capitalism) had fundamentally changed things. It makes a certain kind of sense that to change it further would require more technological change.

Further, actually that AI does create your egalitarian society. Pretty mcuh limitless access to information and resources for everyone.
Yeah.. It's worth explaining what actually happens in that ending.

Basically, the goal of the Helios AI is to expand itself and to overcome the flaws of being a cybernetic entity. To that end, it merges with a guy called JC Denton in the first game, because his nanotech implants allow him to interface with it. It's not a master/servant relationship, there is no distinction between Helios and Denton.

Basically, that ending is the same thing process applied to everyone on earth.. Helios is linked to every human being, and thus there is no more need of 'general law.' Every human being has individual opinions, but they are also linked to the overarching consensus which understands and takes into account their personal opinions, thus governing with 'perfect wisdom'.. As mentioned, there is no need for 'enslavement' as the work economy has been automated, labour is now a redundant concept. Humans are now free to think and research. If anyone's enslaved, they're enslaved to everyone else whose opinions and ideas they now have to account for.. woe is them.

Denton sums it up at one point.. The reason for authority is that all societies take as their foundation that human nature requires control. You need some kind of check on the power and ambition of individuals or they'll run riot. However, if you change human nature, elevate everyone to the same state, provide them with infinate knowledge and equalize their physical capability through nano-augmentation then you no longer need to control anyone as there's no longer any ground anyone could gain on anyone else. Better, by giving people awareness of each other, by encouraging to open their minds to others, then the needs (individual needs) of everyone can be taken into account by society at large.

I'm not a Marxist, and I didn't really mean to talk about Marxism, but does anything actually solve that problem? Without authority, how do you restrict the ambitions of individuals? How do you stop people fucking each other over without oppressing them in the process? Let's face it, some people will always be smarter, or more attractive, or stronger, and they can use those talents to gain an advantage over those who lack them.. Why shouldn't they, after all. You'd have to take a position of authority in order to stop them. Frankly, Marx was so obsessed with conflict between classes he never actually stopped to work out that class is really quite fluid.. There aren't just a preset pool of 'elites' who, once you kill, everything will be happy. Elite groups form from natural human interaction, and the only way to stop that is to keep the people who might become elites down (i.e. oppress them.)

It's a complete logic failure to me..
Capitalism is a system, not a class. The economically disenfranchised are either trying to overthrow the entire system that they themselves are part of (Marxist revolutionaries) or reduce the wealth gap (socialist economics). It's a distinction that's less trivial than it seems, because by and large, in capitalist societies, people want to keep the system; the insidious bit about capitalism is that it constantly tantalizes the lower classes with possibility. "Look at this executive here - you could be rich like that someday!" Money, wealth, property, and power have all been around for a looonnng time, and "true" Marxism/communism generally only works on extremely small scales where everyone can preserve their cooperative ideals (kibbutzes), or on large scales when you enforce it with terror, murder, and authoritarian lunacy (Stalin). So people who don't want either of those (and most people don't), and/or just want to screw the guy with the money, find alternate routes that don't involve sidestepping the system.

Anyway, who says that class is purely predicated on economics? History has shown us religious elites, intellectual elites, family elites, skill-based elites, and more. Unless you have a genepunk future where everyone has the exact same intelligence level, skill sets, drives and goals, physical homogeneity, and life experience, there will always be variation. Someone will just be dumber than the next guy, and in certain systems, will be ostracized; someone may have the strength of a large family with many connections to propel them further and faster.
I hate to say it..

Marx was a social scientist.. His writing pretty much embodies the Enlightenment tradition of social science in that he quite shamelessly takes 'man' as a unified object of study (the foundation of social science is that there is this thing which can be studied, and which follows the same rules - a.k.a 'human nature'.)

I'm really raping the popular media today, but there's a quote from the film 'Enemy at the Gates.'

QUOTE
Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor.


The problem with Marx is that he started at the top.. It's easy to talk about this fictional 'man' (plural) subject and describe how billions of people are meant to live and work together because you don't actually have to deal with them as people with their idiosyncracies and irrationalties and silly human dramas. That's my problem with Marx.. Theory should work even in the most intimate cases, otherwise it's just flawed. Until you can deal with the guy who is jealous because he wants to sleep with his neighbours wife, how are you meant to equalize the classes and create a bold new future?

There are grounds for human conflict and ambition which go beyond the simple materialistic/financial structures Marx was using. People are more than just cogs in a financial system, the things they want, the ideas they hold and the differences between can't just be rationalized away by attributing everything to capitalist exploitation. Why expect everyone to be similar enough to work together harmoniously without any kind of prompting or restriction.. Why should they have to be? Is it important that they are? Most importantly, what happens if you're wrong and they're actually not?

But meh..

I feel this is going slightly off topic. My point was - in what way is the Technocracy actually any worse than the traditions? Assuming the traditions won the Ascention war, what would the world look like - because I can't really see how it would be a nicer place to live than the Technocratic unity. I used the Helios example to illustrate a Technocratic-esque Ascention scenario which couldn't just be written off as exploitative or oppressive.


Although I think this whole AI thing may be a metaphor used by our Capitalist society trying to twist the concept of equality (and it's even more a metaphor that what it's presenting here that it's equating communism/socialism with Stalinism/Maoism/Cult of Personality) even though in reality it's nowhere near that since we don't need an AI to make us "equal" but more like working classes/peasants/etc overthrowing the capitalists so they can create a egalitarian society with no bosses, rulers, hierarchical power structures, and most importantly class society itself (since under true socialism/communism, it would be a classless society meaning there will be no poor, middle class, upper class, ruling classes, etc) which this whole AI thing is the antithesis of what true communists/socialists are trying to accomplish.

Communism/Socialism, in practice, ALWAYS eventually leads to Mao/Stalin. We would need an unselfish AI to manage the functions of bueracracy because though most people want to do good, there are a few who don't and they can make most people rationalize doing wrong in the interest of self preservation. Such individuals seem to be good at manipulating others and getting their way.

(SPOILER alert)

At an earlier point in that game, JC Denton mentions that it is his plan to "address the flaws in human nature" in order to prevent this. The optimist-fantasist in me says this leads to a posthuman minarchist utopia that is Post-Economic rather than capitalistic - we can just make whatever we need or want out of ubiqutous nanomachines, have no more need for politics, everyone is Superman and, having resolved world strife and conflict, can devote our intellects and efforts to tackling the mysteries of the universe. The few "bad people" I mentioned earlier would be the "Unhappy Few" that JC's brother Paul mentions near the end of the game. No one would have any reason to listen to them.

Of course if you played the original game, it's possible that Helios is really, in fact, Icarus and has been playing JC Denton for a fool this whole time, or that the promises were lies, etc etc. The other endings are equally hard to judge. The Templars are Jackbooted Facists, but could be overthrown. Humanity could come to embrace Denton's idea as a reaction to the Templars. The Illuminati ending seems like a less physically intrusive but less amazing version of the Denton ending. And the Omar ending features a ravaged earth, but promises that "The glory of humanity will stretch on to the vanishing point of infinity."



So what do you make of all this?

[Hexen]

The person responded...


Why are we even compairing the utopia presented in this ending and socialism. They have nothing to do with eachother. Besides as I said , I believe in real life implementation. According to Adams, capitalism would optimally allocate societys recources. That markets would be controled by the "invisible hand" and that would allow the economy to self-regulate and bring as much wealth to the populace. Clearly this has not happened completely, eventhough capitalist countries are substantially

[The Red Next Door]

I had played the first one, it basically a game for conspiracy theorists.