I agree with you but I got side-tracked because of the way my childish mind thinks and started chuckling to myself as I imagined an enormous ‘dictator’s support’. The Trump Truss (patent pending). I am visualising something Steampunk style with polished brass, gears and levers, and puffs of steam - a bit like the walking house in Howl’s Moving Castle but bolted around the Tangerine nethers. Cheered me up!

Whoa! You paint a vivid picture, I feel I’m there!

Reminds me of my grandparent’s County Durham ‘pit village’. I think the difference in the UK is that we would have signalled interest by twitching net curtains (no one but the priest, bookie, or police seargent had access to a fancy stuff like a telephone) as the stranger passed and afterwards gathering in scandalised huddles, we would be talking in loud whispers about ‘whae’s yhe when ee’s yem?’ (or in posher English, ‘Prithee good neighbour, verily, knowest thou ought of whom this stranger shalt be, whither he cometh, and whence he goeth?’)

Oh, boy! We’ve come a long way - thank goodness!

Beware the Ides of March, huh?

If I recall, Shakespeare’s Caesar says to Antony:

*Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,

He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.*

Trump certainly has plenty of fat men around him. I just thought it was a coincidence rather than a strategy but maybe he has some well-read people in his security team? Nah, on reflection, I think it’s just a coincidence.

I think we have to explore moral questions. I think it immoral to just refuse to think. It is wrong to simply assert ‘killing people is wrong’ instead of arguing a case. Games, imaginary scenarios, give us laboratories in which to test out our ideas without hurting anyone.

Like you, I am very reluctant to harm any sentient being. But is it always wrong? Example of a thought experiment: you are passenger on an airplane, a terrorist hijacks the plane, says he is going to fly it into a hospital and kill thousands of people. You just came out of the rest room and are behind him, he has not realised you are there, you could jump him but he has a gun, you might have to wrestle for the gun, and he, or you, or a bystander might get killed. What do you do? If you must never kill, then you must not take the risk of killing him, or yourself, or a bystander while you wrestle so you just have to let him fly the plane into the hospital and kill thousands. Or you might argue it is morally better to act, risk killing someone rather than do nothing, and as a result thousands die.

For thousands of years (probably far longer) humans have asked themselves ‘what if…?’ questions. We did this with stories around the camp fire, with theatre, with novels, with radio, movies, t.v., cartoons, comic books. Now we do it with video games. Speculating and questioning and debating is how we develop moral views. This is how humans do human. This is the way we got to having courts of law to argue cases, democratic institutions to argue over what is best government. Asking a question is not immoral. Refusing to ask questions is - those who do not think for themselves, often have their thinking done for them by others, and that is at best infantalising, a refusal to do adult, and at worst a form of willing slavery. That’s my view.

Hello!

You made me chuckle - 1/3rd of my kids still talks to me. I shouldn’t laugh but ‘name one thing that defines C21st living…’ Ha!

I am a big sci-fi fan too but have no telly (by choice, I just can’t watch one without irritation - I listen to podcasts because at least you can do other stuff while listening so it feels less like being hijacked by a pub bore). But every birthday, Christmas or whatever, all the parcels are dvd-shaped because no one believes I can live without seeing the latest cult tv series so they force-feed me their greatest hits of the previous year - I gave watched some weird stuff over the years. I haven’t heard of DARK but it’ll no doubt turn up in my stocking sooner or later ;-)

I have not read Julian May but I have certainly seen her movies which are cult classics. I tend to read the sci-fi classics - stuff which is now called ‘literature’ like HG Wells War of the Worlds, Time Machine. Ursula le Guinn Left Hand of God. William Golding The Inheritors. My sister was very into the fantasy side of sci-fi and comic sci-fi - Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and such. I’ve read a couple of his books which she recommended and I like his word play and dry humour. ‘Give a man a match and he will be warm until he burns his fingers, set a man on fire with a match, and he is warm for the rest of his life’ (quoted from memory) - one of Terry’s aphorisms that made me laugh.

I am intrigued by your interest in Titannic - you are going to have to explain that. Is it the disaster that intrigues you, the engineering, the economics of trans-Atlantic passenger transport, salvaging the wreck? When I was a teen, I was mad keen on going to sea and enquired about becoming a cadet in the merchant navy (never fancied the RN, did not want to kill) but was torn between the executive officer career path or engineering. Titannic disaster is something I ponder as bad engineering or bad seamanship or corporate wickedness. In the end, went to university as I got a scholarship and was more or less pushed that way by the adults around me. It was one of those crossroads in life where you make a decision (at 18, knowing nothing of life) and afterwards you wonder were you a fool.

It’s not fair just having one life - we need much more time than we get and we build up all this experience only for it to die with us. I would design a different universe if I were god.

I could see a role for ‘elder statesmen and women’ as a chamber of cousellors i.e. they offer advice when asked but are not ‘hands-on’. Instead, they step down at a retirement age (about 60 years old say) and their juniors step up. That way you get the best from all generations and no generation selfishly dominates decision-making.

You make fair comment. I don’t disagree with 99% of what you say. However, I stand by my words about addiction. I agree gaming is potentially a very benign thing and I get a lot of pleasure from gaming but I still want to red flag some aspects of it where addiction does seem to be a factor. Being addicted to gaming has led to health problems for players e.g. repetitive strain injuries or tendonitis - it has adversely affected my health, made my arthritis worse, caused tendonitis so I have had to cut back etc. In extreme cases, addicted gamers have murdered their own babies or been violent to partners because they were distracted by them while playing, lost their temper, and lashed out. And getting players addicted is obviously potentially profitable but making profit from addiction is evil. I say ‘responsible gaming’ needs to be the uncompromising rule just like with anything else that can be addictive or mood-altering or get under our skins the way a well-made game can.

Isn’t that a old Chinese curse? ‘May you live in interesting times…’ Hold on to your hat!

Yeah, I reckon 60 is the new 40. And I don’t even feel 40. I still feel like I felt when I was 16 and at punk rock concerts so in my head I am a baby still but if people call me old, I’ll play along just for the giggles. I fancy being a grumpy old timer like grandpa in the Simpsons - ‘I wore a 40lb beard of bees’ style. Ha!

Appalachians - am I right to be thinking about that movie with the banjo music right now? Deliverance, or some such title?

Ooh boy! My family were coal miners and railway workers, life was pretty tough in remote rural mining villages. I think I can guess what sorta childhood you had. Been there, done that, we got the same t-shirt?

Good point!

Cheers, thank you for that info. It’s good to hear from people with lived experience, real knowledge and experience. Yeah, I use a vpn and suspected it was the problem but even after I turned it off, cleared my browser cache etc, the captcha thing was not working. Bit of a mystery still.

I am not fanatical about stuff. I would consider changing my gaming set up - I like playing on a console so I might try a Steamdeck one day, like when my Switch needs replacing. I like the games I play on my Switch - but they are all ported from other platforms and were developed for them. I find most of the games available for Nintendo Switch, i.e. developed for it, totally uninteresting. Not the sort of thing I would ever want to play so in future I would be looking for a less restricted technology and access to more content. Also, I find the Nintendo shop unuseable. I recently looked for a virtual tennis game because I thought it might help me be more active and I used to enjoy tennis. Could not find a decent option - just cartoonish rubbish like some Mario tennis or Pokemon tennis rip-off. I get the impression Switch games are made to exploit children. That is a big ethical violation in my view. So, yeah, its a complex topic and I am still learning my way around.

I know too little about Russia to know who is a contender to replace Putin or if when he goes the system that created him will go too. I am trying to educate myself on that.

As for China, I know a bit more but I am no expert. Given my limited insight, I am surprised that Xi is still in power. I expected the Communist Party to have ‘neutralised’ him, not necessarily bumped him off but to have taken away his power and reduced him to a figurehead, especially after he mishandled the pandemic and has struggled to fix China’s economic woes. He is basically a thug. If all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. But you cannot beat a pandemic with a hammer nor fix inflation or unemployment or pollution with one. You must have as many tools as possible - Chinese perfected the toolkit of government over thousands of years. Sophisticated people in Chinese government must think Xi is an ignorant lout. I suspect they keep him in place because its better for the people who really run China to have a useful idiot as a puppet than to go through the uncertainties of replacing him - more or less how they handled the Kim regime in North Korea until lately. Putin and Kim collaborating on Ukraine must have really angered China which is probably why Chinese are considering sending ‘peace-keeping’ troops to Ukraine. Xi is a pig in a drawing room and the real government is just working around him.

It is hard to tell how much of the reportage about Xi is ‘smoke and mirrors’. I recently saw a viral report on Reddit and in The Guardian newspaper (probably going around all the news outlets) about Chinese military exercises and some special navy vessels (biggest of their kind! etc) they had which were supposed to provide support for amphibian landings of tanks etc. Every report spins this as ‘China war games is preparation for invading Taiwan - shock!’. I am very sceptical. Xi is apparently the driving force behind sabre-rattling rhetoric against Taiwan and building up PRC military might (his new bigger hammer), but I reckon most of Chinese government are not interested in a war with anyone least of all Taiwan - I think they expect to recover Taiwan eventually, by peaceful means, and are happy if it takes a century cos that long timescale is how Chinese think. So, given this split between Xi and the rest, I have the sense this whole media story is just a performance - whether it is to fool the world about China’s military aggressiveness (advertising Xi’s policy) or is some part of Chinese administration doing this to fool Xi he’s still in charge (covert anti-Xi policy), I cannot tell. I just don’t have enough facts to judge what these military manouvres tell us about Chinese government or, on the bigger scale, what real difference it would make if Xi was not around.

We (in UK) get 24/7 coverage of Trump’s idiocies but not real information on other political leaders. I am European and I could not name five European political leaders, let alone predict the outcome if one were assassinated. As for politics in rest of globe, I am just clueless for the most part but I do try to educate myself. I have to create my own news feeds because the MSM is worthless.

Creating bigger problems. Exactly why I ponder if assassination does any good or just recoils on you. But I think that its usefulness is contingent on who kills whom.

I guess that is why there are so few assassinations of elite figures - it threatens the stability that protects the elite so the elite do not assassinate each other.

However, assassinating non-elite people - terrorists and revolutionaries is routine. The elites (governments of nation states, their sub-contractors) have even mechanised assassination by using remote-controlled drone attacks. This stabalises their control.

So, if elites assassinate those that threaten them, it typically works in their favour. But if non-elites do it to elites, does it empower them or not? If it causes chaos and instability amongst the elite, and the chaos spreads to wider society, and does harm to bystanders or even brings about war, is this a price worth paying, or even a good and necessary outcome?

Honestly, I am still struggling with these questions. Part of me thinks ‘sauce for goose, sauce for gander’ and the tyrants deserve to die by their own methods turned back on them. Another part of me knows war is terrible, especially for ‘ordinary people’ and for the environment, and should be avoided. But there is such a thing as ‘a just war’ and armed struggle can be morally good or even our duty.

So, I go back and forth.

Very clear statement, very helpful, thank you. I think you are correct in your analysis. I know that one reason I play video games is to help myself become aware of my ‘ethics’ (derived originally from my Roman Catholic childhood and still full of that mentality despite decades of ‘personal development’ and consciously trying to break free from false religiosity) and to start questioning them. I am a vegan, literally avoid hurting insects let alone humans. I recoil from violence … and it makes me easy to abuse and exploit. I have been trodden on all my life one way or another because I am too ‘nice’ - I am not a Christian but I still ‘turn the other cheek’.

I play Skyrim and one story arc allows you to be an assassin who eventually assassinates the Emperor which, as a republican who finds monarchy morally offensive, is fine by me! But before you kill him, you have to kill a list of ‘ordinary’ people and it is hard to justify doing so as most of these targets are just eccentric or annoying rather than political threats deserving of execution on behalf of those they oppress. I struggle to do this mindless killing (which the game presents as a cultish sacrifice on behalf of a ‘daedric’ demi-god and/or service performed for pay/capitalist commodity) and as I play the game I am trying to understand my anxieties about ‘killing’ pixels, and trying to achieve a visceral sense of it being okay to use violence in specific situations, to feel good in myself about using my own power/agency, so I am not constantly second-guessing myself and thus conceding the initiative to others who are bad actors. I do not find it easy.

I am currently playing The Outer Worlds which is explicitly about the act of rebellion or revolution against tyranny. One of the characters revels in killing the evil corporation’s mercenaries. I am like a child, looking on and trying to understand the lessons, trying to imagine feeling the same about the work of liberation. It is ironic that capitalist products are helping me become a revolutionary but everything can be a learning experience and whatever the developers think they are creating, the players make their own experiences.

That reminds me of a news story from a few years back: a series of bank robberies in Germany, Holland, Denmark - all the same modus operandi and all done by white-haired robbers. Interpol (international police force) said they thought it was elderly members of 1970s terrorist organisations like Bader-Meinhoff gang stealing money because they had no retirement pensions as they destroyed their state records when young/had no savings accounts/criminal records etc and had to find some way to pay for elder care. It just paints an hilarious picture in my mind: Zimmer-frame Zapatas!

Interesting… Thanks for that info. I am a Brit, I wonder what plans our secret services have prepared for different scenarios (Russia, China, North Korea … and now USA). Looks like world is going back to Macchiavelli (if we ever really left).

I tried creating a Steam account and was blocked by the revolving captcha security thing - took days to try to get help from their customer care and by the time they got back to me I had lost interest. I spent the waitjng time researching Valve and I decided they are not an ethical business. Made me sad as I loved the idea of a customised-for-gaming-on-console linux OS and liked the look of the hardware. But Valve is a monopolist and has too much market share and too many users and thus too much power - USA politics today shows how big a risk that is. Valve supports unethical business models like ‘rent game to play’, AI-generated junk games and IP violations so it debases game development and hurts indy developers, live-streaming games which is bad for environment. It promotes ‘easy access/always on gaming’ and is thus profiting from addiction-to-gaming, which ix a MASSIVE problem and few gamers admit it. It’s an American corporation and I distrust American corporate culture. Most of which might be said of other console/platforms so its not just Valve/Steam, I feel wary of but the whole industry. I bought a second-hand Switch so did not help Nintendo/Japanese corporate power directly. I bought a bundle of 2nd-hand games on sd card with minimal download content (except for ‘No Man’s Sky’ which constantly updates). I am trying to be an ethical gamer - limit my time gaming to stop me becoming an addict etc. But I admit I am compromised - I spend too much time gaming, being retired its easy to lose track of time. Honestly, I feel like a vegan who wraps bacon in thick wholemeal sandwiches and pretends they are not really eating pigs since its mainly bread. I am ‘a work in progress’.

Cool. Thanks for that info.

I hope. Maybe Euro, maybe PRC’s renminbi. We’ll see.

I just wondered, give how US dollars is world’s ‘reserve currency’ (since 1944 Bretton Woods pact), how its crash might affect the whole of global trade (it must hurt more than failure of a national currency like Zimbabwe’s since it is a reserve currency and has a special role in the world). Will we get another reserve currency or has the world economy changed so much that we will get a new way of doing business with no reserve currency or multiple competing reserve currencies? I think we are in uncharted territory so its hard to predict…

“If anyone says they’re a libertarian, I just shrug and leave.” - Atlas In His Own Words