Beyond Assassin’s Creed

This post is an experiment and I am eager to see the responses.  There are three distinct facets to the Assassin’s Creed game series.  There is the gameplay.  People enjoy the game -- or not -- and then move on to the next game.  The goal of Ubisoft is to sell as many games as possible today to get their share of that market.  The second is the story or lore aspect.  This is fun and goes beyond just gameplay, but one day the story grows old and we move on to a new lore.  The third is the philosophical element.  What many do not know or understand is the the Assassin’s Creed pre-dates the game series and the philosophy transcends it.  In five, ten, or twenty years time when the gameplay and stories have been forgotten, or are just pleasant memories, the Assassin’s Creed as a concept and its philosophies will remain in some form.

In light of this, I wanted to share from time to time videos that I have discovered that illustrate the principles of the Assassin’s Creed from people who probably know nothing of the games.  They demonstrate that there is a belief system here in which its adherent can rightly say that they are in real life followers of the Creed.  No, they are not committing murder from the rooftops, but they are embracing the ideology of the Assassins through the Creed.

The first video is on the concept of sonder.  To say that Nothing is True is to recognise that each person has their own unique subjective reality.  Sonder drives home that fact by reminding us that from our singular perspective we are the star of out movie, then reminds us that we are an extra in someone else’s.  Everything is permitted not only speaks to our own freedom to act, but also the freedom of others to play the lead role that they choose to play.

The following text is from philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti in which he discusses the notion of social conditioning, the process by which from infancy we are molded to fit into society, first by parents, than peers, then the social institutions like education.  He posits that we must question this conditioning and discover for yourself.  In this context, Nothing is true, Everything is permitted is a challenge to question accepted truths and the imposed behaviours derived from these false truths.

Finally there is Nietzsche.  He referred to the motto of the Assassins in his book The Genealogy of Morals, this was over a century before it came to be known as “the Assassin’s Creed”.  In the text he implies that he contemplated the Creed and the more that I understand of his philosophy, the more I see either the influence of the Creed on his philosophy, or maybe it simply confirmed the ideas he already had.  Watch this video with the Creed in mind -- Nothing is true, Everything is permitted.