Logic’s End

The lifeblood of political community!

Although a wealth of modern technology effects our lives in a myriad of ways, it fails to alter the fundamental nature of who we are as human beings. Futurists and progressives often view the adoption of said technological wonders as cataclysmic events. Thus, the rules of how we live our lives are in a constant state of flux with their philosophical interpretation of the world. Philosophically freewheeling over human nature and the principles that govern our interactions, using the blunt hammer of technology innovation, irresponsibly erodes communities.  With the advent of social media, the wave of innovation has finally broken and rolled back, uncovering a once familiar landscape that has always existed around us: a human political community.

Technological innovation is taking place today as it has throughout history. We invented fire, the wheel, the gun, the abacus, nuclear fission and other “insignificant” advances such as written language. While any of our tools can be employed in ways both beneficial and detrimental to the human condition, it’s worth highlighting they are just tools. Human choice determines how they are employed. Gadgets may be designed in ways to afford certain uses, but they do not make that choice themselves. Just as the hammer and the screwdriver do not build a house, a Twitter feed and a Facebook profile do not make an entrepreneur successful or bolster community involvement. We must choose to leverage them wisely.

If Twitter and Facebook magically manipulated human nature and morphed the principles that govern us and create supportive communities, then the way we use them would be irrelevant. Want to tweet about how many followers you have reading your tweets four dozen times a day? It wouldn’t hurt your social reputation if certain fixed human principles didn’t exist. Feel like harassing your neighbor with tweets about how you’re going to put a golf club through his front window, and then posting the pictures of yourself in the act on Facebook? Why not! After all, with all of this innovation around the rules are (no pun intended) out the window!

Understanding how to use social technology requires first comprehending what it means to live a good life within a community. Folks who live in small towns (perhaps even close-knit neighborhoods within larger cities) have the good fortune of experiencing community life amplified to its highest level. If you were out doing doughnuts in farmer Jeb’s field, you can bet that the whole town will know who did it after you tell three people. Coincidentally, such communities help discourage burglary and other malicious activities, thus fostering the development of better citizens. Life in any small town USA is often as close as one can get to a modern rendition of Aristotle’s polis (a political community that fosters the greatest conditions for human beings).

Twitter and Facebook are helping create a modern polis, right in the midst of where traditional Internet has largely failed. Want to see what’s taking place in Buffalo, NY, on any given Saturday night? Follow the #Buffalo hashtag and you will quickly be in the loop. Heard about a crime alert around town? You can bet that’s on twitter too. Curious as to what the specials are at your favorite restaurant? Chances are that venue has a presence on twitter of its own that you can check on the fly. Community events, thoughts, and opinions can all flow freely over the streams of information that are the social networks.

Indeed, the promise of the social networks is great. They are the next frontier of the digital age, a tome of knowledge in which we’ve only just read the first page. There will be dark chapters filled with misinterpretation and the gross misuse of these new social tools. We should not let that deter us from exploring their potential prudently.

A couple of things to be mindful of:  information overload (reading and producing so much information as to end up not allowing enough time to give it proper consideration and thought), and surrogate technology syndrome (using said open communication systems as replacements for real personal human interaction).

Newspapers, pubs, and town halls were once capable of supporting our political communities in a similar fashion, and they are in fact still quite useful. Twitter and Facebook are not surrogates for them–they are complements. Their use can bolster support and sustain older one-way forms of communication substantially. One skillfully word-smithed tweet may succeed in putting an otherwise obscure newspaper article or announcement right in front of hundreds of new readers. Many citizen tweeters may become educated and inspired enough to speak out at town halls and pubs. All of this while keeping everyone in their political communities honest and informed.

In the end, technology will always be defined us. Our choices make all the difference. Just as we could choose to use the gun for murder or justice and nuclear fission for mass destruction or public energy, we can likewise use social networking for community and thought development or mindless and incessant chatter. In the end the same human principles that have continued to govern and judge our use of the wheel will ultimately guide our use of social networks. Moreover, to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Henry V, we each have to deal with the consequences of the choices we make as our tools come of age.

With that, I’m off to visit family in #Minneapolis!

Games today are flashy, require years of development, and are more quickly cast aside than the haste with which they were purchased. While the pace of the gaming industry increased, quality subsequently waned. Today we have a sundry, unimaginative list of titles, often capitalizing on the namesake of Hollywood’s hit movies.

Then again, there’s a lot of pressure to produce: games must turn a profit, sell million of titles, and sport features such as Internet connectivity or they won’t reach shelves. Yet perhaps the gaming industry has simply run out of good ideas.

I look back with reverence and admiration on an era often thought to be ancient gaming history. The age of Mario Brothers, Mega Man, and CastleVania. Titles such as those are now the epitome of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids of video gaming! Want a more modern analogy of their significance? They’re Led Zeppelin, AC/DC or The Beatles compared to Nickelback (Not to offend to all you Nickelback fans too deeply, but respect must be given where due). Games like Mario had more computing power than the Lunar Lander, yet today they’ve probably got less than your toaster. How on Earth were they ever so successful?

Summed up in one word: fun. Games like that didn’t need to rely on pricey studio graphics or the artistic quality of their soundtrack. Nope, a super-fancy midi file and some 8-bit Windows Paint quality 2-frame animations footed the bill. How many of you can name all the shortcuts, cheats, and surprises in the original Mario Brothers? How about the best order in which to defeat all the boss robots of Mega Man 2? If you can’t, you probably at least tried to figure it out. Maybe you even spent hours doing just that. Simple surprises frequently lent themselves nicely to the re-playability of the classics.

Some would go as far as to say that games are more social today. If by that they mean five guys sitting around drinking beer and stuffing their faces with Doritos to the familiar sounds of Madden Whatever Year echoing throughout the house, then I’d say that there’s a lot left to be desired. Perhaps they meant World of Warcraft, a game where millions sit glued to their computers for hours, all separated from each other (at least the Madden guys have physical company).

What happened to the pause button? Games today have to bait to win. They must constantly keep the carrot in front of the player at all times, and the bigger the carrot the better. When another game comes along with a bigger carrot it’s curtains for the inadequate title as players feverishly jump ship. The classics didn’t need a carrot. The secret was in the sauce, and the recipe still wins to this day.

Modern games rely predominately on time spent. They slowly reward the player for countless hours of playtime. Big producers have taken the recipe for the classic sauce and done the equivalent of mass factory floor production. Yet grandma’s slow home cooking is still the best. Despite the same roots, the games of yesterday were easy to pick up, easy to put down, and at the same time a whole hell of the lot of fun to master and show off to your best friend. Search YouTube, and you’ll find numerous recent posts of flawless runs in several of the best titles of all time. Moreover, those games offered cloture: you could win. Find me a World of Warcraft player that can describe how the game ends in one sentence, 140 characters or less.

At the end of the day, we could trace the lineage of all games to their roots. A couple of controls, buttons, and a screen to play on. Throw in weapons and enemies to beat, and you’re all set. However it’s less about the elements that make up the game, and more about what it represents to the player. The best games engage our imaginations and capture dreams. Moreover, they make them attainable (I remember wanting to be Luigi back in the 1980′s). If nothing else, we ought to respect the classics for what they are: some of the best titles ever made. To call them outdated, old, or antiquated it to misunderstand the nature of the video game as Shakespeare’s Hamlet misunderstands the nature of greatness:

Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

With that, I must resume my flawless run of CastleVania before bed!

A Cup of Love (Surely not Fear)

With this post I’m going to diverge for a bit from my usual topic of technology and return to an age old question pondered by everyone from Socrates and Aquinas to Hobbes, Shakespeare and Machiavelli, just to name a few. No doubt, it will continue to be fervently debating so long as mankind walks the face of the Earth. So why bother asking which is to be preferred?  It’s less a question about which one is better, and more about how to live a good life. The answer is often neither evident nor explicit.

To posit the question from a more modern perspective, two movies seemingly unrelated with completely different directors, epitomize the struggle: Fight Club and Good Will Hunting. The protagonists of each are internally at war with themselves. Each proceeds down a path that perpetually sets the tone and shapes the character of his life. Will Hunting chooses a path that leads him to love and compassion, whereas Tyler Durden pursues fear and violence. More importantly, however, both films consider the real enigma of life: loyalty. Specifically, how we may attain it from our friends, acquaintances, and even, at times, our enemies.

For Durden in Fight Club, loyalty is obtained through sheer force of will. Loyalty to Tyler means you’ve probably been a victim of his mayhem and fear him. Comparatively, with Will Hunting your loyalty means you are his friend, share a pint of beer at a baseball game, and can chat with him about life. Each protagonist has an schism in their personality that propels them toward a malevolence. However, it’s how they temper themselves that ultimately determines their nature. Tyler resorts to wanton destruction and fuels his rage. Hunting delves into academic self-eduction, the  pursuit of a woman, and mixes it with a measure of vengeance for those who cross him. In choosing either course, Machiavelli offers us this in The Prince:

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely

Neither fear nor love can guarantee loyalty. The most cruel person in town may be easily toppled when someone strong enough rises up to exercise their revenge (chances are this person will surely exist). Likewise, being the nicest won’t help you avoid those that simply despise you for that kindness. If I had to chose to part with one, I would personally dispense with fear. I disagree with Machiavelli: fear is far more difficult to maintain, and leaves a notorious stain on one’s soul and an unrepairable reputation. Love, although harder to initially obtain is more rewarding over time. Men are naturally inclined to be of good nature.

The real answer, I believe, is that neither alone is sufficient. Being too compassionate will encourage your most timid enemies to walk all over you. Too vengeful, and you’ll eventually experience the merciless retribution of your opposition. As with all things, there must be a balance. In the figurative words of Theodore Roosevelt, sometimes you just need to walk softly and still carry a big stick.

The best way to receive loyalty is to offer loyalty,  and demand little. If it is every forsaken, the immediate recourse should not be anger or rage, but perhaps calculated, stalwart indifference (offer your enemies nothing). It’s a tricky conundrum. At some point faith comes into play. Back faith up with confidence and respect, and you can grow to presume that others are loyal just by the way you treat them, and not because you beat it out of them (metaphorically speaking). Sure, you’re going to get it wrong sometimes, you’re going to be crossed, but that’s all part of being human, and it makes life more interesting!

So to everyone out there asking the same question, fear or love, I say this: Love unconditionally, laugh at yourself, and expect little in return. Moreover, be quick to sever ties with those who cross you, and slow to allow them to regain your trust if forced to associate with them. (Spoiler Alert) Be the Will Hunting driving off into the sunset to “See about a girl” and not the Tyler Durden blowing his face off in front of one while watching skyscrapers topple in a scene of bedlam.