VI. Super Hexagon

THIS IS KIERKEGAARD’S GOD:

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“God himself is this: how one involves himself with Him. As far as physical and external objects are concerned, the object is something else than the mode: there are many modes. In respect to God, the how is the what. He who does not involve himself with God in the mode of absolute devotion does not become involved with God.”

God is not a thing, as it does not exist in the material sense. Rather, God is a mode of being, a mode of relating with yourself and the world. He happens in a relationship. Or we could understand God as an institution, like the State, or Family: not exactly a thing, but a situation that prescribes you a role in the world, or a way of being. And we enact these roles in the world through ritual.

For Kierkegaard, the form of the ritual matters more than the individuals particular beliefs. If people are participating voluntarily and the ritual is being properly performed, the Holy Ghost, and therefore God, is there. What else is a ritual? Can we find God in football? Or in cooking? In books? Can we find God in Super Hexagon?

“We do not relate to Him, He is this relating”, to quote Žižek again (his book The Parallax View was the main source for this essay). We still don’t have the answers we want, but as we unravel this idea something starts to take form: if God exists in a mode of relationship, in a particular way of experiencing things… then how different, how separate we must stand in relation to Him; there’s no hope for true knowledge: we are far from it. There’s nothing with which to measure ourselves against God, and so we are suddenly confronted with the “insurmountable abyss between the Finite and the Infinite” (Žižek). Between us, humans, and a higher order of existence.

To accept this as the limit of human reason is humbling, but there are also modes of acceptance. We can accept that there’s no fundamental Truth, that we lack any point of reference whatsoever, and even see that as the fundamental human feature: our ability to take a look inside the abyss, have a hearty laugh, and forget the whole thing without feeling too disenfranchised. If God is impossible to understand, there’s nothing we can do… try to laugh about how utterly alone we are in the universe.

But there is another mode, one that brings a strange resignation: the surrender to the abyss. The surrender to meaninglessness itself.

God doesn’t promise us any reward, argues Kierkegaard, and still asks us to sacrifice our whole lives for Him; for nothing. Never quite sure if there is or not a greater reason to it all, if there is or not a bottom to this abyss. God asks Isaac to sacrifice his son, and Isaac promptly abides, without ever fully understanding. He asks for Job’s devotion even while Job’s going through a lot of suffering and misfortune. Job remains loyal. He asks us to surrender, and we jump. Asks me to spin, and I spin.

Why?

Super Hexagon also asks for a sacrifice: my dedication and my time, if I am to understand It. This may not look like a lot, but attention is arguably the most valuable currency in Internet Age. Any movie or game asks for such a sacrifice, really. But they make us various promises: carefully constructed narratives, beautifully designed alien worlds, the ability to fulfill your fantasies.

Super Hexagon is different, because it promises nothing and delivers nothing. And by doing that, Super Hexagon asks for everything: not only for our time, but also that we strip away our preconceptions of what a videogame might mean and be. It asks for naivete, a certain innocence and a lack of expectations, the hardest of tasks in a world turned cynical.

As God for Kierkegaard and Bureaucracy for Kafka, Super Hexagon does this: It turns the concept of Meaning on its head. It asks us to leave our desire for meaning at the door, to surrender ourselves to the machine and its impossible requests, and forget about any kind of resolution, reward, or end. To sacrifice what we have for no purpose at all… and just then, after we strip away every mirror, representation and proxy for meaning, we can feel through the debris and see if there’s anything left behind.

It’s an insane gamble. There’s never a way to know if our efforts will be worthwhile.

When we are talking about religion, we tend to think, in a logical manner, that practice follows belief. First I have to believe in a higher order of being, so this belief can justify my religious practices. In what other way could it be?

Kierkegaard, Kafka, and Super Hexagon points us to the inverted order: first we do, we play, we act: then we try to find meaning in and through our relationship to people and things around us (if there’s any to be found).

It’s the practice that justify our beliefs. It’s through play that we generate meaning: this is the modern secular experience of God.



And how else could I justify the feeling of bliss I get when I hear Jenn Frank’s voice stating “Super Hexagon”, very calmly, at the main menu? How could I justify the feeling I get on my good days, when I’m playing to the peak of my ability, and time itself seems slows down — when my mind reacts fast, sometimes too fast? When my body doesn't feel completely in my control, but a vessel for something else? When my avatar is spinning on the center of the screen, avoiding and hitting walls, forever in doubt: am I trying to escape or am I trying to get in?

It’s in this moment, when trying to explain the unexplainable, that we must recur to last resorts. And Kierkegaard again: “in the last resort there is no theory”. The concept of God is useful because it deflects all reasoning, it’s an attack upon reason itself… but at the same time, it gives us a common ground on which we can build our relationships to things, and to others. It tells us that no matter how different we might think, or be, there’s always another mode of understanding, one that transforms the simple but elusive act of communication a pleasurable possibility: something that bridges the gap between you and me. Like a videogame. Or this essay.

Super Hexagon is simulated divinity: a strange and aggressive paradox that is able to break you free from the illusions of the videogame form, while at the same time thrusting you deeper into the most essential representation of videogames. It highlights the limits and the endless possibilities of videogames, ourselves.

Humanity is made in the image of God, but is also opposed to God in every way. Likewise, Super Hexagon is made in the image of Videogames, but it also stands in opposition to what videogames are. It is too much of a videogame to be a videogame. Super Hexagon recognizes and emphasizes that videogame itself is a mode of relationship, a ritual. That it shapes our ideas and behaviors in relation to something that exists on a higher plane than us: the machine, the last remaining contact with the dimension of the divine. Back to Žižek on Kafka:

“What can be more “divine” than the traumatic encounter with the bureaucracy at its craziest — when, say, a bureaucrat tells me that, legally, I don’t exist? It is in such encounters that we get a glimpse of another order beyond mere earthly everyday reality. Like God, bureaucracy is simultaneously all-powerful and impenetrable, capricious, omnipresent and invisible.”

The ultimate truth we can encounter here is this: God is not there to be found; but human beings, by our nature, will search for it all the same; we still require an “Absolute Other”, a transcendental framework through which to understand reality, to measure ourselves; a gigantic codex of information that contains our names, our deeds, our lives; anything that assigns meaning to our pointless existence. Scoreboards, achievements.

On that Leigh Alexander piece, Cavanagh is quoted:

“I can’t speak of what an abstract game can do in terms of talking about subjects like death and love, but I think games can absolutely be personal, can be about the person who made it,” he adds. “This game… this is me.”

But if we still lack meaning, if we still don’t understand the purpose, we must take a leap of faith, an insane plunge into the abyss to find it. At this time, our infinite resignation and therefore our ultimate sacrifice is required: we must give up ourselves, for absolute nothing. To understand God, and Super Hexagon, surrender is necessary: there’s no guarantee that your time will be worthwhile. If there’s a reward, a promise to restore meaning, this is already a sign that we failed.

If the answer was in plain sight, if an answer existed, there would be no faith, and there would be no leap: the act of play would be robbed of its intense pleasure and enjoyment, robbed of its purposelessness; that touch of divinity that answers a final, impossible question: why participate, if you have everything to lose?

Just because.

That may seem irrational, and it is.

Some things are just hard to understand.