The topics I have been meaning to discuss have been building up for quite some time now, to the point where I am fairly overwhelmed by them. A lot is personal, but some is heavily sociopolitical. Unfortunately, every time I sit down to write my sociopolitical thesis, I end up reading articles on the relevant subjects for several hours, staying up far too late without writing much down other than collections of links, sleeping in and being late for work the next day. Last night was no exception. So for this post I’m just going to cover everything that is not the sociopolitical epic; it’ll make my next post more focused.
Recent Topics of Thought
I have been reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, and even though I’m still in the chapters about relativity (not yet to the sections on quantum mechanics or string/M-theory), it is still highly engaging. Reading it, combined with articles on the future of energy production (more on that in my sociopolitical post later), brings forth an unquenchable fondness for the Pax Artificium and Deus Ultionis campaigns—so much so that I am seriously considering writing their stories into novels this year.
I also recently read Freakonomics, which despite being annoyingly self-congratulatory provides some excellent insights into human behavior—I really enjoy the varied analyses relating to its central theme: “everyone cheats.”
I am also pondering (thanks to some discussion with bitches_tyrone a while back) the imminent collapse of civilization (see Jason Godesky’s Thirty Theses, or various Wikipedia articles) versus the technological singularity (see Simon Funk’s intriguing novella After Life, or the Wikipedia article). The two ideas oppose one another nicely, with one stressing the economic law of diminishing returns while the other emphasizes a technological law of accelerating returns. I’ll post a more detailed discussion of them in my sociopolitical post, but for now suffice to say these ideas are fascinating to me. If they are also of any interest to you, I urge you to read the links above, because I would greatly value others’ thoughts on these topics.
My New Year’s Resolution
I know I said I wasn’t going to discuss the sociopolitical topics—but I needed to provide an overview of them anyway to place my New Year’s resolution this year into perspective: I have resolved to be a worse person. *grin* Specifically, I have resolved to be more practical, making decisions that benefit me directly instead of taking a “higher moral ground” (of dubious existence).
For example, I recently boycotted Gamestop after they dicked me around when I tried to preorder a Wii. Now, after reading Freakonomics, it has really sunk in that the behavior of large groups is fairly straightforward, because it is behavior “on average”—self-interested in nature. Similarly, you can often predict the behavior of corporations quite easily with the “self-interested” metric. I understand why Gamestop handles preorders the way it does. Rather than getting angry and boycotting the store, which hurts only me (I’m not going to convince a significant number of people to join me over it), I should merely use my knowledge to take reality into account. It was my failure to deal with Gamestop’s corporate policy, clerk incompetence (not recommending I sign up for the email list, despite that list being the obvious solution to my situation), etc., that resulted in my lack of a successful Wii preorder from them. As such, when trying to snag a second copy of Final Fantasy XII the day before Fest, the absurdity of the situation suddenly occurred to me, and rather than checking half a dozen stores looking for Final Fantasy XII (I had already verified that it was out of stock at Best Buy), I walked into Gamestop and had a copy of the collector’s edition within two minutes.
In a sense, this resolution could be considered a practical manifestation of my moral tenet to “believe reality.” Put another way, my resolution is, rather than doing things I “should” be doing for the “greater good” or whatever reason, to do things I want or need to do, for my own personal benefit.
Another example of this phenomenon is paying for something, versus getting it for free. In nearly every case, it seems stupid to me to pay for music. You can rationalize things by saying you are supporting your favorite artists, but you are lying to yourself—that money is going to the record companies. From an open letter from recording artists to recording artists, written by Courtney Love: “Recording artists are paid royalties that represent a tiny fraction of the money their work earns. As I was working with my manager and my new attorneys on my lawsuit with the Universal Music Group, we realized that the most unfair clauses in my contract applied to ALL recording artists.” Moreover, there is no universal principle that states that because being a rockstar was obscenely profitable before the digital age, it must remain obscenely profitable as we move forward—it is merely powerful organizations attempting to maintain their power. The system must change to accommodate the new era, not the other way around. But that is a whole nother rant.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I am a firm believer in law to control human behavior on a large scale; however, it’s not that people should follow the law for its own sake, but rather that the government can provide powerful incentives to mold the public’s overall behavior for the betterment (or detriment) of society. With music, neither the government nor the RIAA has provided an incentive that can curtail music “piracy” enough to stop many of us from getting whatever we want, whenever we want it, for free. The chance of having a negative sanction imposed on you for downloading music is next to nil. Paying for music is essentially throwing your money away.
To sum up: my resolution is to stop worrying so much about the “bigger picture” and worry more about my personal gain. In other words, like I said before, to be a worse person.
Now on to fluffier topics!
New Cars
For those who do not already know, my darling stbacchus and I have recently acquired not one but two new vehicles: a 2006 Mazda MX-5 in August, and a 2007 Toyota Yaris Sedan for which we probably paid too much. But now we have a car with an actual back seat again, and because we work different shifts, we can keep the precious, shiny Mazda in the garage for the bulk of the winter, ensuring its availability for many fun summers to come!
Gaming
Nearly seven months after Deus, I still feel unready to run another campaign. I am holding off on my 100th level gestalt ludicrousness until the time is right, which will hopefully be some time later this year. In the meantime, I am quite interested in preparing another Jolt Cola Cup, after the largely successful first endeavor. It would be again based on D&D 3.5, and once again I would create a mysterious packet detailing all the allowed features, to reduce the benefit of “studying” or otherwise preparing in advance. The event would almost certainly fall on a Saturday, probably 10 am until midnight like last time. So who’s interested?
Final Fantasy Fest
Final Fantasy XII was very good! Tentative placement in my “final fantasy ordering” is: 9, 12, 6, 10, 7, 4, 5, 8, 1, 3, 2—with the caveats that I have not finished 5, 8 or 1, I have not significantly played 2 or 3, and 11 is not really a numbered FF (should have been “Final Fantasy Online”). Notice that my top three picks were all directed or co-directed by Hiroyuki Ito? Yeah, that guy rocks. In contrast, Final Fantasy XIII is being directed by Motomu Toriyama, the guy who did X-2 and the hopefully-not-but-probably-lame forthcoming XII: Revenant Wings for DS. Keep your fingers crossed there.
Whew, that’s it for now. I leave you with this parting thought. Thanks for reading, everybody!
“Finally, I’m letting go
Of all my downer thoughts
In no time there’ll be
One less sad robot
Looking for a chance to be
Something more than just metal”
—Jack’s Mannequin, “Miss Delaney”