These Strange Stars: April 2015

Not that anyone actually reads this blog, but you may have noticed I removed Edward Feser from the blogroll. Not that anyone cares about blogrolls anymore either. Anyway, I enjoy his anti-materialist philosophy, even though it comes from a conservative catholic place. That is, until I started reading some of his "arguments" against homosexuality. To wit, he thinks what I do and who I love is an abomination and I'm not impressed with his arguments for why he thinks that. It boils down to naturalism and anything not "penis in vagina" being some kind of moral sexual sin, which is ridiculous. Our entire civilization is built on using our appendages to do "unnatural" things. From building airplanes so we can fly to using the mouth to give blow jobs, which don't, in and of themselves, seem to be cratering civilization as we know it. I just don't buy that sex has some special need to be "natural", I don't buy that "penis in vagina" is the only "natural" sexuality given the high degree of homosexuality in nature, I don't buy that sex catholics are uncomfortable with is the same thing as sex that is destructive to society. "I'm personally uncomfortable with it, therefore society is ruined." is a terrible argument, with few, if any, justifications.

And as much I like to see materialism taken down a peg from time to time (I support materialism as far as it goes and no farther), I can't continue to advertise for yet another christian looking for reasons to be uncomfortable with the gay, especially one using the same tired, old arguments. Who I love isn't wrong, it's just not what he prefers. I wish people like him could tell the difference between those two things. If your philosophy is flatly contradicted by the lived experience of people you are lecturing to, maybe it's time to re-examine your philosophy. Just saying.

*editting to add:*

Honestly, it was the comments that sealed the deal. The fact that he tolerates such a toxic "christian" community in his comments was reason enough to stop reading.

I game, a lot (TOO MUCH), but I don't like identifying as a gamer. I know there are other gamers like me, who are a little older and enjoy the hobby but are equally embarrassed to claim the hobby because of all the, sadly quite rightful, negative associations with it. Which is to say, the general culture of gaming is incredibly juvenile and selfish and immature and any adult worth his salt is probably going to want to seek identity beyond a simple "player of games." I run a large, LGBT-friendly guild in FF14, which I got riddicked into leading but maintain because I like having a safe haven for LGBT people to go where they can play without having to tolerate juvenile homophobia. Even there though, I run into a lot of situations where being asking to be the tiniest bit considerate of other people is considered a grave affront in this modern, sophisticated consumer culture, where no tastes should not be indulged and no thoughts left unfiltered, apparently. The ~~customer~~ gamer is always right after all.

Most of my adult friends, who I know all play games, all seem to do so in privacy and treat it like a guilty pleasure away from their wives and lives and I don't really blame them, although I wish we could still talk about it occasionally without the embarrassment. And yet I'm conflicted too. It's fine to play games, but I've come to find I need a broader, more interesting and challenging set of activities to absorb myself in as I get older. Children are players of games and they are better at it than I am, (in that they enjoy and embrace them without complication) and I do, contrary to appearances, aspire to master more as an adult than I did as a child. My job is very adult, sure, but it increasingly seems like I owe it to myself to challenge myself more in my hobbies to learn new and complicated things that are worth sharing with other people. Gaming is fun, and I enjoy playing with friends, but it's hard to share with other people, you know? Try sharing your level 70 character with another gamer or non-gamer and watch their eyes glaze over. It's like sharing a dream you had once. Or the details of your masturbation sessions. No one cares how you make the little man jump or how many times you stroked it 'til you came.

I tend to see our collective and comforting wallow in nostalgia and gaming in particular as a sign of massive arrested development across western culture. I could be wrong, I'm not saying yes definitely that is what that has to be, but it is my impression. An entire generation of men (and women) collectively refusing to embrace the mantle of "adult" with some post-modern sophistry dancing around the idea that "adult" can mean anything, so why can't it mean eternally a teenager in thought and deed, and who says our parent's generation really grew up anyway? Look at how they're ruinning the world and how childish THEY are.

Yes. Exactly. Look how they're ruinning the world. And where is our generation while christian leaders tell their flock that christian charity should not extend to homosexuals and secular leaders crucify their own in pointless purity crusades (Do you now or have you ever felt uncomfortable with homosexuality? If so, you are history's worst monster). And so what if people are older than you act childish? If you're mature enough to understand that certain behaviors are childish and unhelpful, you're mature enough to understand you choose your own behavior regardless of what other people are doing.

The world needs our generation to put down the controller and pick up a book. Despite our triumphant moralizing on twitter, a lifetime of gameplay and consumerism does not in fact prepare one to challenge adult leadership on a practical or philosophical level. It's not enough to know something's wrong, you have to know why it's wrong, which principle it violates, why that principle is important, where you get that principle from, why one principle is better than another, how to convince someone who holds different principles than you that yours might be better, how to honestly listen to someone when they try to convince you that their principles are actually better than yours, how to be humble, how to be kind to those you really dislike, how to serve others without losing your purpose or dignity or rights, how to be, in essence, actually GOOD are not qualities you learn from a-b, jump, jump, right-trigger. Or from buying the thing that promises to end your eternal search for something you have as yet been unable to define, but you keep shelling out money for regardless. Challenging power will require us to do more studying, and less consuming, at the very least.

The one of the many great tragedies of adulthood is the number of people that leave college prepared to fall into a job that doesn't challenge them by day, and hobbies that don't challenge them by night, like the learning was over the moment they graduated. The bizarre disconnect of education in a consumerist culture is college is theoretically teaching us to learn how to learn with the idea that we keep learning after we leave college. We are supposed to learn more languages, more about humanity, more about religion and humanism and philosophy and what makes us human and how to get along and all that stuff. Some of us are lucky enough to get this on our job, the rest of us are working jobs we don't like or learn much at to pay for the netflix binging and gaming and therapeutic consuming in the evening, all the while bitching about how awful the adults are making everything. I'm not saying we're 100% wasting our lives away, but I am concerned that we are, as Postman put it, amusing ourselves to death. Or perhaps gaming while the world burns.

When I see news articles about educators or parents calling cops on a child throwing a tantrum it boggles my mind, like they need an adult to handle a child and consider police the grown-ups, somehow not realizing that there are already adults on scene who should be prepared to handle the situation. Or adults willing to hand over their preferences to algorithms who choose things for them, or adults eating up the spiritually and philosophically dead and divisive garbage their leaders spew out to keep the culture war churning and frothing enough so that nothing ever changes without ever even questioning it. I mean, I don't know if you've noticed but this government has effectively ceased to function (in that it takes them years to agree on a yearly budget and both parties [and I'm sorry, but especially republicans] seem committed to throwing their sabos in the gears when the other party does something so illegitimate and reckless as win an election). When you don't challenge the opinions and ideas of your leadership you are essentially letting them infantilize you, or keep you like cats. Adults challenge bad ideas. Adults ask for and give accountability. Adults train themselves to recognize factual and philosophical inconsistencies between what their leaders say and do. Adults remove other adults from power when they cannot meet these basic standards.

It is my increasing conviction that adulthood actually requires something of us beyond self-gratification and masturbatory self-congratulation having finished gratifying ourselves*.

And I know that as I say all this, that it's pointless to say all this, that you and I are going to keep gaming, and keep shotgunning netflix and hope some adult out there stands up and champions some good ideas against the absolute onslaught of dehumanizing and dangerous ideological sludge currently threatening to drown us all. Far better, I know, for me to actually live by example and encourage people to join me. I'm not there yet. But I think it's important to actually say out loud, at least every now and then, that we are the adults we've been waiting for, and nothing gets better until we finally grow up.

So why am I yelling at you? I'm not, I'm yelling at me. But perhaps you disagree. Fine. I'll try and make my case better another time. There are a couple of assertions and straw men that could probably be cleaned up. I think I've been mostly writing this more as a message to me than a message to you, which is not an uncommon occurrence in my life. But I think adulthood requires more of me than I've been giving it. I think that is an idea that will require action on my part**. I suspect I might not be the only one.

*If we ever want anything to get better.
** If I ever want anything to get better.

These Strange Stars

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Fessing up

Monday, April 13, 2015

Bootstaps - A Rant About Gaming

Tuesday, April 07, 2015

Breaking Rebel Hearts