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Summer is just about officially over.

I have to confess, I don’t really like the Summer; which I think puts me in the minority. Oh, sure; there are great things about it–the long days, the fact that you’ll almost never be prevented from driving somewhere by bad weather–but it’s my least favorite of all the seasons.

Part of it is simply that I don’t much like the heat. But another part of it is the way it’s always so damned bright and cheerful. Long days are good, but there’s something so clear and carefree about them that it frankly annoys me.

I have kind of a melancholy sensibility, and so I like days that have a tinge of that about them. Thus, I love the Fall because there are hints in the changing of the leaves and the cold winds that suggest the coming winter.

Yes, I know I’m a strange person. Thanks for asking.

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I first learned about affirmations from Scott Adams’ book The Dilbert Future. Basically, the idea is that you write down whatever you want to achieve 15 times every day, and eventually you’ll get it. For example:

“I, John Smith, will become a millionaire.”  (x 15)

Assuming, of course, that your name is John Smith and you want to be a millionaire. If John did this enough, the thinking goes, he should become a millionaire eventually. In his book, Scott Adams recounts numerous instances in which this process worked for him. If what he says in the book is true, it’s pretty eerie. But I didn’t believe him when I read it, and I’m not sure I do now.

What really interests me isn’t even whether it works–though that would be useful, of course. But first, what I really want to understand is: how it could work; in other words, is it even theoretically possible? I realize that’s a strange thing to say, but it’s not as odd a concept as you might think–for example, some physicists believe that it’s theoretically possible to travel through time by entering a black hole–it’s just that there is nothing in the Universe that could survive the trip.

Scott Adams does have some theories on the nature of reality that could explain how affirmations work, but I am skeptical. I hate to try something out when I have no reason to think it will work other than anecdotal evidence.

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Brent Bozell, discussing EA‘s controversial video game Medal of Honor in which you can play as a Taliban fighter, writes:

 “Video games are amazing technological products, but they are not “stories” like a book or a movie… In a video game, every player is the author and the movie director. The game maker only sets the parameters, and lets the player finish the story. ” 

Well, he’s wrong. Some games–maybe most games–really do “railroad” the player. I mean, there’s only one way to play through Doom—you go around shooting monsters and collecting keys. Any other way would result in losing the game.

This may be even more true of the really good narrative-based games. Metal Gear Solid springs to mind as an example of a game where you didn’t feel like you were making your own story, you were playing/watching Hideo Kojima’s story.

Even in a game with multiple endings and branching paths, Bozell’s criticism need not always hold true. No matter what path the player chooses in the great Black Isle RPG Planescape: Torment, the underlying theme of the story is still of the game designer’s choosing. No matter what you do, you’re still probably going to see the motifs, ideas and themes that Chris Avellone wants you to. (This, by the way, is a very good thing.)

Now, it is true there are some games you could make this criticism–if it can really be called a criticism–of. Everything is so morally ambiguous in Obsidian‘s Alpha Protocol that there is no “theme” or “moral”; you really are directing your own spy-thriller story.

All of this is an aside to the main point, which is that, in this Medal of Honor game, you can only play as the Taliban in the multiplayer game, which probably has no plot at all. As the EA spokesperson said: “Most of us have been doing this since we were seven: someone plays cop, someone must be robber.” Bozell does not seem to be aware that this is the case.

Personally, I think multiplayer modes are boring, and a serious threat to games as a storytelling medium. And I wouldn’t mind a bit if they removed the Taliban fighter option and replaced it with, for example, a Nazi, which would almost certainly be less offensive, although I don’t know why.

I also agree with Bozell on the infamous airport level from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It was disturbing without being thought-provoking and ought to have been removed. But Bozell’s criticism of the Medal of Honor game is so badly informed that it makes it impossible to take him seriously.

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Shamus Young has completed his four-part analysis of the character of Mordin Solus from Mass Effect 2. It’s a very good series, and of interest to anyone who has played ME 2. (You can find part 1 here.)

I think that video games aren’t going to get widely accepted as an art form until we get people writing more articles like this that seriously analyze their plots and characters.

While I often disagree with Young’s taste in games, I always enjoy reading his blog because he at least takes the narrative aspect of gaming seriously.

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Like I said, I don’t have lots of time to blog right now,  but there are two points I want to get clear before anything else happens. First:

In his article “How Obama Thinks“, Dinesh D’Souza writes: “In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. “

By way of proof, he quotes this from Obama’s book Dreams from My Father: “It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.”

This is out of context. This is in fact the part of the book where Obama is becoming disillusioned with his father. The next paragraph in Dreams is: 

 “Now, as I sat in the glow of a single light bulb, rocking slightly on a hard-backed chair, that image had suddenly vanished. Replaced by…what? A bitter drunk? An abusive husband? A defeated, lonely bureaucrat? To think that all my life I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost!”   


 Second thing: If there’s anything to be learned from the victory of Christine O’Donnell, it’s that whatever the Tea Party is about, it’s not just a tax revolt, or demands for a balanced budget. That much seems clear. O’Donnell’s credentials are far more in the area of religious conservatism, not fiscal conservatism. (Admittedly, most people knew the Tea Party wasn’t just about taxes, but this makes it more clear than ever.) Andrew Sullivan put it best: “She’s to the religious right of Jerry Falwell – and we keep being told the tea-party is just about economics.”

Sadly, I don’t have time to do in-depth posting or research on either of these matters, so if anyone reading this cares to look into these things, I’d appreciate it. If I got something wrong because I was in a hurry, I’d like to correct it.

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I’m busy with some stuff. I’ll post when I can. In the meantime, some items of interest:

–The story of why one man quit blogging.

–A strange article from Dinesh D’Souza that everyone is whipped up about. I’ll be posting a lot about it when I get a free moment, but for now see this post for an idea of what I think.

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I’m not really very happy with the damn thing, but I thought I’d post it anyway. I felt like I didn’t argue my case well enough. For starters, I needed to do a better job establishing that Democrats were, in fact, more relativistic in nature; and that it is not all the result of Conservative propaganda.

As an unimportant aside, I toyed with titling it: “Relephantism”, to suggest relativism and the elephant, the symbol of the Republican party.

I didn’t though. We can all be glad of that, I think.

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“Pilate saith unto him, ‘What is truth?’…”–John 18:38 

Most people probably believe that of the two major political parties in the United States, it is the Democrats who are more prone to relativism. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that there are more intellectuals, who are always given over to questioning traditions, in the Democratic party. The second is that many years of conservative propaganda has told everyone so.

Most of this is the work of the religious Right, though the Atheist philosophy of Ayn Rand also rejects the idea of anything other than absolute Truth, and it is certainly more widely heard in “conservative”,or–if we must use the term–“right-wing” circles. And there is some truth to all this; after all, does not the word “Conservative” itself suggest a certain intellectual and philosophical rigidity?

But, of late, there have been signs of a creeping relativism among conservatives. For example, this column from paleo-conservative writer Patrick J. Buchanan. An excerpt:

““Naked reason,” pure rationalism… ignores that vast realm of sentiments, such as patriotism and love, that reside in the terrain between thought and feeling.” 

Buchanan, admittedly, is far from one of the major players in the Republican party, having been effectively ostracized years ago. But there is altogether something very “post-modern”, as Andrew Sullivan often says, about the behavior of the conservatives of late. Recall the odd incident early this year when Rudy Giuliani and other prominent conservatives appeared to have forgotten about the 9/11 attacks.

(As Henry Leland says to Mike Thorton in Alpha Protocol: “There are only so many coincidences that can happen before they stop being coincidences.”)

Of course, one could easily explain away such things by pointing out that it is merely the inevitable result of competing–nearly warring–political parties. A strategy, nothing more. Indeed, I suspect a credible case could be made that changes in the media and the education system have produced a general increase in the relativistic outlook, and we only notice it with conservatives because they are, historically, less susceptible to it.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that strategically speaking, the Republicans are moving more and more towards a relativistic approach to reporting and analyzing every issue. Much of their criticism of Obama is based on how he makes them feel, or the image he projects.

Perhaps Lee Atwater had some part in it. (On some sites, I have seen the phrase “Perception is reality” attributed to Atwater. I doubt he originated it, but it does encapsulate his worldview.) Still, from at least Edward Bernays onward, propagandists, strategists and ad men, or whatever name, must have at least a touch of relativism to carry out their duty.

Now, I cannot stress enough that it is mostly the conservative intellectuals and strategists who seem to think this way. All the examples I gave, with the partial exception of Giuliani, were very much the behind-the-scenes tactician sort, not the leaders, and not the rank and file. I don’t think we will ever see Sarah Palin, for example, engaging in anything other than black-and-white moral reasoning. (“We win, they lose…”)

That’s part of what’s so odd about it, in fact. On the one hand we have the traditional non-relativist view of the world characterized by most of the Republican politicians, but pull away the curtain and we find men like Karl Rove–heir to Atwater–and other such strategists. Buchanan, let us not forget, was a strategist for Richard M. Nixon. (Nixon, by the way, was interested in the works of Nietzsche.) Even Dick Cheney, in his role as an adviser to Gerald Ford, famously said: “Principle is OK up to a certain point, but principle doesn’t do any good if you lose.”

It is pointless to counter by saying that the same is true of Democrats. Of course it is. Carville, Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel and the rest are all doubtless cut from the same cloth. But the Democrats as a whole are already supposed to be the party of relativists, to hear the Republicans tell it, and they’re kind of correct. Nothing reveals this more than the fact that Democrats in general will tend to attack Republicans for being too absolutist. Whereas, the Republicans pride themselves on seeing through the moral haziness in which the liberal intellectuals lose themselves by understanding the absolute, God-given differences between True and False, Right and Wrong.

Let me, as Obama would say, be clear:  the majority of the Republican party believes in a rigid, absolutist, traditional Christian morality–or wants to, anyway.  But many of their strategists are willing to do almost anything to achieve victory, and are more than happy to bend the truth in order to get what they want. And they are fairly open about it.

In short, their strategists appear to be using moral and factual relativism in order to justify the rank-and-file and their leaders behaving like moral and factual absolutists.

All comments are welcome, and disagreement is encouraged. 

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“‘But remember – that dark world of fungoid gardens and windowless cities isn’t really terrible. It is only to us that it would seem so. Probably this world seemed just as terrible to the beings when they first explored it in the primal age.'”–H.P. Lovecraft, The Whisperer in Darkness. 1930.

Note that I didn’t identify the character who says this.