Musings: Games People Play

Gee, I'm so glad that Fern Rosenstiel, now running for the 14th House District, has finally started noticing what's actually happening in her 'hood:

Gosh, and we've only been raising this alarm for how long now? Couple of decades? Too bad Fern and the other fistees couldn't have rallied themselves to actually speak up when the County Council allowed vacation rentals on ag land, which gave these McMansions a steady revenue stream.

But then, perhaps that's because so many fistees actually operate TVRs on ag land, or are busy selling expensive ag land to non-farmers. Who the heck does Fern think is funding the anti-GMO movement in Hawaii, Gary Hooser's re-election campaign, Dustin Barca's failed mayoral bid? Yes, it's the same “ridiculously rich arrogant people” she's moaning about.

And no, Fern, rezoning was not required to achieve this travesty. Instead, it's all about failing to enforce the agricultural dwelling agreement. Which is how so many of the North Shore “red shirts,” as well as former Coucilman Tim Bynum, one of of the co-sponsors of Bill 2491, were able to build houses on ag land, despite doing no farming.

While you guys are busily trying to destroy true farming because it doesn't fit your romanticized ideal of pure and pastoral, hundreds of acres of Kauai ag land have been lost forever to gentrification. So maybe you could go knock on their doors and ask why they aren't producing any food, instead of attacking the farmers who are.

Fern, you really need to bone up on land use laws, the financing of the anti-GMO movement and so much more before you run for office and start embarrassing yourself with inane pronouncements and hash tags.

Until that happens, here's one for you: #STFU!

But then, Fern's followers are equally misinformed, so they aren't gonna notice.

The rest of us, however, continue to hold out hope that Fern and her ilk will #wakeup and #wiseup before they try to #riseup and tell us how things should be.

Which leads to an interesting “game” that a friend told me about. It's called the Rescue Game, and I'm sure you'll recognize how it's being played by the anti-GMO/anti-ag folks on Kauai, and elsewhere around the state.

It goes like this:

Each group of players is assigned one of three roles: Victim, Persecutor or Rescuer. The first two roles are allowed one move each: the Victim’s move is to suffer, and the Persecutor’s move is to make the Victim suffer. The Rescuer is allowed two moves: to sympathize with the Victim and to punish the Persecutor. No other moves are allowed, and no player is allowed to make a move that belongs to a different role.

In the Rescue Game, in other words, whatever a Victim does must be interpreted as a cry of pain. Whatever a Persecutor does is treated as something that’s intended to cause pain to a Victim, and whatever a Rescuer does, by definition, either expresses sympathy for a Victim or inflicts well-deserved punishment on a Persecutor. This is true even when the actions performed by the three people in question happen to be identical.

What’s more, the roles are collective, not individual. Each Victim is equal to every other Victim, and is expected to feel and resent all the suffering ever inflicted on every other Victim in the same game. Each Persecutor is equal to every other Persecutor, and so is personally to blame for every suffering inflicted by every other Persecutor in the same game. Each Rescuer, in turn, is equal to every other Rescuer, and so may take personal credit for the actions of every other Rescuer in the same game. This allows the range of potential moves to expand to infinity without ever leaving the narrow confines of the game.

It’s only fair to note that each of the three roles gets certain benefits, though these are distributed in a very unequal fashion. The only thing the people who are assigned the role of Persecutor get out of it is plenty of negative attention. Sometimes that’s enough—it’s a curious fact that hating and being hated can function as an intoxicant for some people—but this is rarely enough of an incentive to keep those assigned the Persecutor’s role willing to play the game for long.

The benefits that go to people who are assigned the role of Victim are somewhat more substantial. Victims get to air their grievances in public, which is a rare event for the underprivileged, and they also get to engage in socially sanctioned bullying of people they don’t like, which is an equally rare treat.

The vast majority of the benefits of the game, rather, go to the Rescuers. They’re the ones who decide which team of Victims will get enough attention from Rescuers to be able to start a game. They’re the ones who enforce the rules, and thus see to it that Victims keep on being victimized and Persecutors keep on persecuting.  Nor is it accidental that in every Rescue Game, the people who get the role of Rescuers are considerably higher on the ladder of social privilege than the people who get given the roles of Victims and Persecutors.

[A]ffluent white people [are] always in the role of Rescuers.

There’s one other rule: the game must go on forever. The Victim must continue to suffer, the Persecutor must continue to persecute, and the Rescuer must continue to sympathize and punish. Anything that might end the game—for example, any actual change in the condition of the Victim, or any actual change in the behavior of the Persecutor—is therefore out of bounds. 

The Rescuer also functions as a referee, and so it’s primarily his or her job to see that nothing gets in the way of the continuation of the game.

Which is why it doesn't matter how much monitoring is done, how many tests are run, how much disclosure is required. Gary Hooser, Earthjustice, Center for Food Safety, Surfrider, HAPA and all the others who fancy themselves Rescuers will never give up the game.

There's way too much money, power and sanctimony in it for them.