Restraining Voices

A year ago to the day, I posted the second part of a two-part post about high technology. About the promises made regarding the development of scientific knowledge, and the validity of technology’s constant promise to make the world a better place. It’s one of the opinions that I still hold strongly: that the pursuit of the answers to life’s mysteries should not be undertaken simply because questions still exist.

And now, having seen the movie Angels and Demons just recently, it seems like a good time to revisit the subject. Because one of the subjects that I didn’t touch on in any great detail is also a subject that is at issue for the characters of that movie: what role does society or religion play in the growth of technology? Who governs what questions we pursue? And how is one of the most age-old conflicts in history, religious tradition versus scientific progress, to be resolved in today’s world?

On both sides of the divide, arguments can be made against any interaction between the two. In Angels and Demons, one of the priests in the movie gives a speech to the College of Cardinals about the war that they are in, the war between the traditionalist Catholic Church and the science-based Illuminati. While that speech isn’t openly militant, that same priest reveals his true colors later in the movie, considering the development of antimatter and its characterization to be sacrilegious.

 Likewise, although it isn’t as present in the movie, from the days of Galileo and his persecution by the religions of the time, science has had little reason to like religion. The attitude expressed by the priest in Angels and Demons may lead some with those views to openly attack the development of technology, but the responses are far too often as intolerant and hostile as their provocation was. For the movie, the chosen response of the “Illuminati” (complicated story there…) was probably ever so slightly over the top.

The fault lies in considering it a war at all. The fault lies in thinking that religious beliefs are incompatible with scientific study. Certainly, it’s not regarded as unusual for even devout followers of a religion to turn to scientific study, and no small number of books professing to link religion and science have been written. We’ve come a long way from the days where scientists had to recant their studies or be branded as heretics.

The question, then, turns to the role that religion will play. Or should there even be one? With its ever-increasing separation from the levers of power, organized religion has (in the Western world, at least) lost much of its power to control scientific progress, it would seem. Not only is religion no longer inclined to continually decry scientific progress; even if they did, progress would likely continue unchecked, since heresy is no longer a crime as it was in older times.

And while I certainly don’t think that a return to that level of religious power would be a good thing, I do think I will mourn the loss of influence there. Because with its passing, yet another check on humanity’s completely unrestrained growth is gone. In his speech before the cardinals of the Catholic Church, in the movie, the priest in question advocated the Vatican’s striking back, firmly, at the never-ending progress of science. He suggested that they act as a restraint on the continued development of science, as a moderating voice.

And maybe that is a good thing. Maybe the world needs a God… not necessarily as an arbiter of our morality or as the final judge of our actions, but as a reminder that some mysteries will remain mysteries. No level of scientific effort will conclusively prove or disprove the existence of a deity. To living members of the human race, the question of a higher power will remain just that: a question, an unknown.

That, I feel, is what the human race needs right now. I feel like we stopped needing to answer questions about the world around us five or six major answers ago. I will not deny that our technological growth has brought with it major advances in the human condition, but I feel like the benefits we gain from continually pursuing mysteries have ceased to be the point.

Today, we don’t unravel the mysteries of the universe to better our condition. Either we’re simply questing after greater power (at a cheaper price) for ourselves, or we’re simply answering questions because they exist. And I think it’s about time that halted. I think it’s time that we started looking at why we seek for all the answers to the mysteries around us, and more importantly, came to grips with the idea that some of those mysteries will never have answers.

Destiny's Commander

So theoretically I’ll be writing about relatively new things. For example, I’ll probably post something about the new Star Trek movie soon enough, since I saw that recently. (It was awesome, of course.) Realistically, though, I’ll be writing about whatever inspires me to write, as long as I haven’t done so before. And since I’m still sorting through my thoughts on the Star Trek movie, I’ll have to resort to the movie Wanted, which I also saw for the first time last weekend despite it not being new.

For those who haven’t seen the movie, the basic idea is that there’s the secret society of assassins that preserve the balance of history and are directed by fate. Or something like that, I don’t think the plot was the strong point of the movie. Especially not after blatantly ripping off one of the oldest plot twists in history: “No, I didn’t kill your father, I am your father” and so on.

… Oh yeah. There may be spoilers for the plot of the movie in here. Should I have gotten to that warning earlier?

At any rate. Despite the plot not really being the movie’s strong point (I would have to give that role to the crazy things they were doing with the large amounts of weaponry they all possessed, or to Angelina Jolie), I’m going to tear apart the motivations of the heroes and villains anyway, for two reasons. One is because it’s kind of the point, that I can find lessons related to the real world even in a movie that maybe isn’t the most plot-heavy one out there. And two is because there’s nothing I love more than mercilessly mocking the rampant stupidity of your standard movie heroes and villains. (Well, okay, maybe video games or anime or… never mind.)

You see, the main character of the movie is your standard office drone who feels like his life is worth nothing and that he has no control over it, pointless as it is. About the only thing special about him, from his perspective, is that he’s got this weird anxiety condition that requires medication to control. And, of course, that’s not a good special condition that helps his self-esteem any.

The impetus that drags him out of that state is the aforementioned secret society of assassins. The leader of whom explains to him a few things, namely that his little anxiety issue isn’t a bad thing at all; rather, it allows him to do insane things (like, oh, shoot the wings off of a fly). Also that this could be controlled and directed to his benefit, and that his father was killed by a former member of this society that went rogue. He’s also the guy who controls the society and is the only one who interprets the fabric produced by this “Loom of Fate” that directs who the society is going to kill.

Putting aside the insanity of allowing imperfections in the fabric that a loom produces to direct assassinations for a moment, it would appear that all the power so far is with the society. That the leader of this society, to throw in the obligatory reference to the title of this post, has the power to command destiny. He reads the prophecies and the commands from fate (from a loom… urge to mock the ridiculous nature of this plot rising) and directs his subordinates to carry them out.

However, this gives one person all of the power. And in the most original plot twist ever, it turns out that that old adage about power corrupting was right all along. The leader of the assassins wasn’t acting on the orders of fate (from a loom… no, I’m not letting that rest) after all, but faking the orders to carry out assassinations for money or, as far as I can tell, for his own personal enjoyment.

That wasn’t the entire story though; he made a lot of noise near the end of the movie about being able to direct the course of history. And you know, he has a point. Barring the United States with its effective system of succession of leadership, assassinations have usually caused no small amount of a stir when they’ve been carried out, potentially altering the course of history. We can’t be sure, of course, since we have no idea what would have happened otherwise.

Besides, assassination isn’t really a tool of fate, and being a “thug that can bend bullets” (the hero’s characterization of the villain) doesn’t make you destiny’s commander. The destiny of a person will always remain in the hands of that person. People have the ultimate command over their own actions, and short of physical force, that command cannot be taken away. Sure, a person can be killed, but that amounts to little more than a reset button, a removal of the influence over destiny that a person had created.

The hero could have remained an office drone for his entire life, and never taken control of that life. But as he expressed at the end of the movie, he wasn’t going to do that. He took control as any person can. As anyone can choose to change what they do. Destiny and fate are not powerful or unknowable forces outside our ability to understand. Because we all have command over our own destinies.

Redefinitions

… Alright, I guess the first and most important thing I should do here and now is apologize to any of the people that have been checking this site at all in the two months now that I’ve been not posting. While I’m not going to get my hopes up regarding how many people have actually done so, I know for a solid fact that at least one person has. So for those of you that have been checking, I do sincerely apologize for not offering so much as even a quick note saying that posts weren’t coming anytime soon.

I could point to a number of different reasons why this has happened, but since I’m not really in the habit of making excuses, I’ll refrain from that and simply state the obvious: I haven’t been posting. Trying to say “well this is why” feels too much like making pointless excuses to me, so instead I’ll just vow to change my behavior. And that means posting again on this blog. (Although if you want the reasons, I’d be happy to give them; just ask and I’ll explain myself.)

And one of the things I really want to hit on in this return to blogging is my eternal nemesis: scheduling. As you all may have noticed, I’m really bad at planning these things. I would just write posts and put them up when I’d done, but since I tend to do my writing in spurts, I’d end up posting three articles in the space of five hours and then have nothing here for the next two weeks.

That said, though, I believe I will try to just put stuff up here when I finish it and to hell with a regular schedule. I’ll take advantage of the scheduling tools to space posts out if necessary. I’ll probably have no fewer than two or three days in between posts, and no more than two weeks at the absolute maximum, but other than that I’ll post things when I finish them from now on.

I’d also like to take this chance to redefine what I’m doing here with this blog, or at least re-state it. This blog is titled “A Video Gamer’s Perspective” for a reason, namely that I really feel that video games have been a major part of my life. I think that one of my defining labels is that title of “video gamer”, whatever that means, and thus feel it’s perfectly justified to label this blog as the perspective of such a person.

This holds true regardless of what’s caught my attention in any particular post. Sure, I’ll usually try to relate things to video games in some way. But in the end, there are almost as many of my posts with the “anime” label as the “video games” label, and that’s unlikely to change. I’m writing in the end about what I do for fun, which isn’t limited to video games.

And that leads me back around to what I do with this stuff in the first place. I’m not here to break new philosophical ground or come up with life lessons that have never been heard before. What I’m doing with the anime or the games that catch my eye is see what value they have beyond simple entertainment.

I’m not trying to be new and revolutionary with the lessons themselves, but rather where I find them and what reinforces them. I can’t even claim to be revolutionary in claiming that video games have worth; after all, that idea too has been discussed in scholarly articles and books written by those far smarter than myself. All I’m trying to do is explore individual games and see just how much of a waste of time they are.

This blog is on some level a challenge. It’s a challenge to the moral guardians and the religious fundamentalists of the world that refuse to view video games as anything other than a source of moral degradation. It’s a challenge to every parent that’s ever said, “That thing will rot your brain, you know,” to their kid sitting in front of the TV.

So let’s all see just what I get out of video games, or anime, or anything else I do for fun. Let’s see if video games are a moral sinkhole, or a waste of time. That’s what I’m here to do: to show through anecdotes and through my own example how these games are about the farthest thing from a waste of time that I can imagine.  I’ve got a good thirty or so posts on the topic already, and now that it’s summer, I’m in the mood to make that number grow.

Oh, and five days ago, my blog hit it’s one-year anniversary; my first post was on May 2^nd, 2008. Since I kinda didn’t post then, we’ll just mark the occasion now. Let’s get back into exploring the world of an anime-obsessed video game fanatic. Hope you all enjoy the ride.

The Authority to Command

Issues regarding commands and who has the authority to give them are part of everyone’s life. We are all subject to the commands of one person or another, with a tiny minority of possible exceptions at the highest levels of authority. For that reason, everyone’s going to encounter questions of authority and the right to issue commands.

One wouldn’t think these would be difficult questions to answer… and one would be surprised. In the anime series .hack//Sign, for much of the series, there existed a player organization called the Crimson Knights. Throughout the first parts of the series, the goals of the Crimson Knights are obvious: they work to help keep control of the game world. They try to bring players that are violating the rules to “justice”.

All well and good, right? It can’t hurt to have people working to help keep the game under control. Game masters of MMOs across the world are overworked trying to do that job; surely some help is a good thing. There doesn’t appear to be much of a problem at first; the knights are loyal to their leader Subaru and follow her orders.

The problem develops over the series. A conflict slowly develops between Subaru and the second in command of the Knights, appropriately named Silver Knight. The problem is of course a question of authority. Silver Knight wants to take as much control as possible, and be as active as possible in hunting down and punishing anyone who breaks the rules.

This forces Subaru to constantly remind him as the series progresses that they are merely players. She never says any more than that, but the implications are obvious: the Crimson Knights are not the game’s police force. Nor are the Crimson Knights the administrators themselves, as the Cobalt Knight Brigade was in .hack//Legend of the Twilight. The Crimson Knights do not have the authority to command other players to do anything, nor do they have the authority to sanction other players for breaking the rules.

It can’t hurt, though, to have additional people keeping an eye out for rules violations, right? Keeping an eye out is not a problem, but what Silver Knight wanted was to have the authority to punish players for their actions. And that most assuredly is a problem.

Any kind of authority carries with it a responsibility. The two cannot be separated; if one has the authority to punish those who violate the rules, one has the responsibility to the players to fairly and evenly mete out punishment. Any authority carries the responsibility that that authority be used appropriately.

This holds true with all kinds of authority, as well. A commanding officer of a military unit has a great deal of authority with regards to that unit. He issues all of the orders to that unit, whether it be a platoon of soldiers all the way up to a carrier battle group, and directs its actions. With that authority comes the responsibility to ensure that unit’s well-being and direct it wisely.

The President of the United States is one of the few people in the world to whom my earlier exception about taking orders may apply, and has a wide range of power inside and outside that nation’s borders. But with the massive amount of power that comes with the position is a very heavy responsibility to use it wisely to the benefit of the American people and society at large; this is why the election of a new President is such a big deal both inside and outside the United States.

As with the President, because of the responsibility that comes with authority, people are only given authority if they can be shown to be able to handle the responsibilities of that authority. Which brings us back to Silver Knight. The problem was not that he wanted to keep the game under control (although last week’s post has more to say about the desirability of that). The problem was that he and the Crimson Knights were trying to take on authority without recognizing or appreciating the responsibility it carried with it.

One of the many dilemmas of command is the heavy responsibility that comes with it. One of the problems of carrying authority is having to be aware of that responsibility. Silver Knight and the Crimson Knights behind him cared for none of that. They tried to take on the authority of the police without being recognized by anyone as able to handle that responsibility. And partway through the series, they were disbanded by Subaru when she realized these exact problems.

The authority to command is not merely power. It is also the responsibility to those that one commands. One who merely gives orders for the sake of feeling strong or authoritative is not a commander, and can truly only be called a bully or a thug. To truly command, one must recognize that one’s duty to the people or rules above you must be balanced by the responsibility to those one commands.

Order, Control, and Gaming

Control. There are those people that like to have it, over themselves and the environment around them. There are others who could care less. This is one of the ways to look at the old Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 alignments of Lawful and Chaotic. One values order and control, the other sees them as unnecessary or even a hindrance.

And, in the story of .hack//Legend of the Twilight, it’s pretty obvious where the system administrators of the biggest MMO ever created fall. To quote, “What cannot be controlled must be deleted.” To be fair, it’s on some level an opinion shared by every single game designer and developer ever to make or run a game. Even the most basic games in real life have rules. Have a winner and a loser, and a set of regulations governing what can and cannot be done in the game.

Order and control are thus very important to games of any kind. It is the knowledge that the rules will be enforced that prevents a game from disintegrating. Who would play World of Warcraft if a high-level monster could just teleport into the low-level zones and wreak havoc, killing off all the low-level players that can’t fight back? It is the order present in the game world that allows it to function. That reassures players that low-level monsters are here, and higher-level ones won’t be found there.

And when that order, when that control, breaks down, it must be dealt with. If a player starts cheating to gain an advantage, they need to be removed; if a bug comes into the system, it needs to be fixed. This is a philosophy shared by both the administrators of “The World” in .hack// and the admins of World of Warcraft or any other MMO.

So then, it is clear that a Lawful alignment preserves the game and allows it to function freely and evenly for all players. But then, aren’t there some things that can’t or even shouldn’t be controlled? Surely it’s ridiculous to assume that everything can be brought under strict order, and even more so to think that that’s a good thing. Such is the Chaotic argument.

In today’s games, the systems and worlds are tightly controlled. There’s really not much chance of anything too odd happening. But in .hack//Legend of the Twilight, “The World” is a massive MMO, with far too many details to easily monitor… far too many details to keep control of. And maybe in a world like that one, it’s better to leave some things be.

An element that cannot be controlled is not automatically evil or unbalancing. It can be, but the default position need not be the above quote. Maybe it’s better to let the world change. If something isn’t harmful or dangerous, then why does a lack of control need to mean destruction?

It’s not just the massive world of .hack// that can’t be entirely controlled. In fact, there are elements of chaos in any game, even in our own tightly regulated games. There will be a lack of balance in any system we create. We aren’t good enough to create a perfectly balanced, perfectly fair game world; what’s more, we never will be. So we might as well recognize that some things need not be controlled.

The dichotomy, the divisions between Lawful and Chaotic opinions, can be seen in modern games. In the MMO EVE Online, there are rules to protect the newer players. Certain systems are under the protection of the law, and any act of aggression in those systems will merit a response from the police forces of the world. What’s more, surviving their attack is considered an exploit by the game’s designers. Again, we see that tight control over what can and cannot be done.

But. Unlike in some games, there are no restrictions on who can be attacked; many games with a Player vs. Player element give new players immunity to this warfare as protection. Nothing of the sort exists in EVE, only the police forces that, like in the real world, can’t respond immediately to a threat. And so, chaos works its way back in. EVE players can always be attacked, anywhere and at any time. There will be consequences for the attacker, but that may not save the victim any grief.

And in the systems where the law has no authority? That’s where the players come in. There are several major player-created alliances in EVE, and they’ve managed to fill in the hole that the designers left behind. The systems that the designers left chaotic and uncontrolled? The players have sovereignty over them now, and they can do whatever they like there.

The designers of EVE could have created a police state. They could have created a sprawling empire of powerful police forces that control every known system, lockouts on targeting systems that prevent the targeting of newer or weaker players, and a regimented system of growth and development that would have guided a player up the ranks. They could have controlled everything in sight, and removed any trace of chaos from the game.

But they would have destroyed the fun of the game in the process. By backing off, by creating a system that combines law and chaos, they created an incredibly compelling system. They control what needs to be controlled, to allow players some sense of security, and they leave the rest chaotic.

There’s a message in there somewhere. Control and order are important, to be sure. Without them, no one could live without being hindered by the random whims of others. And order is far more often than not designed for a good purpose. But also, not everything can be controlled. And sometimes, one needs to just let things run unchecked. At times, life needs to be kept on track through order and control. And at other times, life needs to be allowed to run free in a celebration of chaos.