Syncretia 1: Modern Barbarians

“Across the many ruins of the surface world, we have unearthed hundreds of large acropolises and stadiums, some truly awe-inspiring in their scale. We have found one that we estimate could have held 100,000 Terrans. That’s the size of our regular army, although I suppose they would refer to it as our regular navy. Our anthropologists have long argued about the function of these great cirques. Most will agree they are ceremonial and regal in nature, such is our assumption about the theogonic tendencies of the Terrans. They are temples to their rulers, as only mindless ants and bees can be made to build. Others proposed their entertainment value, as amphitheaters for the performing arts, music and drama and dance, but again we are trapped by the biases of our Atlantean minds, projecting our motivations upon others. We have no idea what these collosea are. Then we found the skeletons. Of men and beasts. Not in a combat for survival, but one for applause. There was a lot of horror at first, I recall. But as the body realizes no mortal danger awaits, it sucks back the horror and leaves a parting gift, a mercy perhaps, but more likely a warning, that gift is called contempt and disgust. Contempt for these savage Terrans. Back to Syncretia we returned, proud of our people, and optimistic about a future that, as bad as things might get, would never approach the barbaric bleakness of Terran society.” — Moneitosmachus, Syncretian Golden Age.

In hindsight, it took a surprisingly long time for the universal act of play evolved to something more sinister, given each intermediate step was as innocuous as the previous. As pleasure-seeking envelopes for reproductive matter, we are bound by a single common joy as easily recognizable as it is empathized with, the delight of play. There is something so visceral about unfettered glee that it is infectious. The aged can no longer run and play. Neither can the disabled. Yet they sit around the groups of children and their content smiles betray a fact about play that the cynics among us might have flagged off as a lurking darkness, its vicarious nature was a danger.

In increasing numbers, the citizens of Athlima began to go and watch the children play in the evenings, after a long day’s work. It became a social occasion. A gay affair, with food, drink, but most of all, the peals of laughter and high-pitched shrieks of children engaged in that purest of pleasures, play. These were the good times. And the good times lasted a long time. Long enough that, perversely, should one be asked today if it had all been worth it, it isn’t self-evident what answer might be received. Athlima was part of the free-movement confederation of Syncretia, and reports about their games-centric communities spread, bringing fresh waves of pilgrims from across the federation. The data seemed clear. The larger focus on play meant a lot more of it. Children were happier, more well-rounded, better socialized, highly energetic and focused, cooperative, and healthy. The adults were closer as a community, less stressed, much happier, more productive and innovative.

Something dangerous was happening in the Athliman subconscious. They were learning the response of vicarious joy not with the unconditioned stimulus of the pure pleasure the children displayed so guilelessly and openly, but instead with the conditioned response of the game itself. They were abstracting the institution of play away from the pleasure it caused and equating games with pleasure instead. At this point there had already evolved a much more important institution than the institution of play, that of watching play.

The number of arenas grew. More children engaged in play and more often. Adults went to watch their own children play. Teams were evenly split and all objectively enjoyable sequences, a well-executed move, a well-coordinated team effort, a heroic individual act, were appreciated and absorbed without any concept of winners or losers. But among meticulous Athliman adults who had social circles in many arenas and therefore spent their time watching different groups of children, an observation was made. Some groups of children were just better, it made for a more enjoyable spectacle. These particular arenas grew in popularity.

Thus began the decay. It started with a very simple idea. If games caused pleasure, and better games caused more pleasure, then improving the games were the best way to maximize pleasure. The kids were trained and coached. This was a long process, because the adults had to learn first. There had never before been a concept of becoming better at the game, playing was just fun. Sure, some were better at the game than others, but that was just innate ability, and it was nothing to be either proud or jealous of. Now, however, there was an incentive to be better. The adults studied what that even meant. Then they coached the children. Metrics were developed to rate the games, and it was always better to have a higher quality game. It was a lot more enjoyable. But it was still play, and there was a ceiling on the amount of time the children (and the adults) could dedicate to games and coaching without sacrificing actual productive activities of daily life.

The institution of watching play became large enough that a breakaway faction meeting was called at the Ecclesian assembly. The motion on the floor was this: If the institution of play was made a productive activity of adult life, then the time and effort needed to further improve the quality of the games could be expended, and compensated by the institution of watching play. The popular tribunal had previously collected the public consensus. It was a split vote. The main argument against the motion was its negative impact on children, and the potential destruction of the pleasure of play.

As all motions in the Ecclesia, this was not a trial. The motion sponsors had the required numbers to create the breakaway faction, that was never up for discussion. It was only to be decided then, how they might best set up their new faction for success by discovering and solving many of the reservations that their dissenting citizens helped bring up. It was also to be decided what the compensation package would be, for the breakaway faction to Athlima should they decide to go ahead with the schism, or Athlima to the supporters of the faction should they be made to stay.

The new free zone was called Athlitismos, and about 50% of Athlima decided to join it. The institution of play was formally made a productive professional activity, and the best children were selected for specific training. The goal was to optimize for the quality of the game. All variables were tweaked and experimented with, now that there were full time children in training and full time adults doing the training, and then more full time adults training the trainers. The institution of watching play began to be called Filathlos, and incorporated groups began to sponsor and then own specific games. The system worked flawlessly. The better games caused more pleasure. More citizens came to watch these, bringing more money that would be used to further improve the games.

As the games became more sophisticated, the margins became smaller, and the quality of the game was suddenly contingent on far more factors than before. Where there used to be a single dominant activity to be maximized, now there were several equally sub-dominant activities. Many of these activities were trade-offs, and therefore could not all be maximized together. One game company realized then that instead of optimizing for a high uniform quality of the game, i.e increasing the quality of both teams in a game equally, they could instead create pockets of high quality within the game by maximizing certain traits on one team and other traits for the second team.

Until now, the teams had always been fluid. The games had been constant, and the pool of players the same. On each game day, they would be split in different ways. But now that the quality of the game was pinned on the specificity of the teams and their internal dynamics as players and external dynamics with the other team, the teams were kept constant from one game day to the next. The increase in overall game quality was drastic. Teams could specialize traits like team-play vs individual brilliance, speed vs patience, fitness vs decision making, and so could the players. These games were markedly better than the others. Soon all the game companies were happy to jump on this bandwagon. Spectators could now invest in game companies and so instead of simply moving to the better game company, they now had an incentive to improve the game of their own company.

Athlitismos joined the Athliman Ecclesia to share their reports. Overall game quality had now far outstripped the Athliman ones, bringing far more pleasure than even the best game at Athlima. What’s more, Athlitismos was discovering new talents and traits of Syncretian children and helping them grow in ways that Athliman kids were given no exposure or opportunity to explore. The fears of the Athliman Boules seemed to be valid and rational, but ultimately proved wrong in this natural experiment. Many more Athlimans paid the compensation and joined Athlitismos after this Ecclesia.

It was an Athliman, fresh off the boat, who had the insight that changed things forever. The games in his new home of Athlitismos were profoundly different, and he had just come from an Athliman game so the creeping changes that the locals had experienced hit him all at once with the subtlety of a hammerhead shark taking its name too literally. The games were enjoyable not in a uniformly positive way like in Athlima, instead they caused internal conflict and tension and that led to a compensatory positive payoff in many micro-games happening within the game due to the dynamic of two ‘opposing’ teams.

If it had stopped there, perhaps Athlitismos would not have gone down the path it did. He went one step farther, and decided to request a novel investment from his game company. He would invest a sum of money that could be used as resources only for one of the teams in the company, the one that instinctively caught his attention in the first game he watched. Since this was still part of the Syncretian Federation, there was no question of ‘approving’ the request, it was by definition approved. But there was a shareholder meeting called to determine the potential compensation. The discussion on compensation was deferred until the other shareholders had more time and data to form an opinion on the potential consequences.

In the meantime, the idea won over many other followers, each of whom also invested in a specific team of the company. They reported enjoyment levels far higher than those who had invested equally in both teams. This was then proven by a research team, and the findings excited everyone in Athlitismos. All the companies began to offer single-team investment options, and it was almost unanimously adopted. Not only did the return on game quality, i.e its translation to pleasure, increase dramatically, investors being able to enjoy the same game far more than neutrals, the game quality itself went up surprisingly.

While there were still no scores or winners or losers, a sort of informal record developed in the minds of investors who were not only evaluating their return on game quality (absolute pleasure) but also the return on their investment (pleasure as a % of investment), in order to guide resource allocation and utilization, and if need be to even change their investment team. Nobody was complaining. The stakes got higher, and the games became better. Overall pleasure in Athlitismos was getting higher and higher, the change was noticeable and energizing for all citizens, believing they had stumbled upon something truly amazing.

It is not known now what might have caused the change in psychology, whether it was the start of informal record of scores, or the idea of a return on investment, but an academic panel studying game metrics came upon a startling trend. Game quality was consistently growing, but absolute pleasure was declining. Many theories were put forth. All were disproved by the data as being uncorrelated. All but one. They discovered that there was a declining trend in the pleasure gained from the quality of the opposing team. In the first few decades, this decline had been compensated by the increase in pleasure translation of quality of one’s own team. They had crossed the equilibrium though.

Around this period, there was a natural consolidation of the Filathlos association. Since spectators were no longer bound by game companies, and since they were no longer experiencing pleasure on account of overall game quality, the companies were first broken up into purely single-team companies rather than game organizers. Second, the better teams didn’t just attract more investors, they attracted all the investors entirely. A team that ‘lost’ more than it ‘won’, in this era of specified pleasure, would quickly go out of business since it caused more tension than it created pleasure. A handful of diverse, yet equally competitive teams emerged, which created tension among their spectators and also cathartic moments of absolute quality that created far more pleasure than the moment of the same quality could otherwise generate.

Because the field was now of uniform high quality, the lengths between these troughs of tension and crests of catharsis could increase. Spectators got used to, and even appreciated, the lengthy tension of many successive weeks of ‘defeat’, and the substantially more cathartic ‘victory’ later. Since the teams were evenly matched, on average the catharsis was inevitable and compensatory. But as spectators settled into these lengthening gaps, they experienced something peculiar. They were able to leave the tension at the arena. Their regular lives served as a catharsis from that extreme tension of the arena. Armed with this hypothesis from her own experience, one researcher conducted a pleasure study that, for the first time, included the average baseline for the person, not linked to any activity but a general state of wellbeing and happiness.

Since Athlitismos was in all ways identical to Athlima except for an evolving institution of play and Falithlos, it was a controlled group study that showed her that average happiness went up due to the tension within the arena. This in itself was met with nods and smiles. Until her next slide, which caused a lot more furrowed brows and consternation. The average daily happiness and pleasure was higher in the periods during the troughs of tension, than it was after a cathartic victory. This was most puzzling. But Syncretians did not puzzle, they experimented.

By now, the informal scoring was formal for all practical purposes. There was also a formal leaderboard and trophies. The results of an additional study backed up her claim. Investors and spectators of teams lower down on the leaderboard, while experiencing lower pleasure from the games, experienced a higher average pleasure and wellbeing outside the games. The Filathlos Association was happy to run with this finding, and the information was responsibly released to the citizens. Soon, the recently-closed teams, that couldn’t compete with the much better teams during the competitive period of the FA, all reopened and found healthy doses of investment. An equilibrium began to form, with all teams attracting almost equal investment, high-quality teams from those looking for cathartic victory, and lower quality teams from those looking for cathartic average life.

Athlitismos was overjoyed. The consumer surplus seemed to be almost perfectly mopped up by this perfect competition between firms for a diverse population of varying utility curves. Report after report confirmed their suspicions. Average pleasure was higher than ever before, and far higher than that of Athlima. Unfortunately, averages lie.

A sub-group of Athlitismos was far lower on their enjoyment scores than anyone in Athlima. The players. Spectators at low-quality teams suffered the tension in the arena, and then went back to their lives to experience the catharsis of not having to deal with the consequences of the defeat they had just witnessed. The players did. In the beginning, they were compensated for their loss of pleasure. That’s what a profession was. Compensation for sacrifice. Time, effort, joy, energy, happiness.

Then the suicides began. The Gladiators began falling like flies. But it was already too late in Athlitismos, the paradise for play.