Mass Effect 3 - Catharsis

Mass Effect 3 - Catharsis

I've written about a lot of difficult issues in my time, but this one takes the cake. This article is going to be extremely lengthy, and is essentially a study of thematic elements in fiction and the human condition, while using the Mass Effect universe as the platform to discuss these issues. The inspiration for this article is a directly driven by a search for catharsis to fill the empty void that the Mass Effect series has left me with.

Please note that this article is teeming with spoilers, it couldn't be avoided. Sorry about that. I structured this article in a way that those with no interest in playing through the game can still understand what I'm talking about, though.

This article is not my analysis of the ending of Mass Effect 3, even though my opinion on the matter is very similar to what is being dubbed 'The Indoctrination Theory' which you can find more information about here. Even though the theory has a lot of peculiarities to it that are hard to ignore, I feel that speculation is counter-intuitive in the light that there's a strong possibility that Bioware/EA has yet to release more content that will shed more light on the issue. So until then, we have to work with what we got, and I've decided instead of rejecting the given ending, to analyze what it means in comparison to the themes that have been touched on throughout the series.

The Ghost in the Machine

The war between synthetic and organic life is the basis of the entire series. The ultimate threat that Shepard (the protagonist) is trying to stop is a dormant machine race called the Reapers that wake up every 50,000 years to destroy all advanced civilization. The issue seems very black and white at first, but as the games progress, the theme is expanded on through your interactions with other intelligent machines, namely the Geth: a humanoid race that gained sentience and nearly obliterated its creating race; and EDI, an AI core created as an advanced assistant for Shepard's ship: the Normandy. Notably, neither of these AI creations are inherently evil, and both most definitely have the capacity to empathize and coexist with organic life, as especially made clear by the potential romance option available between EDI and Joker, your ship's pilot.

The Geth are very interesting in their own right. The only reason they turned on their creating race was simply survival instinct since their creators turned on them. This entire period of their history is rife with confusion, as the Geth didn't inherently understand why they were being exterminated, and despite being technologically advanced, were ultimately too underdeveloped to truly understand the consequences of their actions, or to understand the motivations of other types of life around them. However, while the Geth represent an entire species of sentient life, complete with their own culture and ideals, I believe the true theme of AI sentience is expressed through EDI's character arc.

EDI begins the game with advanced characteristics for an AI: she understands humor, and is able to discern the motivations of other life forms. However she is very calculating, and has a very utilitarian mindset centered almost specifically around self-preservation. During the third game, she acquires a cybernetic body that allows her to gain a first person perspective on the universe, and ultimately drives her to ask questions about the nature of her own programming. What's interesting to note here is that the more she understands about humanity, the more human she herself becomes. She is not directly adverse to the human condition, and views the act of achieving humanity as enlightenment.

I believe this suggests that human-level sentience is a natural progression in the evolution of intelligent beings. Even Legion, a Geth commando that operates differently than other AI incarnations in that all 'his' decisions are based off of the consensus of a collective hive-mind, eventually became enamored with the idea of individuality. Without clear explanation, Legion uses some of your armor to augment his own, and one could easily argue that Legion's entire sub-text is that he views Shepard as some sort of god-like figure, looking up to him, perhaps trying to achieve something about Shepard's humanity that his own race could never allow him. This is kind of in the realm of speculation, but I believe this point specifically was being made when Legion used the word 'I' as opposed to 'we' in his final moments, right before he disseminates his own personality for the good of the rest of his race, no less, an important note of foreshadowing, but I'll touch more on that later.

This concept is put into overdrive when you start to receive the Reaper's motivations for destroying civilization. Their argument, in a nutshell, is that an advanced enough machine race will inevitably turn on their organic counterparts and therefore wipe out organic life as we know it. So in order to stop this from happening, an endless cycle was created where only civilizations on the brink of creating this advanced of an AI will be destroyed and harvested, allowing younger species their chance to grow and inevitably do the same thing.

What is odd about this conclusion is that it doesn't quite explore their motivations. Why not allow organic life to become extinct if it is truly obsolete unless there's something truly special inherent about it? If there is something truly special inherent in organic life, why would an extremely sophisticated AI species destroy it? Were the Reapers just naive, or was the cycle necessary for some other reason?

Diversity of Life

Many of the most important decisions you'll make throughout the series is deciding the fate of entire species. Honestly, this game is chock full of these scenarios, I don't even know where to begin. But for the sake of brevity, lets just say that the entire fate of the Quarians, Geth, Krogan, and Rachni are entirely up to you. Each species has its own instincts for self preservation and usually make their ascent to power accordingly, often at the unfortunate conflict with other species. You have the ability to allow humans to bypass the other alien races in political power grabs, and many of the choices you make in general are specifically designed to paint your relationship with other species.

One common recurring theme is whether or not humanity is superior to aliens and deserve their position of power. I believe this is a precursor designed to make Shepard wonder whether he/she is special or not, but either way, the issue is plainly very grey, and the theme usually subverted by the subject of sacrifice, anyway. The whole theme here gets stretched pretty thin as a result, since more often than not, you're making decisions based on what is best for the survival of the galaxy rather than deciding whether or not to maintain genetic diversity or empower your own race.

Regardless of what you end up thinking of the other races, it becomes clear that each race is clearly unique. They evolved differently, have different ideals, different cultures, they all have something unique to offer galactic civilization. The Reapers obviously realize this and make a point to not just destroy races, but to assimilate them into their own machines so that their traits aren't completely forgotten to genocidal annihilation. It is unclear whether or not the Reapers maintain the personalities and cultures of the species they assimilate, but it seems pretty important that our only interactions with these assimilated races is in combat against grotesque and mindless husks, suggesting that the Reapers might only evaluate a race's worth by their genetic properties rather than their societal ideals. But this too, of course, is just speculation.

According to the catalyst's claims, the cycles were created in order to preserve order, lest the universe descend into chaos. Ignoring the question of whether or not chaos is inherently bad, it does give you some insight into their methodology. Each incarnation of the cycle is inherently different for two reasons: the life forms that must ultimately fight the Reapers are essentially products of random mutations and therefore can be virtually anything; and the Reapers themselves change form each iteration due to their varying selection of assimilated species.

One more thing to note about the Reapers is that they leave their mass effect relays behind, their network for extremely fast space travel. Races usually end up coming across this technology, and thus their 'technological arc' is usually centered around this discovery, which could be seen as a tactical advantage for the Reapers, since it makes it much easier to predict the path these races will take and thus how to systematically destroy them.

A correlation can be seen here with the Krogan and Salarians. The Krogan were culturally uplifted by the Salarians, which had dire consequences. Since the Krogan weren't ethically prepared to deal with their new technology, it ended up nearly destroying their species and their home planet to nuclear warfare. The game does a good job of not condemning technology however, but rather puts a great deal of emphasis on doing your best to understand new technology and not to go blindly into the night, as it were.

Free Agency

Reliance on Reaper technology has a similar warning signal, in that Reaper technology has the ability to corrupt people who use it, as seen multiple times in the first game when entire settlements studying this technology are turned into mindless husks. Not to mention indoctrination, a process Reaper ships use on organic life-forms to slowly subvert their free will. Make no mistake about it, the game tackles the issue of free will almost exclusively through the indoctrination process.

The specifics of how it works is largely unknown, as it's kind of a hotly debated philosophical dilemma but while the game is fairly vague on how it works specifically, it does make it clear that it works using the power of suggestion. The question here is whether or not the suggestions are lies or not, since it appears that the indoctrinated are clued in to the Reaper's ultimate goals, though they do show signs that they have trouble articulating those goals, which indicates that either the concepts are too advanced for normal sentient minds to comprehend and is the reason that indoctrination eventually deteriorates the mind... or it works by lying and confusing the subject, which leads to deterioration for similar reasons.

The game makes a considerably stronger argument for the latter, since it's unlikely that Shepard's pretty basic reasoning skills is enough to undermine indoctrination by confusing them enough to question their own enlightened status. Though it is worthy to note that The Illusive Man hints that he understands the bigger picture right before he dies, the entire scene makes it strongly obvious that he is also quite confused and conflicted as well, leading me to conclude that he has probably gone mad by this point in the game. (The game also makes a point to show you that the Illusive Man was oblivious to EDI's capabilities, which would be strange for someone enlightened to the nature of AI to miss) Still, this is just speculation.

Sacrifice and Loss

The bulk of the emotional punch that Mass Effect 3 in particular centers on is the theme of sacrifice. This is hard to deny, pretty much every major decision you make is about choosing who lives and who dies for the sake of the greater good versus your own personal attachment. 'Ruthless calculus' as Garrus so eloquently puts it.

Though you spend most of the game sacrificing others, this feels so much like self-sacrifice, that when it comes time to put your own life on the line, the transition is seamless. The usual dilemma of self-preservation doesn't apply normally in games as it would in real life, though. While you may be invested in your character, I would argue you're more invested in the game experience and its potential offerings. You feel that by sacrificing certain elements, you yourself are sacrificing some of your personal enjoyment by taking those away from yourself. And for what? The outcome of a fictional galaxy? While it's certainly possible to play selfishly, I think most people empathized with the game universe and became immersed to the point where they felt the end mattered more than fulfilling their own selfish desires, and therefore banked everything they could on giving the galaxy the best fighting chance. It became more important to the player that the game's universe had a better outcome rather than maximizing his own enjoyment. This worked beautifully.

And then the player found out that his sacrifice didn't really matter at all.

The Illusion of Choice

The hole in my soul that I was talking about at the head of the article was the direct result of realizing that the ending theme wasn't about sacrifice at all, but rather transitioned very bluntly into the illusion of choice. The reason the entire game mattered to me was because the game led me on the entire time making me believe I had a choice in the matter, that sacrifice meant something, but really, just like the Reaper's plans for the galaxy, it was all pre-decided, I was just playing along, content following the strings of the two-handed puppet master.

While I can sen the artistic merit of this, it brought on a stage of profound denial. It hit close to home. I felt betrayed by no one in particular. I felt angry at myself for falling into this trap, that I never saw it coming, that I didn't prepare for it 'the right way'. I had no catharsis and I generally just felt pretty shitty. I immediately understood the backlash the game received, and was in awe at the same time. It reminded me of Bioshock, and its presentation of the illusion of control. It reminded me of Fable 2, where sacrifice actually punished you. It reminded me of Irreversible, where the idea of inevitability haunted me for days. It reminded me of Half-Life 2, and that feeling of dancing with something unknowable. It was all that yet different... Mass Effect 3 made me feel... shitty... conflicted...

I usually have some sort of philosophy to rely on, some sort of phrase that helps me sleep better at night that I can turn to for comfort. But this game gave me a message I couldn't wrap my mind around, that I couldn't outright deny or disprove. It showed to me clear as day that personal resolve counts for nothing, that believing in some fleeting hope for a better tomorrow can be taken from you at the drop of a hat, and it had a sound logical argument to back it up.

Denial of Fatalism

Going back to the Reaper's motivations, something became a bit clearer. The cycle of destruction has been going on for ages, and we can't take anything the Catalyst says at face value. The cycle was designed to be some sort of test for advanced civilization, as well as prevent an unwanted logical outcome. We're talking about an extremely advanced intelligence here, truly on the cusp of a Technological Singularity... yet it stopped. It decided that it's more important for living beings to dream and hope for a better future, to believe they have a fighting chance of seeing a better tomorrow... all for nothing. Again and again. That's pretty dark.

As a transhumanist myself, I bank a lot of my hopes and dreams on attaining a better future myself. Regardless of whether or not a Singularity is attainable, it does represent a sort of ideal, a vision of something to aspire to. It's a symbol of salvation in a way. I can't bring myself to believe that the future isn't worth fighting for because to me it screams of arrogance on an unprecedented scale, it assumes a hypothetical brick wall, despite evidence to the contrary showing boundaries being surpassed time and time again, almost always for the good of humanity and life in general. Though to have a highly intelligent machine, albeit a fictional one, behave in a way contrary to this is quite unsettling, I have to believe that there's still more to the story than meets the eye.

And yet, this denial is what Shepard represents the entire game. His resolve, an absolute refusal to be beaten, a soldier through and through that simply can not, will not give up. It's the entire emotional investment of the story. It's obviously clear that the writers are attacking the subject of fatalism as honestly as they can. If I took away anything from the game, cliche as it might be, it's that fatalism is destructive, that perseverance means something, that understanding is enlightenment, and understanding is achieved by going out and god damn achieving it.

Conclusion: Trial by Fire

I'm not going to pretend that the makers of Mass Effect 3 are enlightened souls that know something about ultimate destiny of mankind that the rest of us don't. I think they know just as well as we do that if it's out there, it's got to be achieved somehow. I'm pretty sure the Crucible is as honest a metaphor as the writer could come up with at presenting this as an extremely honorable goal. In the game, the Crucible is a huge mysterious device that represents the only real shot civilization has at defeating the Reapers, and everything comes down to completing it and getting it to work. Beat the Crucible, beat the Reapers. Beat the Reapers, bring on the golden age. Eloquent but simple metaphor really.

All that said... the point of this article was to explore the emotions that the ending inspired, but I might as well end this article on my own theory about the ending.

Lets talk about the Crucible for a second. For one, no one knows who first started the Crucible, but I'm betting it was the Reapers. I mean, think about it, no one knows what it does, each successive cycle of races adds more to it and passes it onto the next cycle, and it happens to requires the Citadel, a Reaper capitol ship, and only the Reapers know this. That's a lot of hints right there, but there's more. Even though the Catalyst is presumably unreliable, I do believe that he's being honest that the cycle will truly end if you choose the Synthesis option, and is actually the entire point of the cycle in the first place.

It's debatable whether or not the Reapers were capable of building the Crucible in the first place, but maybe there's a point to waiting for organic life to do it instead. There seems to be something inherently special about mankind's ability to think for itself, to make decisions based on intuition. There's a lot of emphasis on technology being harmful unless you're genuinely ready for it, and ready to take on the consequences. It might have been counter-productive for the Reapers to force this on organic life, as even the most advanced intelligence in the universe knows that evolution can't be forced. The Reapers remained stagnant, collecting races and different societies, cultures, ways of thinking, etc, biding its time until the Crucible would finally be completed, and civilization was ready to face the next step of evolution. The Catalyst actually goes to say that it's the final form of evolution.

Its also interesting to note that the Synthesis ending isn't available unless you get a high enough ready score, an option that doesn't make quite as much sense if it's just as ineffective as the other endings. But I digress.

This doesn't negate the criticisms people have about the ending, though. In particular, that punch from negating your sacrifices is still quite real and hard to get over, but I still think it serves a very intricate purpose. Just like life, you make choices throughout, but by the end of it, you don't get to see the fruits of your labors, all you can hope for is that you left a better world for your loved ones and hope that they can finish what you started.

Hopefully this provided some catharsis for anyone feeling a bit empty after this experience. All I can really say is... don't give up, really.

Ailsglyph Defined

I've been trying to write a series of short stories that I could post on here periodically, but even after a dozen or so pages, I can't seem to make myself go back and edit them just because they lack any sort of inherent theme. That, and this blog was created for the sole purpose of detailing the very specific world of "Ailsglyph", which is something I haven't written about in quite awhile, so maybe I should just go back to writing short stories about that world and the people who inhabit it.

So what is Ailsglyph? Well, in short, Ailsglyph is a city with no discernible leadership, Ailsglyph is centered around a giant library that is considered by the inhabitants of the "Known World" to be the birthplace of all modern mythology. The books there are written in many different tongues, and there's so many books about just about anything you can think of that scholars tend to spend their entire lives there trying to understand the secrets of the library.

Part of the library's mystique is that it is generally known knowledge that the world has only existed for about five hundred years. Not all of the books are dated, but most are, and none go further back than that. The earliest recorded event found was when the kings of Ailsglyph and Aulfore made a truce with each other that ended whatever dark ages that preceded it, though no one alive today knows what life was like before this event. It was in celebration of this even that the library was constructed, a calendar system was invented, and books from all the world came to Ailsglyph to populate the new massive library.

Library aside, Ailsglyph is broken up into over 20 distinct districts, though many districts overlap. Each district has it's own style of self-management, and the interactions between the people of power over any of these districts comprise the politics of the city. The city is a bit unique in that the surrounding rural areas tend to reside the most eccentric, downright crazy people in the Known World. While some of their stories are so surreal that they border on insanity and the impossible, even well respected and trusted people tend to have wild stories of their own when they visit these areas. It's assumed that the local wildlife in that area tend to have lots of hallucinogenic plants, and those living in symbiosis with the wild tend to have their own unique worldview. Surprisingly, for bordering such a large city, the people who live here aren't very well known, and tend to keep to themselves.

The Known World is the universally accepted name for the world as they know it, because everyone is quite aware that there is an "unknown world", and the names given to the collective world vary radically depending on belief system. The Known World is well chartered, as the border consists of a deep fog that no one dares to venture further in lest they disappear forever.

There are four major kingdoms: Ailsglyph, Aulfore, Koliego, and Dourian. Aulfore is the largest and most powerful empire and has a tendency towards conquest, but due to the alliance with Ailsglyph and the nature behind the alliance, they remain on friendly terms today. Ailsglyph as a kingdom don't tend to think of themselves as land-owners, so much as a people with a variance of an intellectual perspective on the world. Their 'towns' tend to be districts in other cities, or farming and trading outposts scattered across the roads. A lot of Ailsglyph tribes are nomadic, and most tend to stay inside the forests.

Dourian and Aulfore were never major enemies, but Aulfore did tend to create lots of brigand groups who found Dourian cities easier targets than others. Because of this, Dourian's legacy was cut short, and now consists almost entirely of ruins and towns suffering from poverty. Dourian cities are the most abundant across the Known World, and some cities are more organized than others, but Dourian has long lost any semblance of central leadership, and even now, many factions are trying to gain power to become a mighty kingdom again.

As for Koliego... well, they stick to themselves mostly, given the nature of the Known World's layout, they aren't an easily invaded nation. They have some of the most disciplined and trained warriors in the Known World, but probably the least experienced when it comes to veteran experience, since no one cares much to take their territory. Their land isn't very fertile, most of it is desert actually, and the people tend to value artistic qualities than material wealth. As such, they are not part of the global conflict on a major scale.

Anyway, the point of Ailsglyph isn't to detail some fantasy epic, it's actually a meditation on belief systems, and the premise actually originated from a discussion on how dumb magic can be when it comes to facilitating a coherent plot-line.

So why do I want to write a bunch of short stories explaining this fantasy land? Well, I have a larger story in mind, but the origin of Ailsglyph is pretty important in understanding the central premise of the story. Also, I'll admit, there's hundreds of opportunities for pulp fiction in a setting like this that could lend a hand in me re-gaining my creative strength, but really... I just want to create a foundation for an imagined world that other people can be a part of so that I can more easily play my little mind games on them.

The girl is the world

The girl is the world... a part of me that wants, that desires... it manifests itself in people, in objects or emotions. You take these little pieces of yourself and scatter them through everything you've ever known in your life, and when you leave, those pieces of yourself become memories. And memories come back to haunt you...

I could be doing a lot with my life right now, but the motivation just isn't there. I'm too busy trying to deal with my own emotions and getting frustrated that I can't get the upper hand. It's what I deserve though, it's my own fault I allowed the things I can't understand to determine my own well-being... implying I ever had control over my own life and desires in the first place, but now here I am, unsatisfied with my situation, knowing that I can't really *do* anything without moving on, and... well, doing stuff. Catch 22 right there.

Forgive these next few paragraphs, they're going to feel a little bit like a rant, but I feel it's important I lay down my train of thought... people want power. Not exactly power, but there's no word for the concept I'm trying to convey to my knowledge. People want the ability to move on, the power to remove their obstacles so they can return to their calm glide. Every negative emotion I've ever known was due to a realization of an obstacle, and the more I realize that I've hit the same obstacle over and over again, the worse the feeling becomes. The worst of it becomes so painful that it feels like a physical thing, churning inside your chest, trying to burst out, or rather eat you from the inside out.

But power... capacity... growth... there must be a proper identifier here, I refuse to believe my thoughts on this matter are yet another dead end that will destroy me like all the others. What is this desire... this... realization of empowerment, this... dancing muse playing to our heart's own violin... it must be something that can be realized. How can I feed something that I can't even conceptualize properly? Is that why it always dies?

Is it the mother of inspiration? The child of novelty? Do I want so badly to draw out my situation that my shadow chains and frees it as it pleases? How can some be so brilliant and others so withdrawn? How are some people so in tune with this dream-like apparition? Have you ever seen someone transcend their situation so fluently without the aid of this creative maestro?

It's like she's always there, flashing in the corner of my eye, reminding me that I'm not alone, that I have a part to play... reminding me that I'm just floating down this river of time, that trying to float upstream is futile, and swimming downstream will only end you more quickly... all she really wants you to do is stay afloat, with dignity and composure.

There's no language to define her nor her behavior... only vague artistic notions can even hope to give others a glimpse of it, and no matter how clever the wordplay, the attempt seems folly. But as I sit here trying to make something out of seemingly nothing, should I shy away from the obstacle that brought me to this place, or face it head on? Somehow the very question turns the obstacle into a friendly face, a familiar companion on your road throughout the unknown... Is this how it was meant to be? Is this the true nature of the enemy? Is knowing the enemy the only way to truly know yourself?

I'm tired of the struggle but I'm not tired of the fight... Somehow, some way, I must let composure flow over me once again, instead of fighting my demons, I must learn to dance with them. Instead of sitting here in apathetic disquiet, I must venture forward by taking a deep breath and putting one leg in front of the other.

Transcending Science

The universe is a system... the universe as we know it anyway. The universe may actually be something quite unlike how we understand it, and I'm always interested in seeing other people's point of view on how we might have it all wrong, but... honestly, it's been a long time since I've heard a coherent, original explanation about it all. It would seem like you're either a complete realist who doesn't believe anything about the world unless it's been clarified in a peer-reviewed science journal, or you fancy yourself a spiritualist that spends most their time picking and choosing religious traits you like and filling in the cracks formed by nosy skeptics.

Either way, both sides don't seem all that open-minded the way they go about discussing the mysteries of life. I've always been pretty quiet on the issue, mostly because the internet could really do without another pointless religious argument, but I think I'll at least attempt to throw a wrench in the cog of the internet hate machine by trying to find a third argument.

See... the way I see it, people aren't necessarily after truth. I think what people are really trying to do is to create a belief system so they can make sense of the world. Some choose religion, some choose science, some live by rationalism, others by empiricism. But what they all have in common is that they set down some ground rules for what constitutes truth, without any real consideration of what truth even means. Science made some major headway into solving the universal predicament of what to agree on by simply declaring observations based on repeatable experiences. Seeing is believing, as it were, and thus, if spinning makes you dizzy, clearly it must be so.

But I'll take it one step further... what exactly is happening that makes observation possible? It's a byproduct of consciousness, of course. It's basically the thing that happens when a system collects enough information to analyze a declaration in the form of an observation. Even further, that observation only makes sense in the realm of language, in which the rules of logic and mathematics can apply, which might I add are also systems in and of themselves, granted very sophisticated ones.

Now while an argument could theoretically be made that analyzing information doesn't necessarily filter for truth, I definitely don't want to talk shit about how amazing the brain is when it comes to these kinds of tasks. I'm just noting that information is being processed before the notion of truth is even a tangible concept. I doubt the universe even cared about what was true or not before we came along. For all we know, physics lived a carefree and reckless life before we came along and made sense of it.

The way I see it... ever since our very first complete thought, we've been figuring out a puzzle. If something didn't make sense, our curiosity would force us to deal with it, even if it involved tagging it with a name and throwing it in a folder in our brain titled "mysteries of the universe", never to be thought of again. The older we get, the more accustomed we become to organizing information in such a way that we are intimidated by the notion of a complete re-structuring of our brain. It's one thing to find out that a tomato is no longer a vegetable, it's another thing completely if the world turned out to be round instead of flat. Just imagine how you'd feel if you found out your belief system was actually the complete opposite of true, how would you deal with re-structuring that to make sense of the world again? Where would you even start?

But, perhaps truth as a concept is elusive by it's very nature. Perhaps there's no set way the universe actually operates, perhaps the rules change as the universe expands, perhaps the universe is a collective dream in which we all decide what the rules are, perhaps only you exist and the world is a manifestation you made up to make sense of your own personality and inner struggles, or perhaps a lot of atoms exist and magnetism is the ruling force of all interactions forever incomprehensible by the human mind because of the nature of chaos theory.

And you know what? Maybe it doesn't matter. I think regardless of what the truth actually is, if there's a truth to begin with, we're all going to pick the one we like the most anyway. Because in the end, it doesn't matter what truth is to the subjective experience. People existed just fine before they knew anything about astronomy and physics, hell, they still do. It could even be defeatist to attempt to corral everyone together into a single belief system, just think of all the alternative paradigms we'd miss out on! I mean... take for example, somebody who believes the world has only existed for a hundred years. You could tire yourself out trying to explain to him how advanced civilizations and cultures could have formed so comprehensively in such a short amount of time, or you could think about the implications of such a specific worldview. If he actually created a robust and logical internal worldview, he'd probably be filled to the brim with novel ideas, as crazy as most of them would sound, but the profundity levels would be off the chart.

However, I digress... I honestly believe we'd rather attempt to find an ultimate truth because our experiences - the realization of 'truth' - is what fuels our own levels of insight. If something seems to be true, even if it later turns out to be false, we can't deny that feeling that our world opened up a little bit more, offering all sorts of new possibilities. I mean, think about games, or movies, or virtually any form of fiction. Sometimes they offer us things we're more willing to accept and believe in because there's something about their internal system we find attractive. Is it any wonder that people end up in all sorts of different religions and belief systems?

In many ways, any sort of belief system, even one deeply rooted in logical thinking and sound reasoning is much like a prison system. How easy is it, even for the most brilliant of us, to feel disheartened because we feel like our own worldviews had led us to cell, inherently limiting us to never truly break free? I know I've personally felt the weight of the world crush down on me as my childhood aspirations and idealistic notions about the universe got reduced to scientific concepts. Each time I made sense of the world, I felt a rush of euphoria as I picked up on the implications, only to be followed by a sense of dread as my mind slowly reduced the revelation to simply yet another mind numbing factoid. How filled with delight and imagination when I first pondered the mere insignificance of Earth in relation to the trillions of galaxies in the known universe, only to later ponder the same thought with nothing more but a sense of apathy.

And just like a prison system, in order to break out of it, you first have to understand what a prison system truly is. I don't want to take this metaphor too far, but think about it, what exactly *is* a prison system? A bunch of walls, some security systems, you got your prison guards and of course the inmates. You have whatever tools disposable to you within the prison, and you have the combined experiences and worldviews of all the guards and inmates inside the prison system. If no combination of those experiences and tools lead you to a solution on how to break out of the system, then you have to re-think the system, turn it into abstractions until you can reform the picture differently, then perhaps you can find a way to break free.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel a bit cheesy here, but just to go full circle... next time you find yourself engaged in a science vs religion debate, I urge you to just stop for a second and analyze the nature of the conflict... you might be able to dig a little bit deeper and satisfy everyone. I mean, we're just trying to make sense of things, right?

Too Cool for School

Hi there, long time, blah blah, let's get to it shall we.

So I've been to school many times. I never seem to last very long there, eventually I get bored of it and drop out, telling myself I'll come back to it again once I got my shit figured out. However something happened to me this month... I realized I didn't want to go back, not even out of guilt, or to satisfy some societal pressure that I felt was looming over me. I simply didn't want to go because I felt... over it.

Now let me specify that a little bit, I'm not dissing on school, though I do believe it's slowly becoming an outdated system, and I'm very much excited for when the school system gets it's act together and integrates itself with the Information Age, but for all intents and purposes, school is great. It has tons of fields sure to satisfy anyone's interest, it allows you to network and meet people that share the same interests as you, and most of them have tons of equipment, services, and resources that you can't really get anywhere else.

That said, schools are great, it's just the classes... the classes are completely irrelevant. I don't think I've ever even once thought to myself that I learned more in a lecture than I could have looking it up on the internet or reading through a textbook. Not once. I'm an internet baby, I have trained my entire life how to find information I want and finding enough information to satiate my curiosity. The only thing I really wanted out of school was perhaps the discipline and focus needed to truly become a specialist in a relevant field so that someone out there would pick you out of the crowd with the respect and confidence that you're qualified to get the job done.

But... after my last revelation, I found out that I don't necessarily care if anyone thinks I'm qualified. I really only care if *I* think I'm qualified. I don't necessarily care about making a lot of money, or fitting into an economical niche, or being labeled as a 'go to' guy for a specific set of skills and knowledge base. In fact, I dream about the day that money is re-conceptualized and the economy enters a state of rapid change and becomes indiscernible. I dream of a world where everyone knows a little bit about everything and no one ever has to be forced into a dead-end job ever again.

But that's the idealistic side of me talking. On the realistic side of things... I feel completely comfortable in my ability to survive in this world. I'm comfortable enough that I can make these observations and play around with them. I can take the time out of a day to sit back and see if I can find something novel in the world and see if there's more to that new perspective.

So with that said... I'm going to try to spend my time learning new skills so that I can offer this little internet of ours something special. Since this blog is already here, I'm just gonna use it. Who cares, right? :P

Been awhile

Been awhile since I posted here last. One year to be exact. Wasn't actually going to post anything but now I feel obliged to say something about the anniversary mark, but now that I have, where do I go from here? Luckily I don't think anyone reads this, so no one's going to hold anything against me if I lose track of all continuity and just follow any tangent I may happen upon.

The universe seems hostile... like it wants us to die, and is actively working towards that end. Yet amidst the universe trying to kill us all, look how far humanity has come. I mean, there's billions of us completely dominating a planet, and we'd dominate more if we ever figure out how to get off this one. Point is, there's a fighting spirit, a spiteful tact you might say, that encourages humanity and all biological organisms for that matter, to just keep trekking, to keep on getting up, to keep on taking the punches.

I suppose you could say the universe is neutral; it simply acts as a host for a huge variety of chemical reactions that produce an atmosphere that can support life. It cares not for the continuity of life, so long as it keeps moving in terms of the laws of thermodynamics. It may or may not be a coincidence that in producing an equilibrium, this planet actually created an environment that is prime for sustaining life, or at least life as we know it.

But then you might deduce that amidst the chaos of a rapidly expanding universe, that it would ever come to a point at all of producing life that can grow and perceive and feel, that the universe might be a caring place, a place that quickly works to the best of its ability to allow our continued existence, to heal our scars, to produce a more amiable future for our species or perhaps life in general. Perhaps even as we speak, as man wages war on one another and as we constantly put our planet at risk, the universe is trying to make amends for our sake in it's own round-a-bout way.

Or perhaps our ability to reason out any sort of temperament that the universe may have towards us is futile and illogical.

Anyway, this blog has now been updated. For what it's worth, it was fun, maybe I'll try to come back here more often.

Free World

So I'm sure you heard by now that Google announced their new OS, which is good news to me, not because I'm overly excited for a new browser, but because big companies are challenging big companies by releasing open-sourced technologies. It's genius really, a whole globally connected army of technologically-minded people are aching to get their hands on something that can compete with big markets, decentralization is the key here, the world's getting more and more connected and it's because of moves like this that allows them to create the future known as the free world.

I've become more and more opinionated on this subject the more I read into it. The Pirate Party, heard of them? They recently got a seat in the European parliament, it's a growing movement that basically wants to usher in the new age of technology by reforming information laws. Simply put, information should be free. Hard to say that to the thousands of starving artists out there that depend on people buying their music and art to feed themselves, but look at the bigger picture long enough, and you'll see all the money going to all the wrong places. I think it's better this new way and it will only take time before the system as we know it right now collapses and begins to foster a new era of write/re-write culture that will multiply art and entertainment ten-fold easy.

I mean, it's easy to talk as a futurist, we all live in an era where we can actually see the trends becoming apparent and being applied at faster rates, it's only a matter of time and more and more people are starting to realize it, I'm just glad I get to be a part of it, really.

On a different note, I personally have started to feel lethargic, I always had a sort of feigned interest in most of what I do in my day to day life and it's in desperate need of change, so I started a different train of thought to help me through this stage of life. But I quickly realize that if you have a life where you form a routine and a set of habits, you'll discover hundreds of things that will try to pull you away from any goals you might have. I've been researching this specific topic actually, in trying to find the true nature of how focus is maintained and distracted, and I think I'm really onto something. As far as my personal life goes though, I either have to take a significantly more active approach in finding opportunities, or I have to become more consistently aware of opportunities as they come to me. Either way, school and work don't leave too much time for anything else regardless, so it's a bulk equation as it is.

Well, there's hope to be had yet...