Birthdays Are For More Than Just Introspection

Apparently birthdays are also for swearing in your father's face and leaving before the family gathering can take place. Go me.

Thought of the Day: Birthdays are made for introspection

As of today I am 28. I suppose I'm two years early for the typical "what have I done with my life" questions, but then I started shaving my head when I was twelve to get used to being bald. I'm a forward thinker so thats the question on my mind today.

What have I done with my life?

The answer is not much. Mostly keep myself alive, entertained, and with enough money coming in to support both. Is this enough? Not really. Not unless I don't think about it. I want to get back to school, I want to really study philosophy, and most of all I really want to be a scholar, but the barrier to entry is time, money, and an understanding of how to do it. The last one there is the hard one. Knowing nothing about scholarships and schools, I find myself paralyzed by indecision. Without a clear path to go forward, I idle on the path I know.

I need a life machete, I need to get myself moving on this. It is officially my goal to be back in school and learning by the time I hit 30. I figure two years is a sufficient time to get the ball rolling. Of course it's also a sufficient time to give up and fail so I suppose there's a danger as well.

My greatest failing is my inability to rouse myself to action when I'm not helping someone other than myself. I find accomplishing anything that directly benefits me and only me, is an uphill battle of titanic per portions. WHY? What makes my own wellbeing so worth skipping over? I want good things for myself but I don't get to have them, or they aren't worth striving for. The only reason I'm pushing myself to go back to school is for my old professor. She wants it for me, and I want to make it happen for her, but if that push wasn't there I wouldn't even consider the effort.

Sloth is my name.

I want to fight this part of me. I want to be accomplished. I WANT GOOD THINGS FOR MYSELF. To that end I'm going to write once a day this week. Sunday to Sunday. No matter how small or frivolous. I often worry to much about what I have to say, but once I sit down the words pour out. I can do this. It comes easily to me, but only once I start.The week begins now.

I am 28 today.

So I Just Watched Idiocracy

Dear God I've got to get myself back to college. I need to save the future from myself! Not much of a post beyond that sorry to say. I'm looking into scholarships and intend to get my masters. If anyone knows anything about such things, specifically a school that focuses on the classics and first order questions, I would love to hear about it.

On Religious Leanings

Today at work I used a popular colloquialism "Mission Accomplished", where in this case nothing is accomplished other then more failure. This is of course in reference to Bush's famous speech, what is now, early on in the Iraq war. He landed on an aircraft carrier, and proudly proclaimed the Iraq War over, with a giant banner, emblazoned with the now famous words and the phrase that started a debate, the nature of which might have been hostile, I'm still not quite certain.

After the words were out of my mouth, not intended in any way as an attack toward anyone, the individual who is essentially my boss began a heated explanation of how that whole event was misconstrued by the media and how very few sources reported on the fact that the banner was completely unrelated to President Bush's speech. I knew I was now working among more religiously observant people then I had in the past, but I didn't know their predominant political leanings until today.

Shortly after this things made a hard turn into evolution with my boss taking the tact that it's consistently been proven wrong and refuted by scientists, and saying so in language heavily steeped in creationism. The discussion was happening at such a clip I couldn't get my bearings enough to ask him where these declarations were originating from. I'll admit, I'm pretty bad at debate, my mind is often fleeting, drifting away from what I want to say leaving my mouth flapping and my hands waving. Even still I feel I brought my views to the table, that evolution is a hypothesis, not a theory as many people have claimed, that the supposedly omnipotent and omnipresent nature of God allows for any number of creation theories to be true simultaneously.

Past that we swung into personal belief, and I still can't tell if my boss was outright offended at my view that everyone is entitled to their own faith, and that mine allows for everything to be true, no matter how contradictory. Of course he might just have been put off by my insistence in believing in Deism, or the idea that God or some form of creator figure fashioned the cosmos, but then didn't stick around or grant wishes. He kept pressing the idea that if you don't have God backing up his law, that if you don't have the threat of the afterlife to keep you in line, then what you have is worthless, that you'd have no moral compass to prevent you from just doing whatever the hell. I know this to be false because my parents instilled in me a sense of right and wrong. I have my own guilt, the moors of society, and the opinions of those around me to keep me from saying 'fuck all' and (insert heinous crime here). I just reread this paragraph and I feel the need to emphasise just how much guilt I have. Jewish mother guilt. That's how much.

Still in spite of my assurances he seemed ill placated and we eventually lapsed into silence. Others around the office seemed uncomfortable at the debate, it's not exactly par for the course, and people came to bat for me and for my boss at varying times, though so intense was our conversation that they didn't stick around for long. I finished the day with the distinct impression that I had left him both mad and smug due to the nature of my own faith, as well my failure to stand up to his arguments against evolution.

I will admit that the whole affair left me feeling very uncomfortable. This is the first time that I've worked a job where godless heathens weren't at the rudder and I suppose I'm feeling a little out numbered. The insistent, rehearsed and single minded nature of my boss's argument isn't helping. Two of the few things that really disturb me are fanaticism and the concept of absolutes. During the discussion today I very much got the impression that my boss wasn't interested in my end of the argument. In fact the only reason it wasn't a straight lecture, was because he needed ideas and statements to cut off and pound to dust before they had fully formed.

Suddenly my perfect new job is feeling a lot less perfect...

What am I worth: Part 2

I'm still stuck in a bit of an existential doldrum so I find the need for further review of the earlier post. The big question I'm faced with is, if I'm in capable of follow through, if I'm good for nothing other than salted ideas, if nothing I think up will ever see fruition, then should I spend any time thinking them up at all?

Let's be honest, the ideas I come up with are exciting. They're marketable with some extra spin, engaging with some actual development, and strong because as I learned in the biz you steal the best bits from everyone else and then mash them together. I genuinely want to play, read and watch the concepts I come up with, but when the end of the day arrives, I can't be bothered to exert myself enough to make any of them. I've built a life around myself that encourages and rewards apathy. I get up. I go to work. I eat a lunch. I think about all the awesome ideas I have while I work more. I drive home thinking about those ideas. I get home. I ready myself in front of the computer. And then fail to do any of the things I want to and instead I play games, or read a book, or more likely, surf for porn.

I am a parasite!

I feed off the hard work and passion of others!

I live vicariously in the mists of my own head, accomplishing little, and holding myself up to almost no standard!

Sometimes on a good day, like today, I'll write, but not about any of the things I want to. I don't assemble any of the epics that have gnawed at me from within for decades. No, I just jot down mind vomit, which frankly is little better then the masturbation I usually engage in. Even as I do it I'm chastising myself for not writing in the voice of Tom (what little he has) as he tries to salvage the shambles of his life without losing it in the process, or record the discoveries ofReconnoiter as she runs through seas of green grass under an achingly cerulean sky. These visions I have are as strong as anything I see, but I lack something fundamental necessary in making that next step from day dreamer to dream maker.

Is it drive? Maybe. I've always been a fire once and forget it type of game developer. I never want to go back an examine the things I've created because, and this is a sneaking suspicion I have about myself, I don't think I actually know what I'm doing. Whenever it did come time in the dev cycle to make improvements I would always look at what I had put together... And that's pretty much it. I would push some things around, shift them from left to right, but I never really felt it was any greater or lesser improvement on what had already been done. More polished maybe, but what was already there, was it fun? I couldn't ever tell. I don't know what fun is, and that is the heart of game design, the ability to convey an engaging experience. Nothing of what was in the actual game was fun for me. What was fun was the blue sky, highly abstract, early design process. That part I'm REALLY good at. That part I REALLY enjoy. The heady feeling of assembling a game one fundamental piece by piece and then playing those off one another in concept alone was euphoric. The actual slog of building out each of those things was in it's own way, torture for me, especially when it became clear that I lacked the ability to guide both myself and the team around me toward the fruition of my dream. That was anguish.

Of course now that I look at it under this light I'm beginning to understand that I don't really play games for the game. Often times not even the story. I play them for the concept, their most base potentia. When I first hear about a title it exists as little more then a brief description, high concept only, ready to be fleshes out by a broad range of what-ifs and wouldn't-it-be-cools. The next step is getting my hands on it and seeing if it lived up to the pillar I've built, and you better believe I know from pillar building. Often times it doesn't. Oh well it happens, but all of that is secondary to the fact that I engage my media in the same way I produce my own ideas: for the concept's sake alone.

Bringing it back around to the beginning, with this knowledge exposed, should I be coming up with ideas? Should I be wasting my time putting sperm to egg if it will simply sit in the womb, never to be born? Is there some way I could use this talent for ideas to benefit myself and the world as something more then mental wank material? Considering I just came up with an idea for an action/stealth title featuring a character with the ability to alter his personal gravity as a movement mechanic, I don't know. Maybe not.

Thought of the Day: Why Go Alone?

I have many thoughts on the nature of my life and experiences, but I often feel I lack the frame work or credibility to voice them. Because an experience or idea is something personal, and not necessarily shared I often feel that mine lack the validity to be voiced as truth. Of course if I go back to my second post I've already acknowledged that doubt as silly. Truth, no matter where or when it is experienced is still truth. My truth is no less strong for the fact that it is only mine.

Still the desire for validity remains and I find myself thinking, why reinvent the wheel? I've done it before, with the most notable being the discovery of Jung's archetypes about five years before discovering Jung. This time I don't feel like turning off the road into the tall grass. This time I'm going to read a little. Let's see where Philosophy for Dummies can get me. Also Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht, Practical Kabbalah by Rabbi Laibl Wolf, The Kabbalistic Tradition edited by Alan Unterman, and the Cryptonimicon by Niel Stephenson. The last is due to using up my current vein of escapist mindrot.

Hopefully these will help give me some basis to start from, though where to start in that pile is the question...

What am I worth? Where am I going?

Periodically I'll find myself, not so much at a cross roads, but rather on open asphalt that stretches to the horizon in every direction. In short, I've lost my way. Growing up I knew what I wanted out of life. Since I was twelve years old I had my occupation selected, my future predestined. But now, five plus months after losing my job to a layoff, that was actually a very polite firing, I've had to ask some hard questions about myself, my abilities, about who I am. Who am I? I'm not a game designer, I know that so let's start there.

I wanted to be a game designer since I was twelve. I sat down with a friend and he was excited to show me Doom for the first time. It was amazing, possessing a depth that escaped everything I'd ever seen on a console. I was in love. Then we quit out of the game and a bunch of names appeared on the screen.

"Who are they?" I asked.

"Probably the people who made the game." came the response.

The realization was immediate and expanding. You could make games. Build them, create them, fashion them from the raw stuff of your dreams. They didn't just spring from whole cloth into the store, and if people were making them somewhere, that meant there was a job associated with it. I could get that job.

Fast forward to my mental breakdown six months ago. I had been assigned a project and the stress had become so much that I simply shut down. I didn't know what to do to avoid the looming disaster so I did nothing. I would arrive at work, I would push my mouse around on the desk, I would type at my keyboard, but honestly I was not there, or the parts of me that were were screaming at me to get out, to run, to hide, anything other then remaining where I was. I wanted my problems to go away. I wished them away.

Then the genie that was my boss granted my wish. With no lead in, no build up and certainly no indication of concern or offer of help for my situation, I was told that I was being let go. That the project was in such straights that he didn't know if it was salvageable, and that it was his, my boss's, supreme regret that he had been forced to move me up into management before I was ready. That they had lost two projects recently and had no where to bump me over to where I could receive more training. In the end it didn't matter. The lamp had been rubbed, the wishes made, and much like the proper djinn of old, I wasn't terribly happy with how my wishes had turned out.

All of that is half a year behind me now. I'm not sure I still blame my old boss for putting me into the position I was in. In truth I put myself into it for being too willing to please, to eager to advance when I knew I was never meant for leadership. But even beyond that, beyond the recriminations and blame was the subtle sense that I simply didn't do my job. Not well, and at the end, not at all. And then came the questions. What if. What if. What if. What if. What if. Plenty of alternate scenarios, a parade of possibilities, in all of which I show more backbone, grit and determination then I have ever had in my life. It was and still can be a debilitating marry-go-round of depression and self doubt.

That lasted the majority of my unemployment and of course by using that word 'majority' it implies that I'm no longer in such a state of joblessness. That is true. I'm employed again, NOW. At a fine and somewhat morbid position in the happily-ever-after business. Graves that is. Headstones to be specific. The job is a relaxing, undemanding, stressless cruise where I do exactly what I'm good at for eight hours a day, and then I go home. No late nights, no weekends, and no sleeping at the job site, as if that ever did anyone ANY good. I do my job, I do it well, and then I get paid. Not as much as I was in the game-biz mind you, but then, the nature of the job and it's benefits to my mental well being almost negate that loss. But even in this blissful state I find myself asking still asking those questions.

When I described the job to friends, trying to capture how wonderful it is, I find myself using the following, 'For the first time in seven years I don't feel like I'm lying to everyone about how I know what I'm doing.' The truth is, when I was making games, I was flying blind. I could come up with good and fun ideas, but implementing them, especially in a way that was of any quality, was beyond me. I had no idea how to manage that portion of the project, let alone encourage anyone else to do the same. I was lying, to myself, others, everyone.

That realization has forced me to question many things about myself. If I was lying about my abilities as a game designer, what else? What have I honestly created? My writing? My drawing? My aspirations in comic books? IN ANYTHING? I've accomplished so little. Built so little of my life. I'm filled with visions, fantastic vistas play on the back of my eyelids. I yearn to let others experience the same wonder that I feel, but for the limitations of my body, my personality, my soul, I am incapable of completing anything I set myself to. My projects languish like old soviet building, half assembled and left to rot in a radioactive entropy. I'm the saddest form of creator. The idea man. Always with one on the tongue, but with no way to see it to fruition.

What am I worth? At the moment I'm worth morbid clip art that people decay under, or about fifteen fifty an hour. Where am I going? Now that's a more interesting question but not one I have an answer to at the moment.

Ignoring the rest of the article, I find myself asking, 'What do I want.' I find the response as weary as ever, 'Recognition'.

Maybe I'll explore that next time.

The Mythological Truth

When I was in college one of my classes presented me with what I found to be an amazing concept. What is Myth? Mythology? A quick trip over to urbandictionary.com tells us that it's "A story about mystical beings, powers or events otherwise impossible to perform in reality that only exist in imagination." That's good enough for my purposes. Point is most people believe that the word Myth automatically equates to fairy tales and fantasy, but actually it doesn't. The real definition (according to the American Heritage Dictionary) is as follows "A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth." There's a particular part of that statement that I'm going to point to, specifically "...serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world..."

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't see where I'm going with this immediately, which is OK. This is a back-ass-wards concept I'm throwing out here I admit. It's one of the weirder ideas I've mulled over, but what that second definition is saying is Myth isn't fantasy, it's HISTORY. Sure it's not necessarily history written on pure fact or science, but who's history ever is? The books are written by victors, apologists, separatists, patriots, etc. They're written by human beings. The Holocaust was a terrible event but in some countries it simply never happened! That's how mailable events can be from place to place. In one country, six million people never died. Perspective truth is a powerful thing. So if truth is subjective based on the place, it's certainly subjective based on time. It's interesting how the further we accelerate away from the origin point of an event it can simultaneously become muddier and clearer. Rumor, exaggeration and the human foible of forgetfulness obscures the truth, even as modern explorations into the past reveal it anew and with greater clarity then ever. As a result we ('we' being everyone who is 'not currently engaged in the pursuit of history') accept our view of history as 'truth'. What other choice do individuals have? Sane choice mind you. We live our lives as best we can and generally cannot be bothered to investigate the past with vigor. Instead we simply have to accept the 'truth' as it comes to us.

With that much in mind our history is as correct as we're willing to accept it has to be, so long as it something doesn't come to light that severely alters our world view. In short, we believe the past to be true. Great, how wonderful for us. We are the pinnacle of thought. Forward and onward into the great future we have secured for ourselves! BUT. Yes, BUT WHAT IF, say, we transposed our selves a thousand years or two back. The specific time doesn't matter, but for the sake of having everyone on the same page we'll say ancient Greece. What were their beliefs at the time? I'm not going to look them up so if I might get something wrong, but honestly my argument doesn't need me to be right to make my point. So once again, what did they believe. Olympus? The Titans? Zeus and his brothers judo chopping their way out of Cronus' stomach? Totally bad ass! All of these things were hot items. I'm sure, they were as real as the abacus, and the senate, and brothels. But the joke is on them! HA HA! Only a retard would believe in an angry mountain god that juggled lightning and assumed the shape of a bull or goose to turn women on (Another truth: Lowered standards of appearance back then, kinda feeling like I missed out).

So, we have our indomitable truth. It is real in ways that no civilization has ever manifested in the history (our history) of man! We are as real as it gets yo. Oh but what's this uncomfortable feeling. Could it be doubt? No more then one hundred years ago. Blacks, homosexuals, women, Arabs (they were all Arabs back then) the Chinese (they were all Chinese back then) and frankly everyone on the planet who wasn't white, male, and of European stock (and even some who were) were all second, third, and sometimes not even eighth class citizens. SHOCK, OUTRAGE, POLITICALLY CORRECT STATEMENTS AND HAND WAVING. Well I'm sorry it was the TRUTH. Larger then life at the time. The white man- Wait no, the CHRISTIAN MALE was the most potent entity on the planet. Universally manifesting the will of a benevolent/wrath-actioned deity. He could do no wrong and everyone else that didn't have enough money or army to say otherwise better damn well step back! Wow. Now that's a lot hotter then some goose. Seriously.

But was it true? By today's standards? No. By today's standards he was a brutish, racially-centric oaf that couldn't see past his own inflated self image. By today's standards he was wrong, his truth was false. Well, he might have been depending on who you talk to, but beyond that there have been a ton of other truths that have changed in the last hundred years. The fracturous state nations of Europe have become a single high functioning union, we split the atom, made up string theory, then tried to justify it, etc. Our knowledge of medicine, the human body, the sciences, concepts of tolerance/acceptance, we have grown and changed as a people, as a species. But the truths we're sitting on today are as transient and unsound as the truths the Greeks clung to, which gets us to the meat of my argument.

In one hundred years we won't recognize our world. The advances we've seen in the last hundred years alone have easily outpaced the grandest achievements of the last thousand. I don't see why that would slow down. Knowledge begets knowledge. Growth and change are cumulative. So in one hundred, two hundred, five hundred years surely we'll see our understanding of the universe around us stood on it's head (at least on it's side), made to weep as it's arms are folded behind itself and it's forced to the ground. With it's head bagged and it's hand's cuffed, our present day will be taken to a facility in another country and tortured for truths that we simply don't have the technology to employ in the present day and age. Advanced water boarding for archaeologists my friend. They will simultaneously know more about ourselves then we ever did, and be baffled by the simplest of things we understand intimately (remember more and less obscure?), and when the day ends it will be their truth, and it will overwrite ours.

Again, thanks to the nature of time and history our truth is transient. Something that will be unmade and remolded by those who come after us, just as we have remolded the truth of the Greeks. Our truth will be proved false eventually, but does that make our truth, as we perceive it now, right now, does that make it wrong?

I don't believe so.

It's our truth. We've experienced it. Just as personal truth and understanding of the world varies from individual so it does from era to era, but just as individual truths are real from person to person, so it is equally true for the era that experienced it. Their truth is just as real and valid as ours. They didn't experience a world only half understood, with limited and faulty knowledge. Boy their knowledge was cutting edge! They KNEW that their mighty creator king was on his mountain with his vengeful, oft-cuckolded wife watching his every move, trying to keep him from his night out on the bull... swan... thing. They KNEW! Just as we know now that the atom is the smallest particle in a calcium molecule, and if you mess that up you better run as fast as your legs can carry you (which will never be fast enough. Ever). Just as the future knows things about us we can't see beyond the edge of our horizons with their tri-optic eyes and super sciences.

Like Alexander Leek said in the Mothman Prophecies 'If there was a car crash ten blocks away, that window washer up there could probably see it. Now, that doesn't mean he's God, or even smarter than we are. But from where he's sitting, he can see a little further down the road.'

We're experiencing mythology every second of every day. The truth of now becomes the quaint (sometimes pagan, sometimes heretical) ideas of yesterday. Something to be looked upon amusement, while used to make those of us lucky enough to live in the 'modern' era feel great about how superior we are. Well I don't buy into that. I think the truths of yesterday are just as potent, still possibly just as alive as our truths will be as the future of man chuckles over it as he picks through our graves. What if Zeus is still on his mountain? sitting back on his throne, picking golden lint out of his divine belly button while wondering why chicks aren't into the bull thing anymore?

Wondering where his truth went?

In The Beginning. A Beginnings. Beginnings-ings. Yes that sounds right.

Today marks the start of what I hope will be a better understanding of the world around me. I'm going to be talking about philosophy on this page, which, while not quite a mystery to me, is something I'd like to consider at length in a place built for that purpose. That would be here, Rotten Philosophy, titled as such because I have no misconceptions as to my grasp of the subject.

Also I'm Steakhouse if that's helpful. The name, not the restaurant. The above paragraph for the moment is the end of my musings of the subject of this blog. But not forever, I'll be coming back to it. Promise. Here after, for the duration of this post though I'm going to tell you about myself because you, the reader need information to make a value judgement about myself, the writer.

We'll start there actually, I'm not really a writer. Two paragraphs in and I've already lied to you. A clarification is needed. A mentor of mine has oft suggested that I begin writing, writing more often then I do. I've always wanted to write stories of fiction, though, while I don't believe I'm terrible at it, I can't seem to produce enough to justify a qualification on my work. or even access to the title. I tend to slow down, quickly, and become lethargic. I suppose I don't really want to tell anyone else about the stories I dream of. I'd rather have them told to me by someone better at it then I am. Someone created in a lab with the loveableness of Spielberg, the wit of Pratchett, and the explosions of Bay.

What I am not terrible at is writing my thoughts, which I can say with a bit more certainty. Putting them to paper as they dribble out of my head is actually pretty damn easy, though as far as composition goes... well, we'll see. I've also become interested in what my thoughts are on the nature of things so that seems as good a place to start as any, hence this blog (ergo, vis-à-vis, concordantly). We'll see where it goes.

The creation of this blog is somewhat spur of the moment as the day has left me somewhat adrift, so I don't have a hard list prepared of what I personally believe about the nature of man, life, and the cosmos just yet. Suffice it to say that I'm white, male and jewish. I'm neither rich nor poor, a deist, moderate with liberal and conservative leanings, and have no connection with either the Republicans or Democrats. I enjoy a variety of fine art, a wide selection of music, and tend toward the heterosexual with pornography. I'm currently unemployed, though that could change next week or in a year. I play games, read books, and watch a very select amount of television, often months after it's been vetted by people who are much more willing to subject themselves to it en mass then I am. I grew up in a white suburban neighborhood, find tall things other than trees and mountains threatening, and have the occasional drink.

There as a starter I think that's sufficient. Judge away. Nobody actually dismisses philosophical thought (any thought really) on the basis of the theory's strengths/weaknesses, who does that? You dismiss the ideas based on how horrible a human being you think the author is! I don't know just yet how much of myself and my life is going to creep into this blog and mingle with the honest to god subject matter, but I can tell you that it will be there.

When I have some solid thoughts put together I'll begin defining my personal philosophies. A starter list with modern bullet points will adjoin it.