I’ve reviewed Dark souls three before, and honestly I think
review one holds up alright. But I’ve been playing it again, and I’ve been
thinking on the symbols of it all. I’ve run up against something of a wall in
certain respects with the writing of reviews. The volume fell off after 2019,
but the quality rose; well I fucking hope it did.
I’ve perversely decided my writing should be, in some way, ‘good’
or valuable as a text: and honestly that’s the biggest hurdle to write one can
ever put in place. I long for the days when I could uncritically churn out hit
or miss chaff. That urge makes writing progressively harder as one improves, as
you realise everything you ever wrote was not quite good enough, as the future
expectation of improvement chokes the life out of you, but in a very unsexy
way.
So anyway this one’s about capitalism.
There’s a certain academic phrase you’ve never heard of
because you’re not as smart as I am called: The foreclosure of the imagination.
Basically I mean you’ve got no fucking ideas. You cannot because of your own
hang ups, or the prevailing social conditions imagine an alternative, or how to
go about doing it. It’s normally used in relation to neoliberalism, the modern
form of global capitalism since the seventies, nineties whatever? Or so? IDK
I’m a wanker on the internet, not a historian. I SWEAR THIS IS ABOUT DARKSOULS.
SO this NEO-liberalism thingy, they say is foreclosing our
imagination as to the possibility of other social orders. Or so ‘they’ the
bourgeoisie academics sometimes say. It is claimed that the logic of the market
is so all consuming and defuse it has gone beyond merely corroding social
fabric and given us all the tiktok brain rots.
Dark souls 3 is about an endless cycle of sacrifice in which
an age of fire is perpetuated by immolation of its most important figures to
renew the ever (about to end) age of aforementioned fire. WOW that sounds rough
buddy, we should find an alternative status quo. Over countless eons it has
constantly been tending towards this end but never quite achieved it, the age
of darkness has never come. To this end there is decay, rot, grotesque
abominations; but no end ever comes. Instead they are saved, at least for now,
and the cycle repeats. The rot deepens and everything grows teeth where is
never should.
No one in dark souls manages to put an end to the endless
series of sacrifices, or the ever worsening state of the world needed to keep
the system stable; someone, somewhere heads off the ever approaching end. It
is, therefore, an eternal pre-apocalypse. No one can set out an alternative
system, at least until three, and even then.
In capitalism infinite growth is, quite intuitively
laughable. The system cannot grow forever, can it? We must all believe it
cannot, because if we do things get weird. Speculative bubbles occur when such
assumptions take hold, infinite growth implied infinite returns and how much
would you spend to get unlimited money?
This logic is deeply damaging to the society it takes route in,
they expose flaws in the markets and prompt lawmakers to change their approach
in some way. They sudden reveal that are imaginations are not foreclosed, and
the market logics is not inevitable, and the neoliberal status quo seems about
to give way only to find the stability is resorted by our scepticism as we all
start to become ‘realists’ again, throwing around phrases like late stage
capitalism, whilst nothing materially changes other than the concentration
continuing to accumulate. The rot deepens.
The system of extraction is built on an assumed and mostly
implicit scepticism. Any day now, the system will fail, and the age of dark
will begin. We are at the end, and have been for over two hundred years now. There
has always been a looming end, social uprising, communist inflators, the atomic
bomb, the climate crisis. I have successfully criticised capitalism! But my
criticism is subsumed like so much ash. We continually put our intellectual
efforts not into imagining what comes next, but the fall itself. That doom
gooning is the act of foreclosure. It will not change the status quo, no matter
what we do or say, the market is eternal and you should act accordingly!
IS dark souls 3 the discursive framework with which we end
capitalism? Well yes, actually, Idiot! What does the age of dark look like?
Well: The high prince Lothric and Lorian sit upon the throne of the castle
barring the way to progression, having refused to link the fire in their cycle;
they are the instigators of the games events. They have no fucking idea, and
TBH they don’t care, they’re just really not down for this shit. They just want
to hang, let the fire fade, and listen to the spice girls and honestly I’m here
for that.
They understand the larger material cycles they are a part
of, and understand the coercive systems of power that perpetuate it. From that
alone we can unpick the systems of power as methodically as repeatedly ramming
a great sword through my chest. But what comes next isn’t really up to us.
Future history and present necessity only allow us to choose how to begin the
calamity: as Caesar knew full well: the creation of a new social order
ultimately comes down to a roll of the die, and a willingness not to be the
herald of the ever approaching apocalypse, but its instigator.
“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but
then, so did the divine right of kings.” – Magic mommy.
But that begs the question. Should we?
If you go to hidden places in Lothric castle, and fight your
way past a mad old dragon man and his baby there is a place where everything is
ever so… different. Here there is no light. Here the age of dark has taken
hold, and the first boss of the game is alive and well and just aching to kick
your shit in fifty times harder than he did at the start. Here one can find the
fire keepers eyes, which allows the player’s blind attendant to see at last,
but what they can see is darkness. The social order of the world blinds the
fires keepers to prevent this, violating bodily autonomy and foreclosing the
imagination. But the vibes here are- off.
The age of dark was supposed to be peaceful, but there’s
something wrong with the tranquillity. In the world above there is talk of dreg
sorceries made from heaviest elements of the human’s dark soul, having sunk
down and coagulated far below. A cannibal twink munching worm named Aldrich
writes of an age of the deep. It might be future age promised has already been
consumed by the burning flames and what is left isn’t what was promised. Also the
hollows of yondor are defo not trying to use you as a puppet to usurp the fire
flame and build a new order where they can send people they don’t like to south
American country of Elden ring.
Despite what mentally deficient forum users say it’s all
left very ambiguous, other than the vibes. And that’s for the best, there is
room to interpret and into that space seeps the imagination. Our best shot is
not that of categorical certainty but a willingness to navigate uncertainty.
That is the frame work needed.
Are you comfortable in the pre-apocalypse? So long as I have
dark souls I might be.
