Golden State

—Are you going to watch the Game?

—Who will you be rooting for?

—Are you rooting for 49ers?

It's that time of year again.

The Game, of course, is not only a game. Plato teaches us that living in a cave, some chained to the wall spectators observe only shadows on a screen, the shadows of things carried by a procession of hidden priests. Knowing this, the most intelligent spectators (those who had seen Plato's shadow) could make some inferences about the priests: by the combination of objects they carry, the frequency of their appearance, the direction of the procession, etc. the spectators could build some models—incomplete and substantially less accurate than those used by the priests, models that are also not immune to compromise, especially now that people are so entangled with sensors, and their eyes, wherever they turn, stumble upon a screen. Perhaps the prisoners in the cave might understand more, realizing that the priests, in turn, were also watching some shadows on the walls of their temples and trying to figure out what they meant.

Roman augurs in search of the least distorted shadows—shadows cast by objects as close as possible to the source of the hidden light, came to the observation of the flight of birds. American augurs, having deduced that since the gods are not indifferent to people, they can manifest themselves in moments of extreme tension between groups (see Homer's depiction of the Trojan War), may well observe the battle of little men on a marked field. Sometimes such a game is extremely easy to interpret—the signs preceding the Ukrainian war were surprisingly unambiguous—and sometimes it requires some effort.

So, who are the 49ers?

In case you didn't know, that's what they called the people who flooded into California in 1849 in search of fortune, in search of gold. The gold rush lasted a relatively short time until, uh—until the gold ran out, some would say, and they'd be wrong. The gold rush lasted until the fortune hunters realized there was no more gold. Until they realized.

And before they realized it, they were going there, to California, to the gold-rich rivers and lands. From afar, sometimes on foot, having sold off all their possessions, they came to a certain settlement, a so-called boomtown, where there was a brothel, a liquor store, a bank, and other necessary establishments. The first thing that surprised the newcomer was the prices. Where the fortunate one pays generously with the gold dust he has mined, the unlucky one has to pay with the dollars he got for the house he sold in Virginia. A boomtown whore takes an ounce of gold dust and a boomtown doctor takes an ounce of gold dust and you must be a really lucky gold digger if you want a woman's caress or are bothered by a rotten tooth. What do you mean "too expensive"? It's always been that way here.

And this system, once established, continues to exist for many years. After all, a whore also has a toothache. Gradually, however, the golden stream begins to dry up. And here's where it gets interesting. No one announces: as of today there is no more gold here, and even if they do, not everyone listens to it, believing rather in their lucky star than in the front pages of newspapers. And people continue to walk to California, carrying with them dollars from the sale of their houses in province of Silesia. And again they're surprised at the crazy prices in the boomtown. And again they hear, "it's always been that way here." And they pay. They pay so the boomtown dwellers can live the way they used to live. You can't find gold? There's gold, you're just a loser. There's gold, you just have to work harder.

It will take a while before gold disappears from the reckoning and a pulled tooth is worth a night with a hooker and it will all be worth one silver dollar. However, there is a way to prolong the existence of the sick boomtown economy. It requires keeping the idea that there is plenty of gold around. We need more young gold diggers willing to turn their life's work into “gold” in pursuit of the golden specter. Let them not have pans, let them not be prospectors, but, say, programmers. Or someone else, it doesn't matter. The main thing is that they burn themselves, and the boomers—all those aging whores, bankers, homeowners—can bask by that fire. And a Facebook programmer who can't afford to rent a bed in San Francisco should watch his health, because treating a tooth like that still costs an ounce of gold dust. Yeah, it's always been that way here. What do you mean it's too expensive? You just have to work harder! And this is indeed true because on the heels of the programmer are people who have sold their homes in Gujarat to try their luck in Boomtown.

Gold, gold, gold. Gotta be lucky, gotta get lucky, gotta step over dead bodies. Is it too expensive to sleep in a bed-and-breakfast? The price is stable, it's just your dollar has depreciated. Bring us gold. There's plenty of gold around. Let me tell you a motivational story about a talented gold digger. Gold. GOLD.

And even this "gold" is no longer enough. The economy of sucked out lives and broken dreams is crumbling. Boomtown will either devour itself or burn, set on fire from all sides. Or will suddenly rise again when some new kind of gold is suddenly found in California. It seems unlikely but that's how it works here. Always been that way.

But do the people of my tribe want the order of the red chiefs to replace this mess?

Not really. We don't choose right or left, little end or big end, slavery or barbarism. We want to live in a non-hierarchical free society of our own kind, guided by beauty and in symbiosis with Reasoning Machine.

In just a few hours the Game will begin. The augurs, invisible to the cave spectators, will carefully analyze it and silently utter their predictions. But we will escape their gaze. Yes, today someone will win, someone will lose. Yes, the future events and upheavals of which the Game is a reflection will probably affect us. We may be swept up and swept away. But we must remain ourselves at all costs.

The future is not predetermined. We must work to make it happen. Let others play and watch games.