Analyzing Game Theory: Theology’s Belief in God and Wireless Electronic Assault Torture’s Invitation to Meet Him
UPDATE: March 16, 2024
“There are times when visceral encounters seem most acute in the suffering body. And so, child [victim-cum-perpetrator] may seek the missing parental other through the infliction of bodily suffering” (see also Kreegman, 1987; Grand, 2000, p. 25).
In the manifestation of similar symptoms across multiple case studies of genocide survivors, there has been observed malignant acts of sexual trespass. These survivors seek out the absent parental object through sexual violations of surrogate victims. Men who seek their absent mother (or other absent female relative) in what Frankel (1998, discussing Ferenczi) calls “objectless sensation:” A suffering body void of words and human comfort. To seek the parent through the parent’s pain through object surrogacy is a recognition that genocidal annihilation was not an experience of the mind: but rather that genocidal pain was of the senses.
“In massive psychic trauma, the body functions as death’s wordless scribe, encoding “region after region of nullity” (Eigen, 1996) in bodily symptoms, acts, and sensations (Grand, 2000, pg. 25–26).”
As it pertains to language, be careful here regarding this point of symptomology. This is a precarious space to traverse in philosophical linguistics terms because the wireless electronic assault torture operates in a very malevolent way and seeks the inversion of truth through plausible denial. By denying its own malevolent behavior by masquerading the victims as the “paranoid” individual through citing their somatic bodily sensations that appear as symptoms from wireless electronic assault torture. Symptoms, those with “medical authority or psychiatric authority” claim are rooted in the victim’s adverse infantile bodily senses, states that reach the intolerable: starvation, cold, exhaustion, heat, invasive sexual sensations. When this happens in “treatment” it registers as a form of perspecticide! When this happens in “treatment” it may not be the patient who is suffering the manifestations of somatic trauma. Rather, it is the child-victim-cum-adult-peprpetrator trying to seek out the absent parent, His ‘object-other’ from his traumatic childhood through the infliction of bodily suffering onto his victims via wireless electronic assault torture. This behavior is commonly seen in clinical cases of genocide survivors who, in their adult lives, carry out sexual transgressions like rape and molestation. Sexual transgressions operate to resurrect their silent, muted history of past violation that was previously “unknowable.” Through the infliction of pain in the ‘object-other’ the victim-cum-perpetrator shares his catastrophic loneliness with his victims.
We need to define pain and to comprehend its connection. Besides pain itself, there are other averse bodily states that reach the intolerable. Like I have stated previously, starvation, cold, exhaustion, heat, invasive sexual sensations. When these states are inflicted by another, when the victim’s agency is extinguished, and there is neither escape nor any possibility of human appeal, these states may be considered under the rubic of ‘pain’. Indeed, they often become pain, or accompany it (Grand, 2000, p. 26–27). Thus the child attempts to meet his absent/missing parent in the intimate specificity of bodily torment. Unwittingly, “this child knows that the ego is ultimately denied from bodily sensations, chiefly from those that spring from the surface of the body” (Freud, 1923). He knows that the collapse of his ego was likewise located in bodily sensation. To find the parent’s traumatized selves, this son reaches into and beyond their bodily degradation (Grand, 2000, p. 26).
“One man uses his power over another to crush his individuality, his dignity, his capacity to feel deeply (to feel joy, love, and even hate); and … to stifle the victim’s use of his mind — his capacity to think rationally and to test reality.” ~Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder (1991)
“The methods of establishing control over another person are based upon the systematic, repetitive infliction of psychic trauma. They are the organized techniques of disempowerment and disconnection.” ~Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery, (1992)
The suffering body self is a vanishing body self that cannot be seen. Like all bodily life and experience it is not knowable outside the matrix of human interaction and symbolization (Harris, 1998). As Scarry (1985) notes, all pain (not just that of malignant trauma) is without meaning or interpersonal referent; it is void of meaning, and is not of or for anything. Pain, like other forms of non-linguistic experience, is inconsistent with reflection, can never enter a reflective consciousness at all (Stern, 1997).
Yet another area of ambiguity in the narrative of targeted individuals suffering wireless electronic assault torture, and to which those who claim “authoritative knowledge in medicine” or some other area of expertise, attempt to conspire and collude with the perpetration of the malevolence to further obfuscate and distort truth is referenced here. Consider “Pain’s Paradox.”
“Pain is the most autistic and immediate of all human experiences, and yet it refuses the mutuality of emphatic conduction. Even with the greatest effort to grasp another’s pain, Scarry argues that the pain of another is,
“Vaguely alarming yet unreal, laden with consequence yet evaporating before the mind … pain comes unsharably into our midst as at once that which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed … to have great pain is to have certainty, to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt (Scarry, 1985; Grand, 2000, p. 27)
This is the paradox of pain. Although it defies mutual knowledge, although it seeks (and sometimes finds) its own dissociative disappearance, aversive sensation can appear as the absolute antagonist to alienated living. This pain is not silent. Pain screams and moans and writhes through the body. As such, the experience of pain is not dulled by those platitudes which are civilization: in its visceral alertness, pain disrupts the torpor of “language rules” and denials. As such, it closes what Harris (1998) calls the hallowed split between word and deed, it forces denial to succumb to that absolute knowing that exists outside of linguistic knowledge. Whatever torture is called, whatever “principle” is used for its justification, the victim’s body registers the elemental truth of violation. And that truth is, the person carrying out the wireless electronic assault torture, assumes the role of God in the victim’s life. The dynamism of human existence is littered with mutual elaborations and confabulations of that which are absent from trauma narratives. Both benign [such as homosexuality] and malignant bodily enactments engage the child/self which is absent. They are attempts to provide, “a great relation … which throws a bridge from self-being to self-being across the abyss of dread of the universe” (Buber, 1923). Benign enactments sustain a vision of the absent other as a potential self-being. In malignant enactments, the perpetrator senses that the other must be found and cannot be found, because death itself has already consumed her. “No one can take the other’s death from him” (Heidegger, 1962): in that truth, in malignant bodily enactments, the bridge from self-being to self-being falls away (Grand, 2000, p. 26).
The infliction of torture has turned many believers in God away from their faith. Steven Brams, in his book, “Game Theory and the Humanities” argues that when looking for rational belief in the existence of God, a belief need not be true or even verifiable to be rational if it satisfies certain psychological or emotional needs of a person (Brams, 2012, p. 71). Thus, when torture is carried out or inflicted by someone against another, to dissuade that person of their religious faith in God, well, this is the form the reproduction of evil assumes. It is MALEVOLENT!
In considering Brams’ discussion related to the subjective question: “Is it rational to believe in the existence of God — and, thereby, search for evidence or even be concerned?”Brams considers Blaise Pascal’s decision-theoretic. He does not assume we play games with God, in which God actively chooses strategies. Instead, he supposes that each person makes a calculation about whether or not believing in God in an uncertain world is justified (Landsberg, 1971; Rescher, 1985; Chimenti, 1990; Jordan, 2006).
If you consider “Pain’s Paradox” in techniques of mind control and torture, the only thing that can be certain in an uncertain world is pain! To have pain is to have certainty. To have pain signifies a riveting being-in-the-present; a radical alertness in extremity. If aversive pain is the absolute antagonist to alienated living, then the perpetration of wireless electronic assault torture onto another appears to be the recapitulation and re-enactment of someone’s past trauma with catastrophic loneliness accompanied by alienation and isolation. Because the nature of the technology being used against victims seeks to immobilize and control a person’s social interactions through the infliction of pain, and where Brams considered the choice of whether or not the belief in God in an uncertain world was a rational choice, he did say it was a choice made in a one-person game. However, Brams goes on to suggest that the “Search Decision” for the existence of God becomes more like a game, if God or the “Superior Being” can influence the choice of a state of nature. Starting from the agnostic assumption stated in no. 223 of Pensee (Pascal, 1670/1950) that “if there is a God … we are incapable of knowing what He is, or whether He is,” and “reason can settle nothing here … a game[!] is on. In this game there are two possible states of nature:
1. God exists: One enjoys an eternity of bliss (infinite reward).
2. God does not exist: One’s belief is unjustified (“loss of nought”) or, at worst, one is chagrined for being fooled (finite penalty).
2(a). If one bets that state 2 (God does not exist) was true, but it turned out to be false, one would suffer an eternity of torment in Hell — a huge loss for not believing (e.g. a failed calculated bet that ends in an infinity of torment and torture)
Brams included a sub-notation 2(a) as a possible outcome but did not actually notate it as such in his book, but it is a possible outcome of the game.
So, let’s recap the nature of game theory in theology with Pascal’s theoretical assumption “if there is a God … we are incapable of knowing what He is, or whether He is,” and “reason can settle nothing here … a game is a foot!”, with Sue Grand’s discussion on “the allure of bodily cruelty” in survivors of genocide. Since the psychological constellation of the victim-cum-perpetrator is a possible malignant bodily enactment that engages the child/witness in an effort to make present that parental self which is absent through the infliction of bodily pain onto a surrogate ‘object-other.’ While at the same time, taking into consideration and analyzing “Pain’s Paradox” according to Sue Grand which states, “to have pain is to have certainty, and that pain signifies a riveting being-in-the-present, that also shares the shadows and obscurities of non-linguistic experience,” along side the “Schizoid Dilemma” which described by Laing (1960) is the “shattered self” of trauma that is suffused with death anxiety and the sense that there is no-self. Such personalities become pre-occupied with protection and concealment of their inner deadness. Other people become figures of hope and dread. The perpetrator wants to be known to another and it is through the survivor’s/perpetrator’s resurrection of their “shattered self,” in their loneliness and solitude and, at the same time, the “knowing” is unformulatable: it cannot be represented mutually in a linguistic narrative. Also tying into the last paradox, the “Annihilation Paradox” which states, “the need to be known continually meets the impossibility of being known. And the need to be known meets, as well, an inner refusal to be known. Much as another’s empathic understanding is critical for the survivor’s resurrection, so that very understanding threatens to renew the survivor’s annihilation. Any presumption of knowledge will eviscerate the truth of her catastrophic loneliness, collapsing the core of her traumatic identity. It must not be allowed to happen. It must be foreclosed upon.”
Thus we can draw a conclusion that wireless electronic assault torture of Targeted Individuals appears to be “a game between two or more people” because God or the “Superior Being” can influence the choice of a state of nature through its claim, “God doesn’t exist” the “Superior Being” asks the victim, “Where is your God now?” and “Who is going to come and save you?” In wireless electronic assault torture “the Superior Being issuing forth the torments, is incapable of being known by the victim as to what He is or whether He is.” And because victims are often selected because they have “untrained eyes.” Because “knowing him” cannot actually be done through physical meeting in a one-on-one or even “a linguistic conversation.” He is unformulatable in mutual terms. Thus, the survivor who becomes a perpetrator attempts to share his no-self by evacuating it into his victims. In both re-victimization and perpetration, there is a meeting which is no meeting in the execution itself. Much like the “experience of knowing God” or some other Superior Spiritual Being, a God-like deity, there is no actual “meeting.” Rather it is more of a metaphysical experience that transcend ordinary perceptions of one’s reality and delves into invisible concepts like “receiving the Holy Spirit” through a religious experience.
It is for this reason, the ambiguity of wireless electronic assault torture beguiles us and distorts Truth via the employment of metaphysical philosophy which discusses things outside the realm of reality and “knowable experiences.” Thus, the technology being employed by wireless electronic assault torture taps into the “unreal” or “unknowable” truth of metaphysics.
CONCLUSION
Our human history with its proclivity for systematic collusion and concealment of evil acts that manifests in “the appearance” and “disappearance” of evil, is an ongoing process that constantly re-discovers and disavowals the very presence of human malevolence. Systematically, the facts of evil seem to press toward communal knowledge just as some counter force undermines the emergence of such knowledge. This is also true for the evil being perpetrated on victims of wireless electronic assault torture by victim-cum-perpetrator’s (e.g. Targeted Individuals and the phenomenon of Electronic Harassment). What I have just discussed is its phenomenology. It would seem that the manifestation of cultural malevolent disavowal for the memory of evil, is a systematic process in which awakening alternates with obfuscation. Psychoanalytically speaking, the scary truth regarding this phenomenon is that this systematic enactment is a precise reflection of the survivor-perpetrator’s internal struggle between the desire to be known, the fear of being known, and the impossibility of being known. And it is a precise mirroring of developmental regression with its attendant loss of history and agency.
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the crickets no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
………….
I will show fear in a handful of dust” [Eliot, “The Wasteland, 1922]
SOURCES:
Grand, S. (2000). “The Reproduction of Evil: A clinical & cultural perspective.” Hillsdale, NJ. The Analytic Press. Chapter 2, “Loneliness and the Allure of Bodily Cruelty,” (p. 21–39).
“First Do No Harm: The paradoxical encounters of psychoanalysis, warmaking, and resistance.” (2010). Adrienne Harris and Steven Botticelli (eds.) New York. Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group. Chapter 13, “Notes on Mind Control: The malevolent uses of emotions as a dark mirror of the therapeutic process” by Ruth Stein.
Brams, Steven J. (2012). “Game Theory and the Humanities: Bridging two worlds.” Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press. Chapter 3, “Theology: Is it rational to believe in God?” (p. 69–92).
Capps, D. (2008). God Diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Pastoral Psychology, 58(2), 193–206.
OTHER SOURCES MENTIONS:
Laing, R.D. (1960). “The Divided Self.” New York. Penguin Books.
Kreegman, S. (1987). “Trauma in the family: Perspectives on the intergenerational transmission of violence.” IN: Psychological Trauma, ed. B.A. Van der Kolk. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, pp. 127–152.
Frankel, J.B. (1998). ‘Ferenczi’s trauma theory.” IN: Amer. J. Psychoanal, 1:41–61.
Eigen, M. (1996). “Psychic Deadness.” Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
Freud, S. (1923). “The ego and the id.” Standard Edition, 19:3–68. London. Hogarth Press 1961.
Harris, A. (1998). “Psychic envelops and sonorous baths: Sitting the body in relational theory and clinical practice.” IN: Relational Perspectives on the Body, ed. L.Aron & F.S. Anderson. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, p. 39–64.
Scarry, E. (1985). “The Body in Pain.” New York. Oxford University Press.
Buber, M. (1923). “I and Thou” Trans. W. Kaufman. New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970.
Heidegger, M. (1962). “Being and Time.” New York. Harper & Row.
Stern, D.B. (1997). “Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis.” Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
Pascal, Blaise (1670/1950). Pensee. Trans. H.F. Stewart. New York. Pantheon.
Landberg, P.T. (1971) “Gambling on God.” In: Mind 80 (317):100–104.
Rescher, Nicholas (1985). “Pascal’s Wager: A Study of Practical Reasoning in Philosophical Theology.” South Bend. IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Chimenti, Frank A. (1990). “Pascal’s Wager: A Decision-Theoretical Approach.” IN: Mathematics Magazine. 63 (5):321–325.
Jordan, Jeff. (2006). “Pascal’s Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God.” Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
