Deranged Philosophical Outpourings

Friday, June 14, 2002

This game is called Rameses, and was written by Stephen Bond. (I have already noted to myself that Stephen Bond wrote something magnificent here, IMHO, so no need to point it out to me. Point it out to him if you wish.) If you're not already familiar with Interactive Fiction, it's not a prime example of the genre -- it's more of a novel that needs a little extra push. Reading this without playing it is going to make this sound even less focused, so please play it first if you're going to read the rest of this. (I'm fairly sure you can just type 'wait' at the prompts and still get through the whole game. You barely have to go anywhere in it; just pay attention to what happens. You can try 'talk to **name**', where you fill the name of someone in the room with you in for **name**, too.)

It would be an easy thing to say the game is about teenage angst and let it go, but the easy thing is not always the right thing. I think it reduces the game somehow, and that bothers me. It bothers me for plenty of reasons, but the foremost reason it bothers me is how closely this game mirrored my own angst, misplaced as it became.

I can't help but think, quietly, to myself -- perhaps nobody really grows out of that shit anyway. Perhaps, realistically, everyone has just found an easy way to not think about it. Some people do their level best not to think at all, in order to avoid it. Some pick a goal and dedicate themselves. Some apparently never had it to begin with, but I find that hard to believe, somehow.

It's too easy to call it teenage angst. It's something you see too often in the words of a killer or in the actions of a psychotic, this obsession and impatience, inaction and reaction. An inability to act at times combined with a disdain for normal actions at others.

If thinking in this fashion at a later stage of your life is called depression, what separates it from thinking this way at an earlier stage? Really, what is the difference? Is it something you're supposed to "grow out of", like wanting to fuck things ("Oh, they'll grow out of that,") or like wanting to steal things ("Oh, they'll grow out of that,")?

That statement, more than anything, pisses me off. Partly because it implies things that are distastefully hypocritical -- that somehow, by living twenty years, you're guaranteed to be more intelligent and more able and less given to base urges -- but partly because it is said with either a knowing, irritatingly condescending fashion, or else in the fashion of someone who desperately hopes it's true. Either way, it's an insult to the people involved.

Because, truly enough, there are plenty of people who don't grow out of jack shit. Get your head straight now, not later -- patterns of thought become harder to modify after they've had an extra twenty years or so, not less. If you're going to mangling someone's mental patterns, be truthful with yourself, and be as merciful as you can -- be fast, and be consistent.

The primary thing that bothers me about human beings is that -- along with everything else they are capable of -- they are capable of hypocrisy. Lies are one thing; lies are more of a directed action towards a goal. Hypocrisy is much, much worse; you're explaining what you believe in, and you yourself are an example of the opposite. If hypocrisy doesn't cause brain tumors, it should; such a schism between your actions and your thoughts should not go unpunished.

I am careful about my actions. I am careful about them because I'd like to live in a consistent manner; I'd like to say something, and have it jive with the whole rest of me. I feel that normally I manage this. Someone told me once that what they liked about me was that they never quite knew what I would think of a certain thing upon finding out about it. I wondered, to myself, if that makes me unpredictable.

Perhaps in the literal sense. Not in the sense it's used; in the sense it's used, it's applied to terrorists and CEOs, with varying degrees of "good"ness. In the literal sense, I am not wholly predictable. (That's true of everyone, though.) I'm really, really consistent, though. I'm really a very quiet, reserved person most of the time. I honestly don't think most people even notice me, if I'm not making a face or singing a Monty Python song out loud.

I've always been like that, though. I didn't grow out of something. If anything, my changes made sense when compared to what I was doing with my life to begin with. I still read a great deal (less than I'd like to), I try to learn new things all the time, I don't generally trust authority.

I haven't changed. I'm still me.

It's a relief, I tell you -- there were some doubts. I wondered if it was possible, really -- to become someone and preserve the person you became, despite time and people and money and change. To have a core that is you, and an adaptable interface, so to speak.

Tired. Thoughts derailing. More on this when it again seems appropriate.
posted by Gregory 1:52 AM