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We are all aware by now of the extent of damage caused by the recent collapse on Wall Street.

That this could have been allowed to happen beggars belief. Still stranger is the idea that the crash came out of nowhere – that none of the supposed economic experts saw it coming. If we are to accept this, how can anyone be held to account for anything anymore? How is it that nothing is anyone’s fault and no one will take responsibility?

I don’t accept that the crash was an accident, still less an “Act of God”. There is more to it than simply a confluence of destabilising factors which no one could have predicted.

What is important is not so much the crash itself – that is a symptom. What it represents is an underlying series of events and decisions kept hidden from the public eye. These events are all linked as part of an ongoing process, a process which I will call The Game.

The Game is not a new phenomenon. Throughout our history it has existed in one form or another, played beneath the surface of all the great human civilisations. As one Game fails, another begins, different in form but remarkably similar in effect. The consumption bubble which brought about the Wall Street crash is an example of how this secret Game affects our lives and our society.

First, we know what goes up must come down, so it is no surprise that the enormous bubble created by the sales-driven economy would burst. Nonetheless, when it did, its brutal reality of chaos and carnage shocked every last one of us.

How that bubble grew is simple, really. Over the last several decades myriad products were foisted upon the public who drifted into a buying trance. As needs gave way to wants, specific wants gave way to addicts buying for the sake of buying. Consumption became rapacious, driven by slick advertising and enabled by easy credit. A population of shopaholics became so habituated to shopping that even when the money ran out last fall, penniless people carrying maxed out credit cards filled the malls coast-to-coast.

Because humans are driven by emotion and not reason, effective salesmen know that more can be achieved by a manipulative appeal to our emotional weaknesses than by the most cogent, brilliant argument.

Being a master manipulator then, is their goal.

One cannot b trained to be a “Player”, it is something to which one is born. Without a natural capability to manipulate others, Players would be left floundering. They all share the common trait of being narcissistic: they are out for themselves, and everyone else is merely incidental.

Manipulators – Players – are born, not made. Their art requires a degree of congruence in presentation that is simply not sustainable for those who are not naturally inclined to manipulate. The defining element in the character profile of a player is narcissism. But they are not merely narcissistic; they are narcissists to their very core.

Despite this extreme form of self-interest, Players are pack-hunters, gravitating towards one another and existing within carefully controlled circles. As soon as a community of Players has grown strong enough, they will take control of their environment and begin to exploit it for personal gain. This is how The Game begins.

Whereas the law of natural selection would suggest that the most talented people rise to the top, the dominance of the Players is achieved specifically at the expense of those who rightly deserve to rule. The Players lay down rules which work to their benefit and no one else’s, but these rules are hidden, and the game appears on the outside to be proceeding fairly. Whatever we may do to stop them, however, the truth is that the Players are always in control.

And all this is achieved through hypnosis.

Bear in mind that we’re not talking about the kind of hypnosis practiced my magicians and even therapists, but a more subtle, more dangerous art which elevates the Players to a dominance which transcends the physical realm alone.

It is this hypnosis which we call The Game. The Players convince us to play by their rules, and we accept this unquestioningly. If only we could shake ourselves free of this perpetual trance we might evade The Game altogether and experience it as nothing more than a distant memory.

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