This article is a follow-up to a previous piece revealing the
Existentialism in Assassins Creed and there will be a third to follow this
one. You can read the first article here.
When I look at the philosophy of
Assassins Creed I do not see one but three definite philosophical strands woven
together. These are explicit
Existentialism, implicit Romanticism, and demonstrative Stoicism. The Existentialism is explicit in that it’s
right out there with the Creed. The
Romantic is implicit in that it is built into the structure of the stories
themselves. Finally, the Stoic elements
are demonstrated primarily through the characters.
The Romantic is the most
difficult of the three philosophies to approach. Not because the subject matter is
complex. The issue is the diverse
concept of the Romantic itself.
Assassin’s Creed is a Historical Romance, but we do not use that
terminology anymore because the term Romance has come to be associated with the
bodice-ripper novels found in the Romance section of the bookstore. So instead we call it action/adventure. There are actually just over fifty uses of the
word Romantic which means that anyone
discussing the Romantic has to define their terms to avoid confusion.
Jacques Barzun, possibly the
foremost academic authority on the Romantic, identified four cornerstone themes
in narrative Romances: the hero’s
quest/journey, unique settings, a love interest, and the supernatural. The noble knight ventures forth across fields
and mountains on a quest to save his beloved princess from a fierce
dragon. Taking inspiration from the film
Moulin Rouge!, these four cornerstones can be distilled into the values of
Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love.
FINDING TRUTH IN THE SUPERNATURAL
Encountering the supernatural
evokes any number of emotions from awe to disbelief. The point is that the supernatural forces us
to question reality. Many of the early
Gothic Romances were mysteries where characters sought to discover the truth
behind apparently supernatural events through the use of logic and reason to
find a natural explanation. In some stories, the victims of the supernatural go
mad, in other words, they lose their rational faculties. In modern Romantic stories, such as
Science-Fiction, the extraordinary is used to challenge the character’s beliefs
about the nature of reality and sometimes alter their preconceived beliefs
At first glance it may seem
contradictory to acknowledge that Nothing is True and yet pursue Truth as a
value. To reconcile this we must remind
ourselves that the Creed is not to be taken literally. It is not a denial of Truth rather it is an
admonition to independent critical thinking, an important tool in discovering
Truth. I see it like the Scientific
Attitude that approaches life thinking oneself to be wrong until proven
right. This is the opposite of
mainstream thinking where people assume themselves to be right until proven
wrong.
The pursuit of Truth takes three
forms in Assassin’s Creed. The most
obvious is discovering and uncovering the latest Piece of Eden which serves as
the supernatural components in the stories.
Another recurring theme is
betrayal where the character believed a person to be one way but later discovered
this to not be true. Al Mualim’s plot is
uncovered; Lucy Stillman, Daniel Cross, and Shay McCormack all become Templars;
Juno manipulates Connor; Aveline’s step-mother proves to be the “Company Man”;
Hornigold turns his back on the Pirate Republic; the Assassin Pierre Bellec murders
the leader of the Paris Assassins. The
list is extensive. The idea here is that
people are not who they appear and the Truth must be uncovered.
The third is the over-arching
conspiracy. The ACU is a world where
conspiracy theories are for the most part true and secret societies manipulate
events behind the scenes. The thing about conspiracies is that they are
hidden. They are a truth to be
uncovered and have secrets to be revealed.
In AC Syndicate there are a
series of side missions harkening back to Victorian ghost stories. Charles Dickens asks Jacob and Evie if they
believe in ghosts. Jacob answers no in a
rather dismissive tone. Who can blame
him? Afterall, nothing is true. Evie on the other hand gives an emphatic and
excited yes. Of all the Assassins in the
series, Evie is probably the most thrilled by the supernatural as seen by her
intense interest in the Pieces of Eden beyond merely obtaining a McGuffin. The Romantic encourages us to pursue
possibilities with the same childlike enthusiasm we see in Evie’s response to
Dickens.
THE BEAUTIFUL ASSASSIN
Years ago there was a lecture at
Glasgow University where someone argued that the Romantics were early
environmentalists. I disagree. The often taught focus of the Romantics on Nature
misses the point. The real focus is not
on Nature itself but on the beautiful and the sublime. The object of attention just happens to be
Nature. This can be expanded to other
objects such as architecture, design, and even fashion. This carries with it the notion that life
should aspire to imitate art and we should strive to make life beautiful.
The Romantic acknowledges two
forms of beauty, the Beautiful and the Sublime.
Beauty is serene, calm, symmetrical, and ordered. The sublime is big, powerful, and
overwhelming like a rugged cliff set against a stormy sky. When faced with the sublime we feel small
against the grandeur and feel both terrified and yet inspired.
Beauty may not be the first word
one uses to describe Assassin’s Creed, and yet it is not uncommon for a game to
be described as beautiful. Rather than being a value explicitly expressed
in the game it is inherent in the game design itself as artists craft an
amazing world from pixels extolling the beautiful and the sublime in both
natural scenery and manufactured architecture. There was a scene in AC Unity
where I stepped onto balcony of Arno’s home literally admiring the view when to
my surprise an achievement popped-up for admiring the view.
The set designers are not the
only ones concerned with beauty. In life
we tend to view people with an over-interest in fashion as being shallow, vain,
and foolish, however we watch our Romantic heroes run about in clothes designed
specifically for them by fashion designers as if the hero just put that ensemble together themselves.
When we think about the
Assassin’s appearance we are struck emotionally on some level. This is a response to beauty. No, we may not describe them as beautiful. We might use words like striking, inspiring,
or the ubiquitous cool, but these all fit into the Romantic concept of Beauty.
Sartorially speaking, the Assassin’s do not hide in plain sight. The hero dresses in a manner that stands-out
from the crowds as something extraordinary.
We find this behaviour in many heroic/warrior cultures. For example among the American Indians the
warriors would adorn themselves to stand out and be noticed. This practice was adopted by the likes of
Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok who both dressed flamboyantly.
In philosophy, this takes us back
to the philosophy of Dandyism particularly as expressed by Charles
Baudelaire. Most people think of the
dandies as being simply over-interested in appearance, but that was not true. At its core dandyism is the belief that those
not born into wealth, privilege, and title can aspire through hard work to
out-do the nobles of their time in character, manners, and dress. Baudelaire
called dandyism “the last gasp of heroism in decadent ages”. He believed that democracy promoted the
lowest common denominator and that through dandyism one might rise above the
mediocrity promoted by society. This was expressed through fashion, but it was
really about manner and attitude.
This brings us to another aspect
of the beauty, the character of an individual.
A beautiful person with a bad character is described as vain, a word
meaning useless. Physical and sartorial beauty
is not enough. Inner qualities like
grace and charm are also necessary.
There is also the concept of being dashing. These are all featured in the Assassins to
varying degrees. Charm is to show
courtesy, respect and interest in others while being dashing is to demonstrate
the virtue of courage. I doubt that part
of the Assassin education is charm school and no character in the game promotes
these qualities, and yet nearly all of the Assassins possess them.
FREEDOM AND THE OUTLAW HERO
Consider this scene from the film
Up in the Air:
Ryan Bingham: You know why kids love athletes?
Bob: Because they screw lingerie models.
Ryan Bingham: No, that's why we love athletes. Kids love them because they follow their dreams.
Replace that word athlete with
the word hero and you have an idea of why we love heroes. It isn’t so much that heroes follow their
dreams as they have the freedom and power to do so. Really it’s this freedom and power that is
valued when we engage in hero worship and emulation.
Freedom is the right to act and
power is the means to act. The freedom
to act is nothing without the power to act.
You are free to buy that expensive car, but without the means to buy the
car you cannot take advantage of that freedom.
Power is a necessary requirement,
but people tend to forget that there are various forms of power:
1. Internal Power: Character qualities, like ambition, charm,
intelligence, or the will to act.
2. Physical power: These include things like strength,
beauty, dexterity, and physical skill.
3. Material power: This is basically money and those things
money can buy.
4. Social Power: The
ability to harness the powers of others.
5. Legislative Power: This is power granted by government.
6. Titular Power: This is power inherent in a position, like
being President of the United States.
7. Time: This may not
seem like a form of power until you run out of it.
With this is mind, consider that
to increase knowledge, learn a skill, make a new friend, or even for a woman to
put on make-up is to cultivate one’s power.
The pursuit of power is not only, as most people believe, to increase
political power for the purpose of ruling over others. Power is merely an asset allowing you to act as
you will – to follow your dreams.
We admire heroes because they
have this freedom and power. That may
have been enough when the vast majority of people had no freedom or power, but
since the Medieval Period most people have the freedom and power that our
ancestors only dreamed about. As a
consequence our expectations changed in what we expected from our heroes.
For the ancient Greeks and Romans
the concept of the hero had no moral dimension.
It was simply an extraordinary individual who could be either good or
bad. With the rise of Christianity,
Biblical characters were seen as heroes to emulate and this sort of rubbed-off
onto the concept of the hero making them exemplars of morality and community
values.
The heroes we are most familiar
with are the Romantic heroes. These
characters were inspired by Medieval stories but given modern relevance. In
Romantic narrative fiction the two primary figures are King Arthur and Robin
Hood. These translate into the
archetypes of the Knight and the Outlaw.
The Knight is the defender of the benevolent social order. In most stories the Knights are police
officers, soldiers, or government or free agents working to protect the
people. The Outlaw is the opposition to
a malevolent social order. These are the
plucky rebels like the Rebel Alliance of Star Wars, the crew of Serenity in
Firefly, or the freedom fighters of the Hunger Games series. Often they are depicted as the criminals with
the “heart of gold” working to support the people.
Using this as a baseline, we can
identify six variations of this theme.
In addition to the traditional knights and outlaws, who we’ll call
white, are the black and grey versions.
The Black Knight is the defender of a malevolent social order usually
opposing the White Outlaw while the White Knight primarily opposes the Black
Outlaw. In the film Die Hard, John
McLain is the White Knight against Hans Gruber the Black Outlaw. However the formula can vary. In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana
Jones is the White Knight hired by the American government to oppose the Black
Knights of the Nazis. As the colour
implies, the greys are morally ambiguous.
They may have good intentions, but their means are negative. So the Grey Knights might see themselves as
bringing peace but do so by restricting freedom. The Grey Outlaw might strike out against the
authoritarian regime by blowing-up a government installation with no regard for
innocent casualties. A character like
Daredevil is a White Outlaw fighting Black Outlaws but often finds himself
against the Punisher, a Grey Outlaw.
In Assassin’s Creed, the
Assassins are traditional White Outlaws, however they are perceived by the
general public as being Black Outlaws while the Assassins themselves seem
concerned with crossing the line into the grey.
The Templars are mostly Grey Knights.
Occasionally, there are Black Knights in the mixed, but for the most
part they have nominal good intentions.
Haytham Kenway, Shay McCormack, and Elise de la Serre are all examples
of Grey Knights who see the Assassins as well-meaning but ultimately misguided
and a danger to society.
These moral delineations of white,
grey, and black are largely fixed according to how selfless or selfish the
actions. As White Outlaws, the Assassins fight for freedom as their primary
value. This is built into the Creed and
explains cryptic statements found through the game series such as when Evie
says to Queen Victoria, “But with the greatest respect, our philosophy forbids
us from assisting with the expansion of the Empire.” How does she get that from, “Nothing is True;
Everything is Permitted”? This is where Existentialism and
the Romantic overlap. As mentioned
earlier, Nothing is True is an admonition to independent critical
thinking. This is not possible without
the freedom to think as you choose. To
say that Everything is permitted is an existential truth, but a state of
bondage is designed to control and prevent human action. We might rephrase the Creed as, “Freedom to
think and to act”. Imperialism runs
counter to the Creed so Evie rejects it.
LOVE AND THE ASSASSIN
When people think of love it is
usually so-called romantic love that initially comes to mind. Who can blame them? It is the topic of countless songs, shows,
movies, and books. It can rightly be
called a cultural obsession, but this mentality does love a great
disservice.
In the pie chart of love,
romantic love represents the smallest sliver of the experience of love. It is the dopamine driven rush found at the
beginning of a relationship lasting about a year or two before settling into
what we can call a proper form of love.
The big picture of love includes various forms of love such as family
love, love for a spouse, love of friends, love of community, and even love of
ideology. The ancient Greeks had
different words for each of these types of love, but unfortunately English only
has the one word to work with in understanding the concept.
Another unfortunate twist of
language is that the Romantic has lent its name erroneously to the concept of
romantic love, so to keep these concepts clear; I’ll be referring to romantic
love by its Greek name eros.
The foundational form of love
found in the traditional Romances is what is today called courtly or fine
love. The knight acts to impress the
object of his affection that he serves and worships mostly platonically. There is no eros here. So it seems strange that eros is today called
romantic love when it’s absent from the Romances.
So what is love? Love is a strong emotional response to values
and values are those things that we act to gain or to keep. This is why love is often associated with
desire and sacrifice. Values are those
things we desire to possess and those things that we are willing to risk or
sacrifice other values to preserve.
Love is an emotional response, so
understanding love requires some understanding of how emotions work. When the Creed states that “nothing is true”
it is acknowledging that what people think is reality is actually their
perceived idea of reality. Your brain
responds to these ideas with the chemical cocktail that we call emotions. The basic process is: Perception ->
Assessment -> Response --> Action. This process occurs so fast that the
conscious mind barely notices it and not at all if the mind isn't paying
attention. This creates the illusion that emotional responses emerge
instantaneous from nowhere completely independent of the mind. The ancients
believed the source of emotions to be a spirit that comes upon a person.
If someone pulls a gun on you
there is sudden fear. You perceive the gun, assess that it is a gun (a lethal
weapon), and the emotional response is fear for the purpose of acting in
self-preservation. But what if your
perception is false and you only think it's a gun? The chain of events is the same. The emotions
are valid in the sense that they are truly believed and felt, but the premise
of the emotion is faulty and can lead to harmful actions. Similarly, suppose
someone pulls a gun on you but you have never seen a gun before. You would not know to be afraid. In this case the perception is accurate but
the assessment is faulty leading to a flawed but understandable emotional
response.
There is very little eros in
Assassin’s Creed beyond passing encounters.
So you will not find much in terms of a love story. The closest that the series ever came to
making eros a central theme is AC Unity with Arno and Elise playing the Romeo
and Juliet roles of lovers who belong to warring factions.
AC Black Flag focuses on two
forms of love. The Greeks make a
distinction between the love of lovers, eros, and the love of spouses. Once the initial passions of a relationship cool
down they settle into something more stable and mundane. This is the love Edward feels for his wife
Caroline. It is his desire to be a
worthy provider for her that drives him to become a privateer which in turn led
to him becoming a pirate and then Assassin.
So you might say his story is driven by love.
Another form of love in Black
Flag is the love of friends. The story
takes a great deal of time building the friendship of Edward to Mary Reed,
Edward Thatch, and Adelewale making them three of the most likeable characters. Towards the end there is a melancholy scene
where Edward imagines all his friends who had died gathered on his porch
drinking and laughing like old times.
Edward’s grandson, Connor Kenway,
has a different focus. For Connor there
is his village and the settlement. His love is the love of community. Looking at love as a motivator as we act to
gain or keep values, most of Connor’s actions are towards preserving his
village and building the settlement.
This involves the level of care and concern he feels particularly
towards the settlement, but at the same time he Is largely disconnected from it
in the sense that the members come across as positive acquaintances rather than
friends. So really it is the idea of the
settlement and the people in it that he loves.
There is another form of love
filled with strife and anger, but beneath the violent surface there is a deep
connection. This is the love between
siblings and the embodiment of this is of course Jacob and Evie Frye in Ac
Syndicate. Their love for each other is
a major theme in the game and the execution in the story makes their love palpable
as it leaps from the screen. Despite
their playful mockery of each other that gradually deepens into conflict, in
the end their bond of love is secure and sees them through as they realise that
they are better together than apart.
Within families there is this
sibling love but there are other forms as well.
I am told that the love a parent feels for their child is powerful. This is not openly apparent in Assassin’s
Creed though there are hints in Haytham Kenway towards his son, Connor. The other form is the love of a child to
their parent. We see this in Ezio’s
story. All forms of family love can be
found in the Auditores but the key to the story is how Ezio feels about his
family as a concept particularly about his father’s legacy. In AC Brotherhood we see the light and shadow
of this with the Auditores versus the Borgias and the paternal legacy both sons
look to uphold.
When early Christians described
the love between God and Mankind the ancient Greek word they used for love was
agape. Today we may call this the love
of ideology. An ideology is a collection
of beliefs and beliefs are sometimes described as being ideas with emotional
attachments. So yes, you can love an
ideology. This is why people become
hostile when they feel that their ideology is being attacked. This is the basis behind the notion of
blasphemy.
No doubt all the Assassins have a
love for the Creed and each have acted to advance and preserve it, but as a
story showing this kind of love, I will have to go with Altair in AC1. In order to promote and preserve an ideology
organisations are created. The Assassins
exist as an organisation for the Creed.
However, of all the Assassins we see, we see very little of any kind of
organisation. We know it’s there, but
our main characters act independently of it, completely disregard it, or assume
sole leadership of it. Only Altair is a
servant of it. When he fails to do so he
is demoted and must prove himself once again from the bottom rank. Enduring this shows a level of devotion to
the organisation that we do not see in the other Assassins.
To accept love as a Romantic
value is not to simply value eros. It is
essentially to value values. I recent
learned of a fellow named Matthieu Ricard.
He is a Buddhist monk and the son of French philosopher Jean-François
Revel. According to the story I heard,
young Matthieu grew-up in an atmosphere where the leading French
Existentialists, Sartre, Bouvoir, and Camus, were regular guests of his
father. They would sit around smoking cigarettes
and drinking wine. Ricard noticed that
these leading lights of Western philosophy looked miserable. Ricard went on to embrace Eastern philosophy
and is now known as “the happiest man on earth”. In its rejection of imposed values
Existentialism fails to replace them with new values. A life without values is a life without
love. This is one area where the
Romantic helps to support the truths of Existentialism by encouraging a life
where we invest our emotions in the things that matter to us.
TRUTH, BEAUTY, FREEDOM, LOVE, AND ASSASSIN’S CREED
Romantic stories like Assassin’s
Creed serve a valuable purpose in teaching values. They inspire us through example and emotion to
have inquisitive minds in pursuit of Truth and to be true to ourselves and to
others. They encourage us to allow our
lives to become works of art and beauty and not settle for the mundane. They give us heroes to emulate and who show
us that we can cultivate the freedom and power necessary to make our dreams a
reality. Finally, the Romantic
encourages us to make those important value connections with our values, our partners,
our friends, our community, and with our own ideologies.
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