Bodily Sovereignty, Human Dignity, and the Ethical Rejection of Instrumentalized Life
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My life is not a video game, as I'm always trying to point out. My body is my 'temple', my 'church'. Any forced entry to my body is a sign of aggression and will be properly punished. But I am against anti-vaxxers that need to be reasoned.
— Luka Jagor (@LukaJagor) August 29, 2021
Introduction: Against the Gamification of Human Life
“My life is not a video game” is a rejection of a worldview that trivializes human existence. It pushes back against systems that treat people as characters, variables, or disposable units in abstract games of power, efficiency, profit, or ideology. Video games allow resets, respawns, and calculated risks without permanent consequence. Human life does not. Pain is real, trauma accumulates, and violations leave lasting marks.
When the speaker declares that their body is their “temple” and “church,” they are asserting a form of embodied sovereignty: the body as sacred space, inviolable without consent. This language is not necessarily religious—it is ethical. It expresses the idea that the body is not property of the state, the market, institutions, technologies, or movements. It belongs to the person alone.
The statement culminates in a warning: any forced entry into my body constitutes aggression and will be punished appropriately. This is not a call to chaos, but a classical articulation of self-defense, rooted in moral philosophy and legal traditions. It draws a clear line between cooperation and coercion, between social participation and violation.
At its core, this statement opposes the transformation of human beings into instruments—tools to be optimized, controlled, extracted from, or sacrificed. It is a refusal to be reduced to a means rather than recognized as an end.
1. Instrumentalization: When Humans Become Tools
Instrumentalization occurs when people are valued only for what they can produce, provide, or endure, rather than for who they are. This idea has deep philosophical roots. Immanuel Kant famously argued that humans must always be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means. When this principle is violated, moral collapse begins.
Modern societies excel at instrumentalization. Workers are reduced to productivity metrics. Citizens are reduced to data points. Bodies are reduced to biological systems to be managed, optimized, or overridden “for the greater good.” In extreme cases, people are treated as expendable resources—useful until they are depleted.
The video game metaphor captures this perfectly. In games, characters exist to fulfill objectives designed by someone else. Their autonomy is illusory. Their suffering is inconsequential. Their destruction is reversible or irrelevant. Applying this logic to real humans erases accountability and empathy.
When life is treated like a game, risk is externalized onto those with the least power. Decision-makers press buttons; others absorb consequences. The statement refuses this logic entirely.
2. The Body as Sacred Space
Calling the body a “temple” or “church” is a radical assertion in a secular, technocratic age. It reintroduces the idea of sacred boundaries—not in a mystical sense, but in an ethical one. Sacred means “set apart,” “not to be violated casually,” “demanding respect.”
This framing rejects the notion that bodies are public infrastructure. It challenges assumptions that authorities, corporations, or systems have automatic access to human bodies in the name of efficiency, security, progress, or necessity.
Historically, the denial of bodily sanctity has justified slavery, forced labor, medical experimentation, sexual violence, and coercive reproduction. Each of these relied on the belief that some bodies were not fully owned by the people inhabiting them.
Declaring the body sacred is a declaration of self-ownership. It affirms that consent is not optional, and that physical autonomy is the foundation of all other freedoms.
3. Forced Entry as Aggression
The statement’s most provocative claim is that any forced entry into the body constitutes aggression. This aligns with both moral intuition and legal theory. Assault, rape, torture, and non-consensual medical procedures are recognized across cultures as serious violations precisely because they override bodily autonomy.
Aggression here is not limited to physical violence in the narrow sense. It includes coercion, threats, manipulation, and systemic pressure that removes meaningful consent. If compliance is extracted through fear, deprivation, or exclusion, the boundary has already been crossed.
By defining forced bodily intrusion as aggression, the statement reframes debates often clouded by euphemisms. “Procedure,” “intervention,” “requirement,” or “policy” do not neutralize the moral reality of violating someone’s body against their will.
This framing restores clarity: if consent is absent, the act is violent—regardless of justification.
4. Punishment and Self-Defense: A Moral Boundary
The phrase “will be punished appropriately” is often misunderstood as a threat. In fact, it is a reaffirmation of proportional self-defense—a principle recognized in ethics, law, and political theory.
Self-defense is not revenge. It is a boundary-enforcement mechanism. It signals that violations carry consequences, and that the individual is not a passive object but an active moral agent.
Without the possibility of resistance, rights are theoretical. History shows that declarations of dignity mean little unless paired with the capacity to defend boundaries. This does not require vigilantism or brutality; it requires the recognition that autonomy must be enforceable to be real.
The statement insists that the body is not an open-access system. It has rules. Violate them, and accountability follows.
5. Biopolitics and Control of Bodies
Philosopher Michel Foucault described modern power as biopolitical: concerned not only with laws and territory, but with managing bodies, populations, health, reproduction, and life itself. In biopolitical systems, control is often justified as care.
This creates a dangerous ambiguity. Policies presented as protective can become coercive. When bodies are governed “for their own good,” the line between care and domination blurs.
The statement rejects this paternalism. It asserts that no system—no matter how advanced, benevolent, or data-driven—has automatic authority over the body. Governance ends where forced embodiment begins.
This is not anti-society. It is anti-totality. It resists the idea that collective goals erase individual sovereignty.
6. Dehumanization Through Abstraction
Instrumentalization thrives on abstraction. When people are reduced to statistics, risk profiles, or compliance rates, their individuality disappears. Abstraction makes it easier to justify harm because no one feels personally responsible.
Video games are abstract by design. They rely on simplification and repeatability. Applying this logic to real life encourages moral distance: decisions are made far from consequences, and suffering becomes background noise.
The statement insists on re-humanization. It pulls the conversation back to flesh, vulnerability, and irreversibility. You cannot reload a human body. You cannot undo violation. You cannot compensate for stolen autonomy with efficiency gains.
7. Consent as the Foundation of Human Relations
Consent is not a bureaucratic checkbox. It is an ongoing, revocable, informed agreement between autonomous beings. Without it, cooperation turns into extraction.
By emphasizing bodily sovereignty, the statement elevates consent from a procedural detail to a moral absolute. No social contract is legitimate if it requires surrendering control over one’s own body under threat.
This principle extends beyond medicine or sexuality. It applies to labor conditions, surveillance, technological integration, and any system that seeks access to the human body as a resource.
8. Resistance as Affirmation, Not Destruction
Opposing instrumentalization is not nihilistic. It is life-affirming. Resistance here does not mean rejecting society, technology, or cooperation—it means demanding that these serve humans, not consume them.
The statement does not deny complexity. It acknowledges that living together requires negotiation, compromise, and responsibility. But it draws a non-negotiable line at bodily autonomy.
This is the minimum condition for dignity. Without it, all higher ideals—freedom, justice, solidarity—collapse into slogans.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Human
“My life is not a video game” is a refusal to be trivialized. It is a declaration that human beings are not simulations, not test subjects, not expendable pieces in someone else’s strategy.
By asserting the body as sacred space and defining forced intrusion as aggression, the statement restores ethical clarity in an age of moral fog. It re-centers the human body as the ground of rights, responsibility, and resistance.
Ultimately, this is not a statement of hostility, but of limits. It says: You may negotiate with me, persuade me, cooperate with me—but you may not override me. That boundary is where humanity begins.
References
Foucault, M. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1
Arendt, H. The Human Condition
Agamben, G. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
Nussbaum, M. Creating Capabilities
Berlin, I. Two Concepts of Liberty
United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Deep Dive
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