Love and Learning

It's been a bit of time, and I've been thinking about the topic of love a lot lately. Both for personal reasons and philosophical. I think it's important to reflect on your past romantic endeavors (and really any kind of endeavor) and remind yourself of the things you gained, the lessons you learned, and the problems you faced. I wanted to catalog one major lesson from each romantic pursuit.

I learned a lot outside of relationships too, so I'm including 5 non-relationship romantic pursuits and a respective lesson from each one. I'll list them chronologically just in case it betrays something about the progress of human learning in general.

1. Speak up. Good lesson to learn early, but if you never say something about how you feel, the other person will never know. They can't read your mind. Communicate. This goes for crushing on someone all the way through the end of the relationship.

It was elementary school through middle school, so obviously not the height of maturity, but it was still a lesson well-learned, spending five years childishly flirting with the same person, but never saying anything outright, only to find out one day that they moved on. The idea extends through all walks of life though- when you feel strongly about something, say it. You cannot forgo your emotional/mental health- it builds up and destroys you slowly.

2. Some love never goes the way you want it; you have to accept when someone can't or doesn't want to be with you.

More middle school romance. Sometimes the feelings last a lot longer, but you should consider yourself lucky to wind up with a good friend for life, even if you were looking for a partner for life.

3. Relationships are different from standard friendships. Whether you see it coming or not, you'll have expectations and they'll have expectations- all of which will deviate some from the standard friendship expectations in some regard.

High school romances are, I'm sure, awkward for most of everyone. My first relationship, she wanted something different out of a relationship than me. The expectations were new and difficult to navigate, so we both became awkward and shut things down.

4. Don't ever use another human as a means to an end.

Being lonely is no excuse for enjoying another person's affections when you only half-heartedly return them. Everyone deserves to be treated as their own end- a human being.

              4.5. Don't allow another person to be your consolation prize.

This is super related to #4, but I am cheating by including two lessons in one relationship. Everyone also deserves to be treated like they're the most important person in the world to someone. If you "settle" for someone and you treat the relationship like a settlement, then there's spite, guilt, unhappiness, and jealousy already sewn into the relationship from the beginning. Everyone ought to be treated as a 1st place prize to someone. Whether you marry for passion, stability, fun, love, or whatever- make sure that you're picking that person, not begrudgingly accepting them.

I was young, dumb, and infatuated with someone who was interested in someone else. A friend saw my grief and moved closer to me. We had a lot of fun and there was a good dynamic between us, but I sabotaged it from the moment it started, since I was settling for her. (The irony is that I think, looking back on it, I would have liked her more if I'd had a clear head on)

5. Don't sacrifice your core values for your partner (unless you want to sacrifice them).

Sacrifice- give and take- super important, don't get me wrong. But your core values? I dated a smoker despite knowing that I couldn't stand the stuff. I put too much stock into my ability to ignore those important values in order to pursue romance. It didn't work (and I'm glad it didn't).

6. Don't wait for someone's problems to solve themselves (and don't try to fix them yourself).

The first of three failed or noncommital romantic ventures around the same time period. If they're trying to do right by you and grow/learn/fix themselves, that's one thing, but empty platitudes are cheap to hand out. Don't get caught mistaking them for actual currency. "This would be great if they weren't broken in this one huge way!" I'm sure someone has thought that about me before as I've thought it about at least one person before. It's not wise to wait for that huge problem to just... disappear. You can do it, but unless they're showing good evidence of trying to solve it, it's probably time to move on.

7. Don't forget what infatuation can make you do.

The second venture of the three. Liking someone a lot can persuade you to do stupid things. Sometimes these things are good and simply show your feelings on your sleeve. In my case, making a longish drive every weekend I was able to- just to see someone smile for a few hours. But, it's good to remember that infatuation can make you do bad stupid things as well. Just... be aware of what you're doing in the name of your heart flutters.

8. Don't forget to have fun. All the time.

The last one- a fling I very much enjoyed in its simple pursuit of fun. Don't forget in all the seriousness that is life to have fun with the one person you like being around most. Simple, unadulterated fun. The things that make you giggle, poke, and prod each other. Smile. Each and every day.

9. If one person's not in it all the way, then they're not in it.

First college relationship- if either of you isn't willing to push into the adventure, then it's not gonna' happen. Let it go until the point if/when you're both ready/willing.

10. Figure out what you can and can't live with about your partner.

Second college relationship- Learn what quirks about your partner you don't like. Which can you deal with and which can't you deal with? Are any of them core aspects of their personality that can't be changed? If so, it may be a doomed relationship. Which leads to;

               10.5. Don't let it drag on.

If you've already decided to end things, don't put it off. It's disrespectful, hurtful, and immature. Again, I'm cheating and putting two lessons for one relationship. Come at me!

11. Don't allow another person to be your consolation prize.

Fuck, why did I have to learn this lesson twice? God, I'm dumb and terrible sometimes.

12. Love is a choice.

My most recent relationship. I've seen this idea tossed around a bit, and I think it really hits its mark. Love is the choice to forgive. Love is the choice to hear and be heard. Love is the choice to share the bad times together in an effort to address them as a team. Love is the choice to compromise- the choice to hear what you do that bothers them and then fix it. Love is the choice to stay together, even when it's easy not to.

13. Keep yourself grounded.

Falling crazy hard for someone can be a lot of fun- it's exciting, fluttery, adrenaline-pumping, and you're thinking about the things that could be. It's fun, but keep a foot on the ground. If you don't, you pick up speed and you don't have the control to stop yourself or the control to avoid causing damage. For my part, my over-zealous nature hurt me and scared her. Keep yourself based in reality and the here-and-now. Keep a level head about your infatuation (but don't give up the spark). This may not have been a relationship, but it was definitely a lesson that I needed.

Honorable Mention: Don't let yourself be used.

No single instance, but several pseudo-romantic situations have reminded me individually that you should never give someone that kind of control over you. Don't seek approval by doing their bidding; you'll never get what you're looking for, and you'll just become a tool to be used and discarded. You're more than that. Everyone is more than that.

There are a hundred more lessons I learned, but I tried to keep everything to one core theme. Just trying to get some thoughts out there, you know? Maybe it'll help someone else one day.

ADDENDUM

I thought about it a bit, and while this was primarily a way to categorize my thoughts, it's entirely possible a few people involved in the above romantic endeavors will read this. I think for the vast majority of these cases, I did something stupid and/or hurtful to bring the relationship to an end, and I would like to stress that while I think I'm learning lessons, it shouldn't be at the expense of the happiness of others. So to anyone who has been involved with me, I do want to apologize. I'm growing, little by little, but I'm sure I've left painful marks on the history of many of you. You have always and will always deserve better than that. I hope you have found a more fitting partnership, and thank you for being an important part of my life and my growing experience.

Over the Garden Wall Brief Analysis and Thoughts

So, this post will contain massive spoilers.

If you haven't finished watching, leave now (unless you're okay with knowing beforehand what's up).

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Are you gone?

Okay, good. Also note that the analysis is written as an afterthought to help explain my criticisms.

Wirt and his little half-brother Greg are lost and are trying to find their way home. Over eight mini-sodes (at about 10 minutes each), they meet numerous people and creatures along the way, all while getting bits and pieces of warning about "The Beast," an enigmatic creature who appears to sow despair wherever it goes. The serious and thoughtful Wirt leads his energetic and carefree companion through some of the most surrealistic animation landscapes since The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. The two solve their problems through dumb luck and sheer willpower time and time again amidst a cast of mostly non-recurring characters except for Beatrice, their bluebird companion (and almost betrayer) and the woodsman, a man who seems to want to protect the two from The Beast while trying to keep alight a mysterious lantern. This leads up to the final act where Greg sacrifices himself to save Wirt from falling into despair and being swallowed by the forest. As it turns out, the woodsman has been serving as The Beast's pawn, keeping his soul alive with the souls of the people in the forest who gave in to despair.

After defiantly refusing to be tricked by The Beast, Wirt takes Greg and heads off, only to exit a dreamstate, where we find that the two had been drowning in a lake. They're rushed to a hospital where Wirt wakes up to find Greg recounting stories of their adventures in the Unknown world. There are a few hints to suggest that their adventures were real rather than just a death-dream, but interpretation is left open to the audience. This is in keeping with the show's general vibe, which is to give just enough information for the audience to make their own guesses as to how the situations of individual characters came about and/or were resolved respectively.

Now, my criticism of the show is a bit more... thought-out, albeit frustrated.

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I genuinely don't know how to feel about this show. The art, music, voice acting, lighting- all gorgeous. Phenomenal. Easy 10/10 on those elements individually. However, the show felt like it was trying hard to be funny, dark, surreal, and teaching lessons of morality all at once, but I never felt that it did any of those particularly well. The only clear feelings of morality I had were the Huntsmen, who didn't understand what he was doing until the final episode, at which point, it was a relatively quick decision for him to blow out the lantern; Wirt not caring about Greg, an ethical issue which he basically solved by virtue of being knocked out and waking up to Greg missing, and Beatrice leading Wirt and Greg to what was effectively a slaver (though she too didn't understand what the request really was until right before they barged in). In every instance, the moral dilemma seemed to clear up on its own without any serious questions about character ethics having time to grow. The lesson was: everyone felt justified in being selfish until a twist showed them the error of their ways, at which time, they quickly corrected their moral problems.

It was an adorable show, and I love what they did with the world building in the last two episodes, but without building any hints as to where they came from, it was just kinda' out of the blue. I realize that one is a personal preference that simply missed the mark for me.

The ending, while certainly a warm and fuzzy one, wasn't at all what I was expecting as far as emotions go. No one made any difficult decisions (except the woodsman sorta'), and yet everyone was able to live happily ever after. At the beginning of the episode, I had started to have a gut feeling that something awful would happen, which is awesome. I love it when a show foreshadows an unhappy truth and then carries through, but this show felt like they just said "nah, no one needs to be unhappy." Not even Jason Funderberger, who wound up holding hands with the girl in the glasses.
The whole somber and surreal mood of the show was underscored by this sense of dread that something wasn't right, and that things were going to get worse before they got better was just shattered by Wirt casually deciding that that was "dumb." I'll admit that I like how he wrecked a cliche, but it was such a crucial cliche to the story that it makes me think the whole thing was irrelevant. The vicious and unsettling cycle of death, despair, loneliness, and darkness is "dumb," so he just got rid of it. Deciding that the concept of death (since that's the metaphor of the show) is dumb and just getting over it isn't how it works, and I feel like that fundamentally threw the show off for me.

I want to love this mini-series like everyone else seems to, but that ending, capping off the weird feeling that the show was trying too hard to be too many different things, and it all just falls apart to me. And maybe that's a problem with being a show on a kids' network, but hell, look at how the third season of Legend of Korra ended- not everything has to end happily, and even when it's sad, it can have a bright spot of hope supporting it. Or, it could be like season 1 of Korra, where even a happy ending has a long shadow of despair running underneath the surface.

State of Sanity Address

Well, I'm 25 years old. And I guess it's been a while since I made one of these existential posts, so it's time to get my thoughts in a row and out of my head.

I've been recently a lot more forthcoming with people who are important to me about my suicidal thoughts. The hope I had was that this would produce a more secure safety net for me and I could get a sense that I could turn to more people. Unfortunately, this is not the case- not for lack of effort on the part of loved ones, mind you, but just because I will always feel like I'm a burden and that I'm like a broken toy that keeps going back to try to get fixed. People are sick of it.

It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that the thoughts are getting worse and increasing in frequency. On a larger scale, for the first time, I have now thought that I may not see my 26th birthday.

My quality of life is slipping, even as I go out of my way to try to improve it. Trying to eat healthier bit by bit, exercising more, putting myself out there more socially, talking to people more about my depression. These things are not making me feel better, and it occurs to me that if such large steps are ineffective, I don't want to sit here, floundering about, a fish out of water, struggling to breathe for much longer. It is painful. It is sad. I am not happy. These are the themes that re-emerge in my life.

It's ridiculous, in part because I know that the support structure is there and is willing, but I just can't bring myself to bother them more than I already do. One of my longest and dearest friends spoke with me about it recently, and I confided in her that I don't think I could ever actually commit to anything until I wrote. Specifically, until I wrote a letter to every person who is important to me for whom I have things left to say. That was my stated barrier and restraint.

As of writing this, I still have not started writing those letters, and I do not want to, but I also am unsure exactly how much longer I can put this off.

In another instance, my brother with whom I was semi-estranged for years (someone with whom I had had approximately 2 serious conversations in the past) reached out to me to ask me if I was okay. For some reason, that made me bawl. I'm not sure if it was because I felt like someone cared, or if it was because of how obvious it must be that I'm unhappy. And if it's that obvious, what must people think of me as they watch me drift from day to day. Are they just waiting for the day? Are they expecting it? How many of them wouldn't miss me? How many would be happier with me gone? Are they taking bets? Surely, I'm over-estimating how much anyone else is invested in noticing me at all.

Whenever someone takes their own life, you always hear something about how no one saw it coming. No one had any idea the depths of their despair and hopelessness. But what if they did? What if there's just nothing that can be done? Our society is so narrowly focused that there's little to be done for the people who don't travel in the "right" direction. My boss actually told me last week that it was a privilege to work in this law firm; that we were helping people whether they realized it or not. On the one hand, I don't disagree. We get injured people money from insurance companies so that they can go on to resume their lives as best as they can. But, in another very real sense, we're a band-aid covering a wound too big for us. And that wound is one of many. These are the systemic flaws in the world that are nothing short of truly disheartening. So many people are suffering, and there's so little being done about it. The people that do try can spend their entire lives doing so very little for so few. The system is not designed so that people are happy; it's designed so that people make money. In particular, an unbelievably small number of people are the ones making money.

The rest of us are just barely keeping ourselves alive, draining our energy and our passion for those few- just so that we can get up and do it again the next day.
I'm not really interested in being a part of that process, and I've already put up with it for longer than I was comfortable with.

So, what's the state of my sanity? You're already getting a pretty good picture, but here I sit on my birthday, crying my eyes out trying to figure out if I'm going to be alive this time next year.

I really don't want to start writing those letters. It'll just hurt more. I don't want to hurt more. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up.

Misc. Thoughts on Rape and "False Allegations" in our Country

I've bandied about this overarching topic a lot, visiting the realms of extremism on both sides, and a lot of the ground in between. I've been called a good feminist, a misogynist, a misandrist, and plenty of other things. I can't pretend that I have any good answers or that I'm any more "right" about this topic, but I still have a few thoughts floating about.

My personal take on it is that there are two main conversations people are trying to have which come from two fundamentally different positions. This, I think, comes down to a single sticking point: Who you want to protect.

Namely, whether you're more interested in protecting the 2-8% of men who, according to our best statistics, have false rape allegations brought against them , or if you're more concerned with protecting the 92-98% of women who were raped. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm running with a viewpoint of the rate of false rape allegations similar to the one taken in this article. It gets its statistics from what might be the best source we have (though that does NOT make it free from bias and error).

There is an extent to which I believe that "innocent before proven guilty" is a good thing in our society. Without it, we might return to the red scare- witch hunts. However, if we strictly adhere to it, we cannot punish crimes for which intent/consent is the main distinguishing factor from an otherwise legal act. This includes rape, bullying, harassment, verbal/emotional assault. These are problems that -primarily- affect women (and other minorities). Given that, it's likely they were, in part, developed as a means of subjugating certain people. In that event, it should come as no surprise that feminism is fighting back on the side of the 92-98%. They're fighting back against the underlying subjugation; not just the individual crime.

We, as males, have to accept that we don't know what it's like living with that subjugation. We don't know what it's like to be in fear of those things (usually) negatively impacting our lives specifically. And we don't know what it's like to know that the people enacting those crimes against us are probably not going to ever be punished for it.

I do not have a good answer to this problem. We either have to lay down our stringent attachment to "innocent until proven guilty" for that particular type of crime that I mentioned, or else we have to continue letting people subjugate women (and others) until we develop the perfect lie detector that we can use to punish those who commit these crimes.

I am personally in the former camp. I think in order to prove that we want women to be on equal footing, we have to sacrifice some of the things that make us secure- as a show of good faith. Some innocent people will get caught in the crossfire, but far more guilty people will be caught, and being a woman will be at least a little less dangerous.

However, I can understand where the people in the latter camp are coming from- even if I don't agree with them. It's easy for educated, middle class, white males to be bothered by philosophical inconsistencies present in our legal system. Unfortunately, what a lot of us either don't understand or refuse to accept is that the inconsistencies are already present, just swinging in the other direction. It's a scary prospect to give up power and put your trust in a demographic not to abuse a rule that could very easily be abused. But, that's what males have been doing this whole time.

Would this increase the rate of false rape allegations? It's hard to argue that it wouldn't. But that might just be the price we have to pay for making an already oppressed people feel safer.

We Are Weeping

http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/

So I spotted this link on a friend's wall. It's a longish blogpost that almost eerily describes what it feels like to have first-world depression.

Provided in the meat of this post are some haunting bits:

So now you’ve got this degree that’s worth fuck-all, a house that’s worth more as scrap lumber than as a substantial investment, and you’re either going to lose your job or have to do the work of two people, because there’s a recession on. Except they keep saying the recession ended, so why are you still working twice as hard for the same amount of money? 

and 

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I clicked on a video in my Twitter feed that showed mutilated children being dragged from the streets of Gaza. And I started sobbing — just sobbing, sitting there in my bed with the covers around my waist, saying “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over to the empty room. Dead children, torn to bits. And then it was time for…what? Get up, eat my cereal, go about my day? Every day? - See more at: http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/#sthash.o6CMd28Q.dpuf

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I clicked on a video in my Twitter feed that showed mutilated children being dragged from the streets of Gaza. And I started sobbing — just sobbing, sitting there in my bed with the covers around my waist, saying “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over to the empty room. Dead children, torn to bits. And then it was time for…what? Get up, eat my cereal, go about my day? Every day?

and finally

I don’t remember ever feeling this miserable and depressed in my life, this sense of futility that makes you wish you’d simply go numb and not care anymore. I think a lot about killing myself these days. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do it and this isn’t a cry for help. But I wake up and think: fuck, more of this? Really? How much more? And is it really worth it?

This author, a generation before me, has hit the same wall that many in our generation are struggling against; a wall of almost pure futility, despair, and sadness. The indisputable realization that we're dollar signs all day, every day. Our time at work is defined by how much money we can generate. Our time at home is defined by how much money we spend- staying alive, having hobbies, being "happy." Our time asleep is defined by our ability to get up the next day to repeat the process. The actual elements of human joy- companionship, interaction, fulfillment, exercise (mental/physical/emotional), educational betterment- that are all things that are secondary. We are not allowed to prioritize our actual happiness over our ability to generate profit for someone else in order to scrape out a meager existence. We do this for a full 1/3 - 1/2 of our day; the part of our day where we have the most energy, so that we've spent just enough time crushing our own souls such when we get home, there's seldom anything left but fatigue.

What kind of a life is that? Some of us are lucky enough to have a job that's fulfilling (though it's usually one that we can barely live off of), but for the vast majority of us, it's a job necessary to the functioning of society, or more likely, a middle-man company that makes profit off of complicating what should be a relatively simple process in daily life. We are money's bitch.
That's all we are.

And it sucks, and it's sad.

At the same time, while I understand and am intimately familiar with this author's sense of hopelessness, and thoughts of suicide, he cuts off nearly halfway into the article, from talking about the important problems in the world, to bemoan the current state of music and movies. And all at once, my demeanor stiffened just a bit because I'm reminded of Socrates' oft-attributed quote (whether it's an appropriate attribution or not)-

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

 This is some grade A "back in my day" BS that people have been throwing out literally every single generation since the beginning of recorded history. The music isn't worse; you're listening to the genres that you don't like. You're watching the movies that are profit-gobbling pieces of regurgitated trash. Art hasn't gotten worse, you've just started noticing things aside from what you love.

The catch here is that this phenomenon tickles at the depression problem we're suffering. There have always been wars, there's always been corruption. The generation before us always thinks that we're worse than they were at that age. But I think the fundamental reason this is affecting our generation so much more than generations past is our access to knowledge. Our access to these videos, to the horrors in the world. We hear about all the bad that happens, and it's no longer just hear-say, but there are videos and pictures. We have massive communities of people online who can get together and share their experiences. The sense of hopeless dread passes like a plague across all geographical space, because those boundaries have now disappeared.

So, what's the solution? Go back to a time before the internet? Everyone thinks that if you look back far enough, there's some sort of magical utopian time in history that can be pointed to, but it's just not the case. The more we convince ourselves that the past holds some kind of secret to happiness, the less likely we are to actually solve the problems we have in the here and now.

And perhaps in that regard, he concludes it best:

I don’t believe anymore that the answer lies in more or better tech, or even awareness. I think the only thing that can save us is us. I think we need to find ways to tribe up again, to find each other and put our arms around each other and make that charm against the dark. I don’t mean in any hateful or exclusionary way, of course. But I think like minds need to pull together and pool our resources and rage against the dying of the light. And I do think rage is a component that’s necessary here: a final fundamental fed-up-ness with the bullshit and an unwillingness to give any more ground to the things that are doing us in. To stop being reasonable. To stop being well-behaved. Not to hate those who are hurting us with their greed and psychopathic self-interest, but to simply stop letting them do it. The best way to defeat an enemy is not to destroy them, but to make them irrelevant.

There's a philosophical part of me that sees nothing wrong with this idea. To take back what is ours.

But, there is a pragmatic part of me that knows we are not the ones in charge, and to defy the hand that feeds us is to accept the consequences of having no food. For many, that is simply not an option. This is the part of me that considers purchasing a gun and a single bullet myself. The cynical part of me who has already lost the battle without having thrown so much as a real punch. The part of me who has struggled just to dodge the punches thrown at me.

So, where do we turn when we're unhappy and everyone else is drained to the bone dealing with their own unhappiness? We are a people enslaved in mind moreso than body, but is that any less real?

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I clicked on a video in my Twitter feed that showed mutilated children being dragged from the streets of Gaza. And I started sobbing — just sobbing, sitting there in my bed with the covers around my waist, saying “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over to the empty room. Dead children, torn to bits. And then it was time for…what? Get up, eat my cereal, go about my day? Every day? - See more at: http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/#sthash.o6CMd28Q.dpuf

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I clicked on a video in my Twitter feed that showed mutilated children being dragged from the streets of Gaza. And I started sobbing — just sobbing, sitting there in my bed with the covers around my waist, saying “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over to the empty room. Dead children, torn to bits. And then it was time for…what? Get up, eat my cereal, go about my day? Every day? - See more at: http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/#sthash.o6CMd28Q.dpuf

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I clicked on a video in my Twitter feed that showed mutilated children being dragged from the streets of Gaza. And I started sobbing — just sobbing, sitting there in my bed with the covers around my waist, saying “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over to the empty room. Dead children, torn to bits. And then it was time for…what? Get up, eat my cereal, go about my day? Every day? - See more at: http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/#sthash.o6CMd28Q.dpuf

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I clicked on a video in my Twitter feed that showed mutilated children being dragged from the streets of Gaza. And I started sobbing — just sobbing, sitting there in my bed with the covers around my waist, saying “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over to the empty room. Dead children, torn to bits. And then it was time for…what? Get up, eat my cereal, go about my day? Every day? - See more at: http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/#sthash.o6CMd28Q.dpuf

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, I clicked on a video in my Twitter feed that showed mutilated children being dragged from the streets of Gaza. And I started sobbing — just sobbing, sitting there in my bed with the covers around my waist, saying “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over to the empty room. Dead children, torn to bits. And then it was time for…what? Get up, eat my cereal, go about my day? Every day? - See more at: http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/#sthash.o6CMd28Q.dpuf

A Treatise on Monopoly

So, my brother unintentionally convinced me to write a critical analysis of Monopoly in spite of/because of the fact that I hate it.

Monopoly, designed in 1933 and produced in 1935, is so steeped in American culture that if someone utters the phrase "boardgame," most people will think of Monopoly before any others.

For those somehow unfamiliar, Monopoly is a board game that takes place on a square board with the four edges representing streets with properties on them for the players to buy. Players roll a pair of dice and move down the avenue of the board clockwise, buying properties and charging rent from other players who land on those properties. The goal of the game is to not go bankrupt. The more extravagant your property becomes, the more money charged when another player lands on it, allowing you to force people into bankruptcy by staying at your crummy hotel. Along with the 22 main properties (that can have houses and hotels on them), there are 6 lesser properties that can never make a huge amount of money from the other players, but are cheap sources of decent money. Monopoly is a game that thrives on a model of board gaming that had then become the norm for almost an entire generation: roll-and-move. The idea is that the game more or less plays itself. You roll the dice and move that number of spaces forward, doing whatever you are instructed to do on the space upon which you landed.

Meaningful decisions were entirely in how/when/what deals you brokered with other players. Beyond that, the game was an automated luck-machine that took two hours to play. Parker Brothers pushed Monopoly as a patriotic symbol of Americanism in a time when communism had become the major perceived threat. The concept of capitalism being the "best" economic policy was being reinforced as new generations grew up playing Monopoly. Additionally, because of its incredibly small learning curve, it was easy to introduce new players. It was the ideal family night activity for rambunctious kids and exasperated parents- one that didn't require thought, but still allowed you to bond with your children.

This accessibility, however, has played the part of a double-edged sword. While more people accepted the idea of gaming as a "normal" activity, the simplicity of Monopoly (and games developed thereafter) gave our culture the implication that gaming was a strictly childish activity, to be turned to by children or as a means of captivating children. For those that have accepted the idea of playing games as a valid past time for adults, the problem is that all games were seen to be filled to the brim with luck and low on meaningful choices. This led to the stagnation of boardgame design for just shy of 60 years when Settlers of Catan took the world by storm.

More than being an overly simplistic game, however, Monopoly started a dangerous precedent in the world of gaming; that in order to win, everyone else must lose. In this particular case, everyone else must lose everything. Even the person who comes in "second," despite lasting potentially much longer than other players, walks away with exactly nothing, giving early boardgames a sense of "all or none." It's only recently that gaming has broken away from that convention using common mechanics like victory points to definitively place players on a spectrum towards victory, rather than a binary switch between "victor" and "loser."

Monopoly is a game about following orders, never making decisions, and accepting that luck will determine who wins. The fact that this formula has worked its way so deeply into the expected culture of boardgaming is at least partially indicative of why Americans often feel that "games" are toys for children. That one game can set back the course of game design/development by decades on its own is astonishing, and yet here we are, almost 80 years later, only now coming to our own as a hobby.


Socially, Monopoly has done its share of harm as well, but that's not the main purpose of this post, so I'll just touch a tiny bit on that.

Not only has the aspect of winner v. loser been damaging to the longevity of gaming as a culture, but it actually has been perpetuating negative expectations about American economics. Namely, that the middle class can't exist. You have one hyper-rich person for every 2-4 people. The rest? Dirt poor. This mindset has reinforced a refusal to compromise in our society, as well as the tendency to think that if someone has nothing, they simply weren't as "good" as the person who has everything. Monopoly also starts players on equal footing, reinforcing the notion that everyone has the same opportunities

What It's Like to Cry

So, there's something peculiar I've noticed about aging: With each year that passes, I shed tears more easily, particularly at fictional works. Even stories that end on a fundamentally hopeful note, I get choked up and find myself unable to continue, too distraught over how perfectly imperfect the world is and how that fact is eerily represented in works of fantasy.

Change.

Scary though it may be, is more sad than anything in this regard. It represents an inability to simply stop. It highlights our total lack of control over the universe around us. Old friendships fade and new ones replace them; fires sputter and die, to be reborn elsewhere; and like Theseus' ship, our entire lives are slowly recrafted over time, often in unpredictable and massive ways. What's sad is not that the world around us is in flux, but rather, that we cannot, even for a moment, return to a previous time by any means except our memories.

This is especially cruel when our perceived sense of well-being, hope, and happiness was greater in our memories than it remains in the present.
To walk down the road and find the most amazing flower that smelled of spring breeze and the essence of life itself, only to walk away and be unable to remember that scent later, but also unable to turn around and revisit it.

Our linear path forward is one filled with regret and longing. And all I can do is sit here and cry my eyes out for the feelings of remorse others have over the swift flow of time, because I cannot shed tears for my own position in the river.

So what's causing me to cry like this? I know I haven't grown up enough to suddenly be in touch with the sorrow that everyone else in the world (real or otherwise) feel. Maybe it's finally catching up with me, and my need to cry about forlorn happenings is being satisfied through fantasy so that I don't have to feel guilty for deriving my emotional needs from the real pain of others.

And yet... I can't help but continue to take part in stories that offer no happy ending and are riddled with pain and sadness. Is that my body's way of telling me I need to empathize more?

Just another thought for another day.