Work in Progress

Hi All.

This your Glorious Leader Speaking. I missed yesterday's post. And that deserves an explanation. I was struck by a cyclist several weeks back and fractured the cartilage in my ribs. As such, I've been relying on post I had logged as back up till this point.

I am still stuck reclining, as sitting in front of a computer causes my back to seize up. So I am limited to what work I can do from my phone. As you see here.

I am trying to work on the first official book release for the Blood Red Dreaming Project. But due to the injury and my ongoing issues with anxiety and depression, I am having to pick my battles.

As such, these blog posts will likely be limited to progress reports while I heal.

Thank you everyone for you understanding.

Thursday Theory: Frankl and Depression

So in our week long discussion of depression, named the oil mask in the Shadowlands, we are now going to talk about the ideas of Viktor Frankl.

Viktor Frankl wrote the book: "Man's Search for Meaning" as an introduction to his theory of logotherapy, developed as a result of the author's experiences in Aushwitz during World War 2. The basic idea behind logotherapy is that one should find/choose/create a purpose for one's life, and immersively imagine and work towards that outcome. The purpose must be one about which the person feels positively.

And isn't this the underlying mechanism of religion? And also political ideologies. And also people whose vocation began as a beloved pasttime: such a concert musician or a professional actor. This may be why the poor are more religious than the middle class, as the meaning providing by religion could serve as inoculation against depression.

This is, of course, the reason for GLORIOUS LEADER'S GRAND MASTER PLAN!

We need purpose. And if the available purpose giving systems are not sufficient to give you meaningful purpose, as it isn't for your Glorious Leader, then do not despair; because GLORIOUS LEADER'S GRAND MASTER PLAN provides both a complete system to give purpose and also a series of templates by which a individual can devise their own system of meaning and purpose.

I am, of course, not finished.

But I will not stop. I will do this until they nail my coffin shut. Because, this IS my purpose.

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.

Talk Tuesday on a Wednesday

This week we're talking depression, and the startling connection between depression and civilization. Yesterday (note that I intended to post this on Tuesday) we talked about why our jobs make us depressed. Today I want to talk about current events.

How could current events be contributing  to a person's depression or anxiety? The doomsday clock is once again at its closest ever position to the zero at 2 minutes to midnight.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

Nuclear Armageddon is once again being seriously discussed the media. The damage caused by climate change is climbing even as the deniers keep trying to stone wall all hopes at change.

There have been five major wars in past year with more than ten thousand deaths in thepast year each. There have been fourteen conflicts with at least a thousand casualties in the past year. And a further twenty three conflicts with at least one hundred casualties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

Now most of us probably can't name those conflicts, at least not all of them. But I bet those numbers didn't surprise most of you. We are aware of the state of world, and I suspect that this weighs upon our psyche.

Environmental damage and degradation is becoming horrifying common place and even unremarkable on the evening news. And yet estimates place the total number of environmental refugees at between ten million and twenty five million. As deforestation and changing rainfall patterns cause droughts and famines, old settlement locations cease to be habitable. And then people are pressed into action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_migrant

Now obviously, these things will cause stress to those directly impacted. But even if you affected directly, you can't escape the impact entirely. We live in an age of constant information overload, an outrage economy fueled by the twenty four hour news cycle and the might of the internet. And so the strife and struggle of a thousand miles away is still sitting in our living rooms and back of mind.

Open tasks are stressors on the mind, like open tabs on a browser window. And things which feel like threats, but which we cannot address, will sit like psychic tumors in our brains. Open tabs with malicious software sitting in the back of our browser window.

And so, where once our awareness extended to our village and perhaps to a larger tribe and clan affiliation, now it extends to the ends of the earth and encompasses celebrities, world leaders, and workers halfway round the world. We carry the psychic weight of the world upon our shoulders. When I was born there were four and a half billion people and that number is seven and a half billion. The human mind evolved to hold the connections to roughly one hundred people. That does seem a bit of a mismatch.

No wonder we're depressed.

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.

Memo Monday: Working Depressed

Why are so many civilized humans depressed?

Oh, so many reasons.

Today I want to discuss one such possible reason. Imagine that you work for a living,   that you must sell your labor to survive. A difficult thing to imagine I know.

Now imagine also that in your job you are utterly replaceable. Imagine that they would not stumble in the slightest if you were to leave. I know, I know, preposterous.

Now imagine that in your day to day on the job that you are constantly measured against standards designed to minimize what you are to be paid. And imagine that your routine on the job includes regularly scheduled harangues and brow beating called called coaching and performance reviews. Bizarre to imagine, yes, but let's continue.

And now imagine that at the end of each day you leave your job with no evidence that you've made any impact. Imagine that that every day on the job is a day on a metaphorical hamster wheel.

In such a hypothetical situation, your job would generate no meaning and no satisfaction in a job well done, no significance and no sense of achievement. That's not a life conducive to a positive mind set.

Imagine this was your life. Yes, I know this a huge stretch (have you caught the bloody sarcasm yet?) But stick with me here. If this was your life, would you want to get up every day?

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.

Follow Up Fridays: Dark Souls wants you to try, even though there's no point

Still working my way through video games which provoked some introspection on my part. This week: Dark Souls. 

No, I've never finished Dark Souls. I stopped where a lot of players stopped, Ornstein and Smough. I came bloody close to beating them on the first attempt and then didn't come close ever again. I realized that I wasn't interested in putting in the amount of time necessary to get good enough to beat them or play long enough to get lucky. But I was struck by the nihilism of the basic plot.

The Lords of a previous age have used the fire of their souls to kindle and "age of fire", but fire is fading. The player, playing a potential chosen one, can sacrifice themselves to rekindle the flame- or snuff the flame and usher in an age of darkness. We are told that the age of darkness is the age of man, by less than trustworthy sources. And the question as to which choice is the correct one is a question not easily resolved.

Or is it?

Because the fire will always fade. The age of darkness is inevitable. Even if the player succeeds and rekindles the flame, the success is temporary. Eventually the flame will go out. Darkness will eventually fall.

Dark Souls has no win condition. The point is to persevere, but eventually- darkness prevails.

Theory Thursday: A Sword at Your Throat

The fear of the right wing conspiracy theorists is typically the confiscation of firearms. And let's be honest, this is not an unreasonable fear.

Restriction on who could bear arms is one of the oldest restrictions placed by a ruler upon a people. The transformation of all people from warriors into citizens, and the restricting of the right to use force to a small dedicated group, is as old as civilization itself. Thorstein Veblen notes that the Warrior and Priest are the seed from which the nobility is formed.

And that's no accident. If they have a sword at your throat, and you don't even have a sword- well you do the math. This is the root of the Locust King, this is where the Hungry Empire gets its hooks in. The Hungry Empire needs workers, and workers don't get much in return. A worker who can defend himself will not put up with what the Empire has in mind. A worker will fight back or runaway.

And of course, this is the modern challenge.

The challenge in modern overpopulated civilized society in policing an armed populace is monumental, and thus the fear of everyone being armed is quite understandable. This is not up for debate. But neither is this, if you cannot defend yourself- you are helpless before those who can inflict violence upon you. This is true even if they are technically the very people assigned to keep you safe. Square that circle.

If you can.

Life is Short.
Work is Crap.
Join my Cult.

Blood Red Wednesdays: First Hero

First Hero

There are four Key Figures (five really) in story of the Flight from the Glass City: The First Mother, The Kudavbin King, the Dreamwalker (actually two figures: the Dreamer and the Walker- but not really), and First Hero.

First Hero, the counterpart, companion and lover to First Mother is the most dangerous of the four. The Dreamwalker is an incarnation of the storyteller, and devoted to the story and the telling- and thus reliable. First Mother is the provider and nurturer of the tribe and devoted the tribe, and thus reliable. The Kudavbin King, the runaway prince who has abandoned the Hungry Empire is devoted to history sister (First Mother) and to the otherthrow of his father (The Locust King) and thus mostly reliable. But First Hero, First Hero is devoted to great deeds and daring do and the challenge of it all. And thus, the First Hero is not terribly reliable- or even very predictable in a useful sense.

Look at incarnations of First Hero: the Monkey King and Cu Chulainn and Heracles and Achilles and Atalanta and Mwindo and... yeah, not a group of people generally known for knowing when to quit or how to play well with others. A true and proper hero will barrel through impossible odds, and typically not listen if the odds he's barrelling through are in support of his allies. He's not malicious, but he is easily bored, and easily distracted and easily confused.

easily the most powerful weapon of the Free Peoples, it falls to First Mother and other level headed Archetypes in the story to keep the vast but easily diverted power of First Hero aimed towards the HUngry Empire and the Locust King.

Good luck with that, by the way.

Talk Tuesday: Climate Change and things we don't want to Know

So here's a thought. Climate Change is no longer something that is going to happen. It is now well into being established history. Industries from construction to shipping to insurance to agriculture are all having to adjust their practises to accommodate the new realities of a world where climate change is happening and nobody is doing anything to stop it.

And yet we still talk like the consequences are in the future. Miami in particular and Florida in general is already having to deal with an increasingly floody day to day. The Northwest passage is ice free for much of the year, a previously unthinkable phenomenon. Rainfall patterns are shifting, changing growing seasons and adjusting what land is and is not arable, and having a terrifying effect on forest fire season. And of course there are the tropical storms.

No single one event can can be called climate change, and this is what the deniers cling to.

But what about the rest of us?

Even a majority of Americans (63%), Internet famous as the world's climate denier believe that climate change is a threat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_opinion_by_country

So if we aren't doing remotely enough, and we aren't. What should an individual do if they want to survive and or thrive in the changing world?

http://www.climatehotmap.org

Find out the likely impacts on your area and plan accordingly. If nothing is going to change on a large scale until its too late, then the big winners in a post climate change world will be the people who acted like Noah, and not the ones who acted like Chicken Little.

Don't tell people that the sky is falling (not like I'm doing) most won't listen. Or, if you must, only tell enough that you find a few people willing to work with you. After all, you'll need manpower for what I am recommending.

But seriously, don't play chicken little and warn people, build your ark instead.

Life is Short.
Work is Crap.
Join my Cult.

Dear Employers (We don't want your gamification)

Dear Employers,

We don't want your gamification. Points and badges and Leaderboards don't make something fun on their own. Competitions don't motivate without an underlying reason.

What you ask most of us to do is monotonous grinding grunt work- even if we sit at a desk. And a grind wihout a goal, a mission of greatness, will just grind a person down.

And so it doesn't matter what kind of surface level gamifications you try to incorporate into your sad little skinner box motivational scheme. It might work short term, but not long term. We need a mission, an compelling goal- and your return on investment doesn't count, neither does your golden parachute.

Points and Badges and Leaderboards are their to help us through the troughs, the low points where motivation is hard to sustain on our epic quests though life. They are not their to trick or compel us to devote our lives to the service of a false god and a false king for false profit benefiting somebody else.

So try them. They might work for a few months, you might get your bonus. But then its back to the grind for all of us.

Life is Short.
Work is Crap.
Join my Cult.

Follow Up Fridays: Far Cry 4 thinks there are no Heroes

I've been using Follow up Fridays to look at video games that pushed my thoughts in interesting ways. Last week I spoke about Far Cry 3. This week, I want to talk about its follow up: Far Cry 4.


Where Far Cry 3 wanted to deconstruct the video game and how it conflates violence and heroism. Far Cry 4 wants to talk about violence and solving problems. In  Far Cry 4 you play Ajay Ghale: an expatriate from a fictional war torn nation of Kyrat in the Himalayas. The nation is ruled by a Triad Mob boss turned dictator who backed a royalist faction and then betrayed them. The nation is locked in a civil war between the Dictator's forces and rebels, who are themselves divided between a reformist faction bent on modernizing the nation and traditionalist faction bent on bringing back the monarchy and traditional state religion. One faction mirrors the Maoist rebels of Nepal, the other mirrors the people of occupied Tibet.

The game starts with a pretty clean dichotomy between the good rebels and the bad Dictator: one Pagan Min. But things break down as Ajay finds himself (as son of the rebellions founders) acting as kingmaker and swing vote for the two leaders of the rebellion. Regardless who Ajay supports, the decisions to be made will be flawed and rarely will a clean cut good answer present itself. As the endgame approaches, the player will (or at least I did) start to get a sense of inevitability, and the increasing sense that this isn't going to turn out well. Every character you have fought beside ends up compromised in some way. And every villain you fought against is given a sympathetic perspective to unbalance the easy (previously held) view of them as a villain. An early example will serve, Paul Harmon is pagan Min's chief spy and torture technician. In the very tutorial level of the game, he tortures the man who helped you get into the country while talking idly about self help books. The game teases you with his devotion to his daughter, but despite how ubiquitous his daughter's letter our in his strong hold and how much Harmon talks about his daughter, its doesn't really strike home until you capture him. After you capture Harmon, he has a bag stuffed on his head and he is led away, implicitly to be tortured for information- so much for good guys and bad guys. And this is happening, his phone begins to ring and he recognizes the ring tone as meaning his daughter is calling. The player will have seen him stop mid torture to take his daughter's call at least twice previously. But here, unable to answer the call, Harmon begins to panic. He begs Ajay to help him answer the phone. He starts frantically telling the phone that "Daddy's coming!"

I didn't like Paul Harmon, but that scene gave me pause. This is repeated for Pagan's other lieutenant Noor, who has an even more sympathetic back story, but who has arguably done more damage to Kyrat through he blood sports in Shanath Arena, soaking the local culture in a glorified and sanctified violence. Even Pagan's right hand woman Yuma, is shown adrift and lost after losing faith in Pagan, a man she indicated she would have previously followed anywhere. And Pagan himself is nothing but polite to Ajay, and offers every chance for reconciliation. The player even has several chances to let Pagan live. The game has multiple spots that could be considered an ending, and none of them resolve anything, instead creating a new normal that is arguably just as bad as the old normal.

The more things change the more they stay the same. Or to quote a game that tried to make the same impression and failed, "War. Ware never changes."

There is no win state for the player or for Ajay. The game doesn't kill Ajay for his choices, or threaten to delete his save fail as the previous game did. Instead, Far Cry 4 would rather force you to live with yourself and the consequences of the choices you made. Side with the reformist faction? They've lost so many troops that they need to start conscripting children. Side with the traditionalists, and the institute a purge of reformist faction and institute a child as a puppet theocratic head of state. Kill Pagan? He never find out the secret your mother sent you back to Kyrat to discover. Let Pagan live? A violent psychopathic murderer is free to do as he likes. The game even gives you the chance to free the rebel leader you don't side with (and the chance to find and kill them later if you change your mind) with no impact on the outcome for Kyrat. Once you see how far the faction you have backed will go, you have a chance to kill the leader of the faction which you did back, with no impact on the outcome for Kyrat.

War is hell, and everyone suffers. And there are no heroes. Welcome Home.