waoko… the simple fact of your response profoundly affected me at this moment of time. I think (and hope) that I am interpreting it correctly. The following rant is entirely tangential to any single topic, but current events have been bringing various notions from many past points in time into some fresh collective focus…
I may now feel that the very frivolity of arguing the politics of issues like the (for example) “console wars” with random people on internet forums, has been a very useful exercise for my own consciousness. And it has provided me with some anchor for faith in the universality of reason. I don’t seem to be able to grasp a clear template for explaining this, so I’m just going to throw out some of the different things that have been on my mind lately:
As I’ve obviously been paying closer attention to my nation’s politics recently, I was struck by the simple truth of something: even when given direct influence over their society and the opportunity to choose the policies and leadership which will shape it… most people will make that choice as children!
Lacking a fully developed and autonomous confidence in one’s own qualification to make a choice of such import and responsibility, then making a reasoned choice - or the most intelligent choice for one’s own interests - will not even be a concern. So what’s left? People need to then believe they’re making the RIGHT choice… which implicitly makes something else also the WRONG choice. And having more distraction and corruption in play only serves to reinforce that tendency, since arriving at a genuine decision becomes ever more painful. And this effect has been exploited by one major party far more than the other in recent decades.
And it has been illuminating for me to observe and participate in this political microcosm for the last several years, since precisely the same dynamics play out. Yet there’s one important difference… since these are just freaking videogames - and as such the livelihood if not very lives of whole nations aren’t in the balance - then the investment most people have in their factions is ultimately very shallow, and as such their dogma about it is rarely so absolutely intractable. As in… reconsidering one’s choices does not rock the very foundations of one’s worldview.
I’d really hate to come across as a cliche here… but sometimes when I consciously recall how young the majority of people on frivolous internet forums likely are, I can feel a little sad at the totalitarian attitudes they so often present. It’s quite subjective and personal in one way, since being open minded is a defining preoccupation of mine - not that I would ever hold myself up as a general example, the character of and degree to which I am even successful may represent a form of derangement as much as anything - but I could still hope people weren’t in such a hurry to deepen the trenches in their consciousness…
This is a brave new world right here… an unprecedented and singular medium of communication. It’s a real-time conversation that yet exists in suspended-time. While again I could never wish anyone else to be as tortuously deliberate as my own obsessive nature often demands of me… this way to converse with other people casually, both without the interference of other physical posturing or otherwise non-verbal and directly emotional channels, and within the freedom to reflect and edit… is really powerful. So it can be disheartening to see it not being taken full advantage of, and so often turned into a bizarre shadow of an IRL conversation.
Not to sound too too serious here though, and that’s at least one idiom where it already shines, message boards have certainly created a new realm of comedy…
Ehh… I can’t even be that sure of what the hell I’m trying to say there, but I wanted to say thank you waoko. As should be obvious enough my habitual persona is not concerned with making friends exactly… but by the same token there is some scrupulous motivation in being so mercenary. I really appreciate what you said there because it carries the message that you evidently made a choice to accept something else I once said at face value - which is how it was genuinely meant - and not as an attack. Consider yourself exceptional.