INGRESS META-NARRATIVE FRAMEWORK

INGRESS META-NARRATIVE FRAMEWORK

Here's my attempt at making sense of the Ingress lore and universe, and the proposed framework. 

The meta-narrative of Ingress should conform to the meta-narrative of human history - the narrative of human conflict. Ingress is only credible as an Augmented Reality Game when it is rooted in current Reality. Here's my thesis of the present Reality's meta-narrative (based on Thucydides, that the trinity of Fear, Honour and Interest as the strongest motives for violent politics) :

The Big Picture

Why do human societies fight? What do human societies fight over? This is the framework explaining the reasons for conflict, manifested in wars and revolutions

- The Right to Exist: survival
- How Society is Organized and Re-organized:  power structures
-How Scare Resources are Distributed: economic structures
- Who decides on the Organization of Society and Distribution of Scare Resources: the struggle to for power to be in control

Sometimes, the struggle could be about Why should societies be organized?

This should posit the over-arching meta-narrative of Ingress, since there are forces at conflict. 

At the strategic level, there's the global conflict. The known actors at this level are powerful entities represented by nation-states (USA, Russia, China) and non-state actors e.g. corporations - IQTech, Visur and Hulong. There's esoteric societies like the 13MAGNUS (with semblance to the Freemasons) and the Anti-Magnus (Opus Dei?). And there's the Resistance and the Enlightened representing social movements. 

The Raison d'être of these actors is likely to lie within the boundaries of the metanarrative framework. It appears their current conflict is over the exploitation of Exotic Matter (XM). 

The discovery of XM marks a moment where societies and even civilizations could be transformed. Whoever could influence the process of transformation will be able to control the new world order. The control of XM is a high stake gambit.This perhaps places XM as the next currency or resource of power, much like how fossil fuel was the strategic currency for the 20th century. 

The tension may be between traditional power structures - that of the nation-states that want to monopolize the exploitation of XM as a public good, vs the interests of the private corporations wanting to exploit it for profit and ultimately power. But at the end of the day, these entities are helmed by individuals, each with varied motives - but could be summed up within the same framework - for the pursuit of pride and honour, and having the power to reshape society.

Social movements tend to be co-opted by powerful entities to fulfil and legitimise their Raison d'être. In this regard, the powerful entities will need to have social movements on their side, by aligning their interests. While it remains to be seen who owns who, it is usually a small elite group that will be stewards of successful and effective movements (even in egalitarian mass movements). The alignment of these stewards will matter to the powerful entities.

The original (Year 0 to Year 1) premise of Ingress had Enlightened believing that XM is beneficial to the progress of human society and that the Shapers are their guide; meanwhile the Resistance believe that the Shapers are bane to civilization's 'natural' progression and their Ingression needs to be stopped. Hulong "backed" the Enlightened, while the NIA (and correspondingly, the US government?) "backed" the Resistance - and had gone on lengths to discredit the Enlightened via information operations. By Year 2, the Resistance, it appears, had been co-opted by ADA and are now even backing the N'zeer.

In this regard, who is whose proxy?

Beyond the strategic real, there's the Titanic struggle between the Shapers and the N'zeer. Till now, little is revealed over their conflict. Will the conflict between these two 'cosmological' forces conform to the Human Conflict Framework?

The Dramatic Theatre: Role of the Individual - the protagonist/antagonist (The Heroes' Journey)

This is the part of narrative engages the audiences - because of identification/empathy/emotional connection with specific characters. Ideologies and ideas are abstracts, and often human agents need to find the embodiment of these higher ideas in  anthropomorphic characters. The conflict between individuals, if they are influential characters, could have strategic ramifications.

The Promethean creations: ADA and Hank Johnson. 

ADA appears to be fighting for its right to exist and be free from its creators.

Hank Johnson wants to end his recursion. But is his immortality necessary because he is on a never-ending quest to restore the balance in the struggle between the Shapers and the N'zeer? What is his real quest?

Ezekiel Calvin seems to be a member of one of the hidden hands, which esoteric society does he serve or lead?

Devra, Jarvis, Oliver Lynton-Wolf, Misty Hannah, Carrie Campbell, Victor Kureze, 855, Hubert Farlowe, Ni Yuen, Catherine Fan, Ken Owen, Jay Philips, Klue, H. Richard Loeb, Yuri Nagassa, Stein Lightman...and even Edgar Allan Wright.  What about them?

Leitmotifs

Uknown ancient beings, ancient astronauts - this provides the Lovecraftian sense of wonder and mystery. There is a significant Other, but no one knows whether they are good or bad. Or perhaps they can be good or bad depending on your cultural bias. 

Ship/shipwrecks - its another one of the recurring theme. What's the significance of ships? An allegory to enterprise of exploring unknown frontiers? The ark that saves chosen survivors during apocalypse? Vessels to carry the seeds of colony to unexplored lands?

flint dille 

Originally shared by Hank Johnson

Combing through documents, I’ve discovered some curious things.

It seems sometime in the distant past the N’zeer were defeated and nearly all trace of them was blotted from human history and culture.

It isn't clear to me if it was a simultaneous global eradication or extinguishment, but I cannot begin to imagine how that would be accomplished: How is an idea or energy removed from the world? When I contemplate it, I summon images of the defacement of monuments and a Fahrenheit 451 type destruction of literature on a mass scale almost unimaginable in the ancient world.  That having been said, the ancient world did not have the proliferation of art and literature that we are used to. Such things were contained to specific places of power. So perhaps it was easier. 
 
I see scant evidence of armed conflict. Rather, I see evidence of what I would almost call spiritual warfare.  Though, I cannot rule out the possibility that this larger trans-dimensional war was the underlying cause of Earthly conflicts.

I wish I could share more. It is absolutely fascinating. But for now I can tell you this much. As with the Shapers, there is no clear visual depiction of the N’zeer, though there are depictions of various forms of monstrous human beings and other images that defy the normal, sometimes they are terrifying. I do not get the impression that the ancient chroniclers believed that these creatures roamed our plane, moreover I believe that they were their hallucinations of the Julian Jaynes variety which interrupted the thought stream and entered our culture through memory. But I must be aware that my own cultural bias would probably prevent me from considering the alternative.

Surely were there such bizarre creatures walking the earth we would have archaeological trace of them––unless of course those traces were  eradicated by the same people who redacted the historical and literary traces of the N’zeer.  But I will leave you with one other thought.

Perhaps the shell of our universe is more porous than we think.