(no subject)

 "Will you come here and talk with me?" asked the adult of the child.
  "Talking with adults is boring, because they never want to talk about what I like." said the seven-year-old, who firmly believes he will be seven forever (and since in the minds of children that age anything longer than an hour is forever, he's at least partially correct).
  "So what do you like?"
  "Mostly video games."
  "What about talking to other children? Is that boring?"
  "No, they're interesting."
  "I see."

  The reason why talking to adults is boring, my child, is because the inverse can be doubly true! For children to be interesting to adults, their little heads must be filled with at least enough information that they can ask interesting questions, uncover interesting facts, or make interesting observations. For instance earlier today when you told me that scorpions belong to the arachnid family--a fact I certainly didn't know and still am not sure of. Thank goodness for the Internet!

Earlier today I was talking with my mother, who is twice my age and must have done something correctly because I don't find her boring (just sometimes frustrating). We were discussing cities, and she was trying to understand why some people who live in larger cities, when they take their frequent holidays to escape the clutches of the conglomerate's magnetic pull, only seem able to talk about moving away from where they have chosen to live (often at great cost).

  This was like an echo in my head, and I remembered my own brush with city life which I found distasteful. Thankfully the ambrosial sweetness of living in a small, elevated concrete box turned bitter for me sooner than most, and I escaped after only having lost a few years of existence to such ridiculousness.

  Why then, my mother asked, are city-dwellers so entranced by country life? My assumption is that it seems "more real" by rose-coloured comparison. The quiet dignity of country life says to them "You may not choose to live as we do but you can learn from our strengths, since our communities allow yours to exist and function."

  An entrancement with city life is far more than just a youthful attraction to bright lights. Everyone can see the flow of society's energies from the country to the city, the confluence of transport and communications linkages forming a bright, bustling hub of activity. In a very real sense, the city is a reactor for society; the fuel is accumulated and distributed to the outlying suburban fat cells, so the central business district heart can pulse with life. People wishing to contribute to something far larger than themselves accumulate like blood cells, the energies they expend in their daily lives driving the force of civilisation ever onwards.

  There is a more shallow attraction which we covered and that was the retailing aspect. I expect consumer fascination is driven essentially by the satisfaction of ownership, and a desire for repetition. "I want that robe, that bauble, that person." Take what you want, and pay for it. Use it until you tire of it or its lustre wears, then repeat the experience of acquisition. An object-driven perspective, where an individual is the sum of their acquisitions.

  While I tread my different path, admiring and deploring what I see.

  Which I suppose is just as much of a personality flaw. The self-possessed don't give of themselves easily. Fearing love and affection, because of the underlying transactional nature of such emotional exchange. "See how I possess myself? Unless you follow my ways you will never have that."

  The victory of the acquisitive mindset is by no means assured, but the self-possessed are in danger of keeping so much bottled up by their strange, old ways, that when it does release there is this overwhelming wash, everything given in an irresistible tide.

  There is no easy compromise, because such compromise would weaken. Some problems cannot find their solutions that way. There are decisions which must be made no matter how bitter the outcome of the choices. Which is why we're in the countryside, talking about why people living in the city must be talking about being elsewhere too.

The Digital Crack Pipe of MMEHs (Massively Multiplayer Eternal Hell)

So I've got to thinking I need to put some thoughts down about why Star Trek: Online is bad, when it's sooo good.
It's like crack. Before I got into ST:O, I often described MMOs as a "digital crack pipe", and only marginally healthier than an actual one. Now I've been through the addition grinder of the game, I stand by that description.
Why is it so bad when it's Free To Play, you may ask? Especially since ST:O going F2P was what got me playing in earnest.
Well, it's because Cryptic/Perfect World KNOW they are essentially digital crack-dealers.
If you've never bought crack from a dealer before, and you try, they're going to want you to give them twenty bucks before they give you a rock of crack in tinfoil and the rest is up to you.
Just like Perfect World wants your email address, name, age, and other details (these things are worth real, actual cash to them and their advertising affiliates) before they will give you access to their digital crack pipe.
After you've bought crack that first time, knowing the powerful addictive properties of the drug, they can let you have more crack in twenty-dollar dosages on credit. "Come on man, I really NEED it, I'll pay you tomorrow."
They know you'll want more by then, so the hook of the addiction is what ensures your custom. Today, they will spot you some crack, tomorrow, knowing you'll be back, you'll owe them twenty bucks. Then the day after that, and so on.
In Cryptic/Perfect World's Star Trek: Online conception of the digital crack pipe, you have to ask them "Come on, I really NEED to refine dilithium!" and they will let you refine twenty starbucks worth of pink crack-rock every day, KNOWING that the likelihood of your eventually spending real, actual cash to speed that process grows with every click of the "Refine Crack" button.
Back to the world of crack addiction, let's say you have $200.00 of real, actual cash. "Can I buy this much crack?"
Of course you can!
Just like in F2P MMEHs (Massively Multiplayer Eternal Hell)! If you want to spend your money on digital crack, you can buy as much as you want!
You'd be an idiot to do so, and indeed I once heard a gem of wisdom from someone on The Daily Show being interviewed by Jon Stewart who'd written a book which broached the subject; "Crack is an idiotic activity."
In both the physical and digital worlds, idiocy is characterised by possession of the soul by the unlimited desires of the id. An idiot unfailingly repeats pleasurable activities to their own detriment as an organism, especially if the activity itself degrades the ability to recognise such diminishing returns of pleasure evidenced by repetition. Things which do this have "addictive properties" and it shows wisdom over idiocy to get off, and stay off both the physical and digital crack pipe.
Unless your ego can avoid the dissolution of addiction, subjugate the desires of the id, because you really, really enjoy crack? Powerful argument, from the heart, but it doesn't matter. Eventually, everyone reaches a point where realisation sets in--that no matter who you are, this sort of solipsism doesn't work forever. Either you put the crack pipe down and stop, or you die taking crack or from poor health caused by taking too much crack while life has passed you by too quickly for you to realise you're missing out on what else is happening.

Good grief

Yet another reason why the iOS LJ app is a piece of dung: it doesn't understand CR/LF characters, and destroys other formatting as well! FFS LiveJournal, it's shit like this which forces people over to Google+/Facebook blogging services DESPITE the overexposure and advertising of the social networks.

Setting course from East of Eden, from Utopia, to a cornucopia of realities.

  For an plethora of pertinent reasons made apparent to everyone on a daily basis, I've decided that this planet largely deserves to be the forsaken place it is. Unfortunately, the pressure of these realisations has worn in over time, causing me to erroneously conclude that everything in my life is very, very sad. Since I can't reproduce my selfish genes, the desire to make some form of lasting impact on this place is magnified, and even if I could, I would like everyone else, remain enormously subject to the same desire. Wishing to be remembered forever, but understanding you'll eventually be forgotten, is a bitter pill for all to swallow. Shelley said it best in Ozymandias, king of kings! "Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair!" The meaning that even the most powerful ancients have their astoundingly deep and broad achievements lost amidst the sands of time. Against the backdrop of our vastly scaled and aged universe, the sum total of all human endeavour amounts currently closer to nothing at all than anything substantial. An existential pointlessness Shelley or Satre could well have appreciated.

  Fortunately even if you're not into etching your words deep in stone or sculpting your likeness into rocks, limits come in to help. We all need help describing the form our legacies will assume, because it is only by the goodwill of others they will take any lasting shape we might recognise. For a legacy to exist as long as possible while issuing the sort of impact you intended is difficult and requires an integrity of vision so fundamental to serving its purpose it is easily understood by everyone. So if you're going to attempt this, extreme care must be taken to ensure your legacy stands as being completely intentional, rather than the inverse (let's take most religious cult splinter groups, cults of personality, and fascist governments as examples of movements which were derailed from their intent to better our world). All petty despots, autocrats, and dictators really desired remembrance as great leaders--yet because their visions of their legacies lacked integrity or focus; by and large these people are remembered as evil monsters.

  When you're setting about the game of empire-building things get out of control and devolve quickly, unless you keep beneficence clear in mind during the execution of ambitious plans. Empire-builders throughout history have ambitiously stacked rocks on top of one another in their efforts to reach ever greater heights of achievement. Inevitably bureaucrats throughout history have followed, taking those same rocks down again in almost equal measure. Without getting too far into the motivations for destroying the achievements of others (because these are both good and bad), it's far past time for the emergence of progressive new ideas concerning how and what we bequeath unto the future.

  In trying to uncover a way to surpass these limitations, a deep desire has originated in me, something which because of my sadness, will never go away. I want this planet ripped apart. torn asunder, continental shelves flung from her heaving mantle. Not in an apocalyptic cataclysm, but a great and glorious upheaval of intelligence beginning the obvious next phase of human evolution. I finally have an answer to Larry Niven's question of "If aliens arrive offering us entry into the galactic amalgam of star-faring cultures, what are we going to say when a teenage mother throws her baby in a dumpster?" When grown men swing axes to slice off the arms of boys who refuse to bear arms for evil or no cause? We're going to unapologetically laugh then say; "By comparison to our ancestors, we're tame. They were capable of and did things so evil they defy description." Barbarism is barely a sufficient word to encompass the ancient cultural practices which produced our modern world.

  Yet still, we identify greatly with our ancestors because they were perhaps even more human than we are capable of being. Now we are largely detached from both our past and present evils. Anyone living in modern society only has to watch films like "Baraka" to see how far we've drifted. From our original war-torn communities which suffered so much strife, disease and grief, the backlash sometimes causes their descendant societies to fall into a kind of eternally pacifist, subsistence existence of penance. This monkish trance produces so much happiness for individuals they can bliss out in ignorance--of the fact they are descendants of those vicious enough to destroy any competition so thoroughly, their ancestors were finally able to cease the perennial madness of killing thy neighbour to meditate on what they'd been doing. Afterwards, they disliked what they'd been up to as much as we dislike hearing about it historically, so those able to carry on raised their children to behave better than them. We are those children, and we all owe our present and departed ancestors the honour of raising children who behave far better than we do now.

  In view of our past, for my vision for the future, I choose to meditate upon ways the world can change for the betterment of a future so far-flung few people can imagine how the human condition will be realised rather than suffered. I want this planet to become a world where nobody has to lose their sense of humour or childlike nature. Where our technologies constantly reshape our world into such a wonderful, amazing place, which everyone can enjoy in such variety, reality will truly be what we make of it.