Game of Thrones and Our Scheming Elites

Yves Smith reviews Game of Thrones and Our Scheming Elites.

Smith is reading the series of books for "The Game of Thrones" by Martin:

The perspective in Martin’s books is a medieval reflection of the world envisioned by neoclassical economics, of isolated individuals working for their own self interest. There’s no real community in war-torn Westros, but even before the struggle broke out, the court was a hotbed of plots, spying, and ambition. Given the way, say, the Ptolemys plotted against each other, this isn’t necessarily that far removed from the dynamics of some pre-modern courts. But this is the through line of the series, the juice that carries readers forward. And sadly, this seems to be the juice that drives the world we live in now.

Before you get cynical and say, that’s just the way it is, that’s simply not accurate. The current level of corruption and cynicism is hardly inevitable; it’s a social construct. Look at Linux, where developers collaborated to produce code, for no money, out of pride in craft. Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, therapist and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, would often start out by asking patients, “Why haven’t you killed yourself?” His experience was the things that people lived for were either people they loved or creative work (Lambert’s “Do what only you can do”). Similarly, psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who has made a study of happiness, has concluded it comes through a state he calls flow, where one is deeply engrossed in an activity (for instance, the famed “zone” in sports).

The books and television series are all part of the ideological reproduction of Capitalism. It is necessary to educate humans to be self-centred so as to adjust them to the rampant individualism.

Communism allows people to develop themselves.