Do You Realise?

... That everyone you love will some day be gone? Man, the Flaming Lips are playing here at work and managing to somehow both mellow me out and make me feel just a tad edgy. There's something almost illegal about that. :D

So in case you haven't already heard, we have a new Pope - Pope Benedict the something-or-other. I realise that as a born Irish-Catholic I really should give more of a crap. But I haven't been a practising Catholic for years. Apparently ol' Benedict is a real moral conservative - just what this world needs right now is another "moral" conservative. The thing about moral conservatism, for me, is that it tends to ignore the moral side - ironically - in favour of conservatism. Because the fundamental flaw of many moral conservatives is very much the same as the moral liberalists - the base assumption that their philosophy of liberalism or conservatism is automatically correct.

Funny how we tend to like to short-cut our opinions so as to save precious thinking power.

You see, moral conservatives seem t hold the view of "if it worked before it should still work now." While Liberalists seem to hold the view of "If it worked before, it wont work now because we all different baby!"

The thing is we aren't that much different to humans almost 200,000 years ago when it comes to the essentials of life. Sure, we have socially evolved as a species - but even as early as the first signs of homo-sapiens sapiens there is evidence of social structure. Humanity now evolves through technology and society rather than physically - but these evolutions work in a different manner, it would seem.

Now to return to the whole moral issue - morality is pretty straight forward, really, it works on the whole harm none, treat each other as equals etc... type of mindset. How we chose to define these morals differs from culture to culture - but the actual morals themselves tend to hold true.

What conservatives want is to keep the definitions that they grew up with, because they appear to fear that if the definitions can be changed, then maybe all those morals they held on to aren't as absolute as they thought they were. Which in turn means that things they thought they couldn't do, because it was wrong, they might of actually been able to do after all.

Meanwhile, Liberals seem to believe that because these definitions are fluid - then they mean nothing and that anything can go, to the point of not having to think about morals much at all - because it must be right if everyone is happy - yeah?

But it strikes me that not everyone would be happy.

So what's the solution?

First, to recognise that morals are guidelines to help us navigate the dangerous morass that is ethics and morality. They aren't rules, they are the general benchmark from which to measure our decisions. It is silly to just assume that they are so absolute - it is, in fact, immoral. Morality isn't something you can be flippant about, it is part intuition, part common sense and part thought. Each case needs to be considered individually, because in some cases the morally correct choice can end up being different from what one would initially assume to be the right choice.

I have my own little yardstick that helps me with understanding moral choice - Intent. Intent is a very important aspect of morality - because it is your intentions that really show if you considered someone else or not, or if you thought about the consequences. So the first step in looking at a moral dillemma is to consider each party's intentions.

Then you need to consider how well each member considered the consequences - this is important because despite intentions, you can still commit an immoral act if you didn't really think about the consequences.

Then you need to look to your intuition to help guide you. Odd statement, I know, but a lot of morality involves thinking - if someone judged/treated me this way, how would I feel?

A lot becomes clear when you follow those guidelines. Like I said before, we all have the same moral values - we just define them differently. Everyone believes murder is wrong - but some people have different definitions about what constitutes murder.

The thing is, you need to then look at the reasoning and intention behind those definitions - because we choose these definitions. Even if it is to just follow what we have been taught - it is a choice to not question our beliefs. And I do feel that you cannot claim to truly believe something if you haven't questioned/challenged those beliefs and our own intentions for believing them.

Conan

Popularity and Ian Wishart

About Town, the blog for my flatmates was recently quoted in the New Zealand Herald for commenting on investigative "journalist" Ian Wishart.

For those who live else where in the world and obviously wouldn't have heard of this gentleman (and I use the term somewhat loosely), Ian Wishart is one of those long term reporters who realised that he didn't need to tell the complete truth to make money as a reporter.

Now don't get me wrong, Ian Wishart puts a lot of work into researching his articles... it's just that he takes a particular position and alters the way the facts read to support his pre-supposed opinion.

This is a common practice, but Wishart seems to have a thing for conspiracies and generally sacrifices objectivity and ethics to acheive this.

Recently, Ian Wishart basically managed to score himself an interview with Maori Politician John Tamihere. Unfortunately John seems to have thought that the interview was off the record - showing that he isn't exactly the best judge of character - and said a number of politically suicidal statements about his colleagues. *sigh*

The thing that gets my goat is that Ian Wishart is selling himself as the defender of truth by revealing these statements. He constantly decries that he's the good guy.

Bollocks.

He got lucky and took advantage of a situation to raise his profile. His magazine - Investigate - rarely contains solid facts, and his constant claims of being followed and watched tend to be a little too contrived.

The fact that he publishes all this tripe and sells it goes to show how much popularity there is for belief that everything that is going wrong in the world is someone else's fault.

Isn't really time for us to all take a little responsibility for our own mistakes? I know it's hard. Heck, I sometimes try to find someone else to blame when I feel I can get away with it - we live in a society that sort of promots this way of thinking. But then I tend to always leap on this bandwagon. :D

Anyway, it's a sunday and I have the day off work - so excuse me while I go chill out for the rest of the day.

Catch y'all later!

Conan

Tattoos, Blogs and the Secret of Zir'an

Tattoos

So I was just reading this thread on RPG.net about people getting game symbols tatooed on their body. It is amazing the kinds of debates that tend to break out on the open gaming forums. Is getting a tattoo really that lame? I have sometimes toyed with the idea, but I'd get something more stylised - like George Clooney's in "From Dusk till Dawn."

Except I keep thinking of what it would look like in about fifty years from now. Brrrr. :D

Tattoos are an interesting topic, because for some people it is almost an addiction and for others it is a very spiritual thing. Me? I think it would take something pretty damn important to convince me to mark my body. :D

It's almost the same reason as to why I don't wear any jewellry or accessories like rings or necklaces/chains. These are things that I feel are important signs of a commitment or memory. For me to wear a ring, there would need to be considerable significance behind it. Of course there is the added issue that I hate the feeling of a ring on my finger for some reason... must have ultra sensitive skin. :D (Don't even ask about my issues with my back, *chuckle*)

The Secret of Zir'an

This is one game that I am really dying to see - check it out. Think Eberron meets Final Fantasy with a touch of Indiana Jones/Sky Captain. It looks damn cool! I love pulp-cinematic games, and SoZ has this is spades. The system looks odd, but I suspect that it will be like Fireborn fast-paced and entertaining.

So finally for now, talking about blogs. I've been struggling to find a "voice" for my blog. Obviously for those long standing readers I went through a pretty dark patch for a while, an my blog showed that. I've since removed those posts - mostly because they were things said while I was very upset and in a bad place.

Now... well I'm still searching for the right balance, but I hope you'll be able to hang around to follow it all.

Until later,

Keep smiling!

Conan

The Ransom Model

Meatbot Massacre

Well Greg Stolze is at it again with another inspirational game concept. This time he and Daniel Solis have worked together to create a model of game that cuts out the distributor and target piracy. Basically they set a value - in this case $600 - on their game which they held for ransom. If the money wasn't raised by September 2005 then the game would be abandoned and the money that was raised would go to a homeless shelter. If the money was raised, then the game would be published as a PDF for free for everyone to download.

It worked! They managed to raise the money almost five months ahead of schedule. This strikes me as a great alternative for small publishing companies and for writers wanting to make a little money writing and publishing their own games.

Check it out and see what you think. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of this kind of thing from Mr Stolze in the future. :)

Conan