20 May 2009

morality


Over the weekend, I was in my hometown with my brother which has put me in my high school mentality. I spent the weekend playing games with my brother on his X-Box 360 on our ridiculously huge HDTV.

I played "Mirror's Edge" for the first time, and found it to be a very fun game despite various criticisms. Although that being said, it is a very challenging game. If you don't like games that have a great deal of trial and error, then you might not like the game. I like to think of myself as a gamer who is not as frustrated with impossibly hard games. The game has a great visual feel and the controls feel very natural once you get used to it. I really like the use of color in the game the layout of various levels.

For those unfamiliar with the game, "Mirror's Edge" is about an underground courier service which has become the last remaining unmonitored form of communication in a Orwellian future police state. You play the character Faith who has to run, jump and climb like Jackie Chan to get from point to point to complete various missions. The game also allows you to steal people's guns and turn around and shoot them, however, with a gun in your hand you run slower, and inhibits your ability to climb. In an entire jungle of games in which the only strategy are different means of killing people, "Mirror's Edge" offers a refreshing solution which doesn't envolve killing.

This is where I find there is a great example of moral choice. Shooting people is not required to complete the game, nor are you blatantly rewarded for being a goody-two-shoes other than getting an out of story based achievement award. This is quite different from the other morality driven decisions in games in which there are active consequences in your actions. For me, this attempt to consider moral choices merely operates on the preconventional level of Kohlberg's moral stages. A gamer will do a morally upright action within the game for the purpose of some direct reward. There is no moral education, and people tend to do different actions just to see what would happen. However, in games like "Metal Gear Solid", or "Mirror's Edge" the gamer must chose whether or not to kill someone. They don't have to, and they won't be rewarded directly for not doing so. In fact the game doesn't seem to care either way, the choice is ultimately on you. This for me reaches a Postconvential level of moral reasoning because it is only up to the judgement of how the player feels is morally correct. In the end Postconventional moral reasoning for me relies on the idea of what one does when there is no one there to judge you.

09 May 2009

Social litmus

I've always felt the most interesting part of the Star Trek universe was its ability to be a constantly evolving world to match the way we see our own world. Gene Roddenberry did not just want to make a "wagon train to the stars", but take the social issues of our time and transpose them to theirs. For the sixties, it was a phenomenally delicate approach to understanding issues of race, nation states, the cold war, and the human psyche. Subsequently, the movies and the later shows of "Star Trek the Next Generation", "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager" added newer layers which consistently matched many of the social issues topical to the time. I have often used the Cardassian/Bajoran strife to explain the Balkan wars or the other way around depending on the audience. Deep Space Nine's Producer himself said that "The Kurds, the Palestinians, the Jews in the 1940s, or the boat people from Haiti; unfortunately, the homeless and terrorism are problems in every age." As the means in which the public understood thier own world changed, Star Trek changed with it.

So what does this new movie have to say about our times now? I noticed an interesting theme emerging in this movie. This was a movie which developed and molded the characters of Spock and Kirk in fascinating ways. Again and again I saw the theme of men set apart from their family and their home. These were two men confused by the conflict of their past and adrift in a world of rituals. I find it interesting that this message would speak so powerfully to our generation. We live in a world of odd preconceived notions of normality and patterns. Many of us has convinced ourselves that there are only a few avenues towards success in life, and if we had missed out on those tracks, then we deserve no better than to be kicked to the curb by those who found the course. Excellence has become a standard, which was never meant to be for all, so a majority of people who find themselves "sub-excellent" feel lost and confused. What I think the story of this new Star Trek movie has shown us, is that these roads of predestination are completely artificial and carry as much authority as people give it. The roads to our future are uncharted, and the rules and models created by the sages of the past don't work anymore. In short, "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

02 May 2009

Masculinity

Now that I'm working in a military office, I'm getting more and more tired of the alpha male attitude with problems. I once walked in on an army Sergent banging at the copying machine, threatening to bring in explosives to "fix it". The conversation went like this (Names changed to protect the innocent.)

SGT Turgidson: What this copier needs is some C4 to clear this jam.
Nesuphyn: I think this may be the rare cases in which explosives may not solve the problem.
SGT Turgidson: Son, in my experience explosives can solve any problem.
Nesuphyn: I don't see how that could be the case.
SGT Turgidson: If the copier gets blown up, Xerox will replace it, that's how it worked in the Sandbox.
Nesuphyn: I think I'm going to get some coffee.
(Nesuphyn exit stage left goes to cry into coffee.)

But in all fairness it seems that nerds have their fair share of aggression against technology. Gizmodo led me to this wonderful video on YouTube of a guy stabbing a Mac Air. I'll take a moment to be a racist and point out that this is an affluent white man destroying an $1800 product to prove how much of a sucker he was like his 6 other friends who also bought an $1800 computer.

Whew, OK, I'm better now.

So what's with the rage? (and not just white folks) We are often bombarded with staggeringly oppressive images of violence which is often open linked to being masculine. Yet our day to day lives are mostly quiet and heavily controlled by social norms and civilized affluence. I wonder what that does to the psyche and if that cognitive dissonance causes problems to our ability to be civilized people.
What I find disturbing, is that this use of violence is an excellent marketing tool. Manly men are rough with our toys so we "are forced" to buy better and bigger toys. I use the Sumsung Juke as my cellphone. One of my "manlier" friends sneered at me and said "Wait until the spring breaks". I don't think it need a phone that is piece of solid metal for it to last a few years. I've been using this phone for over a year, and still works fine. I take care of my things, use it for its purpose, and treat it with respect. I know a cellphone is considered a throw away product these days, but I still treat mine as something I shouldn't take for granted. I worry about how we men are convinced what it means to be a man, and at the same time this culture of masculinity just happens to make us better consumers.