LARPing for Meaning
Going Through the Motions in a Godless Age
The modern man thinks he can rid himself of God and its religious substructures. But everything man does is deeply religious. Religion is the carpet with a fold. You can stamp it down, but it will emerge on the other side of the room. The secular society sees the fold of religion on the far side but pretends it is not there. Society has put on a mask and drawn a plastic sword. We now pray to have the constitution to endure an artificial spiritual war.
LARPing (Live Action Role Playing), once thought of as an act for Magic: The Gathering types (not a dig by the way), was appropriated by most of society long before this fantasy game was popularized. You see, LARPing is an imaginary story in which the participants adhere to rules and principles in a fictional setting. Participants can become a character with meaning, goals, and fundamentally a structured “universe.” LARPing is the transposition of fantasy into reality. The characters engage with one another as if they are bound to these rules (and as if each character lives under the control of a metaphysical plot).
Despite the secularization of society, humans are still meaning-seeking beings. To appease our psychological proclivity towards religion, society will LARP for meaning. Religion (in the classical sense), historically provided structure for meaning in humans. It is a framework to make sense of an absurd universe. Religion, however, is not confined to the pageantry of Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. It is a series of structures, rules (i.e. commandments), and connections that allow us to find meaning and belonging.
As the religions of the pre-enlightenment era limp forward into modernity, we tend to take two routes to fill the hollow space religion once placed. We can either LARP with some other pseudo-spiritual endeavor or we are forced to become the creator of the value system ourselves, thus playing god. Ultimately, everyone worships something.
The problem is much of the sense-making tools religion provided are still encoded. Underlying current social movements or mimetic desires are influences born out of spiritual ideas. We now, however, carry out watered-down attempts for meaning and transcendence. We look to impart meaning to trivial matters, but convince ourselves it is the highest ideal. We swap connection to the transcendent for that of the mundane.
A life without meaning is one of nihilism and despair. The philosopher’s heeds to the symptoms of nihilism have by and large gone unnoticed. From the macro to the micro, nihilism is a pathology on mankind. It breeds the obvious problems of moral relativism, social isolation, psychological disturbances, emotional detachment, apathy, and ultimately, existential despair. But beyond these obvious tropes, nihilism lays forth and primes the explosives that destroy the road to hope. What lies in its wake are the makings of a people who have no pathway to greatness.
The idea of meaning is a flowing river. You can dam the river off from its connection, but now must deal with the totality of the river. Harness it for another use, control its flow, and maintain the reservoir. Meaning is the foundation of a life with purpose. The Sunday church from the old world was more than the father-of-3, showing up to some conspicuous building, to listen to some man in robe garble on about a ghost behind the curtain, spewing invisible curses upon the world. The church provided an entryway into meaning; a doorway into the idealist world where all is connected.
We seem to be wired towards transcendence. Meaning is the vessel towards cosmic significance. The cheapest version of meaning within religion comes in the form of, “everything happens for a reason.” Man reaches out to the stars to connect himself to all that is and was. He knows within, he is an emergent property that belongs to that which came before him and that which comes after. Yet we still run around squabbling for our piece of the heroic pie in the godless world.
Nietzsche correctly diagnosed the death of God as he witnessed a malaise sweep over society in the 19th century. The Enlightenment ushered in an era that promised to extinguish any uncertainty we had about the universe. What can God possibly provide us when we reject religious authority? How can religion serve us when we seek to explain things through rational thought? What was once fatigue, kept at bay by the religious baggage of the pre-enlightenment, slowly has become an insidious disease upon mankind. As the secular world spreads, a vacuum of (principled) nihilism takes up its place. In a society that has shunned the gods, we are left to become gods ourselves or outsource our godliness to some other means.1
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
-Fredrick Nietzsche, The Joyous Science2
Consider that it is the illusions religion provides that allow man to march forth against the anxieties of the infinite. We LARP to maintain the illusion. The illusion of interconnectedness. The illusion of cosmic significance. The Kierkegaardian ‘leap of faith’ is an attempt out of the anxieties that you are a mouse and the cat will eventually catch you. Faith provides the illusion that the maze is cut out for you.
“Civilized” society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense everything that man does is religious and heroic, and yet in danger of being fictitious and fallible,”
-Ernest Becker
This is why religious frameworks are such a strong underpinning for most of society. Unless you are attuned to nature’s teleology, you are likely in need of some other presets, code, or guidelines to enable you to find meaning. On the backdrop of absurdity, we deploy illusory mechanisms to impart significance. Society in turn, will substitute genuine, earnest steps toward truth with benausic pursuits or activities.
LARPing maintains the scaffolding of our curious predicament; we have a dual nature in which we are one part symbolic and one part inescapably intertwined with mortality, ultimately culminating in the processes of death and decomposition. The LARP is an attempt to connect to the symbolic and spiritual side of our nature. We are simultaneously the creators of ideals, worlds, visions, stories, metaphors, universes, and yet chained to a physical entity destined for demise.
We have a few options when addressing the divine. We can either acknowledge our actions as spiritual, grounded in axioms providing transcendent meaning or we can LARP. The LARP is a way to imagine our actions as having no cosmic significance, but acting as if it does. Let’s take a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater as an example. The secular types attend this concert as if nothing here is symbolic, religious, or God-like. It is “entertainment” to them. But look out over the crowd chanting, cheering amongst the beauty of the rock formations. The priest has been swapped for a rockstar. The visuals are meant to inspire awe. From the acoustics and the sunset to the zeal of the crowd. They are all attempting to enter a portal. The crowd hopes to catch a similar qualia; or vibration. A collective sharing of passion. But secular society does not acknowledge this. Instead, we pretend that all of the above actions are of no humanistic significance. But why do we act like it is a meaningful experience? Here we witness a spiritual trick we perform on ourselves. We get to be a part of something akin to divinity, but refuse to acknowledge the underpinnings.
In a civic society in which materialism prevails, the emergent connections and meanings of all things are lost. The religion of science aims to eliminate the meaning of nature. It reduces all entities into its parts and pieces. The ancient Greeks saw the interconnectedness of everything. The Greek belief is that most of what exists in the materialist framework is an outreach of larger forms projected from an idealistic universe. This view provides a frame for meaning in all things. Every part and parcel of nature is a keeper of its constituent parts. Nothing goes without meaning in this mode of thought.
A tree is not just a series of materials that carry out a task in a mechanistic fashion. A tree is beyond “a living plant.” It is a metaphor. A provider of shade. A signal. An ecosystem. A structure. A Filter. A symbol. Its meaning goes beyond a series of cells carrying out photosynthesis, reproducing sexually and asexually. The materialist examines the what of the tree with a neutral examination. The idealist will hold the tree out as something to have a final form.
But a tree with no inherent meaning is one destined to be cut down. It is an eyesore in a concrete jungle. A tree with no interconnectedness is not a place to play. Not a place to rest. It provides a bitter fruit. The tree that is not revered, is an object and a means to an end. The utility is all it offers in the material world.
When we lose sight of the interconnectedness religion provides, and to avoid listless wandering, we attach ourselves to a role. We are forced to become actors on our own accord for games we have constructed. The LARPing is thus carried out on old forms of values and spiritual pillars. We consciously ignore the divine all while enacting the very principles that religion carried into the new age.
To live in a state of demystification is to squeeze the sweet juice out of life. The fruit of the tree, once an intoxicating splendor, now bears a cardboard cutout. Only useful to provide whichever categorization you have decided on: fiber, vitamins, calories, décor, etc.
But a society that is ambivalent towards religious structures, but despairs nonetheless, still wants its motivations projected onto itself. Our convictions towards life are laid on a foundation of sand. When the principles that guide us are poorly regulated (where all is a construct) or outsourced to some other deity, we are back to wondering why we are not self-actualized.
I must once again return to the concept of the man of nature and perhaps expand on him further. The MON is enveloped with purpose and meaning. He is one of the few truly sentient beings amongst us. His values are not swayed by the institutional practices as they are imbued within himself. He sees himself as an extension of nature and imparts meaning to himself. Now whether these values are derived from a collective unconscious or a natural archetype would just be guesswork. Ultimately, the man of nature does not rely on external guidance. He reaches within and outward to amalgamate himself with the metaphysical undercurrent.
The Man of Nature is likely to be steadfast in the godless age. He does not need to LARP for meaning because his values are of strong constitution. He is a being of virtue; One who holds themselves in the highest with nature, himself, and god. When we rely on LARPing as an outsource of meaning, the internal compass used to navigate towards meaning is faulty. Thus we are likely to fall into despair, which is much of what you see today. The loss of transcendent morality leaves room for worldly morality.
Contemporary ideologies and institutions have taken on religious characteristics. The orthodoxy of today lies in the religion of climate change, critical theory, economics, science, hustle-culture, capitalism, socialism, self-improvement, environmentalism, feminism, transhumanism, conservatism, liberalism, minimalism, new-age spirituality, etc., etc.
The man of today recoils at the mention of religion. He will read these words and unironically assign morality to the suggestion of religions’ pervasiveness in culture. But culture is religion for the atheist. Culture is now the provider of rules, traditions, norms, and meaning for the post-modern man. He performs a sleight of hand upon himself to avoid any claim to religiosity. He worships culture all while absolving his relationship to it in spirit.
The materialist scoffs at anything relating to sacrament, but is in league with some of its highest offertory. He is the worshiper of science, of his sports teams, of music, of success, and ultimately himself. But all these modes are cousins of meaning. They provide a “meaning-lite.” Low on calories, less bitter, same great taste.
“It is because we have wanted to distance ourselves from religion that it is now returning with such force…In this it will perhaps have been our last mythology. We “believed” in reason, as people used to believe in gods.”
-Rene Girard, Battling to the End
The decadent society adopts nihilism as the new religion. Means for an escape from the existential burden must be built. Man knows in his heart of hearts he is searching for meaning via transcendence. In order to fool ourselves, we begin carrying out a cosmic creation of values through the means of LARPing; a sort of going through the motions for purpose.
Even in a secular society, a value system must be built. A value system with regards to ideals. LARPing is a low-stakes entry into transcendence. LARPing is watered-down symbolic immortality. Role-playing your way to meaning is an attempt at newfound values. The Sunday NFL game is a way to transpose any feelings of aloneness in the universe to that of belonging. Shared escapism is one method of the LARP. The skeptic will call this tribalism, but tribalism is part and parcel with religion, perhaps a topic for another day.3
The devotion to a sports team or league is encoded with all the signals of a religious movement. The sermon occurs every Sunday. Thousands gather in what seems to avoid any rational preconceived thought. A devotion to your god is offered via chants and cheers. Attendees dress in colors and symbols to please their gods. An intoxication of shared experience brought forth through actions of other people beyond your control. Here lies a source of meaning via shared escapism. But sports is the opium of the masses as Marx probably said. It is a way to transpose any virtues you hold in high esteem onto yourself by proxy.
LARPing allows action and participation to feel significant. The sports team may win the championship and a transient feeling of transcendence follows (i.e. “My team will always be the 2015 Super Bowl Champions and history can never be changed”). It effectively reaches into the future while gluing to the past for eternity.
LARPing is a phenomenon that is entrenched in several other various aspects of life beyond shared escapism. When society drains god and the principles which he provides, moral relativism pervades. Leo Strauss was well aware of the pitfalls of this entanglement. He pointed to how the individual or culture will be tasked to determine their own moral standards. When the transcendent is eliminated, nihilism lies in its wake.
How often do you hear the generations of today devoid of hope? [*Insert the current fear and worry of today*] Any fear you have inserted here will pale in comparison to the cosmic significance you can bestow upon yourself.
The prime abolition of hope comes to the forefront in the anti-natalist movement. The declination of attitudes towards children is a turn away from the future. This is a loss of hope in real-time. To bear and raise children is encoded in your DNA. Your progeny are an extension of you and the creators before them. Children are simultaneously a bridge into the past and future. It is not only a moral imperative, no matter which lens you choose to look through, children provide meaning on a platter. This is not by mistake. Evolution ensured that the greatest will take their children seriously. They are an extension of you and all else. All religions provide some essence towards immortality. Children are the torchbearers of immortality in the physical sense. In Plato’s The Symposium, Diotima’s definition of Love is through goodness. If people have a good life [eudaimonia], they have a fulfilled life. All humans desire to continue to have good things. Thus, immortality through children is an extension of goodness.
Immortality is not some selfish endeavor for the parent to “feel good.” It is the carrying forth of wisdom and beauty. To plant seeds into the universe and provide the divine. True beauty is unchanging, everlasting. An ode to all that is.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
-Greek Proverb
To avoid children or to believe that having children is an act inflicting harm onto the world is analogous to the belief that you should never exercise because you run the risk of getting injured or will die eventually anyway. When exercise induces stress, it globally improves your health. To avoid children is to avoid the opportunity for societal progress, opportunity, and growth. Children are the cornerstone of the physical realm of transcendence. The physical is a reflection of the internal. What we see as actions in our physical world are reflections of our constitution that lies beneath.
In an aimless, decadent society, we can note an increasing population who think bearing children is to be avoided at best and a burden on themselves and the world at worst. Children are no longer a gift, but an imposition. Bring in the LARP. They become a dog mom or dad. Here we witness a self-imposed psychological trick. To fulfill the encoded pull that lies beneath, an attempt is made to cover it with lower stakes. The pseudo-parent now has something they would “die for” and something they “love.” The dog mom and dad attempt to reap the wonderous joys of a child, without the physical and emotional consequences required to raise children of this world.
But until we have something, either principled or physical, that we would quite literally die for, we will continue to go through the motions for meaning. We seem to be viewing the actions of our lives as a means to an end. True humanity goes forth as an infinite endeavor. Actions and values go beyond their simple uses when transcendent values are to be carried forth.
The marriages (and relationships) of today must check all the right boxes. We feel we must be emotionally and financially prepared for marriage and children. We view our partners and children as another set of means to an end. They must provide us a return on investment by providing a, b, and c. All of the pieces must be in place before one feels ready to commit. But love is beyond rational. True love, requires a leap of faith.
The anti-natalists proclaim: “It is not rational to bring a child into a world like this! There is climate change, economic instability, and too many people. The world has gone mad. It would not be fair to bring a child into this world.” How they have shown their hand. To turn away from the future aligns with the nihilism that is rife for the taking in the absence of transcendent meaning.
Now one who rationalizes all that is wrong in the world must LARP or they will fall into despair. Do you think it is a coincidence we are dealing with unprecedented mental health issues in the developed world? It is likely most people do not have strong enough axioms to fall back on when they are LARPing. In effect, the LARP is of a weak structure.
Social LARPing is present in people who are enveloped with traits prevalent within the narcissistic society. When individuals aim to create their value structure, you see an inorganic optimization at any cost. In this otherwise structureless society, your social circles become enveloped in game theory. They are about perceptions and a way to obtain a status versus genuine, authentic relationships built on organic love.
The American Civic religion has replaced the Christian one. Where morality is now judged based on your political leanings. You can see this in political discourse. A particular morality is assigned to a person based on who or what policies they vote for. To label right-wing voters as racists or fascists, or the left as communists or snowflakes is the modern-day equivalent to calling them a sinner.
The political LARP comes in the form of the modern-day demagogue. Where political leaders are viewed as saints and speakers of truth. But they only speak the sacrament of their politcoreligous doctrine. A mass of people follow along, not based on any particular stance these people carry, but based on their political affiliation. A shrine of political or social who’s who on one’s wall with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama, or LBJ is no different than the conservative household with Jesus’ picture in the family room.4
Travel and entertainment are of the ultimate worship. What was once grounded in the search for understanding has been transformed into a shallow attempt to display social superiority or a list to be checked off. Deep down, people travel to distant places in hopes of encapsulating beauty (physical, human, or spiritual). But the LARPer will ignore the meaning of beauty. The irony here is that beauty is a reflection of God (in the Spinoza sense). The churches, homes, and buildings of before were reflections of nature to please God. They are an awe built to praise something higher than oneself. The traveler of today seeks to find solace in the beauty of God while denouncing the meaning behind the original beauty. The modern traveler will hold the beauty of nature hostage and use it for his self-promotion. Did you even travel if you didn’t post it on your timeline?
The declaration of ‘climate change’ is a LARP for God’s punishment for your sins. We have “sinned” for our treatment of nature and will be punished with the cataclysm of the Earth. It is a religious calling for the end of times. It is as if to say “If we do not fall in line and repent (net zero C02 emissions), God will punish us. (With literal flooding and natural disasters. It's like this has been written somewhere before. But I digress.)
And finally, where religion once provided the direct source to meaning has been taken over by one’s job or career. As our dissociation from metaphysical meaning grows, we see an increase in people looking to fill the hole via their careers. Careers, which categorically are just vehicles to enhance your life, have effectively become all-encompassing. Your career must be a passion or calling. A career now must not only be fulfilling, but for many, it provides community and structure. Many turn to their career as the mechanism to enact change in the world. A way to “make the world a better place.” But a career will rarely provide anything but a shallow entry into transcendence as it is also a LARP for significance.
It may seem I am an advocate for God as a solution to the meaning-paradox, but I am not endorsing God in the old world sense. In all efforts, this ship has sailed for us. Whereas in the post-god world, you are the creator of morals and virtue. We have effectively placed ourselves on an island. With no greater calling. No higher good. No principled virtues, but our own. And we know how fallible the human mind is. We grab on to old world virtues and use them as scaffolds to our own self-created divinity.
In the face of an increasingly fractured and secular world, it is the totality of human experience that holds the potential to rescue us from the depths of despair. The realization that we are simultaneously creators of ideals and beholden to the physical realities of our existence is not a contradiction but a paradox that defines the human condition. It is a paradox that requires us to grapple with the profound question of where meaning and transcendence truly reside in our lives.
While traditional religious structures may have waned in influence, they have left a lasting imprint on the human psyche. The search for something beyond the mundane, the longing for connection with the symbolic and divine, is an enduring part of our nature. It is a quest that has manifested in various forms throughout history and continues to do so today, whether through the rituals of traditional worship, the shared escapism of sports and entertainment, or even the moral fervor of environmentalism.
The human desire for meaning and transcendence cannot be suppressed or eliminated. Even in a world that often rejects the old gods, we find new avenues to express our need for the divine, the interconnected, and the symbolic. In the absence of a clear framework provided by traditional religion, we are left to construct our values. The challenge lies in ensuring that these values are built on solid foundations, for the LARP of life, when lacking true depth and authenticity, can lead us to desolate shores.
The paradox of being both creators and products of our own value systems remains an intricate aspect of our existence. The quest for meaning and transcendence endures. In our modern world, where we are often our own gods, the responsibility to construct and uphold our value lattice falls squarely on our shoulders. It is a challenge that requires introspection, a return to the natural, interconnected world, and a recognition of the profundity of all things. As we navigate this complex and evolving landscape, the search for meaning and the pursuit of transcendence remain fundamental to the human experience, offering a glimmer of hope in an otherwise uncertain world.
I would like to avoid a pretentious tone here, but have failed to find a way around it. It could be that Nietzsche was actually witnessing the death of metaphysics brought on in part by the West’s hyper-focus on categorizations. As opposed to the construction of mind based around being as a whole. Heidegger pointed to our focus on ‘entities of being’ as a misstep in the exploration of our relationship with nature.
And nothing like a Nietzsche quote (let alone the God is Dead one) to diminish any signs of intellect I may have shown.
Tribalism is built on the same principles as religions. Ingroup vs. outgroup, dogma/belief systems, rituals and symbols, authority figures, emotional attachment, and conflict against opposing ideas.
The left is probably more likely to perform this practice as they are also more likely to hold onto a stronger notion towards the separation of church and state. The political left, generally feels grounded in principles of science, the material, and social progress. But they have effectively disposed of the old ways of transcendence and replaced them with political versions.