Theres a common thread of venality that binds man to his brothers. And we have the thin veneer of civilisation to thank for wrapping up this subtle self that we all contain in a social contract of politeness, legality, constraint, and mutual benificience.
But anonymity has always been the enemy of the civilised project. Anonymity affords the greater mass of us the opportunity to shrug aside some of the looser conditions of our everyday behaviour. Anonymity allows us to exert a peculiar control over ourselves that we would not generally otherwise choose to exercise.
We're not always nice people when nobodies watching.
Plato asks a question in a parable. The parable of Gyges ring. Gyges ring conveys invisibility upon the wearer. What man who posessed it could possibly resist the opportunity to enrich himself, when absolved of the consequences of guilt.
In a nutshell. Morality is what you can get away with.
Tha parallels between online anonymity and Platonic invisibility are there to be seen. We can divorce our actions from their most obvious of consequences. Its easier to con a man, to lie, and chet and steal, when you don't have to look him in the face.
Poker offers to many players one of the few arenas in which they can exercise almost complete economic control over their fate. Its a game built on deception. It punishes the weak. It punishes kindness, generosity, and mercy. It measures itself in money. Dollars and cents, pounds and euros are the limited language of its success. And in its online guise, the anonymity offered makes fleecing the marks that much easier.
Would you sell an alcholoic a bottle of whiskey, or a junkie a hit of heroin. Would you fleece a gambling addict for his last dollar and feel good about the accomplished superiority of your play. Would you steal from the sick and post about how professional you were?
Its a difficult world, and you have to be careful about who you choose to be. Because in the end, its not civilisation that will judge you. At the end of it all, we are left with only ourselves, and what we have made of that. And its a subtle truth, too tenuous and thoughtful a thing for many who will have to live with it. And the tragedy of life is in unkowingly making of ourselves something that we secretly come to hate.
I like poker. I might even be good at it. But, in thoughtful response to my little blogs post, you have to be careful with who you become. Or ot might just sneak up on you one day. Money is a problem to be solved. It is too petty a thing to be an end in itself. Work to live, or live to work?
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