Does Norway exist? or A story about Steffe, Nisse and the game of Norway

Once in Duckburg I one time overheard a conversation where someone boldly stated that Norway (or any other country really) didn't exist. He claimed that what actually existed was a piece of landmass on a distinct planet in a particular galaxy, but everything else - like borders, a distinct culture or anything else was just a piece of imagination floating around in peoples heads. Norway was "play pretend", only the earth mass itself of the "Norway game" could be considered actually real. Naturally people got quite upset, especially the Norwegian ducks around and I don't remember much of the continuation of the conversation - but the claim has stuck with me since.

I don't think I agree with it, at least not entirely. I can see what the "Norway-skeptic" meant by his claim. There is a distinction between our words and names for things and what actually takes place in existence proper and can be said to be real. This is a philosophical debate as old as any, but still - "Norway" is indeed only a name, however a very distinctly one of that. It refers to a certain areal of the earth and if you consult a respected atlas and walk around along the Norwegian border you will find that the image of Norway in the atlas will match very precisely with what you see on your path. Then, you can call this particular area whatever you like - "Salmoniland" or "Skiwaytoomuchistan" or something else entirely, "Norway" is arbitrary - the land mass isn't.

R and I use too play "Twenty questions" when out walking and when places is the topic, our definition of a real place versus a fictional one is if it's possible to travel to the place in question in our current reality and if you then are able to explore and investigate it - labify it if you will - then it is to be considered real - if not then it has to be fictional. Norway, its woods and fjords and all other things found among its lands you very much can labify to your hearts content - so yes, Norway is very much real I must say. 

So. There. A short essay this time around, see you next time...

***

Nah.

Wait a minute here. Let us take the same form of test to the Norwegian state and see what we'll find. Can I go somewhere in the world and "labify" this state thingy of yours? If I try one might point me to such things as the Norwegian king or make me go to the location of the "Stortinget" and look up the Prime Minister or perhaps someone will take me to their version of the IRS and say: "We'll if the state wouldn't be real, who are we paying all these money to?" In all these cases I wouldn't recognize a "state" anywhere. No, I would see a fancy dressed man (the king), an impressive building (the Stortinget) with a less fancy dressed man (the prime minister) and a horror house of evil and pain (the IRS) - but nowhere a state. The only thing recognizable as a "state" would be different people playing "the game of the Norwegian state" and claiming all these things mentioned above belongs to it. Those claims are impossible to labify outside of maybe the department of sociology - but that science is as real a science as creationism is. The state does not pass the test of "twenty questions" and I'm tired of pretending that it does. 

Actually. I really, truly am. In almost all my life I have gotten attitude from atheists belittling my religious beliefs by pointing out how they just are different kinds of "play pretend" and "imagination games". "Show me God" they say and when I fail to do so in a labifistic manner they almost collapse in a happy cloud of smugness. No, God can't be labified any more than a state can but there are differences between the two games. When people of faith come together to play the game of God it is based on their own inner experiences of a phenomenon that needs outside interpretation to be understood. In a specific faith these interpretations can be carried out and the experiencers of the God-phenomenon can get guidance, teachings, corrections, inspirations, you name it based on these interpretations by their fellow believers. God is still a game of sorts, but the experiences beneath the game are very much real. Mind real, admittedly, but they still take place in existence and are very much actual. (Twenty question-test for this "location": take five grams of psilocybin in silent darkness and see if you get there) The same basis for the game of the Norwegian state is much more vague. Well, there is a distinct culture of Norway - they speak the same language and they do like eating salmon and skiing a whole lot, but is all that enough to point out kings and dusty bureaucrats and make them create laws and regulations for everyone residing within the borders of Salmonilan.. ehhr Norway? I'm hesitant. It's all too vague. 

Yet. Most atheists happily deny the game of God but accept wholeheartedly the game of the State. (Mad respect to the ducks out there who actually have the intellectual consistency to deny both games with the same vigor. They are the masters of "no nonsense for me, thank you"- attitude and while not agreeing with them I'm still very fond of them) It's perplexing to me. Both are indeed games created by the social aspects of humanity but while one is about relating to the very real numinous quality of existence the other is just... I don't know, why do we do the games of the state again? 

***

No, it's okay. I kind of know why. We do it because we want protection from psychopaths like Putler or Joe Biden. We do it to form security nets for the poor and unfortunate in our midst. We do it to strengthen a sense of community to our wide neighbors who share the same customs as we might have. All this is valid reasons to a certain degree, but surely, there's gotta be a better way to play the game than how we're currently are doing it and has done for millennia now. As a board game enthusiast a poorly designed game frustrates me, especially when the core idea seems promising as in this case. Let me illustrate my point through a somewhat silly story and see where that leads us: 

Steffe, Nisse and the Island of Norway 

Imagine that you have a group of people on an island. They all speak the same language, namely Norwegian, and they all share an unhealthy obsession of the fish Salmon and the art of skiing. They decide to play the game of Norway and the rules becomes as follows: 1. The main language for communication should be Norwegian. 2. We will not speak ill of salmon 3. Everyone will ski, "gå på tur" at least once a week - that is what you got to do to participate in the game of Norway. The rest is entirely up to you. If you fail to follow the rules, you will be shamed and considered "foreign" but nothing else will happen to you. 

Of course, if you steal points from your fellow players or if you physically challenges them without their consent or forces them to exit the game  there will be actual consequences and you will have to take a time out in the Jail area, but that is just common sense. That's the basis of the game, the points will be gathered by doing useful or enjoyable things that the other players like to purchase or reward for other reasons, but the winner of the game isn't the one with the most points when they exit it - actually, this is a game where there is no defined winner at all. Just have fun, folks! 

In this particular session of the game it so happened that one player, who had a whole lot of points, suddenly declared "I should be 'king'!" and he decided quickly that everyone should give him tithes every lunar cycle just because he was so frecking awesome! Amazingly, almost every other player agreed - everyone but one: "Steffe", who thought that even if the "King" was quite a good player all in all, giving tithes in his direction every lunar cycle would be a bit much. Steffe simply refused. The other players got horrified and Steffe got sent to the Jail area of the Island. This was surprising because Steffe thought he hadn't done anything wrong. He had never stolen points or been violent in any way whatsoever. He even ate Salmon every day and was skiing more often than what most other players did - he just didn't like the idea of a king that much and even if he did, why did the dude need to receive Steffes points to be able to be king? 

With Steffe in jail, the king could roam free however. He started to be a bit weird after a while, but now everyone was so used to the idea of the king that they hardly noticed the change. The king stole points quite often, the tithe wasn't enough he claimed, he needed more points - kinging was exhausting. The other players didn't react, the king was too impressive a player to dare to protest - He even started to hit people for no apparent reason, still no reaction. The manhandled players were often annoying anyway, some of them "foreign" (stupid salmon-absolutists, stupid skiphobics) and some of them were outright criminals. They had been seen stealing points and why shouldn't they be punched by the king as an added punishment to their exile into the Jail area? It only seemed fair, really. It was when things started to escalate to the point of force-exiting and in an ever expanding scale where the other players finally just had enough. The king was mad, he was crazy, he had ridiculously more points than anyone else and the only result nowadays was that he made the game worse for everybody instead of better which was the intention behind the points. Many players declared themselves "republicans" and "democrats" and when they had mustered enough courage they surrounded the king and force-exited the hell out of him. Immediately afterwards they went to the Jail area and brought Steffe back home. Joy and jubilation, Norway was a free game again. 

The next lunar cycle it became time for tithing again. A light confusion spread quickly among the players. What should we do? They were so used to paying the tithe now that it felt awkward to abstain. A democrat had an idea: Let's keep collecting tithe from everyone but now we can use it to the betterment of everyone. Let's give them to the weakest players we have around us, those who got the worst treatment from the king. Yeah, naturally we should give some to me who had the idea and will collect them every cycle and some should go the republican fellow who killed the king and some should go to... The tithe didn't quite cover all the good things the democrat wanted to do with them so the amount was upped to 20 per cent of your current point tally instead of merely 10 but everyone happily agreed. This was different than what the king was doing, that was clear as day. Clear as day to everyone but Steffe. Again he found himself just annoyed. "No" he said. "I want to keep my darn points! Everyone knows that stealing points is deserving of exile to Jail and this smells like, looks like and feels like stealing points! I refuse!" The other players was horrified once more. Don't you see how much good we will do with the points, how can that be stealing? Stealing is bad, but this is good, so clearly different. The king stole from us, but this isn't that at all. This is different." And once more Steffe was sent to the Jail area. 

***

Time passed and the game of Norway got better and better for everyone of the players. They even managed to found a whole field of "point liquid" (whatever that is) at the bottom of the ocean when fishing one day and every player just felt very happy, very norwegianingly pleased with themselves. 

Despite that, one of them - Nisse - was a bit bored. He didn't knew why, really, but the game wasn't too exciting anymore. He didn't felt exiting was necessary, but he wanted more than what the game currently offered. So one day he ventured out to the Jungle area of the island and he found some funny looking mushrooms and some strange looking weeds which he decided to bring home. Oh boy, were they fun to consume! Nisse loved them, suddenly he felt in love with the game in a whole new way. He shared the plants with so many of the other players as he could and many of them liked them as well, however not in the same way as Nisse did. In fact, some of the other "plant- enjoyers" as they started to call themselves couldn't really behave when eating them. They started to act out and became a burden to the sober players. The sober players confronted Nisse and said this is not okey, you have to stop eating these kind of plants immediately - it's borderline illegal plays here even if you're not actively doing something wrong. Nisse agreed and talked to his group and told them to stop being in public when high on these things. "Let's just do them when alone or out in the woods'" The other enjoyers got upset, the social rave was the fun part according to them so they left the plants alone and started doing other things instead. Nisse however didn't stop but he followed his own advice and took them only when alone, in the woods or at home. 

One day, a player from the democrat group visited him and when doing so they noticed traces of mushrooms at a few places in Nisses home. "Didn't we tell you to stop eating these things?" they asked "Yes, but most of my group did stop and I only eat them by myself now" Nisse answered. "Doesn't matter. An order is an order, especially when our game finally goes so well as it does. You have to go to the Jail area for this." 

And so it happened. Nisse went away, quite confused. He never had hit a single player, nor had he stole a single point, he loved skiing and even if he didn't like eating salmon because it was meat, he never spoke ill of it to anyone - the taste was still good he admitted. Why was he exiled to Jail? It didn't make sense. 

Here we must leave the story of the game of Norway, with both Steffe and Nisse in Jail - against the basic configurations of the game: "Respect your fellow players, respect the custom of Norway but do whatever you wish otherwise." 

A tragedy, for sure.

***

The story above is admittedly silly and simplified but the differences to our society are just in scale, not in principle. Everything we do as social creatures can be boiled down to a game and the rules are the same as in the story. "Respect your fellow man, don't do acts of aggressions unprovoked but then please do whatever else you would like to do." That's reality. That's the gift and the mission God has given every single one of us. Yet we continue to play the game so lousy. Adding rules that are not needed and giving certain groups of people the license to break the real rules without anyone protesting. 

If we would see kids playing "country" we would never let any of them play the role of the state realistically because it so clearly sends the wrong message about the ethics we wish them to integrate but with us grown- ups we suddenly don't care. Maybe because we have played the game a certain way for too long, maybe because we are genuinely afraid of what would happen if we abandoned our self- created addons to the simple game that God intended. - I'm not really sure. 

I just know that I'd rather play as God wants me to play than how Cesar prefers me to. And that, friends, is why I'm an anarchist.