The Common Knowledge Game (CKG) is a newer name for a form of consensus social understanding used in collective consciousness since humans became social animals. The CKG informs our understanding of our own lives, how we see others, and how to use it’s often times twisted knowledge of poor self-esteem and negative judgments of others to help inform our decisions about actions we can take in our own lives.
The following statements are some of the pre-conditions in my own employment with the US Postal Service that set up the Common Knowledge Game. Many of my co-workers were there because they felt that they could do no other work, that they did not either have the skills, qualification, competency, or motivation to try anything else, and everybody knew that truth not only about themselves, but also about all of their co-workers, which in turn, was what the co-workers understood about each other, as well.
Many also shared a common foe, chemical dependency. Those two factors helped to define my relationship to the Post Office career, as well. I really enjoyed my time working as a machine clerk, however, as the fast pace of the job, and the fact that it was a lifetime guaranteed job, kept me from feeling too bad about my personal and employment decisions. Even though I was “trapped”, I found a way to sing in my cage often enough to delay the inevitable crush of despair that was to follow in earnest later on in my career.
Our negative assessments, or judgements of others, and of our self, both physical form and spiritual essence, is the reason for the spiritual imprisonment for all of us. This internal, and social, process of consciousness has become culturally inculcated into our awareness, and we all share in this “collective consciousness”. A most important aspect of this “collective consciousness” is the “common knowledge game”, a phenomena well-studied in the last generation by Nobel Prize winners, mathematicians, and New York Times best-selling authors and philosophers (this has been called many other names by seers and seekers over the millennia). This is the mechanism by which we can collectively keep each other imprisoned. This process has become so ingrained in consciousness, so accepted, so standardized, so normalized that the individual who even casually practices it continues to contribute to the imprisonment of all of mankind through this process.
Here is a more specific explanation and definition of the Common Knowledge Game (Game Theory is an offshoot of this phenomenon). There are several good books to be read on the matter, and articles on the theory are available on the internet, should your own insight into or experience of it not be sufficient for its understanding. My thanks to several published authors for providing some of the information in the following discussion about the Common Knowledge Game.
An item of information in a game is common knowledge if all of the players know it (it is mutual knowledge) and all of the players know that all other players know it and all other players know that all other players know that all other players know it, and so on. This is much more than simply saying that something is known by all, but also implies that the fact that “what is known by me” is also known by all, etc. Thus, common knowledge implies not only that we all know some piece of information, but can also be absolutely confident that the rest know it, and that the rest know that we know it, and so on.
Consider a simple example of several jealous office workers seeking to demean a common foe, be it a boss or a motivated co-worker, or practicing racism, sexism, religious persecution, etc. (this can be several human beings practicing typical mutually inaccurate assessments of a party not currently in their presence, also typical of what happens in big companies, politics and Donald Trump style “tweet attacks” , high school, or in church). To those with prior knowledge, this will be reminiscent of the “mob mind”, and how it acts in the real world. The participants will not attack unless they are sure that the other will attack at exactly the same time, as nobody wants to be the lone attacker, becoming vulnerable and thus expose their own intent for aggression. The first person sends out a “feeler” (verbal exchange of internalized culturally inculcated thought process) to the other parties with the message “You know, I am really unhappy with Mr. X, he is problematic.” Yes, we warm up for the attack, by gently degrading the third-party, while awaiting the others reply within the group physically or emotionally present, which, hopefully affirms our intent. Our verbal or written means of attempting to communicate with the other “attackers” may be misinterpreted, so we initially have no collective security in adopting an “attack mode”. If however, the message of attack is received simultaneously by others within the group, which it does in “common knowledge modes of thought”, then the attack is on. Note that all parties already know the message. They all knew in advance that the “other attackers” had the message as well, because it is COMMON KNOWLEDGE that others share at least some of their negative perceptions, and they will attack the other, because they always have before, and they have already prepared their internal fortifications, as well as their “verbal and social weapons” for such an experience.
This is the classic attack/defense posture or mechanism that the entirety of the human race is now participating in. Anybody who has worked in the construction trades, or in work areas dominated by men, know this process quite well. The terms repartee, badinage, bantering, persiflage, etc. are the kind names given to this culturally accepted, and sometimes revered process, whereby we “lightly and without intentional malice” impugn the dignity and reputation of others, through pokes at each other. We call this “humor”, and some may feel almost hurt when others do not engage in this behavior with us. This has been an accepted standard of behavior (though we are finally awakening to darker aspects of this by identifying hostile work environments, and instituting regulations for reducing persecution, racial discrimination, age discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual discrimination in the workplace).
In schools, the wimps, eggheads, goths, transsexuals, homosexuals, hippies, outcasts, or whatever name that defines the “out group” outside of the popular, socially accepted standards of behavior, can be quite susceptible to aggression, antagonism, and bullying. I think that everyone reading this had experience with this phenomenon in grade or high school. There only needs to be one in an “in” group, in the presence of others from that group, who may want to impress their peer group, and they begin by attacking a member of the ‘out” group. It may be only verbal, or it can be a combination of both physical and verbal, but the rules of engagement have already been worked out generations in advance of any new bullying behavior. It follows standards paths of aggression, hostility, belittlement, and debasement, and somehow the aggressor becomes elevated in stature, at the expense of the victim. Of course, these are the same behaviors that get translated into our adult life as racism, xenophobia, and the callous judgement against the poor, old, disabled, and the rest of the compromised members of society, that our conservative Republican politicians and wayward POTU$ continue to try to abuse and deprive of health care and welfare.
Be aware, once again, of what the “common knowledge game” really is. Briefly, it is the process whereby we have internalized the verbal understandings of all others, whereby ignorant, judgmental, limiting, obfuscating, damaging, soul-destroying concepts of self and other are “socially acceptable” modes for assessing and understanding the self, and the other. This are internalized, and socialized, and this “knowledge” becomes a collectively shared experience. And, we all know that everybody else knows what we know, while we know what everybody else knows. Within the Christian churches with backwoods understanding, we are all “sinners”, we are “corrupt”, we have no hope for “salvation”, etc. unless we believe a certain way, and bow down before certain philosophies and religious and political leaders. Who wants to be damned to hell for eternity for not following the religious path? Everybody knows that is where you go when you disobey the laws that are represented in the bible, or expounded upon by the minister.
Through a process which has existed since verbal consciousness first formed in humanity, we develop verbal constructs to represent the outside world in our own internal universe. Yet, none of these internalized assessments are 100% accurate, NOR COULD THEY EVER BE, even though the entirety of human consciousness now shares in the illusion that what they do represent what is actually “out there” as represented by their current misunderstanding of their fellow human being, and their current relationship to the other (“the finger pointing at the moon can never be the moon”). And, we use these constructs to oppress, repress, and deny the other, all the while unconsciously honoring the culturally inculcated process of mutual oppression, and repression, of the Divine. We are all potential scapegoats for “the other”, especially when collaboration in a process is not a value, and much of our energy may become directed to prevention of us from becoming blamed or accused of behavior everybody is already responsible for, with or without us, anyway. PROJECTION IS PAINFUL, and we all feel its wrath from time to time.
Civil War, by Guns and Roses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALhwQKTRAgA
Our culture shows many examples of this process playing out in movies, on TV programs, and, of course, we all experience this in our day-to-day lives, as we interact with our social and cultural environment. The implications are vast, and insidious. Please consider the following excerpt from the movie COOL HAND LUKE
Captain: You gonna get used to wearing those chains after a while, Luke. Don’t you never stop listening to them clinking, ‘cause they gonna remind you what I been saying for your own good.
Luke: I wish you’d stop being so good to me, Cap’n.
Captain: Don’t you ever talk that way to me. NEVER! NEVER! [Captain hits Luke, who rolls down the hill to the other prisoners] What we’ve got here is … failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you men.
The “failed” communication of the Captain to Luke is the basis for the successful communication of the Captain to the prisoners: subvert my rules and you will be crushed. The brutal message is made in public, not so that all the prisoners can see what happens to Luke, but so that all the prisoners can see all the prisoners seeing what happens to Luke.
In environments like prisons, the education system, the military, and larger groups up to, and including, American society, behavioral decisions based on private information (“I saw Luke beaten down for breaking the rules. If I break the rules I might get beaten, too.”) are almost always weaker than behavioral decisions based on Common Knowledge (“Everyone knows that if you break the rules like Luke you will be beaten down. Why would I even think about breaking the rules?”). The latter has more binding power, because, in effect, the prisoners themselves end up enforcing the warden’s (or society’s) rules. Even if you privately believe that you and your fellow prisoners could make a break for it, so long as you believe that “everyone knows” that you will be punished for breaking the rules, then you do not believe that you will receive any support from your fellow prisoners (fellow citizens, or friends). It is irrational to even raise the subject with your fellow prisoners, as you will mark yourself as someone who is either too stupid or too dangerous not to recognize what everyone else knows that everyone else knows. And because everyone is making a similar calculation, no one ever makes an escape attempt and the Common Knowledge grows stronger over time, as does the no-escaping binding attitudes. This is why the Captain goes to such lengths not just to punish Luke for his escape attempts, but to break Luke, and not just to break Luke, but to break Luke as publicly as possible.
A variation of the Common Knowledge game appears in a story first presented in ancient times. Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them, and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all, for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the manufactured reality that is the shadows seen by the prisoners.
The inmates of this place do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life. The prisoners manage to break their bonds one day, and discover that their reality was not what they thought it was. They discovered the sun, which Plato uses as an analogy for the fire that man cannot see behind. Like the fire that cast light on the walls of the cave, the human condition is forever bound to the impressions that are received through the senses. Even if these interpretations are an absurd misrepresentation of reality, we cannot somehow break free from the bonds of our human condition – we cannot free ourselves from phenomenal state just as the prisoners could not free themselves from their chains. If, however, we were to miraculously escape our bondage, we would find a world that we could not understand – the sun is incomprehensible for someone who has never seen it. In other words, we would encounter another “realm,” a place incomprehensible because, theoretically, it is the source of a higher reality than the one we have always known; it is the realm of pure Form, pure fact.
Because of the Common Knowledge game, there is enormous power in making a Public Spectacle out of information, which is why our local and national news (see Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting), especially those tainted by the present day propaganda generators, Presidential Twitter Posts, terminations from employment, public humiliations, coronations and executions (remember Timothy McVey?) alike are carried out in front of live audiences, posted to Facebook, broadcast through Twitter feeds, and/or are televised. This lesson in behavioral influence – the crowd doesn’t just need to see the event, the crowd needs to see the crowd seeing the event – is why so many of our modern social institutions – from political campaigns to American Idol – are staged in front of live audiences. When you sit in front of your TV set and watch, say, a national political convention, you are infinitely more engaged with the event when you see a crowd than when we don’t. We can’t help our self. It doesn’t even matter if the live audience is faked and we know that the audience is faked … have you ever listened to a sitcom without a laugh track? It’s just not as funny. The fact is that humans are social animals. We are hard-wired to look for and respond to Common Knowledge, and smart people – from political leaders to religious leaders to business leaders – have taken advantage of this for thousands of years.
What happens in the diseased family structure (alcoholism and drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse, psychological abuse of all types) in many situations of discipline and control exactly parallel the common knowledge game? Eventually, the children learn not to attempt to act out, or break free from, the oppressive qualities of an abusive parent, or parents, their church and its interpretation of “religious thought”, and their educational experience. Breaking the spirit of the abused child, and making sure that other members know that such “punishment” will also come their way keeps children under control, but also victimized, and traumatized. Children entering the school system where bullies are allowed to run free get to experience this process once again, in a bigger social setting. And, children who attend a church where the dignity of the individual is constantly degraded through their religious philosophy (you are a sinner, you always have been a sinner, and unless you believe the way we do, you are evil, and doomed to an eternity in hell) also will feel the horrific abuse of the COMMON KNOWLEDGE GAME. If any of us were to speak out against our oppressors, we will be punished severely, and we will be smacked down, and “roll down the hill” just like what happened to Paul Newman in the movie Cool Hand Luke.
So, our COMMON KNOWLEDGE GAME keeps all of us in some sort of order, albeit one that affirms the false truth that we are all broken human beings, with our only hope for salvation lying with chaotic, and insane, orders of unreality that continue to be inculcated into our collective consciousness. In other words, unless we march to the drummer of our religious and cultural past, we will be judged, persecuted, marginalized, and otherwise thrown to the wolves, with little hope for our own redemption. Woe to the brave individual that strikes out on his own, and attempts to find a new way of being in this world of chaos, distraction, and torment.
Far too many men engage in the Conspiracy of Silence daily. These are the
don’t talk
don’t tell
don’t touch
don’t feel
don’t engage
don’t listen
don’t change
attitudes that we witness over and over again in far too many men in our lives. The Conspiracy of Silence is a common practice for addicts, alcoholics and generally dysfunctional people of both genders, and is also a prime underlying principle in the Common Knowledge Game. There is little wonder as to why our culture is so emotionally and spiritually disfigured.
The Buddha had his own ideas about what constitutes mental health, and by his definition anyone who isn’t well on the way to Enlightenment is insane. Quite how literally he meant it when he said “All humans are mad” is hard to say, but when he looked at ordinary people like us going about their daily business he saw a world out of balance — and a world that by necessity is out of balance, because it is composed of those same off-kilter individuals. He viewed this imbalance as a form of perversion, inversion, and/or derangement He understood that we, collectively, misunderstand the world that we live in, misunderstand ourselves, thus we all end up living in a virtual reality of delusion, confusion, and distortion. What’s more, we largely share the same delusions, which mean that we don’t even realize that our minds are disturbed.
As Krishnamurti suggests, it’s possible to think that we’re spiritually and mentally healthy because we share our mistaken values and understandings with those around us. Collectively, our ill minds create social circles, or society that is itself ill, and we consider ourselves healthy because we see our values reflected in our spiritually sick fellow travelers.
Jesus of Nazareth stated quite clearly that “My kingdom is not of this world”. Also he stated “Be in this world, yet do not be of it”. And, “Do not attempt to remove the sliver from each other’s eye, before first removing the log from your own eye”. Finally, he also stated “Straight is the way, and narrow is the gate, and very few there are who will enter in”. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus also said, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
This is a pretty clear message, for those who have “ears to hear”.
Pockets of conscious, self-aware, healthy people have been sprouting up among the weeds of American misunderstanding since the beginning of our time together as a people and nation. Perhaps these pockets will someday be woven into a national garment of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical well-being, to be worn by all. This is not happening while I am still alive, however, and may not ever be realized in our time, or any time for that matter. Changes must happen within consciousness itself, and the “common knowledge game” that we all unconsciously play must be examined, and re-examined again and again, until we are no longer subjugated to its darker sides of oppression and repression of human spirit.
Yes, our country is in a downward spiral, where telling the truth is no longer a virtue, but instead it is bastardized, and spun into alternate reality fantasies, to be just another tool to be abused by propagandists. Propagandists are masters at manipulating fear, distrust, lies, half-truths, and specious reasoning, which also help to create new channels of control in the Common Knowledge Game. We are in a war of ideologies, and the “first victim of war is the truth”. Supporting and promoting Pseudo-Christian Apocalyptic irrationality, and making “America Great Again” for the rich, for the polluting energy industry, and for the military, spells doom for the rest of us, and for our precious world. Donald Trump and his family constitute non-holistic capitalism, and, at times, a borderline criminal enterprise. It is both a reflection on Donald Trump, and of America itself, that a known liar, cheater, manipulator, and one time Russian money dependent bankrupt businessman would be elected as Commander-in-Chief.
The most corrupt human being to occupy the White House in many, many generations (maybe ever?) knows a little about corruption and lying. It is kind of hard not too, since he is a master at both. Accusing others of his own bad behavior is typical of all “projectionists”, especially when guilty of all charges, and unable to mount a rational defense. The only fake news here is when Donald Trump opens his hyperbolic mouth, and entertains his minions with his verbal drooling. This dirty diaper of a human being needs to be changed, QUICKLY. TREASON: Trump Related Extreme Anxiety Strikes Our Nation.
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