Video Games and Other Things

Yesterday, I died a dozen times fighting a powerful magician. Usually at least once when I"m playing video games the thought will enter my mind, "why am I doing this?" And almost every time the question is dismissed as quickly as it comes by some inner desire that really needs to keep playing. Yesterday was no exception, the question came and went as I worked my way through this dungeon, fighting shades and magicians. Saving and reloading, saving and reloading. I've never been much of a gamer but I've dabbled enough to experience at least a little of the thrill in it.

There really is a sort of pleasure, in video games that is different from any other pleasure. Today I was meditating on that, trying to trace it to it's root. Questions like those below went flashing through my mind.

What is a video game?

How are video games different from other things?

Why do people play them?

Before the technology existed that allowed for video games, was their some other activity which people participated in as a substitute?

what are the differences between playing solo from mult-iplayer from online play?

What is that thrill or pleasure that comes from video games?

With these questions came thoughts, images, answers. Games I've played, experiences I had and books I've read. I don't include all of those, they are a cloud. There's a reason we have thought bubbles not thought squares because most everyone's thoughts are disjointed, disorganized, and fragile. Rarely are they orderly structured and neat like a square. I leave them out for both our sakes and I will put my conclusion which, despite the chaos it emerged from, I believe still to be valid.

Video games give a sense of control to the player unobtainable in real life. We like video games because in them we can be the attractive person that our genes have denied us. We can be brave and heroic and make all the decisions that we are too scared to make in this life. We can make choices without consequences, we can save and reload, save and reload or save and quit if we don't like whats going on. The player can also assume anything that can be done in game, his character can do.

All these things stand in contrast to real life. Life has no quit button, life has no save button. Life is big and scary and full of things which I can't do on my own or maybe ever. While real life has far more beauty, vitality and satisfaction, I've found it amazing how willing I am in my sinful state to sacrifice the beauty of lfe for the control of an alternate reality.

So does this mean video games are evil? no, not necessarily. It does mean that I've found an unhealthy desire within myself, a desire for control. This desire is so powerful that it would have me sacrifice real friendship, real joy, real godliness for the ability to control the destiny of a fictional character in a fictional world. That being the case I've decided not to simply cut out the video games. I don't want to simply remove myself from video games because that won't destroy the inner desire for control, it will only force the desire to find  another outlet. I'm going to use video games to punch this desire in the face and hopefully break its neck. This will mean playing video games for extremely short amounts of time and willing myself to stop when I find myself most seriously engaged in it. That's my plan anyway, hopefully in a month or to I'll have destroyed this particular desire and will be able to move on to something.


Thanks for reading. I suppose I'll warn you to look inside yourself for similar desires. I don't know if it looks the same in others as is in me but it seems logical to think that because we are made in the image of God, we'll probably want in some sense to have control in a way similar to how God has control. Because of our sinful nature this instinctive desire for control will express itself all wrong and is in drastic need of reform.

Question 3 From A Good Conversation

3. What would I do if I could not fail?

To begin with this question needs to be better defined. The original context of the question didn't allow for literally anything to happen. The question isn't asking, what would I do if I were God and could bend the laws of morality and physics or alter the nature of metaphysics and time. So within a reasonable human sense what would I do if I couldn't fail.

Still the possibilities are endless and exciting. Perhaps they are even more exciting now that we've quantified the question. Now, rather than asking "what would you do if you could do the impossible?" we are asking, "of all the things that are possible which would you like most to do?" This means that these following dreams are not mere fantasies but feasible goals which with proper effort and preparation could potentially become reality.

Fantasying about the impossible has it's place in a healthy personality. but more important in my opinion is to dream within the bounds of real life.  The world is full of powerful resources and no human being has maximized their potential. When you're willing to work hard and dream big and think rationally miracles can happen.

Now for an actual answer. If I could not fail, first I'll have a family of 8 children. I'll probably do this anyway but the assurance that I won't fail would certainly be a nice confidence boost. Secondly I'll learn to dance. I'll probably never do this unless my wife turns out to be a great dancer in which case she could teach me. Third, I'll be a king of some country and rule it with an iron fist. I'll certainly never do this unless some entirely unforeseen events alter the course of my life. Fourth, I'll become proficient enough in my knowledge of Plato, Augustine and Lewis to quote them like I can quote scripture. Fifth, I'd be a much more social person. I am really good at seeing things that are wrong. I'm not usually good at fixing them. I'm certainly trying to be a better communicator and a person better able to address the issues of my fellow human beings but knowing I wouldn't fail would be awesome. The possibility of failing makes it scary to try and help someone else because often I can leave the other person worse off than when I found them because I totally failed at being of any help.

I will publicly thank my anonymous friend who gave me the three question. Below is the ending theme song for an anime I watched earlier this week. Cool characters, awesome hair and an epic plot twist.

Question 2 From A Good Conversation

2. If a vampire bites a zombie will the zombie become a vampire or remain a zombie? or will it become some form of hybrid.

I had thought about writing a larger post about the plausibility of vampires and zombies actually being real. After thinking and doing some research I made the conclusion that whether vampires and zombies are real or not is too hard of a question for me. What I do know for sure though is this, if vampires or zombies do exist they are not the sort you see on TV. Most stories nowadays about vampires and zombies are just an authors imagination. Each author invents his own sort of vampire or zombie creature as they imagine or desire them to be and write a story. 

So to answer the question is difficult because which sort of vampire or zombie do we want to use? Do we use Stephanie Myers definition of vampire or John Polidor's? Do we look at the Walking Dead's idea of a zombie or World War Z's? It is not possible to come up with a true answer to the question. So I'll invent my own definition of vampire and a definition of a zombie and we'll answer the question based on my own imagination. 

Vampire: noun, a creature of supernatural origin created through an unlawful mixing of flesh and spirit resulting in an abomination both spiritual and natural. Most spiritual beings gain their life force from God. However God has separated Himself from vampires forcing them to gain their life force from something other than God. The most readily available source of life source is blood. However, some more powerful vampires can mine the spiritual power which God pours forth into His creatures. So while blood is most often the source of a vampires nutrition other sources are available. 

Zombies: noun, a corpse of a human being empowered to move through the influence of an outside source. Depending on what source is empowering them a zombie will do different things. In ancient times soldiers or slaves would be killed upon the death of their king. Spells would be placed over the bodies of these servants as a precaution. If the tomb was disturbed these bodies would arise and would destroy the disturbance. An apocalypse of zombies would require a power source far more advanced than the magic charms used to awaken a dead soldier to protect it's king. I don't foresee an apocalypse of zombies unless some new spiritual forces makes its way into our sector of the universe. 

Based on the above definitions I do not believe a vampire would bite a zombie. If however it were to happen two things might happen. The vampire would drain the power from whatever is giving the corpe ability to move. Or the vampire would be overwhelmed by the power within the zombie and become a creature under that power's control. 

Question 1 From A Good Conversation.

Conversations are wonderful things. They are one of a few things in the universe that teach us as much or as little as we are willing to learn from them.

I had a nice chat with someone a few days ago and below were our topics of discussion and my opinion on them.

1. If a person were born deaf, what language would they think in? 

This is a really cool question because it forces us to consider what thinking really is? Is it possible to think without words? Try...let me know, I can't. You can trace the way people act back to the way they think and you can trace the way they think back to the words they know. In the English language their are over 500,000 not counting scientific/medical terminology used only in those fields. The average English speaker knows only about 3000 words. We use only a fraction of the words we could which results in us only being able to think about a fraction of the things that actually exist. A simple way of thinking about it is as follows. Words are invented so that we can talk about things. A person will only be able to talk or think about the things he has words to understand. If you  understand (understand is an important word here. Understanding is different than simply reciting a definition)  5000 words you will be able to think about twice as many things as a person who understands only 2500 words.

The words that we know give us potential to go deeper and look further and acquire greater understanding. Here's an example of what I'm trying to say. Pretend that you are required to write an essay in school about being a parent. You know that parent means the producer of the child. However you don't know the vocabulary words like, father, mother, mom, dad, son, daughter,  pa, ma, patriarch, matriarch, loving, caring, kind. ect... Without these accompanying words your essay will be short and bland and boring. Why? Because words are the building blocks that create ideas in our minds. Ideas are the building blocks of beliefs, And beliefs are the building blocks of our worldview.

So I've talked about how words are so important. What does that mean for our deaf friend who has never heard a word in his life? There's a story recorded in Herodotus' history. (2.2) about an Egyptian Pharaoh named Psamtik I. He reigned over Egypt for 54 years in the seventh century BC. He conducted an experiment to figure out which language was the oldest in the world. He took two children who were orphaned at birth and raised them in seclusion. Their nurses were women who had had their tongues cut out. The nurses cared for the children but were responsible for ensuring that the children never heard a spoken word. Around their second birthday the children began saying the word "Bekos" a Phrygian word meaning bread. The Pharaoh concluded that Phrygian was the worlds first language or at least Bekos was a word in the world's first language and that Phrygian was related to that language.

Beyond being an interesting story, I think it tells us something about the nature of humans. Human beings in contrast to animals were created as thinking beings. We will think and if we don't have the words for what we want to think about we will make them up. Shakespeare is a recognized genius because he wrote plays about human experience and he made up words to describe experiences that we all have had. In situations that leave alot of people speechless, Shakespeare invented words so that he could tell others about those experiences.

The deaf person will think either in Phrygian or in a language of his own invention or perhaps words will be different for him. For most people a word would be defined as a unit of sound. Perhaps for him a word be defined as a particular sight. He could see "tree" written out and have someone point at a picture of a tree and realize that the letters t r e e on a piece of paper represent the idea of a tree as seen in nature.

The other things we talked about I'll save for later. The ideas are below but this post is already long enough and I'll save my comments for another time.

2. If a vampire bites a zombie will the zombie become a vampire or remain a zombie? or will it become some form of hybrid.

3. What would I do if I could not fail?

Doors of Daring

Doors of Daring by Henry Van Dyke

The mountains that inclose the vale
With walls of granite, steep and high,
Invite the fearless foot to scale
Their stairway toward the sky

The restless, deep, dividing sea
That flows and foams from shore to shore,
Calls to its sunburned chivalry,
"Push out, set sail, explore!"

The bars of live at which we fret,
That seem to prison and control,
Are but the doors of daring, set
Ajar before the soul.

Say, not "Too poor," but freely give;
Sigh not, "Too weak," but boldly try;
You never can begin to live
Until you dare to die.