I can’t believe this is now the third time I find occasion to write about conspiracies in recent times (and the second time in the last week) [1] [2], but as someone who writes based on what I experience, the occasion came up. As I have written before, I am an active player in the game Star Wars Combine [3] [4], and I belong to a faction there called the Arkanian Royal Engineers. I am a logistics pilot in the game, and my character spends long and lonely days moving raw materials and ships and vehicles from one place to another. Other compatriots of mine build cities or produce ships and vehicles or mine imaginary resources from imaginary planets. In short, we do things that real people do but in an imaginary universe.

Unfortunately, the political mindset of the real world sometimes gets put into the imaginary world of games. We do not enter into imaginary worlds without baggage. We bring our worldviews with us wherever we go. My own worldview is to be a civic-minded but also profit-minded person, and so I was attracted to the hustle and bustle but also the independent-minded spirit of the Arkanian Royal Engineers, and I liked that it was associated with the New Republic, which I associated with a great amount of democratic freedoms. Unfortunately, recent experience suggests that the New Republic is going the way of the United States, and that’s not a good thing.

I find out quickly that being a part of a Private Sector company (called a PSA in the New Republic lingo) meant that I was a second-class citizen in a realm that favored inefficient and corrupt crony government owned firms and looked down upon those of us who are more capitalist minded. Politics is run by a hypocritical group of people who pass laws restricting liberty on our communication channels but make sure not to live under those laws. Their incompetence at governing has made us a laughing stock, and our current recruitment head is at his wit’s end.

So, clearly there is a problem that demands attention. The result is what is a conspiracy. I want those of my readers who are particular conspiracy buffs to understand what a conspiracy is so as to properly determine their views as to conspiracies elsewhere. We are in a bad situation in the New Republic, as those of us who speak out (like myself) have been abused as being paranoid simply because we don’t trust our government (which, I must concede, does sound rather familiar). Our response is not merely to complain and whine about it, because we recognize that our government is incompetent and insecure and not necessarily deliberately acting according to a conspiracy themselves.

Our response, though, is a conspiracy, and it’s one I wholeheartedly recommend in similar circumstances. I have given vocal encouragement to my cohorts for us to recruit enough people (especially those who like us are dissatisfied with the status quo), which we need between 15-30 of, so that we can go independent and be our own government. Our response to the incompetence of our government has been to seek our own self-government, not merely to whine and complain about that (I hate whining and complaining–I’m the kind of person who wants to do something about things when they are wrong). Because I’m an action minded person and not someone who likes to vent by complaining, I am a conspirator, and I don’t have a problem with that at all.

It is, of course, vastly more dangerous to be a conspirator in real life than it is in a game, but I have seen my share of real life conspiracies. It just so happens that in a game the numbers are small enough where a fairly ordinary person like myself of no particular charisma nor any great wealth or power can, simply by virtue of being an active and civic-minded person, weigh great influence by supporting the efforts of others. In life just as in games, though, I am the kind of person who is going to be a conspirator rather than to complain about conspiracies. I say this because my response to crisis and danger is collaborate with other people to make life better, to use my own personal power and intellect, such as it is, to support my own political and moral worldview. And though I am not a person of great power, I do like to encourage others who are like minded and to turn individual frustrations into common efforts, and that makes me a conspirator, and I’m alright with that, come what may.

There is a lot that is screwed up in this world. If all we do is complain and moan about it, we are no better than the slave-minded Israelites whose whiny carcasses littered the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised land because they lacked the faith in God and the desire to take personal responsibility for their thoughts and actions. That’s not acceptable to me. If something is wrong, I want to do something about it. Sometimes all I can do is send an S.O.S. out to like-minded people so that we can wrestle with the problems and determine solutions. Sometimes it means working hard to build up crumbling institutions so that there is some counterbalance to the entropy and decay that are enveloping my beloved society and its constituent parts. It means I work hard, get my hands dirty, and do something about the problems, rather than complain that others are conspiring to destroy what I hold dear. And if you choose to do something, you are a conspirator too. Embrace it, and stop complaining about others. Be too busy working for the good to whine and moan about others. Then maybe we will have a chance to save ourselves, even if our societies and realms, whether virtual or real, prove to be beyond saving.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/two-people-can-keep-a-secret-if-both-of-them-are-dead/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/why-i-am-not-a-conspiracy-theorist/

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/its-a-lonely-galaxy-out-there/

[4] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/if-life-was-more-like-a-game/