Toxoplasma
The article literally takes less than a minute and a half to read I listened to it, and it goes into better detail than I will here. Rats that touch cat poop containing the Toxoplasma brain parasite “has increased activity in brain regions associated with sexual attraction” when they smell cat urine. So the Toxo-infected rats “actually follow cat odors, often presumably to their doom, red in tooth and claw.” I found this creepy, in an inspiring way, and wanted to construct a narrative around this idea. Here it is, the first part takes place in the seweres:
It’s not true.
I’m telling you it’s true. My cousin saw it.
You have so many cousins, one of them is bound to be crazy.
Well-
And poop? Poop? we pass poo so often here it’s part of the scenery.
The two rats scurried through the drain pipe drawn by the smell of food, pausing occasionally, noses up to get their bearing.
You with the ghost rats, the vampire rats, the Frankenstein rats with random human parts growing from them. Now you’re telling me about poop that turns rats into horny sex zombies.
But-
Not just sex zombies, sex zombies who get turned on by the smell of cats
Well, yeah-
But think they’re smelling horny female rats.
Huh, did I ever tell you, you’re a great listener?
As they rounded a corner, they found the source of the smell, a discarded pizza crust with bits of old cheese stuck to the paper plate it was folded into.
What is it? Can I just smell crazy better than you can?
He said it happened to a good friend. Got a crazy look in his eye, a huge woody, and kept carrying on about a hot girl he smelled. My cousin couldn’t smell it, wasn’t horny, so he just didn’t keep up the pace.
Ha-ha, wow, convenient.
Well it was! If he had kept up, that cat might’ve killed him instead.
Well no, according to your zombie theory. Your cousin’s buddy would have just been looking all over that cat trying to find the imaginary rat the poop made him smell. How does poop even factor into this story?
Finished with the pizza crust, they ran out into the open air in search of more food.
Well, they’d been hanging out the day earlier and when they slipped and fell down a chute, some of his front paws hit some poop at the bottom but my cousin missed it completely.
Okay, this whole thing sounds like one of those complicated lies you tell to get out of something.
That story about the human wearing a meat dress was true! http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2010-09-13-ladygagameatdress.jpg
Second, making rats terrified of poo is cruel. We got enough to be scared of without your crazy cousin spreading rumors.
Ask anyone, he’s still depressed and refuses to go anywhere near poop.
I never said he was lying. I said he was crazy. Poop is literally everywhere. I smell food. I smell girls. I barely notice poop until it’s right in front of me. What the-
In front of them, the ground was littered with rat corpses. all of it seemed to be the work of cats.
“You didn’t smell this, Mr. I Smell Everything.”
“Shut up, let’s get out of here.”
A large shadow moved in their periphery.
“RUN!”
And they ran, well aware only one of them could make it out alive. They moved in and out of broken containers, under tables, through bushes. Unfortunately, their instincts led them to the same dead end, shaking terrified as their pursuer stared at them inquisitively.
Ah see, that’s what I miss. The chase, the hunt. Thought the killing was my favorite part but after killing the 10th one that ran up to get a good smell of me ran, I just wanted a way to do it without touching you.
Screw you, Lady! Still shaking, Gene was in awe of his friend. The cat continued undeterred.
No, the first few were fun but-
Seriously, if you’re gonna eat us quit playing with us and do it.
Did you just wet yourself? Gene asked.
N-no, yes, who cares?! It’s about to murder us. Is this a bad time for you?
You could die with some-
Are you two done?
By now, they were as irritated with each other as they were scared of the cat. Ultimately, they were a captive audience albeit poorly behaved. They listened as the cat told them of how horny rats had been finding her in the area and how as a domesticated cat she actually had little to no appetite for rat meat but hunting was still her favorite past time. She wanted to know the reason foe this phenomenon. After some more arguing, Gene convinced Syd to tell his cousin’s story.
“Now you’re messing with me.”
She sauntered off.
“You don’t remember killing him?”
She paused without turning around.
No all you rats look the same to me and I’m not the only rat killer in this area. Anyway, I stuck around longer because of my curiosity. I’m going to hunt elsewhere. Maybe find some smarter rats…no offense.
Their hearts finally began to slow down after she had been out of their view for a few minutes.
Did we just survive…talk to a cat?
Yeah, she was hot though, right?
Syd, I can smell your crazy.
I mean, I’m just saying I wouldn’t mind being a cat.
You know what? Me neither. You hungry?
They hurried off to find food unaware of the danger approaching because of their conversation with the cat. She had gone to find a new hunting ground as she said but on her way she picked up two of the most freshly killed rats she could find. She liked to hunt but she didn’t like competing with street cats for territory or fighting off their advances. Using the rats as evidence of plenty, she convinced the alley cats that hunting in the area she just came from left her too stuffed to have another bite. The alley cats were always looking for an easy meal and set off to find the willing prey she had described.
In a few hours there were so many cats in the area Gene and Syd and the rest of the rats could hear them in all directions. Panicked rats provided cats with more proof of how easily they could find sustenance.
That cat screwed us.
What? The same cat you wanted to mount a few hours ago.
So it’s just coincidence that we talk to a cat-
Keep your voice down! You want everyone knowing this is our fault.
Our fault, you’re the one who told me to tell her about the poo.
Gene’s face lit up.
You’re right.
I am?
It’s not our fault. It’s the poop’s fault.
Gene darted off. Syd raced to catch him. Gene slowed down near Syd’s cousin’s nest.
You have to get him to tell us where the poop is.
What? Why? It’s what started all this trouble in the first place.
We have to think like cats to get out of here. Cats want easy kills. At least, at first. All we gotta do is convince everybody else to roll in the poop and use them to get out of here.
What? No!
Yeah, and when they ask why we’re not covered in poop, we just tell them that we would look like crazy rats covered in poo trying to get others to join us.
No, I mean we shouldn’t. They want to eat without putting much work into it. There’s no guarantee we don’t trip and end up bowels deep in a cat. Hiding’s smarter. Most of them will get bored and go back where they came from, but-
How do you-
But if we make it easy for them, it’ll just attract more cats.
Gene regained his composure.
This is a nightmare.
Yup.
And zombie sex rats barely have anything to do with it.
Syd sighed, “I know. Let’s find somewhere to ride this out. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see an opening.”
Sadness – Don’t read this if you’re not in a bad mood and are susceptible to bad moods. If you are in a bad mood try reading it like you’re a drill instructor shouting at a new recruit.
It’s like when you’re a kid and you have your birthday at one of those pizza place/indoor amusement park places. Since it’s your birthday, you get to go in that miniature wind tunnel that has all of those tickets that you would normally have to play games to win, and you want those tickets so that you can trade them for one of those sweet, sweet prizes they have in displayed in the glass cases nearby. However, when you step in somebody throws a bucket of warm sticky wax at you, and at first you’re upset but then you’re thinking, “Oh, this will help me win more prizes.” The wind starts moving through the contraption, and you’re excited at first until you realize it’s not tickets being blown at you. It’s sadness. Piles and piles of sadness sticking to you, and you’re powerless. Any attempt you make to flail opens up your body so the sadness can stick to you in new ways. It finally stops, but any attempt made to remove the sadness from your body causes you too much pain so you end up looking like Steve Carell in 40 year old virgin with patches here and there but mostly covered with sadness. That’s h.g.u.n.g. sadness. PEACE.
Symmetry of John 3 and the Mortal Soul
Got mad insomnia, yo. So after lapping up podcasts like warm milk as is my custom, I turned to the Bible in the hopes it would serve as a better sleep aid. It led me to John 3, and I tried to focus on memorizing the verses that seemed the most abstract to me, verses 8, 11, and 12.
Verse 8 says, “The wind[e] blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” It suggests being born of the spirit is something recognizable, but it isn’t something that you can fully grasp. Then in verses 11 and 12, Jesus says, “We speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things.” I began to wonder if Jesus was just messing with Nicodemus because at first his wind metaphor suggests that what he’s saying isn’t an easy concept to grasp. Additionally, it seems that in both Aramaic and Greek, they used the same word for wind as they did for spirit. Then he behaves as if Nicodemus should already grasp what he’s saying. Ultimately, what made it easier for me to memorize these verses helped me to understand these verses better.
Jesus’ logic is tight. Verses 11 was common sense. Speak of what you know and bear witness to what you see. Verse 12 had its own balance. I teach earthly things, you don’t believe. How can you believe when I teach heavenly things? Verse 8 was more abstract, but, if it was in Aramaic or Greek, the symmetry would have been clear sooner. The general concept of what he’s trying to teach is apparent to us, but only in the way that increasing the minimum wage being good for the economy is clear to us (this isn’t really the case). I’m not implying it’s false. I’m implying that we accept it as true and apparent only because we’ve heard it so many times in so many different ways, but this is Jesus trying to break things down as simply as possible in order to impart a deeper truth.
This whole conversation is about how to gain admittance into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus begins with the answer by saying, “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God (see my comment about the Greek below).” Then he starts with his repetition and explanation of how flesh gives birth to flesh and spirit gives birth to spirit. Nicodemus seems to have a reaction to this because in verse 7, he basically tells him to calm down, and in verse 8, he explains about the wind. I think he chose the wind as an example to help enlighten Nic. He was presenting Nicodemus with another example of something else that gave birth to something like it. It might be similar to trying to explain radiation to a child by comparing it to the heat that comes from your own body.
Nicodemus is still having trouble with it which I can’t blame it for. This quote from Cracked.com’s article “5 Mind Blowing Ways Your Memory Plays Tricks on You” explains both Nicodemus’ response and the method Jesus employs to try and get through to him.
” …research shows that once we’ve seized on an incorrect piece of information, exposure to the facts either doesn’t change what we think, or makes us even more likely to hold onto the false information. You can guess why this is: our self-image triumphs over all. It’s more important that we continue to think of ourselves as infallible than admit we’re wrong.”
So when Nicodemus responds almost incredulously, Jesus actually appeals to Nic’s self image by saying, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” Then Jesus’ line about earthly things and heavenly things makes more sense because of the two earthly examples he used to help Nicodemus understand. Jesus continues his explanation by saying that the Son of Man had to descend from heaven in order to impart to us the ability to ascend with him and have eternal life because being born of flesh we lack the ability to do either on our own.
Looking at how Jesus used the serpent in the wilderness reference, I feel like John 3:16-22 was someone’s attempt at explaining Jesus use of such a potentially scary metaphor. Looking at the story he’s referring to could lead one to logically form the opinion shared in John 16-22 on their own. In Numbers 21, it says that God actually sent the fiery serpents among the people. This implies that they came from God and weren’t just some repurposed reptiles. This scenario is a good metaphor for humanity’s antagonistic relationship with the things of God. Eventually, God allows Moses to create a serpent with the express purpose of saving people from their snake bites. Jesus used this snake as an image of how he would save people from their own antagonistic relationships with God. Jesus goes further than the snake by saving people from their own mortality.
John 3:1-15 provides evidence that the idea of an immortal soul is not Biblical. Like gives birth to like. Jesus states this several times in several different ways, and he clearly states that, without him, flesh can only give birth to flesh. According to this passage whatever any of us have that we had before being reborn is flesh. So if we have a soul that is part of us from birth, it’s still a part of our flesh, and nowhere does the Bible state that any part of the flesh can last forever. The only way we gain any type of access to eternal life is by being born again of the Spirit. The idea of an immortal soul is a ubiquitous part of Western culture that dates back to the ancient Greeks, but it’s not Biblical.
The only pseudo-Biblical idea that suggests that we have an immortal soul is the idea that we burn forever in hell. Looking at the verse that supports that view point, the case can easily be made that the fire is what lasts, not what’s being thrown in the fire. The Bible is highlighting the potency of the fire and not the immortality of any part of a human being.
What follows is the scenario. A fire somehow exists in a place where fire is all there is. Something gets thrown into that fire and locked in with it. It gets burnt up, but it’s still trapped inside with the fire. That thing remains in the fire not because the thing is immortal or everlasting but because it literally has nowhere to go.
I’m going to do my own variation on what Jesus did Nicodemus. If you call yourself a Bible believing person, look at how many times the Bible clearly refers to humans as finite and temporal. Then find any place where it clearly states that any part of a human being, aside from God, is immortal. From there, the truth of what the Bible has to say about the mortality of humans should be clear to you.
Born of Water
John 3:5-6
Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
People generally take these verses one of two ways. One group believes that someone “born of water and the Spirit” is someone “born of the Spirit” because, to them, the phrase “born of water” refers to baptism. The other camp believes that the phrase “born of water” refers to physical birth, and water alludes to the amniotic fluid that surrounds a fetus inside the womb and bursts from a mother ready to give birth. According to people of this mindset, to be “born of water” is to “be born of flesh”, and I share this belief.
People have written exhaustively in defense of both of these viewpoints, and I don’t feel compelled to defend my point of view. If you really care to know, pages 316-325 of the book Lectures in Theology by Bennett Tyler and Nahum Gale published in 1859 defend it more eloquently than I ever could on my own. You can find it here http://books.google.com/books?id=Y6UMAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA97&ots=fgXWgMT8-z&dq=nahum%20gale&pg=PA317#v=onepage&q=born%20of%20water&f=false for free. I might summarize it in the next post, but for now I just want to say that this interpretation suggests that the unborn cannot enter heaven.
According to that interpretation, during Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, he mentions the requirement of two births three times, four times if you include verse 6. This provides extra fodder for the debate over where life begins and the debate over abortion, and either side could use it to bolster their argument. However, I can’t think of an argument based on this interpretation that could entice either camp to change their way of thinking. I have a stance on this, but I think focusing on that stance misses the point. Although I do believe debates over abortion have merit, I think a well-adjusted, thoughtful person would care more about how to keep women from having to make that choice than whether the legal right to make that choice should exist (I say life instead of human life intentionally).
Whether you feel that engaging in sexual intercourse without intending to procreate is immoral or that engaging in sex solely for pleasure is healthy, I don’t think anybody wants to bear the social cost of other people’s unwanted pregnancies that could have been prevented through abstinence or the use of contraceptives. I don’t understand why people who believe sex outside of marriage is immoral would want people who commit immoral acts raising children they don’t want especially if those same pillars of society will do literally nothing to help that child become a righteous person except trying to achieve the reasonable goal of reshape the laws of this country to reflect their belief system. I also don’t understand and haven’t met a responsible adult who thinks sex is a great thing you should do often who also believes people should engage in a behavior if they can’t own up to all of the potential consequences. It’s like telling someone without the ability to pay off a loan to buy a house because it’s a great investment. It just makes sense to employ all of the tools available to prevent fertilization of an egg so maybe that the number of unwanted pregnancies can one day be so small that we are willing to bear the cost.
Miscellaneous Thought:
This thing went pear shaped on me. I was actually thinking of using that verse to try to bolster my stance on where life begins before I realized, while trying to write this post, that it was a stupid, stupid idea. So I decided to write something that I could make a good argument for without having write pages on the subject, cite scientific and religious authors who agree with me, and ultimately fail to do anything to move people entrenched in their stances. So if the shift in focus from religious to political was jarring, it wasn’t my original intent, but I think what I wrote has the potential to be more fruitful than what I originally wanted to write.
Also in my mind, pear-shaped is a ridiculous term that I don’t think I’ll ever use seriously. Additionally, the amniotic sac entry on wikipedia has a pretty raw picture of someone pulling the amniotic sac out of a woman. I honestly didn’t expect it to look so sac-like.
The Bible’s Thorniness
This quote from http://donmilleris.com/2011/08/25/being-less-biblical-and-more-like-the-bible/ has articulated much better than I have how I feel about the Bible at its best.
“In my opinion, it is a rich tapestry of egoless narratives, poems and letters. Most of the writers were not chosen for their skill, I don’t believe, but each of them has an uncanny ability to remove pretense from their work. Even Christ’s biographers depict Him without sparing us His humanity. He gets angry, He gets annoyed, He is hard to understand (and indeed hard to follow) and while He seems to love the world, He’s as alien as E.T., pointing always toward the heavens rambling about going home. It’s brilliant stuff when you stop reading it to figure out if you’re right or wrong about something. It’s life-changing, actually, the way your life gets changed by a friend over time.”
I only disagree with the idea that all of the New Testament letters are egoless. Several of them were written from the perspective of people who believed they had received God’s most important revelations, understood them, and lived by them. How could they not feel driven to write authoritatively? The shallowness of my faith might hinder me from strongly relating to the letters penned by those type of writers. Ultimately, I find it easier to identify with men of faith from the Old Testament and draw far more inspiration from the words of Jesus in the gospels.
Let me start with some non toxic examples to demonstrate why I take issue with these men speaking so authoritatively.
2 Cor 14:33-35 “33For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. 35If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”
Now people, including me for a time, say that this instruction was for their time, but, in context, we can’t say this was just the cultural expectation because he reinforces his instruction by pointing to it as something “the Law”, big “L”, requires of women. He starts this declaration about the status of women in the church by highlighting a particular aspect of God’s nature. Then he says, “As in all the churches of the saints,” before saying women shouldn’t talk in church even to ask a question. He didn’t mean to write “As in all the churches of the saints in this era” either.
My understanding was that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus created a new covenant for us, and followers of Christ were no longer bound by the old covenant. In fact, the apostles told gentiles in the early church that they didn’t have to meet the law’s requirement of circumcision and that they didn’t have to follow the law’s old dietary restrictions. One of God’s early positive commands to Adam and Eve in the garden was to “be fruitful and multiply”, but you find an apostle in the New Testament discouraging people from even getting married unless they had to much trouble controlling their lust while elsewhere another writer says that, in order for men to serve as a church leaders, they need to be model husbands and fathers.
Jesus himself never says women should stay quiet and submissive as a rule. My favorite quote from Jesus regarding women is in Luke 8:21 where he says, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” When the sinful Samaritan woman at the well realizes Jesus is the Christ and runs to tell the people in town her testimony, Jesus doesn’t stop her and tell her to find a man to tell it to so that the good news can be spread properly. If you check out that story, the sight of Jesus talking to a woman makes the disciples uncomfortable, but none of them has the balls to say anything about it. When they try to get him to eat something, Jesus’ response reflects that knowing the outcome of his conversation with the sinful Samaritan woman sufficiently appeased his hunger. In my opinion, the author of that passage in 1 Corinthians 14 completely misunderstands the role of women in spreading the gospel and serving the church.
If the writer of that letter could have commanded something so inconsistent with Jesus’ teaching and ministry, how can you not feel the need to question whether some of the other positions taken by letter writers in the Bible line up with what Jesus said and did? Jesus never says following the written word equates to following him or following his disciples equates to following him. He says in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He says in verse 15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Jesus doesn’t say you have to believe all of the principles and rules written in letters considered canonical by future believers. Whether or not you believe the entire Bible is the infallible word of God, Jesus never says you need to follow and believe all the rules and principles laid out in books 39 through 66 in order to grow in your relationship with him or in order to receive the grace he extends.
All the parts of the Bible don’t come together to create a complete, coherent picture. Each author presents their personal perspective on how God moved in their life or in the lives of others. An old testament example of inconsistency is a God in the book of Job who allows his faithful servant to suffer and all his children to die because Satan begs permission versus a God who, in any other book of the Old Testament, dispenses rewards or punishments according to how well the people in covenant with him meet its requirements. The gospels come close to a unified vision only because all four books set out to explore the thoughts, teachings, and deeds of one man who physically dwelt on earth for a little longer than three decades and whose public ministry lasted for an action-packed, short 3 years.
(no transition, need help)
Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this world,[c] but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” On its own, I don’t fully understand what that means, but I know it doesn’t mean that you must abandon your critical thinking skills in order to discover a unified theory that links every single letter, narrative, and poem the Bible has to offer. For example, the mind of the flesh might think, “Jerking off to some explicit images feels good now so I’m going to ignore the notion that it will damage my relationship with God and others.” However, having the mind of the Spirit does not require you to
1) know that everything an unsaved person is and does disgusts God
2) believe no other possibilities but eternal torture exist for anyone who doesn’t have the same relationship with Christ that you believe you do.
3) believe the universe and everything in it was created in 7 solar days
4) believe women need to wait till they get home to discuss the sermon with their husband lest they disrupt church with vibration of their vocal chords
5) believe any other sort of debatable hooey
According to Jesus, you could accept any number of things as fact and still not have a place in his family or a role in leading anyone else to Him. Jesus doesn’t require his followers to be literate enough to study or understand any of these debatable topics.
Look at John 16:7-14
“7Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the [Bible] will not come to you. But if I go, I will send [it] to you. 8 And when [it] comes, [it] will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. 12“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13When the [Bible] comes, [it]will guide you into all the truth, for [it]will not speak on [its] own authority, but whatever [it] hears [it] will speak, and [it] will declare to you the things that are to come. 14[It] will glorify me, for [it] will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
If you’re familiar with the passage you will notice that I replaced every pronoun and noun referring to the Holy Spirit. I did this because it best conveys how some Christians view the Bible. The way some talk would lead you to believe that the Holy Spirit’s main job is to help you understand the Bible so the Bible can do all of the stuff that Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would do. John 5:39 applies to a lot of us today “[searching] the Scriptures because [we] think that in them [we] have eternal life”. Most of us doing that are also trying to seek out Jesus, but multi-tasking is failing us here.
Often, when we’re struggling for the right words to say to someone, a Bible verse comes to us, and we think we’re living out the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:20. However, a believer looking to take advantage of their full birthright should expect more than the right quotes if they consider what Jesus has to say about the fruit of the Holy Spirit in John 14:12, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do”. Using the birthright metaphor reminds me of the story of the prodigal son who goes off on his own thinking he has his full birthright, spends it all, returns to his father’s house hoping to work as a servant, and receives a loving, gracious welcome home from his father when he returns. We could also be the son, ignorant of all the things his father would give him, who never left home, but never enjoyed it there either. I could never fully fault putting the Bible on a pedestal for denying us our full birthright, but it’s easy to be overwhelmed and distracted by it rather than encouraged and challenged by it. A useful resource can turn into the thorns that immobilize an individual and slow or hinder their growth.
I know I spend a lot of time thinking, debating, and negotiating, but hopefully I can spend more time doing and responding and arrive somewhere I can take full advantage of what the Spirit has to offer instead of flipping through pages trying to find each nugget and morsel a book has to offer.
Spectrum Exhaust or AT&T and the Unions
I can’t fault AT&T for trying to buy or T-mobile for wanting to sell because by now we have to know that big business only aim to make money for themselves. Unless coerced by regulators or by profit, big businesses don’t make moves to benefit consumers or improve the economy.
I spent a little more time browsing the article a link had taken me to. While skimming it, I read part of an AT&T press release that said they hope the merger will help fix the nation’s “spectrum exhaust” problem. Our what now? Google “spectrum exhaust” and see if you can find anything that has to with telecommunications that isn’t quoting AT&T’s press release. I got all the way to the bottom and found the dreaded comments section. I asked myself whether or not I wanted to see some Tea Party troll rail against the government’s decision with the kind of passion only a black President can inspire. I did and was happy to see that 10 out of 11 of the responses to her post were negative, but one of the comments led me to type the words “unions” and “AT&T” into my google search engine. I thought that unions would oppose this merger based on the rhetoric of Tea Party members. I thought wrong. Googling those two words makes it clear that the unions favor this merger heavily for a variety of reasons, none of which have to do with creating more jobs for everybody or protecting any jobs other than their own. Union employee receive better compensation for the same work done by non-union workers meaning that if T-mobile becomes unionized they will have to hire less people because of the higher salaries and benefits.
Seeing the union response to the block of this merger, the tea party response to the block of this merger, and the AT&T response to the block of this merger made it clear to me that, wow, if not for the federal government blocking this merger. I would have never known or cared about how messed up this merger is. With those three powers on the same side of this, I can’t begin to imagine how heavy the lobbying will be in favor of this merger, but, as always, I can appreciate how little say I will have in whether or not this merger occurs. I think a mistake people make is assuming that businesses and corporations alone drive a healthy economy. If that were true, trickle down economics would have worked. Consumers with purchasing power and choices are integral to a healthy economy. Businesses and corporations can be an important part of that, but consumers suffer most in poor economic climates while bigger business are forgiven for trespasses and subsidized for their troubles. Businesses and corporations only need stability in order to find ways to make a profit, but without eager (drawn to buy by the quality and the variety of options), employed consumers, economies slow down and stagnate.
In response to a person posting that the federal government intended to protect consumers by blocking this, one of the tea party people commented that people didn’t need the federal government treating them like children in need of protection. I don’t like to be patronized either but the only other words that can better describe how I feel as corporations. regulators, and lobbyists clash overhead on yon Capitol Hill shouldn’t be uttered in polite company.
Using a chess analogy to describe my status in this fight, I’m not a pawn. I am brushstroke on a tile on which pawns move. Keep in mind this is a game we actually get a glimpse of. If the federal government never blocked this, we wouldn’t get to see any of this game play out. It would have just happened. I remember that headline, “AT&T acquries T-mobile”. That could have been it. Consumers need the government to protect them. I feel historical evidence supports that as much as it reveals government’s inability to consistently and competently do that. There’s a chance we can be protected from this, but it’s certain how we feel about it only matters in theory. This era* has been a bit discouraging. I think it’s reasonable to feel powerless, but part of me thinks it’s not okay to stay that way.
*By era, I mean the war, what the war gave us, what the war revealed about us, the collapse, what the collapse brought us, what the collapse revealed about us. We got some people trying to create a consumer protection agency and struggling to do so, we got some people trying to improve our school systems resigning due to opposition, and some of the most passionate of us are some of the most misinformed.
THE SECOND COMING by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The Second Coming was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War.
1919 between the 1st world and the Great Depression. I think it’s too bold of me to say that I feel any sort of kinship with Yeats, but this is the first moment in my life where I think, if he walked past me while I was reading this poem and noticed, I wouldn’t make light of him being such a downer. Foul stuff has been happening in the world before literacy even became a thing, but I feel least hopeful now than I have ever felt in my lifetime about America’s ability to do anything about it because of how terrible we are at helping ourselves. I think Obama’s missteps have hurt us, but I’m going to bristle even more the next time I hear about how history will vindicate Bush. The seeds of this malaise were sown during his time in office, but, although I say that, I can’t even give him 30% of the blame for those seeds being sown because I know the Executive Branch isn’t that powerful or even capable of having the foresight or flexibility to battle that. I can say the same thing about the Obama administration. If he ever thought he could be any type of savior, that’s a misconception both he and his supporters share. He’s been misguided in some of the things he has chosen to throw his weight behind in a time when mistakes are even more costly.
About that poem, I’m starting to think about that anarchy line in the context of the whole poem. I think anarchy is a transient state because eventually the most passionate and the most powerful will figure a way to gain control. I think in the poem it’s just a transitional thing that’s not descriptive of the entire setting.
Last thing. I know it’s a simple obvious thing to say, and people who I strongly disagree with would say the same thing. Nevertheless, I think the best government isn’t the government that governs least, but the government that does its best to equally empower the people it’s serving. A consumer protection agency would be nice. Bolstering our educational system would be nice. However, legally treating corporations as people and making it harder to hold powerful people accountable when they make mistakes http://www.slate.com/id/2290036/are not the way. I find that since I stopped watching the Daily Show, I have plenty of things to irritate me without Jon Stewart telling me what stupid thing some pundit or guest on Fox News said.
Everything that follows this is a lot of me playing pong in my head with different stuff. I’m not really trying to make a well-formed coherent argument about anything from here.
On a happier note, check out Rachel Held Evans blog. I want someone to give her her own show. I’m thinking O’ Reilly Factor format and just let her tell what’s up. Also about that Yeats poem, I read that poem years ago and I kind of understood it, but it didn’t resonate with me in anyway that I could use. I find that that’s the case with a lot of literature for me, and it just makes me question how we teach literature. I don’t think during the time I was in high school, I was mentally developed enough to make a lot of the connections that I make now on my own. I don’t have any ideas on how I would teach it better because I don’t think it’s a matter of teaching. I think on some level you have to be open to it, and being open to it is like gene expression. Like you can be predisposed to this or that, but unless you have the right environmental exposure the gene may never manifest. This can be good things or bad things manifesting. During 9-12, I think you just might be too insulated to pick up on a lot of stuff. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad or intentional insulation, it’s just maybe you’re dealing with being a high school student too much to really let anything sink in. I don’t know. Like now I listen to podcasts all the time, and a lot of them have depth to them. I think high school me could have benefited a lot from these podcasts, but I wonder if high school me would have even been capable of appreciating them. Not to say high school me didn’t have things going on for him, just this me is evolved in different ways that high school me wasn’t, this me is also deficient in ways high school me wasn’t, I’m working on it.
Spy Kid
An over-sized t-shirt with colors faded. Baggy, scuffed up jeans with holes in the wrong places. Shoes with parts literally hanging off. Plus he had a cold. First day of school waiting for the bus to arrive, Eric was doing a terrible job of projecting any sort of strength. “You should have stayed home today,” said Samantha as she handed Eric some paper napkins. Eric blew his nose then put all of the napkin into the pocket he knew didn’t have holes in it, “Thanks, Sam.”
The bus doors opened and Eric quickly found an open seat. Samantha and Eric were actually moving at the same pace, but Elliot, being younger and shorter, looked more hurried in his movements. Put succinctly, she walked, he shuffled. Before the bus began moving, Eric already had his gaze fixed outside his window, not really focused on anything. It was his standby mode, the way he got when he waiting for the next thing to do.
“Hey!”
-_
“Hey!”
–
An open milk carton whipped across the aisle and hit Eric in the head knocking him out of his tranquil state. It only had a little bit of milk, and just a few drops landed on his shirt. The laughter coming from the other side of the bus caught his attention. He made eye contact with one of the giggling boys who gave Eric the finger in response. Eric took note and refocused his gaze outside of his window. “Sam,” Eric whispered, “Stop looking sorry for me.” Samantha went back to staring at her nails.
Sam recalled Eric’s words the weekend before, “If I get picked on, I get picked on, but you don’t need to get picked on sticking up for me. Just makes things harder for both of us. When we’re at school, I’m just another kid, okay?”
The 10-minute bell rang, as they got off the bus and began finding their way towards homeroom. “Hey!” It was the same voice as before. Eric didn’t stop to find the source. He didn’t speed up either. “Hey!” The voice grew closer. “Hey!” Then a shove. Eric lost his balance and fell onto the asphalt covered in loose, almost sand-like gravel. “What kind of black kid wears a NASCAR t-shirt?”
Those were the kind of questions Eric’s dad used to ask. The kind that serves as a set up for an insult. “Leave me alone.” Eric was upright now, but still on the ground. He knew he had an advantage there. The kid mimicked Eric mockingly and laughed at himself. A crowd of kids had began to form. “If you’re going to hit me, hit me.” Eric said.
Samantha winced when she noticed Eric’s hands on the ground curl into fists full of loose sand.
Feeling the crowd gather around him, his friends, and Eric, the kid smiled. “Well since you’re asking for it.” He took two quick steps towards Eric and punched. Eric tilted his head letting the punch hit him in the forehead and fell backwards. As the kid began to kneel down and raise his fist up to strike again, Eric tossed the gravel he had collected into the kid’s face then, using the kid’s shirt collar to pull, Eric drove his forehead into the kid’s mouth.
The kid yowled and would have spun off cursing if Eric didn’t roll him over onto his back and began punching. The fight was over as soon as the headbutt landed, and Eric knew it. A bloody mouth and sand in the eyes is usually enough to debilitate most men, but Eric knew neither the guy on the ground nor the kids watching fully understood that.
In order to get peace for the school year, Eric knew he needed to send a clear message. So he punched, and he punched, and he punched. He punched in spite of his runny nose dripping onto his former bully, he punched in spite of his hands throbbing more with each blow, he punched until the sounds of excitement coming from the crowd of kids turned into quiet, scared concern.
It had been less than a minute since the first punch thrown by the child now lying on the asphalt. Eric was on his feet now, backpack back on, notebook and pencils secured inside. He took a breath which reminded him of his runny nose. Standing not more than three feet from the mess he made, he carefully took out the napkin he had used before and began to blow his nose.
The first teacher on the scene, seeing Eric standing there with a bloody forehead blowing his nose, was relieved to see the scrawny kid with the over-sized shirt relatively unhurt, but nearly cursed when he saw the battered child on the floor behind him.
The teacher had been told by the student who fetched him that Dustin was beating someone up again. The student, more uncomfortable with violence than most of her peers, didn’t stand around long enough to see the scuffle unfold so she was as shocked as the teacher who was now crouched next to Dustin .
Another teacher arrived before an ambulance was called. A third began herding the children towards class. A fourth escorted Eric to wait outside the principal’s office. Eric held off on telling them his name and home telephone number until about 10 in spite of assurances he would not be punished because it was his mother’s day off. Depriving her of the opportunity to sleep-in would have made him feel bad.
His mom arrived with a worried look on her face. Upon seeing Eric, she smiled and kissed the bandage on his forehead before entering the principal’s office to discuss Eric’s behavior. She lied a bit by telling the principal that Eric didn’t get into fights often.
He fought regularly until the 6th grade where he learned his first lessons in non-verbal communication. Only one fight similarly ending with an assailant in need of bed rest. He got all A’s that year, the 2nd year since the family had gotten away from Eric’s father, the man responsible for Eric’s proficiency at the martial arts. He was a violent alcoholic and a generally unpleasant person whose name they never uttered.
Eric’s mom and the principal shook hands and finished up their conversation right outside the door next to Eric.
“Eric,” the principal began, “I’m sorry all that happened out there today. There should have been someone watching you kids. I’d hate for you to feel unsafe here. Like we said before, from everything we could tell, it was self defense.You’re not in trouble, but we think it’ll be less distracting for everybody if you just take the day off today.” Eric nodded.
When they got home, his mom gave him some cold medicine and he slept away most of the day until Samantha came back with his homework and told him about her day. She had a made a friend who said she’d save Samantha a seat on the bus tomorrow. Overall, a good day.
Transfer Payments
Not much to say. Government expenditures have grown mostly in the areas of social security and medicare since 1965. The majority of the people receiving those payments pay little to no taxes because of how low their income is. So one fair way to look at it is saying that government is taking from the rich and giving to the poor. You might believe that is unfair because that group of people, poor people paying little to no taxes receiving the benefits of social security and medicare, literally have more money to spend than they earn. That’s about 50% of Americans, 1 out of every 2. Ignore the fact that they tend to spend that money rather than horde it, effectively putting it back into the economy. Ignore that. They are getting money they haven’t earned to buy stuff. Some of it to buy stuff they need, and some of it for stuff they don’t need but might give them pleasure or make their lives easier. Simple question. That I think Americans who hate this idea should ask themselves. How much poorer and unhappier are you willing to let 50% of the population become? How much higher will the rates of crime and homelessness and general disease climb if we collectively decided to stop giving them that money? How much harder do you think a life of poverty in America should be? A cell phone less? Okay? A microwave less? Fine? A refrigerator less? A few hours of sleep because they have to work more to earn money less? Hmm. A meal less? Rough. A place to live less?
Now I know this is somewhat of a slippery slope argument, but you can’t dispute the fact that a large number of that 50% rely on that money for daily necessities. To me it’s kind of obvious by saying that you want that part of government expenditures cut that you’re willing to let those among us that struggle most, struggle more, and you’re not worried about how that might have some repercussions for public health and safety and contentment. Right now taxing the rich higher in any way has you worried that the rich might leave, but the rich wouldn’t mind having more tired, hungry, homeless, depressed, sick, resentful poor people around. Now I’m not criticizing the rich. I’m criticizing the perception of them.
Can we be honest? Most people paying taxes who have no use for social security and medicare won’t all just start supporting their fellow man if you made it so they didn’t have to pay the taxes that support that program. That’s just not realistic. Job “creators” won’t just start hiring like crazy because they don’t have to pay those taxes partially because it’s human nature but economically because there will be much fewer people spending money on those services that the job creators make money providing. Instead of thinking that cutting taxes and expenditures are the solution to what’s ailing America we should realize that those expenditures are part of America’s attempt to aid people who are ailing in America.
Picture this. Two guys do manual labor for a living. The labor requires two people, but one is simply better at it than the other and is compensated better because of it. One day the weaker of the two starts having back aches, and knowing neither can get the job done on his own, they go to a doctor together. The doctor prescribes pain medication too costly for the weaker one to afford so, knowing that he still needs him to do the job, the stronger one pays for the pain medication. This works well for a while, but one day the strong man becomes fed up with having to pay for the weaker one’s pain medication. It’s his money and he has the right to use it how he sees fit. Instead of identifying the source of the back pain and having the doctor fix it, the stronger man just refuses to pay leaving the weaker man in more pain and less able to function ultimately making the job harder and less fruitful for the strong man.
To me the only solution that I know of to alleviate poverty long term is education. Even if we could wake up tomorrow and have a perfect education system, it would still take decades before we saw any progress because it takes time to learn the skills that people would pay you to have. I think it would take decades of treating school like hallowed ground and teachers like professionals. What I mean by treating teachers like professionals is to give them the proper tools to do their job, develop an environment that allows them to do their job well, compensate them well when they do it well, and fire them when they don’t.
It’s not a quick solution because poverty is a pervasive problem, and it will take focus and passion and resolve to address it. Throwing money at it doesn’t fix it, but spending money to aid people isn’t just a nice thing that we should do because I feel guilty about poor people. In my opinion, it’s necessary to keep things from getting worse. I’m not saying that we should raise or lower taxes during a recession, but I believe that a lot of the money given to people too poor to pay taxes needs to go to them. We need to stop thinking that the only way America can be great again is by measuring up to some false, glorified memory we have it from before the growth of social security and medicare began in 1965. Does anybody remember that the government only passed a Civil Rights Act the year before that? We need to realize that American excellence doesn’t lie in the past, and the only way that we can have it is by investing in the future and taking care of our present.
P.S.
Looking at when spending for social security and medicare took off, I think there’s a strong racial correlation that needs to be explored. I know correlation doesn’t always equal causation, but it’s interesting to note that. From the article “First, we should note that Medicare didn’t exist until 1965, so a big share of the increase Romney pointed to stems from this single program.” With Civil Rights Act of 1964 the government starts the process of treating people of all color the same. Maybe they noticed that a lot of those people that they weren’t treating well before weren’t doing so well, but now had a louder voice in government so Medicare is enacted in 1965, but the education system still hasn’t done enough to fix the root of the problem or hasn’t been given the right tools to fix the problem.
P.S. 2
I love how we refer to America as a Christian nation when we’re deciding who the government should grant marriage licenses to, who we should wage war against, whether we should teach evolution in classrooms, and who we should support militarily, but when someone suggests that it should be U.S. domestic policy to take from people who have plenty and give it to people who don’t have enough then it’s class warfare.
Horrible Ad Campaign
I find most commercials that have nothing to do with food incredibly ineffective, but rarely do I find them offensive as a heterosexual male. One commercial that recently struck me came from “the phone to save us from our phone” ad campaign where a beautiful brunette in a short black night gown is unable to get the attention of a man, probably her husband and not just an aloof roommate, too preoccupied with his smart phone to notice her. I see that ridiculousness and want to push it further. I envision the same set up, but, instead of the lady simply standing there, there’s a man ravaging her as part of her ploy to raise her husband’s ire. Then her husband looks up, shifts his reading glasses down, and says, “Hold Still,” as he snaps a picture. After examining it he becomes enraged, throws his phone across the room and, before he begins pouting, yells, “I still don’t know how to get rid of the damn red eye!”
I understand that over time a lesser man can become desensitized to seeing the same beautiful woman everyday, but these commercials aren’t that nuanced. They simply suggest that the wrong phone can make a man blind to a beautiful woman and leave it up to the audience to imagine how crippling impotence, the fear of women, or the wrong type of intoxicant can be. This phone company doesn’t offend me with its premise primarily because it highlights that choosing to fidget with a phone over intimacy with a woman is a bad decision. On the other hand, a beer company shouldn’t generate an entire ad campaign around the idea that cold beer with temperature sensitive graphics makes the love of a beautiful woman mundane in comparison.
Can you imagine the people who would make that kind of pitch? When I try, it’s always a group of guys, because I figure women know their power too well to ever take it so lightly, and their faces manifest as some constantly shifting nightmarish amalgamation of all the corporate villains from 80s movies who seriously and honestly agree that they need to convey the idea that their brand of beer is better than sex. Because they lack the ability to communicate that idea subtly, they relay it in the most blunt, implausible, frustrating way possible. Additionally, I can only assume that they are marketing their beer to children because they are the least likely demographic to have a point of reference grounded in reality, never having tasted beer and never having had an enjoyable sexual experience. This might be the closest approximation to a cartoon camel with a phallic design (ironic on its own) promoting cigarettes, and they would deserve some sort of an award if it was done for satire. Since I would never give someone that much credit for being that many levels [balls] deep with their wit, I encourage you to read the possible pitch to yourself and try not to agree with me more.
“We want to let everybody know that this stuff is better than sex, right? So, picture rose petals leading to the bedroom, incense burning, and a gorgeous woman in a satin night gown smiling, and our guy…the speaker pauses and looks around the room for effect…struts in, ignores all this, and goes straight for an ice cold beer in the fridge. Am I selling this or am I selling this?”
We end up with a commercial that is neither funny nor any type of reflection of normal male behavior but could possibly be someone making light of alcoholism’s ability to destroy a relationship in order to sell alcohol.
Kobe Bryant’s Petard
Do you remember when Kobe and Shaq both played for the Lakers and people knew that, in order for the Lakers win championships, Kobe needed to limit his shooting and defer more consistently to Shaq? Now, can you recall how often we hear people are saying that the Lakers play better when Kobe shoots less? Over time, I don’t think the meat of what we’re saying has changed, but we’re saying it more respectfully now because Kobe has carried the heavy individual load that he so desperately coveted and because of his unhealthy stranglehold on the role of closer that previous Phil Jackson Lakers teams allowed to fall to whomever had the best shot after running offensive sets designed to produce multiple options. Kobe Bryant is, without a doubt, the most versatile, dangerous scorer in the NBA, but we are unable to fully recognize that his unyielding ambition to stand out as an individual has consistently done more harm than good for all of the championship teams and potential championship teams that he has been on. I believe that he has played better in his last two championship seasons than he did when he played with Shaq, but he has not evolved so drastically that he merits greatest of all time consideration.
First of all, during those first three championships Shaq was the best player on those teams, and the most obvious reason that Kobe’s numbers have improved qualitatively since Shaq’s departure is that he now plays in an offense designed for him to score a majority of the points. So that should raise a question. How is it that an all-time great’s team struggles more when he takes a lot of shots in an offense built to give him a lot of opportunities to shoot? In other words, a guy whose best ability is scoring hurts his team’s ability to win when he scores too much. Unlike other all-time greats, Kobe hasn’t shown an innate understanding of how to employ his greatest talent in a way that allows his team to be as high above .500 when he uses it most. We know that being an entertaining scorer doesn’t make you an all-time great and neither does being the best player on a championship team, but if we examine Kobe closely those are the things that he contributes.
Shaq must have hated Kobe. I know it’s glaringly obvious now but look at Shaq’s behavior in his 2nd season away from Kobe. Kobe obviously wanted to be top dog on his team, but I don’t think people noticed how willing Shaq was to give up that responsibility after he left. Shaq happily played 2nd fiddle to Dwayne Wade in their championship run, but some combination of vitriol, envy, and or pride kept him from doing the same with Kobe and drove Phil Jackson out of LA. If Kobe had the patience or the humility or the wisdom to do so, he might have begun winning championships sooner, but, if he had that, I probably wouldn’t find his status as an all-time great so questionable.
Traveling further down the Kobe sans Shaq path, I think Kobe hasn’t evolved beyond needing a Shaq, and it might be due to bad habits he picked up in his first season without him where he actually had to score 30+ in order to improve his teams chances of winning. In the summer that followed that season, we saw Kobe whining publicly about the lack of help LA management had provided him when he was the one that chased it away the previous season. I don’t know if an all-time great has to be able to figure things out with his coach and superstar player so they can continue winning, but I think it certainly reflects poorly on him considering plenty of all-time greats had rocky relationships with their teammates but were able to work amicably enough to keep the band together. Nevertheless management responds to Kobe’s demands and gets him Gasol, but a healthy Gasol isn’t enough to win him a championship. Kobe needs a healthy Gasol and a productive Bynum in order to win a championship. I’m not including all of the other players and Coach Jackson because those were roughly equivalent pieces that they had in place when Shaq was king of the Lakers. Let’s do some more rough math. Kobe with Shaq equals championships. Kobe without Shaq doesn’t get to the conference finals. Kobe with Gasol equals out in 6 with a blowout loss in their last game. Kobe with Gasol and Bynum equals championships.
These are rough generalizations, but you also have to add the fact that in the first and last scenarios where championships are won, Kobe displays just as much of a propensity to shoot his team out of contention as he does to shoot them into contention. This also relates to how predictable and static Kobe’s Lakers become in the final minutes of close games.
A contrast between Shaq’s Lakers and Kobe’s Lakers is that in close games Shaq’s Lakers had multiple options and attempted to run the offense in order to find the best possible shot late, and opposing team defenses had more variables to account for in the final minutes. Shaq’s Lakers were more likely to look for the right basketball play than simply defer to the most macho player on the court. Kobe’s Lakers are statistically worse near the ends of close games because the opposing team’s defense knows more often than not Kobe will take all of the shots in the final minutes in spite of the Lakers have multiple players, Odom, Artest, and Fisher, with the confidence to take those final shots. People are pleasantly surprised when they do it now, but Robert Horry who quietly shuffled out of the league recently used to be their most regular finisher because he had the confidence to step into a good shot when freed up by a well run offensive set. Instead you have Kobe doing his best to convince everybody that he’s much better than Shaq. I understand that Kobe on fire approaches unstoppable, but if Kobe is just Kobe, which is still really good, then he can’t be as effective as he is over the course of a whole game because, unlike in the final minutes, an entire team’s defense isn’t dedicated to stopping him.
In spite of his gifts and his talents, his proven ability to undermine himself in his own self-magnifying pursuit of glory keeps me from being able to consider him an all-great.
Sinister Simulation
This 22 year old architect from the Philippines “spent four years wallowing in equations and graph paper” and created a self-sustaining city named Magnasanti using the game Sim City. When I played Sim City, I found it frustrating at every turn and could never get to a point in the game where I really felt in control. If the budget wasn’t bleeding money, fires, monsters, or rioting citizens seemed intent on destroying my cities. I used to feel a bit impotent in my inability to respond properly to the demands of the game, but, after finding out that it took an aspiring architect just under four years to master the game, I don’t feel so inadequate.
His name, Vincent Ocasala, even sounds like the moniker of a fictional mastermind, and people who read about his feat, watch the youtube video, and read his interview seem to find him a bit terrifying but, to me, he more closely resembles the genius anti-hero archetype found in animes such as L from Death Note and LeLouch of Code Geass. I don’t know the effect that completing this game had on his mind because his philosophy seems a bit villainish, and he shows an unbridled affection for the game that he slaved over for years in order to successfully master. I don’t find him so immediately sinister because this interview seems like a smaller part of an unfinished story.
It’s possible that Sim City has its limitations and Vincent’s city exists as one of many possible solutions that the algorithms in the game allow for. If the creators designed the game deliberately so that only this type of city could maintain the highest population level without cheats, then I would identify them as the shadowy figures lurking behind the scenes in this existential tale.
What human being would think a city should have the ability to function indefinitely in this form:
“Technically, no one is leaving or coming into the city. Population growth is stagnant. Sims don’t need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block. Wherever they go it’s like going to the same place…
There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle – this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.”
“The city symmetry uses a modified version of the symbol [the Bhavacakra, the wheel of life and death in Buddhism] to represent the sinister intent of enslaving all of its citizens for all eternity.”
“…none of its citizens seem to live past the age of 50.
Health of the sims was not a priority, relative to the main objective. I could have enacted several health ordinances which would have increased the life expectancy, but I decided not to for practical reasons.”
If you make it all the way to the end of the interview, there’s a twist. If you’ve seen animes like Death Note or Code Geass, then you know that the anti-heroes, for the sake of righting wrongs on a global scale, must resort to using harsh, unsavory methods in order to act as catalysts for the type of revolution that their world desperately needs. Instead of viewing it as an illustration of right ideology, Vincent explains it instead as a cautionary tale:
“It shows that by only focusing on one objective, one may end up neglecting, or resorting to sacrificing, other important elements. Similarly, [in the real world] if we make maximizing profits as the absolute objective, we fail to take into consideration the social and environmental consequences.”
This serves as a prime example of video games as high art especially if the creator’s intended to do this, and it wasn’t simply a failure to produce an unbeatable game.
The love of money is “a” root of evil, but idolatry in any form can be detrimental to an individual or a society as a whole particulary when it involves the pursuit of things that we collectively consider worth pursuing. An unchecked pursuit of safety, comfort, or happiness can easily lead to the devaluation of the value of human life, possibly the life of the pursuer, possibly the life of a person who happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, or possibly the value of human life in the context of a society.
I think that I’m a bit idealistic; I don’t think there was ever a time in history when a society ever came close to a proper approximation of the value of human life. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” falls short especially when people start throwing around phrases like, “You have nothing to worry about if you’re innocent. I’m innocent and…” Take the case of Henry Skinner in Texas who sits on death row because his lawyer valued his time and his paycheck more than Henry’s life and the justice system values the perception of being just so much more than this man’s life that waiting a month for DNA testing could sully that glistening reputation http://www.slate.com/id/2256188 .
Also there’s the case of 3 guilty-until-proven-innocent detainees, who died in U.S. custody because of how highly we value national security and how alluring a cash reward for turning over people to the U.S. was for people in their home countries http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368 (further rant by me here https://immaletufinish.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/bad-intelligence/ )
As an economics major and a part-time philosopher, I know a little bit about the actual difficulty of calculating the value of human life, but that doesn’t give us license to be callous monsters.
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes"
I’ve been comment-starved since January. Let me know if you
The Philosopher Thief 
