Challenge: Book Quotes

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews. I kind of fell off last year, so we'll see how I do with it this year.)

Prompt: Book quotes that make me think

 I mean, that's going to be Terry Pratchett for me. Consider, for example, the Boots Theory from Men At Arms: 

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.

 Or the discussion of justice and belief in Hogfather: 

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

Year 2020 ADHD

At this point in my life, I'm pretty sure that Beautiful Wife and I both have undiagnosed (now adult) ADHD. And in reading about the various less-recognized versions and symptoms of ADHD, I'm noticing a particular theme: one way that people with ADHD hack their brains into getting things done is to stress themselves out enough to switch over from distraction to hyperfocus. And for a lot of people who use that trick, the generally high stress level of 2020 is making that harder, if not impossible. 

I read that, and I just thought: Ooof. 

I am here to tell you all that I am absolutely freaked out. Election day is in two days, the Republican Party has spent the entire election doing their best to suppress voting, throw out legitimate votes, and rig absolutely everything they can -- all the while screaming about how the Democrats are trying to steal the election. They're also busily trying rat-fuck the opposition; it's worth noting that the push that Giuliani and others are making about the Oh So Scandalous contents of Hunter Biden's laptop is actually in regards to the second of these supposed laptops to mysteriously turn up. (And at this point I feel compelled add: at least the second. I would not be surprised to learn that there were more.) The first one appeared right around the time that the impeachment hearings were starting, in the hands of a former Fox News contributor. Meanwhile the right wing is predicting all the horrible, terroristic things the Democrats are going to do if they win, while their own people are already doing them.

It also seems quite clear that Donald Trump has no intention of conceding the presidency, no matter what the voting results look like on election night. The entire Republican Party is, I expect, going to back his play; they have so far, and I can't imagine why they'd stop now. Plus, they've managed to stack the Supreme Court in such a way that if the question ever gets that far, the results are going to make Bush vs. Gore look like a well-reasoned legal decision. 

Oh, and there's a pandemic. As of last night, we've over a million deaths globally and nearly 231,000 deaths here in the United States -- a set of numbers that I strongly suspect is being undercounted, at least here in the U.S. And looking at the death toll alone is understating the cost regardless, since we already have plenty of evidence of ongoing health effects in over a third of people infected by it.

The medical impact isn't all of it, either: there's also the economic impact. I don't think it's really showing up in the news, and I'm not sure that there's any sort of widespread understanding of the full effects of it, but: a lot of people are out of work. A lot of people are facing eviction. (A lot of people have been evicted.) A lot of people are facing medical bankruptcies. Hotels and restaurants are not going to be operating at full capacity any time in the forseeable future. (I saw an ad the other day for a hotel chain... it wasn't this one, but it gave off a similar feeling of "Please come stay with us, you can social distance just by being the only person in our hotel!") Tourism has pretty much bottomed out. I strongly suspect -- though I don't have a citation for this one, or really any good evidence -- that the only reason "The Economy" hasn't crashed is that "The Economy" is measured in ways that are being artificially propped up until after the election. (Stock Market, I'm looking at you.) I'm expecting (and Dark Gods, but I'd love to be wrong about this) that by January we'll be in freefall regardless of who wins. I'm also expecting that this will be the subject of much shock and surprise on the part of politicians, pundits, and reporters... while the Disaster Capitalists who set it all up rake in the money, and the folks who still haven't recovered from the last recession or two wind up even worse off.

I'm also expecting a rise in hate crimes following the election. If you're a member of a vulnerable group (or even you're not) please have a post-election safety plan. I hope you do already. It's going to get crazier out there.

So... yeah. What was I talking about? Oh, right, stress. Life is just a teeeeeeensy bit stressful right now. And if that's interfering with your ability to operate, you aren't alone. Everybody I know is freaked the fuck out right now. The only ones who aren't seem to be the ones who are looking forward to the violence, or even pushing for some kind of new civil war. Being utterly discombobulated by all this is perfectly natural (in fact, a lot of what's getting passed around as news and rumors right now seems purpose-built to create that effect). Needing way more sleep than usual is also nothing unusual. This is not normal, and there's nothing wrong with you for noticing and reacting to that.

Me? Well, I'm planning to stay off of social media until the election is past; maybe through the end of the week and into next weekend. I may or may not be putting things up here on the Blog o' Doom; if I do, they'll likely be pieces that have nothing to do with the real world. Aside from heavy drinking (which I really can't do right now, owing to some medications I'm taking) and writing all this out (which I've just done) I can't think of any other good way to cope. You can only take so many hot baths.

Take care of yourselves; take care of each other. If you know me and you need help with something, let me know; I'll do what I can. 

If there's any hope to be found in all this, it'll be found in supporting each other. 

And for fuck's sake, VOTE. If you already voted, awesome! But also be aware that it may take more than that to get us through this. Figure out what you can do, what you're willing to do, and be ready to do it. People are -- and have been -- organizing; if you're in a position where you can be part of that, your presence is needed. 

And now that I've written all that out, maybe I can finally go to sleep.

Abolish ICE

So, one of my wife's students has been arrested by ICE, because he's one of the DACA kids. And apparently they have until close of business tomorrow to submit letters attesting to his character. Odds are good that he's going to be deported regardless, and by "deported" I mean arbitrarily exiled to a country that he's never so much as visited before. This is what "justice" looks like in Modern America: somewhere along the line, we've decided that the Gestapo had the right idea.

(And yes, I'm aware that justice in historical America is frequently no better.)

I mean, clearly this is the only way, right? We can't let him get away with, well, being a good student and a leader in student organizations and a contributing participant in American society and civic life. That would just be wrong, wouldn't it?

If this is who we are, then we are absolute shit: morally shit, socially shit, politically shit. And make no mistake about it: this *is* who we are.

I firmly believe we can do better. I firmly believe we can *be* better. And we have to start now.

Abolish ICE. Defund them. Dissolve their charter. Whatever it takes. And then hold its leaders responsible for their human rights violations.

Leviticus 19:34 if you're scripturally inclined.

Asking for what, exactly?

Tucker McCrady:
"I get pretty angry when someone suggests that women are 'asking for it' if they dress a certain way. And up until today, my outrage was mostly directed at the notion of “asking,” the notion that dressing a certain way is a request of any sort. People should feel free to dress however they want! But of course, our choice of dress does communicate things, and we all know that; we all have reasons for dressing one way on one day, and another on the next. Pretending otherwise isn’t quite exactly to the point.

"What is to the point, what really is outrageous, is the notion of 'it.' When people say women are 'asking for it' by dressing provocatively (whatever that means), the 'it' they are referring to is sexual harassment. Which, if you think about it, is saying that if you dress in a way so as to stimulate or invite sexual interest (which you are perfectly entitled to do), you are simultaneously asking to be sexually harassed...as though men just can’t be expected to worry their pretty little heads about the difference between sexual interest and sexual harassment.

"Which of course is the whole problem; men all too often don’t know or care what sexual harassment is, or at least not enough to not do it.

"If I ask for a pat on the back and turn so you can give me one, I suppose I am taking the risk that you might instead strike me so hard as to injure or even cripple me. But taking that risk is my business; if you do decide to crack my spine, it is beyond absurd to say that I asked for it. There is only one person to blame for an assault, a harassment, or even a professionally inappropriate expression of sexual interest that might be appropriate in another context. It’s the person who chooses to do it, not the person trying desperately to juggle risks in a screwed-up, misogynist world.

"So the next time someone refers to someone as 'asking for it,' ask them to clarify what 'it' means. My guess is they’ve probably never even thought about it."

Enthusiasm Gap

From a comment on Facebook:
"Much of this country is extremely frustrated by the inability of the government to take care of the middle and lower class. Hillary represents to a lot of people the class responsible for that failure. That was working against her from the very start and she never addressed it to the American people in a way that was convincing. She simply didn't represent a meaningful change in the states where it mattered. That's why her vote totals were lower than Obama's. The data basically tells you people just didn't show up where they needed to for her."

Meh. Maybe? I mean, you switch from a charismatic 40-something president to a... seventy-something? ...woman, you're going to have an enthusiasm gap. You nominate a candidate who's talking about policy and what can actually be done instead of making "bold" promises that nobody could possibly keep, you're going to have an enthusiasm gap. I'm not sure you can blame Hillary Clinton for that, especially since I'd generally consider a realistic outlook and a desire to present it honestly as, well, Things That Should Be Virtues.

But those virtues cost her votes. That's not all that cost her votes; belonging to the same party as the encumbent also cost her votes, being a woman cost her votes, years of Republican demonization cost her votes, agreeing that Black Lives Matter actually had a point cost her votes.

It isn't just an enthusiasm gap. It's also a perspective gap. Those of the Trump voters that I've actually spoken to (and admittedly, that's a small-as-hell sample size) not only genuinely thought that she was lying, corrupt, and definitely guilty of *something* even if we hadn't quite found out what yet. They also thought that Washington was hopelessly corrupt, even while they cheerfully voted Republican up and down the ticket. They thought that minorities were imagining racism, or maybe manufacturing examples of it to gain advantage for themselves. They genuinely believed that Trump was a bold outsider, and as such was the only person who stood any chance of "draining the swamp".

I don't know how to argue with that. I don't know how to react when someone presents me with "facts" that seem self-evidently wrong, but are just as self-evidently right to them. I don't know where to go when we can't even agree on how to decide on what actually constitutes a fact.

I'm not in touch with the ones who voted for Trump on the basis of open, proud racism. The ones I've spoken to seem, instead, simply to be blind to it: it's horrible, so naturally nobody would actually *do* that, so naturally minorities et al must be making it up. They're not bad people; they just want to get along... and that's precisely the problem: (what I see as) their blind spot is going to hurt an awful lot of my friends and co-workers, and possibly them too, if Paul Ryan gets his way.

Enlightened Self-Interest

If you haven't already, get out there and vote.

The Sin Of Sodom

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." That would Ezekiel 16:49.

I wouldn't bother mentioning this -- what with me being an atheist, and all -- except that, in my life, the people I hear protesting the most loudly against taking in refugees or living in the same country as Muslims are the same ones who speak the most loudly about their Christian faiths. Also:

"When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God." That one would be Leviticus 19:33-34.

As Ezekiel (a notoriously cranky old bastard) might have said: Listen and take heed, motherfuckers.

Various Things Worth Reading

First up, some thoughts on violence and morality: People Do Violence Because Their Moral Codes Demand It.

On a somewhat related note, Ten Things I Wish I'd Known About Gaslighting.

And a bonus video: F*ck That, A Guided Meditation.

Those dirty rats...

I'm taking a break - probably pretty brief, but still a break - so instead of actually writing... well... anything, I'm just going to post something I found interesting and send you off to read it.

In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes.

So, if morality cannot exist without religion (which I don't believe myself), would this study suggest that rats have some form of religion? It seems more likely to me that the basic underpinnings of morality (empathy and fairness) are part of our biological heritage.

Infamous: Festival of Blood

So, I finished playing Festival of Blood on Sunday night.[1] This post may feature some spoilers for anyone who hasn't actually played the game yet; consider yourselves warned.

I'm... weirdly ambivalent about it. I loved Infamous and Infamous II. (It's hard to separate them entirely; they're two games, but basically a single storyline.) I posted some earlier thoughts on them, and on the Karma scale and the way that morality is conceived and applied within the game, here, here, and here. I love the way the storyline comes together; I love the game dynamics and the graphics and the voice acting, the little touches that really make the setting come alive. I love that it's possible to be extremely good or extremely evil, but it takes some effort either way; I love that part of trying to be Really Good involves Not Hurting Innocent Bystanders, and the way that means that you have to be really careful - especially with the really powerful powers.

Festival of Blood does away with a lot of that. It features the same protagonist, Cole MacGrath, and it uses the same engine and setting as Infamous II, so in a lot of ways has very much the same feel. Then... well...

First of all, it adds vampires. Now, in the original storyline (in the first two games), super-powers only appear after the explosion in Empire City, and they're connected to the item that caused the explosion: the Ray Sphere. This isn't a world in which some people have always had powers; it's a world in which suddenly, now, things that only happened in comic books and movies have suddenly intruded into real life. To maintain that sense of a more... realistic, plausible world, the powers aren't magic; they're basically psychic powers, brought out and radically enhanced by the device known as the Ray Sphere. In other words, the powers are A) a new thing; and B) amenable to scientific study, albeit of the Star Trek This-Sounds-Plausible-Enough-For-Suspension-Of-Disbelief variety. Except now, in this story, there are also vampires, and they've been around a lot longer than the sort of power brought out by the Ray Sphere.

Second of all, because this story is built around Cole being turned into a vampire and then trying to restore his humanity by slaying the vampire who turned him,[2] the Karma meter is suddenly gone. There's no particular penalty for draining the blood of innocent bystanders; in fact, at a couple of points the game encourages it (and I think at one point requires it, though there might be a workaround that I didn't find). So this where I emphatically did not like the game: the Cole MacGrath that I'd just finished playing in Infamous II would never have killed civilians just to power his vampire-cloud-of-bats flying power while he was chasing a Bad Guy. He'd have found another way. But... that didn't seem to be an option here. (Evil-side Cole, from one of my previous games, would have cheerfully done it just to escape his creator's control - but, again, choices.)

So that was my first reaction: an Infamous game without the moral choices and moral consequences just doesn't feel like an Infamous game, and using the same character just felt wrong. What almost saved it, and what allowed me to play it all the way through instead of giving up in disgust, was the framing device: the whole thing is a story told by Cole's best friend, Zeke... to a woman that he's trying to pick up at a bar. That helped, because Zeke is probably some sort of Grand High Poobah of unreliable narrators. Except that in the very closing scene, we discover that the woman he's been talking to is a vampire herself, which means that enough of the story is probably true that all the my initial objections - This Doesn't Fit The Established Setting and This Is Out Of Character For Cole - that all of my disgruntled objections immediately came rushing back.

My second reaction was that it would have been very possible to create a story similar to Infamous, in which instead of receiving electricity-based superpowers, the main character had just become a vampire. Yes, the powers involved would be different, and the environmental hazards would change, but you could still do a fairly awesome story that way: something like Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain in a modern setting[3], with an awful lot of the same moral and social choices found in the other Infamous games.

This particular combination, though... It was kind of fun to play, but aesthetically it just felt wrong.

[1] Yes, I realize that my gaming tends to run anywhere from six months to four years behind whatever's current; and yes, I also realize that this makes my reviews essentially useless as reviews. That's... not the point. Not generally. Not much of it, anyway.

[2] ...before dawn arrives, because now we're dealing with magic and not bothering to rationalize how this makes any kind of sense...

[3] The powers could either be traditional horror/fantasy vampire milieu, or could plug directly in to the established world as a new variety of Conduit. Cole can already drain fallen enemies of their bio-electric energy, though it's considered an evil act; it's not like conduits can't have some vampiric tendencies already.

Modeling Consent Culture

Over at Disrupting Dinner Parties, guest poster Rebecca Flin describes her first encounter with "consent culture". I'm not going to repost the whole thing here; but this is the sort of message that really deserves a signal boost, so this is my small contribution. Go read it.

So we know what “rape-culture” is at this point, right? Thank god we finally have a word for it! Like the emergence of the term, “sexual harassment” in the 1970s, the recent addition of the term “rape culture” to our everyday lexicon has given us a way to describe what used to be called “just the way it is” or “life”. Therefore, we are now able to see and discuss it. And I don’t know about you guys, but I see it everywhere: movies, the news, music, child-raising, the subway, you name it. Rape culture is our culture. But now that we see it, we can start changing it right?

So tell me, what can I do to move away from rape culture?

Seriously, go read it.

9/11 a day late

I don't really have much to say about 9/11. I didn't when it happened; I never have since. By and large, I just don't talk about it, because this is one of those peculiar issues where my failure to have any sort of strong reaction is actually offensive to some people.

So instead of posting anything of my own, I'm going to link to a Cracked article on The Six Weirdest Things We've Learned Since 9/11. (Surely I'm not the only one who finds it disturbing that, in our post-9/11 world, our best reporting is done by people whose actual field is, at least ostensibly, comedy... That's not just me, right?)

"Hey, guys -- I'm starting to think we overreacted to the terrorism thing."

Christianity for Non-Christians: a Response

Christian Piatt, whose stuff I frequently enjoy, has a post up that he's entitled Christianity for Non-Christians. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It seems to be targeted less at non-Christians, and more at Christians who are disaffected with what they see of Christianity. Since my response to it in the comments is longer than anything I've written for my own blog this week (and since I don't have anything ready to put up this morning), I'm going to duplicate it here:

---

Hm.

"1. You do not have to believe in the supernatural in order to follow a Christlike path."

No, but if you believe that Jesus was only a man, however wise, then you're free (in fact, I'd argue that you're morally obligated) to decide for yourself which of his teachings were true. (Cafeteria Christianity, here we come!) More to the point, if you see Jesus as merely a great teacher, then odds are good that you also acknowledge him as one of many great teachers - and at that point, you're not so much following a Christlike path as you are trying to figure out how best to act morally.

"2. If you don’t feel comfortable praying to something or someone, then just pray on or about something."

Or, you know, just don't pray. It's not that I don't pray because I'm uncomfortable with the practice; I don't pray because prayer does nothing for me. And while I don't want to get into a big semantic argument about what exactly constitutes prayer, it does seem to me that if nothing is listening, then you're not exactly praying. You're just thinking. Reflecting. Contemplating, maybe. Which are all good and valuable practices in their own right, so why label them with a fancier name?

"3. Christianity is an ongoing practice, not a one time event."

I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. It seems like something you ought to be saying to Christians, not to non-Christians. Yes, of course Christianity is an ongoing practice - in no small part because, at least as I was raised to understand it, a huge amount of Christianity is about learning to be a good person, and being a good person is inevitably a matter of constant work, reflection, and refinement. And yes, despite what some Christians claim, as an unbeliever I shouldn't expect Christians to be immediately redeemed into better people. And, personally, I don't. As far as I can tell, becoming a better person is (like so much else) dependent on the amount of effort you put into trying become a better person; it doesn't have anything to do (pro or con) with becoming a Christian per se. (Though of course, becoming a Christian can certainly inspire someone to try to become a better person.)

"4. You don’t need church to be a Christian, but doing it alone is not easy."

Again - and maybe I'm misreading the point of this whole list - but this seems relevant to Christians and would-be Christians, but not to non-Christians. It may be true, but as a non-believer why should I care?

Going back to Point One, if I don't believe in the supernatural, then there's nothing all that special about Christianity; or, to put that another way, there's no reason for me to aspire to a Christlike life when I can aspire to living a good life that draws on the wisdom of many great teachers. There's no particular reason for me, as a non-believer, to want to be a Christian or be seen as a Christian.

...That said, I would love to see more of Christianity embrace the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven as something that desperately needs to be built here on Earth - an idea, I might add, that seems to be directly supported by Scripture.

"5. Just being a “good person” or “not hurting anyone else” isn’t enough."

Why not? The devil, as they say, is in the details. Sure, your daughter may have learned these principles in her first day at school (or, more likely, even before that) but learning how best to apply them (in all of life's wide variety of situations) is the study of a lifetime. That's true whether your idea of being a good person includes "love God", or whether it's only "love your neighbor as yourself". (Yes, in fact, Jesus himself seems to have suggested that all the law and prophets are direct outgrowths of Trying Not To Be A Dick.)

You seem to be saying that we need Christianity, or some sort of Christian belief, to help us evaluate the full effects of our actions, inactions, and behaviors. I disagree. In fact, as far as I can tell, the only way that any of us, Christians and non-Christians alike, manage that sort of evaluation - the kind that leads to moral growth - is through a combination of empathy, rigorous honesty, and intersubjectivity (which is basically a fancy way of saying "listening to each other").

The only reason I can see that Christianity would be required for such a process is if there is, in fact, a supernatural component to being a Christian - if the Almighty somehow explains things, or guides people to understandings that they wouldn't otherwise get. So far, I haven't seen anything to indicate that such is the case - and, again, that goes against the first point on your list.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Having read through this twice - once initially, and again in composing this response - I have the distinct feeling that I'm missing your point. This doesn't seem like Christianity for Non-Christians; it seems more like some ruminations on What True Christianity Is Or Should Be... or maybe How To Be Christian If You've Become Uncomfortable With Christianity Or Churches (But Still Want To Be A Christian). I don't really see how it's Christianity for non-Christians, either in the sense of explaining things to unbelievers, or in the sense of trying to show why Christianity can/should still be inviting to non-believers.

Am I missing something? (Besides, you know, any drive towards religious belief?) If so, what?

---

There are several other good responses in the comments, so check them out as well.

The Parable of the Cartographer

Once upon a time, there was a Cartographer. He was a bright, successful man, well-regarded in his field, and he had (as cartographers so often do) a map.

This was not just any map. This was the map, relied upon by billions of people across the world. It was widely considered, even by those who didn't consult it regularly, to be absolutely the finest tool for navigation available. Admittedly, not all of those of people used the map in exactly the same way; but the Cartographer had studied for years to learn how to read the map correctly and had been much applauded for his ability to decipher its complexities.

One day, the Cartographer was out walking when he heard someone calling out to him. He was, at it happens, walking from his workshop in Springfield, Illinois to the town of Phoenix. He had, of course, brought his copy of the map with him, and he was using it to find his way. So, naturally, the cartographer looked for the source of the voice and found a farmer standing next to him.

"Begging your pardon," said the farmer, "but you're walking through my field, and you're crushing some of my plants."

The cartographer consulted the map, then turned back to the farmer. "That is unfortunate," he said, "but I am on my way to Phoenix; and the map says I must proceed this way."

The farmer wasn't sure what to say to this. He, too, held the map in high regard; and he could tell by the Cartographer's scholarly clothes that the Cartographer had spent a lot more time studying the map than he had. "Well," he said, "if that's what the map says..."

So the Cartographer bade him good day, and continued to follow the map.

Some time later the Cartographer was passing through a town when he again heard someone calling out to him. He stopped and looked around, and found that a man and a woman had stopped him. The man wore a carpenter's toolbelt, and the woman wore the simple skirt and apron of a professional maid. "May I help you?" he asked, thinking that perhaps they were lost and had stopped to ask him for guidance from the map.

"You," said the man, "need to look where you're going. In the last few minutes you've forced four people to detour around you, and bumped into two others. You nearly knocked one lady over!"

"Have I?" asked the Cartographer. He had noticed no such thing, and was startled and a little irritated to be accused of such behavior.

"Oh, yes indeed," answered the woman. "I saw it with my own eyes. You bumped into them just as he said, and no mistake about it."

"Ah," said the Cartographer. "Well." He was, truth be told, a little aggravated at being accosted over something like this; didn't these people have any sense of priorities? "You must understand, I am following the map."

The carpenter scowled and walked away, but the maid asked: "But sir, could you perhaps use your map to find some other way to get where you're going? One that isn't so hard on other people?"

The Cartographer reminded himself that she was, of course, sadly uneducated in these matters. To educate her, he replied: "I'm sorry, my dear, but the map shows us the one correct route. I cannot divert from it." She only stared at him, looking puzzled.

So he bade her good day, and continued to the follow the map.

Later still, as he was approaching Phoenix, he heard yet another voice. He stopped again, and looked to see where it was coming from. This time he found a woman beside him, and she was waving her arms and screaming invectives at him. Finding that she at last had his attention, she demanded: "What do you think you're doing!?"

Well, the Cartographer wasn't used to being addressed in this manner, and he didn't like it one bit. So he drew himself up and said, "Ma'am, I am following the map."

"You are walking on my children!" she replied. "They were out here playing, and you came right up and walked over them! You are hurting my children!"

"Well," he replied. "I don't see how that's possible. I am following the map, and the map shows us the correct route. Naturally it wouldn't show us that path if it was in any way wrong."

"The map?" she asked. "Doesn't it say, 'Don't hurt anyone in your travels'? Look. Right up there, just under the compass rose."

"It does indeed," he agreed, "and that is clear evidence of the value of the map. Moreover, the map clearly shows that this is the way to reach my destination, so this is the path I must follow."

The woman studied him in silence. Just as he was about to bid her farewell, she said: "My husband is an explorer, and I know a thing or two about maps. And the one thing I've seen, over and over, is that no map in the world can help you if you don't stop and orient yourself to the terrain. Doesn't matter how skilled you are at reading it, either. You have to check the terrain." She paused. "Most strangers passing through here, I'd invite 'em in for food and drink, a bit of rest from the heat of the day. But you, sir, don't seem to be the kind of man who changes direction easily, and my kin and I want nothing to do with you."

With that she turned away, gathered up her children, and found her own way back to her home.

I write this in reaction to Fred Clark's rather neat vivisection of Bishop Paprocki's talk on same sex marriage and the question-and-answer session that apparently followed.

Bishop Paprocki may protest that his "position is not a question of anecdotal stories" and that his opponent "presented her case from an emotional position" as opposed to "the church's stance [which] comes from the position of faith and reason", but (assuming even minimal accuracy on the part of the National Catholic Register) neither of those protests is relevant. The people supporting the right of same-sex (etc.) couples to wed are not trying to sway his opinion with anecdotal stories; nor are they arguing on the basis of illogical emotion. They are trying to draw his attention to the terrain.

How long can you tread water?

I have, as you might have noticed, some issues with the story of Noah's Ark. Don't get me wrong, I can see the appeal. I've had days (weeks, months) in which it really seemed like the only way to really fix things was to burn everything down and start over. (That seems, to me, to be the fundamental lure of the story.)

But unless you're willing to believe that everyone else in the world, everyone Not Like You, is evil - completely and irredeemably evil - then killing off the entire world is a monstrous and evil thing to do. It's only slightly less monstrous if you're "merely" leaving everyone else to die, as you get in some modern retellings of the story (such as Atlas Shrugged).

If other people are basically just doing their best to get by, then killing them off for their perceived failure(s) isn't noble; it's villainous. It's horrible. And if you discovered that someone was planning to do that, the heroic action would be trying to stop them.

...This has devolved into something of a rant, which wasn't exactly what I intended. So, on a lighter note, here's Bill Cosby with his own distinctive take on the story:

Video Game Morality and Love Triangles

Still continuing from some earlier thoughts. Mild spoilers are possible. Read ahead at your own risk.

In my last post, I was talking about the games Infamous and Infamous II, and the in-game incentives to play as either a very good Good Guy, or a very bad Bad Guy.

Infamous also II sets up a situation that might charitably be described as a love triangle, with the main (male) character, Cole MacGrath, associating with Agent Kuo, who brought him down to New Marais in order to increase his power so he could defeat The Beast; and with Nix, whom he encounters soon after arriving in New Marais. Agent Kuo represents the forces of law and order, at the very least, and generally encourages Good behavior: she's the one who compliments you when you interrupt a mugging or stop to heal people, and her missions are oriented towards promoting trust and building goodwill with the general population. Nix, on the other hand, is deeply bitter, and doesn't see why you should care about the ordinary people at all; as far as she's concerned, the people without powers should learn their place. She compliments you when you beat down the police, take blast shards from powerless civilians, and generally impose your will on the least of these.

Now, this particular setup is something of a cliche, though I'm more accustomed to seeing it done with a Good Guy and Bad Boy that a heroine must choose between. Even so, it doesn't really bother me; the female characters are both characterized well enough to be interesting entirely on their own merits. But it's interesting that the game designers chose to set things up this way: not only do you have a little morality meter, but you're also interacting with women who, at least on one level, personify the good and evil paths. Was the morality meter (and its associated powers) not enough to emphasize the nature of the choice between good and evil? Or was this a convenient way to make the super-powered women distinctive? I suspect it's a little of both.

It's probably also worth noting that the "love interest" in the first Infamous game is MacGrath's girlfriend Trish, who doesn't have powers and spends most of the game being estranged from Cole because of his role in the Empire City explosion. Spoiler: she doesn't survive the first game, making her another potential addition to the Women In Refrigerators list. But there is, at least potentially, a troubling subtext there: in order to be a worthy love-interest for MacGrath, you have to have powers, too. For this storyline, Trish can be a sacrifice to build Cole's character, but she can't survive to play a role in the ongoing story.

And... this is still kind of incomplete, but I think I need to finish the game and see the Evil Side ending before I come back to it. So, thanks for you patience.

Video Game Morality

There may be some minor spoilers here; consider yourself warned.

Continuing some earlier thoughts...

In that last post, I talked a little bit about how I'm playing the Evil side this time around, so I can see what Evil missions and Powers I might have missed, and what the Evil ending might look like. I also talked a little about how oddly difficult I found it to be Evil in the game; I'm having to fight against my native inclinations and some ingrained habits. Despite this, I've managed to become as Evil as the game's system of morality will recognize. By the standards of Infamous II (and, before that, Infamous I), I am absolutely evil.

But that has some interesting implications all by itself. The way the game is set up, there's a very strong incentive to be either very good, or very evil. It's not the missions; you can complete good-side or evil-side missions as you choose. It's the powers. There are certain powers that are simply not available until you reach a certain degree of virtue - or a certain level of vice. (There are also certain... I'd call them "corollary effects" of being particularly good or particularly evil.)

Now, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea that someone with this degree of personal power - and seriously, we're talking "Hey I can take out an entire police force and be ready to go again five minutes later" kind of power - would likely do either a lot of good, or a lot of evil. Especially since MacGrath is interacting very directly with both his rivals and enemies, and with the un-empowered people around him: there's no insulation, none of the usual buffers that keep most of us from dealing directly with the sort of people who could ruin our lives on a whim.

But, I would like to see a third option: not neutrality, exactly, but... lack of extemism? I'd like to see what might happen if I used my powers without any particular concern for what kind of progression particular actions could earn me. I'd like a third path, where players could grow their powers without needing to strive for the ultimate good or the absolute evil.

I can make some guesses about how I might behave. If I wasn't striving for sainthood, I'd probably be less worried about hitting innocent bystanders... but not as sublimely indifferent as I am in my current quest to be evil. On the other hand, I'd probably stop to heal the sick and injured... especially if I'd injured them myself... but I might not have been so obsessive about healing every single person I found, if I wasn't both Becoming More Good and gaining experience points every time I did. Still, I'd be interested to see if those guesses bore out without the specific incentives to reinforce them.

The Problem of (Being) Evil

So, I'm playing back through Infamous and Infamous II. This is a pair of video games in which the main character gains electricity-based super powers after an explosion in Empire City - an explosion caused by a package that he was delivering. (I've mentioned these games before, because the main character - Cole MacGrath - looks like an adult version of my six-year-old's favorite super-hero, Lightning Zapzers.)

As with a lot of more recent video games, Infamous features a system of dualistic morality. Depending on your actions in the game, your character becomes more villainous or more heroic. This isn't just a measure of your in-game morality, either; the choices you make affect the way your powers develop, what missions are available to you, how the ordinary citizens react to your presence, and even your character's appearance.

The first time I played through, I went with the good side. I tried not to damage innocent by-standers, I healed people when they were hurt, I helped the police re-establish order, I dealt fairly with the citizens. Probably the hardest part of all that was avoiding collateral damage: Cole is so powerful that even with the good-side powers, it's easy to destroy things you didn't mean to. On a related note, never get into a guns-versus-lightning battle at a gas station.

This time, I'm playing the evil side. This is mainly out of curiosity: I wanted to see what the missions I'd missed were like, and how the evil-side powers developed.

At least, I'm trying to play the evil side. It's harder than I would have thought - I mean, evil is supposed to be easy, right? But I have to make a conscious effort not to stop and heal injured people when I pass them on the street. Or to pick fights with the police. And it gets really weird when I get feedback from the other characters; there's a very nice NSA agent who disapproves vehemently of my evil actions, and having her chew me out is weirdly uncomfortable.

Does that mean that I'm basically a good person? I don't know, and I'm reluctant to use a video game as any sort of litmus test for morality. But it's certainly an interesting experience.

Until the Rainbow, Part Five

This is the fifth and final (Yay! At last!) part of a five-part series. You can start from the beginning here. I wonder, are there any great stories that aren't morally problematic?

Among the things the old man left behind, I found some paper. I've been writing this while the others work -- and despite my expectations, they've encouraged it. I thought someone would rebuke me for not helping out, but no one did. Part of that, I'm sure, was because I'd made the climb into the boat... but I think that another part of it is a desire to be remembered, to have some record of who we were, and what we did when the waters rose.

Our final project is as simple to describe as it is difficult to complete: to rip the roof off the old man's house, whole and intact, and invert it. With any luck, and a lot of work, we can make an impromptu boat and put the children inside.

When the old man and his sons lowered me out of their boat, they gave me a length of rope. Once our own boat is ready, I'll make that climb again, and tie that rope to his ship. The other end will be attached to our boat, the life raft we're crafting from his roof, tying it to his floating barn.

I doubt the raft will last long. It might not even survive the arrival of the waters, but there's nothing I can do about that. Still, if it lasts until daylight... my last, great, burning hope is that the old man and his family will be forced to choose between bringing the children aboard, and watching them drown. I hope -- and, yes, even pray -- that they'll choose the former. But if they don't, let them have my curse: let their descendents be just as we are now. Just as varied, just as selfish, just as petty and greedy and warlike. If God can curse the world to death by water, surely I can curse the old man's descendents to be human and imperfect.

And if my curse has any power, then you -- eventual reader, the person who finds this record -- will know how the old man chose.

None of the adults will go with the raft. There's only barely room for the children, and the old man will absolutely ignore any vessel with any of us in it. We've resigned ourselves to dying, to give them a better chance to live. If we are truly part of the sin and iniquity that brought about the end of the world, then we'll pay for it now.

I have an empty bottle here beside me: dry, discarded. When I finish, I'll put these papers inside and seal the top as best I can. If there's any justice in the world, someday someone will find them and learn what we did. And if there isn't, you can at least consider this my last defiant act: spitting in the eye of a god who would wipe us all from the face of the Earth for being what he made, rather than what he hoped for.

Until the Rainbow, Part Four

This is the fourth piece of a three-part four-part five-part short story. (Honestly, I really thought that three would do it!) You can read part one here. Feel free to leave thoughts or corrections in the comments.

I gripped the wet, slick wood with trembling fingers, and pulled myself up to the edge so I could see in the window. It was a ridiculous position: I was fifty feet in the air, balanced precariously on an unstable structure, in the midst of the worst downpour the world had ever seen... and I was doing this mere hours after a cross-country hike (also in the battering rain) which had taken most of the day.

We'd tried to build a ladder, using anything available: bits of furniture the old man and his family had left behind, wood from a couple of outbuildings that we'd disassembled, bits of fence post, even some scrap lumber that looked to be left over from the construction of the old man's crazy boat. What we got wasn't really a ladder, let alone anything as useful as steps. It was just a very steep pile, held together by whatever we could find: bits of clothesline, belts, and as much of our clothing as we could spare.

I was the third one to try to climb it. The first attempt had been made by one of the teenage boys. Two-thirds of the way up, the pile had shifted and he'd lost his grip. The second attempt was made by the father from a young couple who had arrived with their small children on their backs. He'd made it halfway up, then came back down and refused to try again. He said that with all the rain he couldn't get a grip on the wood, but he'd also helped us with the boy who fell; he'd seen the bone sticking out of his shin, seen us force it back in and splint the leg. If his nerve had simply given out, I really couldn't blame him. The whole attempt was suicidal. Even if one of us made it up there, we'd never get anyone else up unless the old man and his family were willing to open the door, or at least lower ropes.

I couldn't blame him, but I couldn't afford to wait for daylight, either: the ground was giving the first faint hints of trembling, precursors to the unmistakable vibration that would herald the arrival of the devouring waters.

So I climbed. The gathering darkness may have helped, forcing me to feel for my next hold as I labored my way up. There was, at least, enough angle that I could stop and lean into the slope when I grew tired.

And now there I was, balanced against the driving rain, standing atop the pile and gripping the edge of the old man's ship. The exposed deck was covered by a massive roof, which was supported by a central structure (little more than a blacker area of the darkness) that probably held the stairs down to the lower decks. The edge of the roof was just above my head, forming a sort of window that went all the way around the boat. It was about a foot and a half high: enough room to squeeze through.

I shifted my arm, and got an elbow on top of the wall. Then I pulled myself up, feet scrambling against the slickness of the hull. If this didn't work, I wasn't going to be able to climb back down.

I got my head through, hooked my other elbow over, and pushed myself out over the deck. I tilted forward, then began to slip down; fortunately, it was in the direction I wanted. I crashed onto my forearms, barely shielding my head from the impact, and let the rest of my body slide down the low wall and flop to the side. For a long moment I could barely move; I just lay there on the deck, aching all over and trying to breathe.

I'd done it.

Then there were voices, and a flare of light that seemed shockingly bright. The old man's sons were spilling out of the central structure. They were just starting to spread out across the deck when one of them saw me and cried out. Then they were all approaching.

I flopped over and forced myself up to my hands and knees. I got a foot under me, then looked up. Kneeling was about as far as I was going to make it: they were standing around me now. The one in front of me held a shovel, and think one of the others had something else, but I didn't have the energy to turn my head and see. "We need--" I said, and began to cough. They just stood there, uncertain or maybe waiting. "We need your help," I said. "There are people down there. You have to get them onto the boat."

"I have to do no such thing," said a voice. The younger men parted to make way for the crazy old man. "I couldn't even if I wanted to."

I started to say, "You can--" but he cut me off.

"The Lord himself has closed up this vessel. He has determined to cleanse the evil from this world, and only we are to be spared. You and all your kind must perish."

"What?" I shouldn't have said that; I saw his expression harden. I took a deep breath and tried again. "You know me. I run a restaurant. What have I done that's so evil that... I don't know... the only solution is to kill the world and start over?"

"That is between you and God," he told me. "I know only what He has chosen to share with me: that the world has grown full of sin and iniquity, and that He will wipe it all away."

I couldn't believe this. All this way, all this effort to save my family, and this monster was going to stand there and let us die. Anger flickered briefly through my veins, but I was too exhausted to support it. Instead, I begged: "My daughter just turned two. She's too young to be wicked. You can raise her, teach her the proper ways of worship and obedience and..." I trailed off, uncertain of what else God might find us lacking in. "Whatever else God requires. At least save the children."

But the old man shook his head. "I would not dare. If the Lord Almighty intended to save them, they would already be aboard. To bring them on now would risk the safety of the ship. If I do not abide by His commands, none of us will survive."

I put a hand on the railing and managed to stand. With nothing left to lose, I asked: "This is your idea of righteousness? To stand by and save yourselves, while all around you children die? What good and loving God would have you make that choice?"

"No." The old man shook his head. "Your mockery did not shake my faith. Your whispers did not shake my faith. Your questions will not shake it now. Go back to your family. Enjoy what time is left to you."

"Enjoy...?" I looked at his sons, and knew I couldn't take them. They were too many, and I was too weak. I had nothing left. I hadn't even brought a weapon; I didn't dare try to climb with one. "You know what? Fine. But you're going to have to lower me down." I paused, looking around me. "Or you can throw me off, and have my blood directly on your hands. I'm honestly too tired to care, at this point."

The old man stiffened. He was silent for a long moment, but finally he said: "Fetch some rope." One of his sons hurried away.

A short time later I was bumping my way down the side of the boat. They'd tied a sort of basket or harness around me, and helped me squeeze back out the window. It was not a comfortable trip, but after everything else I barely noticed.

Then I was lying in the mud, with the rain steadily battering my body: defeated, fallen, and utterly damned. There was a slight tug on the rope, and then it went slack. A moment later it began to pour down on top of me, coil after coil. They'd released it entirely rather than risk that I might try to climb back up.

Hands found me, touched me, helped up. I couldn't see the figures beside me; it was too dark for that. I could barely hear their voices over the rain. But they put their arms around me, and carried me back into the old man's house.

I should have been broken by the knowledge that we were all going to die, but I wasn't. It was as if, with my death assured, my body gave up the last of its hoarded energy. Suddenly, I had enough strength to be angry.

The others were looking at me as they carried me in the door: expectant, hopeful, sure that nobody would knowingly leave us to die in the rising waters. I stood there, not answering, and saw the knowledge and despair spread across their faces.

"One final effort," I rasped. "One last thing to try."

I knew even then that I was lying. I would keep trying one last thing until the waters claimed my corpse, or until the Almighty himself rose up to strike me down. I was only sorry that we lacked the tools to put a hole in that ridiculous, oversized nightmare of a boat. If God was really out to destroy the world, maybe that would have forced Him to renegotiate.

But we couldn't do it. So instead we tried something else. One last thing, before the waters took us.

Continued in Part Five.