Seeking Answers for the 13th Game

I did a night shift last night, the first time after many months. I should have made a date with a whiskey bottle when I got home, or used some other means of hardcore sedation. Instead, I rode along with the momentum of residual anxious restlessness doing all sorts oddly random household chores: from fixing furniture, to troubleshooting tech components, to laundering non-clothing items, to making perogies and meatballs.*

The only good thing I can say about the night shift is that I endured it, but as always, there followed bad physiological effects, and a mind that gets warped into making strangely random observations and weird connections, especially when I start touring around town. My impulse control gets drastically lowered. For some strange reason, when I wandered by some place, and with my insomnia-addled brain, I somehow was triggered to remember that it was the same spot a while ago where I saw Yann Martel . . . If you recognize the name, yes, it's the same Yann Martel who is the author of Life of Pi. He resides here in Saskatoon, and I see him around from time to time; as much as I admire his work as an author I chose not to bother him, or impose upon his time.** After that day of seeing him at this one particular place, I was compelled to read another book he wrote: Beatrice and Virgil.*** Like  Life of Pi, animals are used to add an allegorical element about the human condition in the story, this one is centred around the Holocaust. I don't wish to spoil the story for anyone, but I will say that at the end of the book, there is a set of "games": really a series of questions related to deeper themes of morality centered on stuff people actually faced in the Holocaust. The last question, Game 13, is simply a blank page for you to fill in after you've deliberated all the dilemmas and ethical issues from the previous twelve, and you are left trying to figure out what your consequential place is in the scope of this most horrendous human tragedy. So now I'm sitting here blowing off the dust of some of the junk in the attic that is my insomniac mind by means of writing, re-examining the 13th game.

I only came up with a single word as a broad query for Game 13: a name of a place, Drohobych. Attached to it are a lot of "what if" questions. I found myself getting hung up on this particular word when I thought of the history of World War II, the Holocaust and the stuff dredged up in that book Yann wrote. Drohobych is the name of town in what is now western Ukraine. Historically, throughout the time since its founding sometime in the fourteenth century, it has been claimed and conquered numerous times by various Eastern European empires and nation states. According to my findings in Wikipedia, in 1939, the census showed that almost 40% that town's population was Jewish. During Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, this town was seized by the Nazi troops, and the Jewish ghetto there was liquidated. Thousands of these citizens were rounded up and shipped off to the Bełzec extermination camp in Poland. The census information of that place afterward in the 1950s then had only 2% of its population listed as being Jewish.

Why is this of significance to me? On a formal level, I studied some of the broader historical patterns of force from that country when I used to work in one of the Ukrainian cultural centres here. On a personal level, it was out of genealogical research. This is the community where my grandparents came from before they immigrated to Canada. Originally, they didn't leave there with the intent to escape anything they foresaw as a prelude to war or oppression, they simply left to try to prosper and garner a new life in Canada. Luckily and thankfully, they managed to get out of Drohobych before the Soviets/Nazis set foot in there. If they hadn't done so, of course, I wouldn't now exist. Had they remained there though, in what would become such a volatile and hostile place, they could have been damned to subjugation or slaughter by tyranny under either fascists or communists. They themselves weren't Jewish, and may not have been overtly targeted for extermination, but it is just as awful of a thought that if they had remained there, that they could have lost their humanity from being swept up in the insanity of that time and place, and could have been pressed into being servants who either actively or indirectly took part in some role the purging of the Jews in that region.

It was a doomed place, where higher ideals of justice and right and wrong were erased by the more immediate need for self-preservation. There seemed to be no right side to be on during those times as a Ukrainian, and it was worse if you were Jewish. Before the Nazis came, Ukraine already suffered a man-made famine under the Stalin regime, known there as the Holodomor (it roughly translates to murder by hunger), where the land, grain, and food was confiscated.  Millions died, and the living got starved into submitting to the Stalinist authority. When the Nazis came a few years later, many Ukrainians welcomed them as liberators from this regime. However, to avoid being slaughtered off by these new invading overlords, people were forced to comply with measures which meant that maybe only a few of the surrounding neighbours they knew got shipped off someplace on a train, never to return. Being put in that dilemma, it was comparatively better than watching you and all your family and neighbours being executed, or starved to death, for non-compliance. It was a shameful tragedy all around.

I have no contact with those who are blood relatives who still live in Ukraine; who may possibly still inhabit Drohobych. The decades of political and social isolationism through the communist years effectively severed such ties with our families. I have been ignorant of their histories and accounts of who they were as people living through such an ordeal and how it made them what they are today. If I could speak with any of them who witnessed such stuff during that phase of history, for the sake of gleaning answers to Game 13, I would be asking them things like:

• What happened with the family during the years of the Holodomor?
• Was anybody in the family in the military during WWII? If so, which side were they on? (Red Army, Nazi collaborators, independent partisans?) 
• What did you do when they came to round up the Jewish citizens in the village?
• How did you reconcile with all these things afterward?

I'm sure a lot of the answers would be disquieting and unnerving. I'd probably be better off not knowing some of them.

I don't know why these reflections of such morbid things strike me now. Perhaps it's a consequence of the stress of the series of negotiations I'm involved in, which seems to be wearing at me as we'll. Perhaps it's because I'm going through something like what they did in Drohobych during the war years, minus the matter of life and death urgency: having the back against the wall and the only options given seem to be just different entrances into hell; dealing with powers of authority who are indifferent about anyone's welfare. Maybe the thoughts of my grandparents' courageous choice to get out of the old country is a prompt for me to think more seriously of making some sort of exodus of my own: before seeing things taking a turn for the worse.

*- Two foods commonly found in the community Fall suppers that happen in October and November in the rural towns of Saskatchewan. Perhaps I was getting nostalgic.
** - I'm not divulging when, where, and what circumstances it happened, I see no need to violate any aspect of his privacy. Sure, it was tempting to gush, and accost him with praise, platitudes, comments and questions about his work, but acting like a star-struck groupie isn't respectful, nor does it make for a good first impression to someone whom you regard, even indirectly, as a mentor. I'll leave my appreciation for his brilliance as a writer to be reflected here while still respecting his peace. It was enough that we just exchanged good mornings with each other as civilized men, as we each went about our separate ways to attend to our own affairs.
***- Stretching leather while fixing my furniture today made me think of taxidermy, which was probably another prompt to remember the book. You'll have to read it to get it.

Praise and Thanks to Alan

November continues to be a month of solemn salutes, tributes, and commemorations. For this year, along with things like Remembrance day and Movember, the month holds the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy down in the states. That event happened before I was born*, in a nation apart from me, and thus I'm more ignorant of it than one who actually lived through that piece of history; but I look upon that day as when the best possible seed for a continuous destiny of positive growth and change for the Americans had died as well, and nothing ever really appeared as a decent replacement in any other equivalent form since then.

Today marks another sad anniversary of sorts. November 16th of this year is the 40th anniversary of the passing of a person who has been a lot more impressionable to me than someone like Kennedy was. I rarely bring attention to the people whom I regard as heroes, icons, and mentors. However for today, it would feel wrong for me not to write something about him.

Alan Wilson Watts
January 6th, 1915 - November 16th, 1973

Alan Watts was a philosopher, and a keen intellect who dared to bring eastern religions to light, comparing them with those ideas of a largely conservative western contemporary establishment at the time, examining it all with strong objectivity, and yet somehow avoiding to "preach" about such things. He often introduced himself as a self-acclaimed "spiritual entertainer"; and he was very effective at this role. It was through his lectures that I was introduced to Zen Buddhism, one thing I began to find more solace in thereafter. What I most liked about Alan was not only his choice of many lecture topics, but his manner of delivering them. I admired him most as a speaker. Whenever I want to really focus on communicating something with a great degree of fortitude and depth, yet with an eloquent, calm, humorous and kindly manner, it's his voice that enters my head that I use as a model for doing it**. He probably did a lot to show me how to freely engage, and courageously make, an esoteric subject much less intellectually abstract, at least as a writer, and proved to me that even liberal and nonsensical use of sound effects in the course of a serious discussion is a good thing and can do a lot to make your point, and that people can take what you say seriously without you taking yourself too seriously. Watts started off being a religious interpreter, but he progressed to examining things more in the spheres of more science and anthropology. What I most appreciate him for is for ultimately being an interpreter of consciousness and how it fits in reality. He made thinking on deeper issues of existence look like fun! Listen to him long and often enough, and you will never allow yourself to ever have another boring thought ever again when you wonder about the metaphysical things in nature.

How exactly I discovered the works and wisdom of Alan Watts escapes my memory: it's still a mystery to me. I just remember that it happened about a decade ago, at a time when I felt most downtrodden, the most burnt-out, and when I was at my worst in failing to feel like a human being of some worth. I was very disgruntled, depressed, and disillusioned. I totally snapped after dealing with a lot of stress, and at the same time being treated like a tool/peon by fools who claimed to be religious, or acting like they were morally superior to me; but at the same time, would press me to do their dirty work, slander, backstab, and would throw me under the bus as easily as flipping a coin. I became distrustful of everyone and completely bereft of a spiritual centre, or an inner happy place to retreat to; and there was no way I was going to return back to those from whom I felt the most betrayal. To this day, I regard religious zealousness and sanctimony, and those who try to be authoritarian through such means, as being far more perverse than any of the vices spelled out by the seven deadly sins. Listening to Alan's lectures helped me emerge from the hatred I was feeling for much of humanity, to finding a curiosity and appreciation about things and wonders of everyday life, and finding more of a place for myself in it. His words and teachings did a lot to rescue me.

I only wish that something more happened that could have rescued him. I wish he lived longer, and I wish I discovered this guy and used him as a teacher and mentor much earlier on in my life. I think I would have made so many better decisions about: who to befriend, how to be rebellious in a manner that's benevolent***, where to find peace, and how to question other people's motives without putting them on the defensive. Alan was not without his own foibles and troubles. Despite being such a personable lecturer, his own interpersonal relationships weren't so easy for him. He had been married three times; each marriage dissolving into separation and divorce. His own death was caused by a heart condition, suspected to be complicated and worsened by chronic overuse of alcohol; dying on this day at a relatively young age of 58 years old. I'm thankful for the treasure trove of his writings and lectures that he had recorded during the time that he was with us on this Earth.

I can't explain the thinking of Alan Watts better than he could himself. So, to close, I'm including the following links of a couple of his more enjoyable/notable talks. Feel free to explore and click on more of his lectures in You Tube, or check out his podcasts, if you wish.

You're It -by Alan Watts

 

Animation by Matt Stone and Trey Parker: the creators of South Park. 

*- In a nation that never had any political assassinations of any of its leaders I must add . . . 
**- I have to sometimes watch myself while I'm doing it though as I speak: because strangely, the British accent he had tends to sneak into the choice of words I use if I'm not careful.
***- Like how both Buddha and Jesus did.
 

In Remembrance (추억의)

For this time of the year, I felt a need to share this memory from an experience I had last August. I was riding home one weekend afternoon. I spotted a young Asian woman trying to wave down motor traffic from the side of the street. When she saw me approaching, she dashed out onto the road in the path of my bike; forcing me to stop. She was a bit flustered and anxious, trying to explain to me in broken English that she was lost and trying to find a local address. Once she calmed down, and was more readily able to understand me, I managed to draw her a crude map on the back of an envelope to show her where to go. I asked her where she was from. In her reply, it wasn't what she said, but how she said it that struck me to the bone. She told me that she was from South Korea, drawing out extra emphasis on the word "south". She said it very deliberately and adamantly, like she had to make it clearly known to me that she wasn't one of them, as if to completely disassociate herself from something very vile and evil. I came to realizing on that late summer day that this year would be the 60th anniversary of the end of hostilities of the Korean War*.

It's a bloody shame that there is still this despicable geopolitical abomination on this planet called North Korea, with its six decade long dynasty of wicked totalitarianism. The notable tone in that young lady's response was a mixture of both pride and gratitude of who she was, and of a sorrow laden shame that there are these people who are ethnically identical to her, but have been perverted and corrupted culturally and politically; rendered into some sort of sub-species without rights or freedoms. These same people could be directly related to her, but at the same time conditioned such that on a simple order, they may be turned against her to kill her and her loved ones without any second thought. As bad as that all sounds, it could be so much worse. That entire peninsula could have been overrun by the Communist forces, and there would be about another 50 million more Koreans today being starved, oppressed and subjected to the depraved indoctrination by the Kim legacy. That would be 50 million more Koreans under this type of dictatorship: a number 10 million greater than the current population of Canada; and we have our veterans to thank for not allowing that to happen. Had the political entities on the side of South Korea, with any real interest in democracy and human rights, during that time had foresight into what North Korea would eventually be devolving into, there probably would still have been fighting going on until that peninsula was entirely liberated.

We have failed for a long time to take a better reckoning of this fact. We have been more dismissive of this time, and undervaluing our veterans' role during that point of history, somehow putting it behind our nation's victories and sacrifices in the European theatres of battle in scale, scope and significance. The media and political forces have stooped to calling our military presence on the Korean peninsula a "police action", or simply terming it the "Korean Conflict"** That has made us ignorant of the not only the real historical impact it had, but also in terms of the suffering and horror soldiers and civilians alike endured. Sadly, our perception of that period only gets viewed most commonly through dark comedy reruns of M*A*S*H. I would never insult or disrespect our veterans who were involved there by diminishing it with lesser labels; by calling it something other than what it was. It was indeed a war.

This is my special thanks to those men and women, to the Canadians and other UN force veterans, who served for that critical time in history. I'm sure the same appreciation comes from that young lady I helped in August, and the remaining 50 million free Koreans, who are prosperous today in comparison to their subjugated northern neighbours. Peace be with you all.

I see the greeting of "Have a Happy Remembrance Day" being shared on signs and posts on Facebook. I know people mean it as a good intention, or are at least grateful for a statutory holiday, but I think the more correct and appropriate greeting we should share is: "Have an Appreciative Remembrance Day". War, or memory of it, shouldn't exactly incite the feeling of "happiness", except for its ending. We have to be wary of the fact that the rights and freedoms we have today didn't come to us cheaply. Let us rightly honour those who gave some sacrifice, either in deed or in blood, in order that our generations in peace time have rights and freedom.

*Technically, the war between those nations hasn't ended: no official peace treaty has been signed between the two nations; it has been just been a prolonged cease-fire.
**- When you have a nation as large as Communist China, backed with a million man Red Army, involved as an oppositional force, there is no way in hell you can trivialize that situation as a "police action" or a simple "conflict".

Hunkering Down between Covers

For me, the most unwelcome sign that marks the first day of when Old Man Winter comes to stay is not the actual sight of the snow, nor any characteristic of the chill in the air. It's from something like being awoken in the morning, like I was this morning, to the wretched sound coming from outside of ice being chipped, and scraped off from encrusted windshields in the parking lot or from the sidewalks, especially when the snow follows a soaking rain, like it did last night. I can detect other's frustration, loathing, and negativity surrounding the ordeal by the force and rhythm used with their scraping tools along these slick and pebbly surfaces as they are smacked with the disappointing reality of having to chisel and rasp away at their ice-encased vehicles just to get into them. It is a sound representing things grinding down to a bleak despair for most, in knowing just how much extra effort and energy it takes to just move around and do even simple tasks for the next few months.

From that noise alone, even while my eyes are closed in the dark of my room, with my curtains drawn, I can readily form a perfectly vivid and exact picture in my mind as to what the actual scene outside looks like as to: how much snow fell, where it blew in and accumulated, what its exact texture and moisture composition is, and just how bad the conditions of the roads and streets are, all before I even try to move out of bed . . . which by then, I don't want to do. I wish I could impress you with some intricate and elegant Sherlock Holmes-ian style and manner of deduction for determining how all this happens precognitively, but it really doesn't involve anything that intellectually sophisticated. It's an instinct that one eventually gets after living here in this particular region, as a Canadian; enduring too many years of long harsh miserable winters. One innately develops an instinct for sensing accurately how inclement the weather gets out there without even making direct contact with it; with even the most minimal of sensory input. It becomes a feature of the mind that one doesn't want to admit or appreciate having: since once this instinct is triggered, a long depression tends to follow.


A small sample of some of the other covers that I like slip
 between other than the ones on my bed. If the books in my
entire collection of digital editions were physical hardcopies,
they would make every shelf in this place buckle and break. 

After getting up and glancing outside out the window to discover how accurate and correct my suspicions were, I sadly stowed my bike away, and started rummaging around my storage spaces for my woollies, skiing equipment, and block heater cords. I also uncovered and sorted out all the remaining physical bits of reading material I own. It reminds me that I've been going into a slump with that too: acquiring and reading the "right" books for my personal hardcopy library. There are books that can be read over and left hidden away as digital copies, and others that somehow merit some distinction of what I'd like to incorporate as concrete physical features in my dominion: ones that are true representations and summations of my personal character and identity. E-reader apps and tablets are wonderful things, which I will always use, but they lack the ability to project an air of your true passions and interests in an organic fashion and fusion into your living space that books with actual physical covers do. It's kind of the same way for people who collect album covers/sleeves to reflect their musical/artistic tastes, even though current digital audio technology has left analog LP records in the dust in terms of sound fidelity ages ago. It's sentimentality: something in people who need, or long for, a physical object or icon to make abstract things of thought and memory coalesce together.

Here is a small list of some of the hardcopies of fiction and non-fiction I'd proudly have in my home library that I have yet to collect:

• The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Complete Works of H.G. Wells
• Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
• A Clockwork Orange - Antony Burgess
• Gulliver's Travels - Johnathan Swift
• Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
• Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
• The Alchemist - Paulo Coello
• Life of Pi - Yann Martel (I had one, but Ella chewed it to pieces as a puppy. . . BAD GIRL!)*
• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
• Seeing Farther - Bill Bryson
• Physics of the Future - Michio Kaku
• Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
• The Origin of the Species - Charles Darwin

*- Perhaps another advantage to having an e-reader. . . unless your dog starts to chew on that too.

Second Lives: Part II

Continuing from last entry, Second Lives: Part I . . .

To say that humankind was destined to develop and incorporate virtual reality as part of our evolution is perhaps a very fair and sound argument. It could be said that it all began happening as early on when the first hominids began to develop and use language to the degree of sophistication where vocabulary, grammar, and syntax could be used to describe things outside of the present tense*. Think about how revolutionary of a leap that was during our course of evolution! It really put us apart from other animal species: to be able to share and communicate ideas about things that weren't actually happening or existing in the here and now**. It ultimately gave us the ability to better develop our memory, to learn and share knowledge from stories (and successes/failures), to speculate and plan on seeking resources and avoiding disasters, and to be creative. It was essentially the development of this "software" that allowed us to create ideas for an abstract "unreal" world which impacted motor behaviours and sensory experience in this one. Slapping that talent together with tool-making hands to make simulations and extensions of things essentially began and fueled our endeavors to create virtual realities. Then along came art and music, to give our senses a pleasant break from being constantly vigilant in a more hostile natural world. Those things were blended with dressing up in distinct costuming and decoration, using psychoactive botanicals, special rituals and ceremonies, and building special monuments, mostly for the purpose of trying to transcend into other places beyond this realm. Thus, the earliest vehicle thence used to search for these other "virtual realities" came when our early ancestors began formulating religion.

Taken in that context, there might be a valid reason to be suspicious of "virtual realities". Throughout thousands of years of inquisitions, witch trials, dogma and dictates of authoritative caste systems, and judgements from theocratic regimes, millions of people suffered when they were suspected of not playing along in the virtual reality of religion properly. They were either enslaved, ostracized, imprisoned, tortured, or executed as infidels, witches, blasphemers, and atheists; or else, for the sake of playing the game properly in some cultures, many were splayed out on some altar and offered as a blood sacrifice, given a bodily mutilation, or even obligated to commit ritual suicide*** to placate some mythological being or force of a "virtual reality". The virtual game of human development I play, Civilization V, is a hell of a lot tamer by comparison than real human development when religion becomes factored in.

It's ridiculous when I see the juxtaposition of those heavily immersed in religion and those over-enthralled with playing around in modern day virtual reality/gaming environments, and then see the sides actually actively arguing and clashing about who is more knowledgeable about reality, because one is no better grounded in actual reality than the other: they are both trying to find improvement by using escapist means to avoid the harsh, oppressive or "sinful" world they see today. It's a funny irony to see that many who are most reactionary and opposed to the development of game based virtual reality also make some claim to being religious. They believe in preaching to people to stop interacting with other in a false world of a game environment and use energy to gather together more often and talk to, and listen to stories related to the existence and will of a great big invisible man in the sky. At the same time, especially in the USA, those same people who associate themselves with a conservative right wing religious "moral majority" who want to further restrict or outright ban simulated game-based violence in MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games), most likely are the ones lobbying for the right to tote around real flippin' guns. Equally though, VR players who are spending most of their waking daily lives in front of a screen, are becoming more disengaged from actual real world interaction, are becoming increasing more socially maladroit nerds and thus have no ground to stand on for sanctimoniously judging others who are opting to bravely engage more with the real world. The VR people are likely to smugly brand the reality-based people as "Luddites", "low-techs", or with some other label that brand those apart from them as technically ignorant and primitive. This all just brings more chicken and egg questions to light that I have no time to explore and answer. All I know is that I don't want to side with, or get involved too deeply, with either camp.

The most deluded and pathetic of all people who are overly-engaged with their little realm of virtual reality don't even have to use computers, or a place of worship. They are the "super-fans" of sports. Jesus Christ, I hate these idiots! The ones who are constantly glued to the games and stats reports on the sports channel on TV, and would stay that way if they could, the one who makes paying for season tickets a priority over paying for food and shelter. I'm talking about the real intense ones. The assholes who are too much emotionally dependant on the success of whatever team they are following, like the entire world is dependant on it. If the team wins, they are on cloud nine, in a weirdly maniacal way; if their team loses, super-fan gives himself (and it's 99.9999% a guy thing) some special license to lash out and be dramatically and dangerously angry: to be a hooligan, to riot and loot, to drink himself stupid and to abuse others or beat his wife and kids****. It's a bloody insult to humanity to channel behaviour like this something that "comes out of passion". The negative outcome of a simple "virtual" game translates to real-life losses from their drastic and thoughtless violent and destructive behaviour in the real world. These are the guys who may jeer and laugh at the nerdy types who play role-playing board and computer games, but some of these same guys will turn around and drop everything at an instant to play fuckin' "fantasy football", or "fantasy draft picks": things which basically equate to being Dungeons and Dragons for dumb jocks. That's even going into whole new level of stupid when put into context of virtual worlds: a virtual reality based on a virtual reality*****.

I mentioned before in my last entry that the list of things in our lives not related to using virtual reality would be shorter than the ones that did. I challenged myself and made my list of things that I enjoy doing that I consider are completely apart from any virtual reality or media. Instead of escaping into the virtual worlds, I believe the brain needs to be pulled away from there and re-booted with good dose of reality. Basically, one has to think of things that don't involve computers, looking at screens or pictures, intoxication, listening to music/recordings, playing games, or creating abstract thoughts from reading, writing, doodling, and making calculations. It really is a short list. The items in it are:

• sleeping
• eating
• drinking various beverages
• cardio vascular exercise (without earphones, that gets me to an actual destination, no treadmills or stationary bikes)
• cooking
• talking face to face with friends and family (and the odd stranger . . . and believe me, I encounter a lot of "odd" strangers)
• scavenging and foraging (not shopping: using money is a grey area to classify, but let's say that for now that it's an abstraction: exchanging currency, or 0's and 1's through card transactions for goods actually counts as a form of virtual reality)
• sitting/meditating in a park, or by calm water
• cleaning and organizing my living space (this mood rarely strikes me, but it happens)
• fishing
• watching wildlife
• tending a garden space
• walking/petting/playing with my dog

I dwelled too much on this topic already. I fixated on in a little more because I just watched some snowflakes fall here in my real world outside, thus comes the season where I'll be tuning in more to the "virtual" realms. These places won't be found in Second Life, nor will they be found through perusing chapters of a holy book or scriptures; they certainly won't be toured through by loyally spectating the progress of any team. They will be toured through anything else that makes me wonder about the peculiarities of the human condition . . . perhaps for the sake of feeling some relief or amazement when I realize I've survived this long in the "reality game" amidst all the stupidity I sometimes witness by being immersed in it.

*- Communication in higher animals is pretty much restricted to stuff happening in the present tense. Signals and gestures from fish to mammals are limited to being prompted by what is happening in the immediate environment they are currently in.
**-[a bit of a digression] This is not just a thing we should just assume happens naturally and automatically in the basic development of any human language. There are some languages that don't have clear cut sets of grammar or syntax for expressing exact conditional or future tenses. Even English itself technically has no concise "future tense", in the sense that the verbs in a future tense don't neatly conjugate into a precise single word, as compared to some other languages. There's "I walked to the store yesterday." but there is no, "I [single word to describe a future action of "to walk"] to the store tomorrow". It has clumsily jumbled in modal auxillary verbs with the infinitives to talk about future things. The modal "will" itself derives from the verb "to want," or "to wish", and the modal "shall" strangely is derived from "to owe". Even as our vocabulary advanced through the ages, the concept of tense and time is abstract enough that we often are limited to describing the dimension with the some of the same adjectives we would use to describe physical space. Even some modern languages don't even have separate words to further differentiate the next day after the current day, and the general early time of day: like Spanish and German, both use same word to mean "tomorrow", and "morning".
***- Rituals like: the Aztecs cutting hearts out of people, circumcision (male and female), scarification in rites of passage in Africa; the suicidal ones like suttee in India, suppuku/hari kiri in Japan; more historically recent, the Jonestown, and Heaven's Gate Cult massacres.
****- When working at another past vocation, being contracted through the provincial Ministry of Justice, I encountered a domestic violence case where woman had most of half of her face beat in by her husband in the presence of their kids. His reported excuse as to why he did it was: "Oh, it's nothing. I just got a little mad because the Flames lost."
*****- All contact and field sports are simulated forms of battling and warfare, therefore an artificial world; if you aren't actually involved with actually playing it, and only spectating it, that only makes it a virtual reality to you, one in which your degree of interactivity is just limited to cheering, screaming and yelling at the field or screen like a moron.

Second Lives: Part I

I desperately needed to unplug my brain and take a break from brooding about a big messy issue that isn't going to get rectified anytime soon. I escaped into diddling around with, and contemplating the significance of, virtual online worlds during some of my downtime at home as the weather in my real world became cooler. I got into messing around playing Civilization V. I sucked at it enough such that my empire was wiped out and consumed by a virtual Roman civilization by the relative year of 1873 A.D. I set the bar higher by playing at a more advanced level, so I should have expected failure.

I also just recently viewed a TV documentary called Life 2.0. It's a peek into the lives of people who are/were very involved, some to the point of addiction, in dwelling and interacting in the online virtual world of Second Life. I toured that site a few years ago, and I got more insight about this entity from the documentary than I did from actually being in it and testing it. I regard Second Life (SL) as a community, but not a "game world", at least not in a sense according to my definition of gaming. There is no common objective or goal, no set rules, nor are there any other conventional concepts of winning and losing. You create and fashion a character (avatar) as you wish it to appear, and you can make it interact socially in various degrees* in the environments provided; perhaps in that respect it's more complicated than regular typical gaming environment, because so many elements of it are so "open-ended". The documentary interviewed: a couple who met on there and began a romantic tryst¹, another person who used it to escape the real world and found a way to make virtual products² and sell them for real profit, and another who intermingled as an avatar identity that was a complete opposite in terms of appearance and personality of his real-self. His choice of avatar was a little too freaky: one that did reflect deeper psychological issues that he harboured that he was eventually forced to confront.

Basically, my earlier impression and verdict of Second Life was the view that it's just an online dollhouse where people go to play digital dress up; a great big pixilated puppet playground without any fixed objectives, or defined plot or mission. Could it be that I'm being too judgemental and dismissive? Before I rashly critique all this, or unwillingly appear as a fuddy-duddy reactionary, I thought I would explore this ever growing phenomenon more in depth. It can't be avoided because more real life commerce and billions of dollars worth of business is currently being conducted in SL and other virtual world platforms, and as transmission speeds and access bandwidth increase, the presence and influence of such places in virtual/augmented reality will be making an evermore prevalent impact on everyone's life, real and virtual. Knowing how to competently navigate and negotiate, and perhaps even knowing how to avoid litigation with such bizarre virtual realms and media are going to become more valid and valued talents to learn whether we like dabbling with this stuff or not.

I was curious enough to poke around and tour Second Life only once, but that was a few years ago: at a time closer to its infancy, when it was probably going through a lot of growing pains. There was nothing on it that was especially interesting or impressive for me back then, and thus I easily abandoned it. I felt completely stifled when trying to express a clear train of thought that one wants when interacting with someone. I found the controls and interface veering towards being user-hostile. The site had a tendency to crash during high volume periods, and there were numerous other interruptive technical glitches. I maybe spent less than five hours in that place, so in all fairness I know I didn't check something that large and detailed out that thoroughly. I just had a bad first impression with it.

What I initially went on there for was an opportunity to find and chat with people who were at least intellectual equals, who by chance may conveniently be in a time zone which was in synch with my skewed and irregular off hours from work. Since it's a global meeting place, I also hoped for a chance to bone up on and practice speaking some of the other languages I know, instead of letting them rust out, and to be a receptive host to those who wished to practice their English. I naively thought, by creating some anonymity with an avatar, it would help to shield and conceal some embarrassment surrounding the lingual flubs and mistakes that either side would make. I figured that the avatar could also be used as a tool to make gestures and point to things to help clarify and surpass verbal obstacles that can't be done with a simple voice to voice conversation. It's in my interest because programming adaptive technologies for augmented communication is (informally) one of my roles at work. Instead, what I remember encountering on there socially was, for the most part, just unbridled stupidity: I found a lot more crass, rude, and obnoxious people than I would ever find in real life. Most of them were Americans. I suppose with a laissez-faire environment, with no real set social mores or rules of engagement; being effectively in disguise in avatar form, and facing no real threat of repercussions and not having to answer for bad behaviour and attitudes, some people just think that civility, manners, maturity**, and simple kindness can be ditched entirely. Hence, such idiots think that they can carry on around there with being jerks and bullies to strangers with a greater sense of impunity. So cowardly of them really. So, that was another strike and turn off that made it lose its appeal for me. Maybe the better spots were more hidden from me, or perhaps I was just too impatient and discouraged to seek out other realms there with better souls in them.

So now I wondered if, and by how much, either the interface environment or the social vibe had changed or improved on Second Life. The graphics in the documentary showed some rapidly expanded and evolved technical sophistication since I last toured there. My answer came to me as a login failure. I found out that apparently now my video cards on both my desktop PC and laptop are now too slow and underpowered; no longer sufficient enough to handle the technical enhancements and advanced graphics load that Linden Labs, the company that developed Second Life, has updated for the site. So, my curiosity ended there, and there was none left to compel me to dash out and get my own tech updates done just to mess around and explore it.

I still can't be entirely dismissive of the virtual life though. How much of our everyday lives are lived in some form of virtual reality already? Actually, the question should be: how much of an average person's life today isn't "virtual" and artificial? The list of answers would be much shorter than the list of those of the contrary. What the truth is is that we all seem to be driven to seek out some form of virtual reality. You'll realize this when you consider that all reading material, music, art, theatre, games, sports, radio and television programs are forms of virtual and augmented realities; just with more limited degrees of interactivity. Explaining this could be a long treatise. So I'll continue on in another entry.

1.- Both were married to other people, and each split from their spouse as their romance started to heat up. They met each other to continue this affair in real life only to have that relationship fail later once some arguments between them started popping up.
2.- Online, the women who was doing this was making and designing high fashion virtual clothing and had her own high end boutiques. In real life, she was working and living in a messy, dingy, basement. She was actually involved in a real life law suit; suing another SL user for copying and freely distributing her fashions.
*- From casual chat and benign stuff like strolling around, dancing and "shopping", to things that veer toward the kinky and grossly explicit. What you choose to do there is your own business. I don't want to know.
**- Only adults can register on Second Life, so it's even more disappointing in knowing this to find nothing but people on there speaking and behaving with adolescent mindsets.

Raspberry Friday: Random Acts of Kindness

The trees have denuded themselves enough around here to lead me to believe that it could snow any day now. This observation prompted me to start planning some winterization chores for this weekend; but instead I got desperate to overcome a couple weeks worth of stagnancy from being sick. I have been either penned up too long for that time at home, or when I did go out it was only to do a string of 11 hour days for the past week, which seemed more exhausting than usual. This stretch of days of prolonged indoor time, and my absence, was making a strain for Ella as well.

Monkeying around on the leaning elm
 at Buena Vista Park.

We're both suffering the consequences of my idleness and illness induced lethargy. My joints are stiffer and my pants are fitting more snug; Ella is still hauling around, and adding to, her fat from last winter.

So, we did ourselves a favour, and took a long morning walk yesterday to Broadway and back, for the fresh air and exercise, and to tame down some of her boredom and restlessness. I must say that it's nice to be able to fully and freely breathe and move again.
One nice thing about touring Broadway with the dog is that many of the shops around there are pet-friendly: when we visit, most of the proprietors are happy to see Ella and spoil her with treats. She knows exactly where these shops are, and she knows who is most obliging to giving her some form of munchies. Our long absence of living around there has dulled neither her memory, nor her intimate knowledge at all of these shops and people in the neighbourhood. These trips make her happy; walking my dog and her sharing her happiness for those who want to greet and pet her I suppose is one of my random acts of kindness.

At the door of McQuarrie's Teas & Coffees -
"Hurry up and open, damn it! I needs my jerky!"

I won't pretend to know exactly what thoughts fly around in her little brain on excursions like these, but I would guess that for her it's probably something akin to winning a jackpot at Las Vegas.

Ella wasn't the only one who scored that day. I also was treated to a random act of kindness from some stranger. It was a bit strange. It happened after our walk, after I conceded to doing some recycling and purging of stuff before doing anything else involving winter prep. I hauled out and traded in some books, cycling with loaded packs of them to my favourite used bookshop; adding considerably to my redeemable store credit. I suspect that the act may have been from the woman who was locking her bike to the rack at the time when I first arrived there. She was in her early fifties*; quite athletic-looking and well-kempt. She seemed well-educated, yet humble. We exchanged good mornings and started a conversation about our appreciation for the fact that it was still agreeable and decent cycling weather, and that the snow hasn't arrived yet. Somehow, the topic smoothly switched to cross-country skiing; both of us learning that the respective other was equally a novice at it. We were complete strangers to each other, but the different thing about this encounter was that I took the initiative of speaking with this person as if I knew her all my life; I don't know why. The whole chat was no more than two minutes long. She hurried off to do some shopping in a non-dismissive manner, and I went along my way to do my business. I returned to my bike a half hour later. Hers was gone, but I found a pint container of fresh raspberries that came from the neighbouring Safeway, propped on top of my bike seat. There was no note or anything. I looked around for her, or for other onlookers/witnesses to question, or for other clues in the parking lot, to gather if it indeed was this anonymous stranger who was the donor, but there wasn't anyone or anything else conspicuous around for a correct conclusion. I could only assume.

Tuning myself into writing this story was just as random and reasonless as the act that prompted it. It certainly isn't a real epic or profound one. I think I only troubled myself to write it because I realize just how much more likely I am to regularly encounter and witness random acts of idiocy/craziness from anonymous strangers in public than I am in seeing anything else comparable to this raspberry treat incident. This gesture, as odd and small as it was, put a smile on my face for the rest of the day, and gave me a little more peace of mind. The raspberries were enjoyed with some yogurt and honey, and with a lingering hope that I might meet this person again, or another like her. Unfortunately though, I'm already beginning to forget the finer details of what she looked like.

Selfless and random acts of kindness toward strangers shouldn't have to be epic or profound. Sadly, most of us are standing around like we are waiting for some reason or license to perform them, or get caught up in analyzing: foolishly hoping and dwelling, about what sort of credit we should be ultimately owed for doing such things. It's too bad that more people don't give themselves equal license or attention into inhibiting themselves from doing selfish and random acts of idiocy/craziness.

* - My stupid bloody hair colour always garners me more attention from older women than from ones who (I think) are more age appropriate for me. Thanks a lot . . . stupid chromosome number four.