I’ve been quiet for a long time. Quiet because I’ve been busy and quiet because I haven’t known what to say.
As an update there is a book and it is on its way, as it has been for some time. And there are details I could share, but I won’t because I like the idea that the sense of surprise means something to anyone who might still be waiting. That maybe there is anticipation.
***
A friend of mine remarked recently that he wasn’t able to discern reality from unreality anymore. The insinuation being that the world has lost its mind in such a convincing manner that maybe we’ll never understand the extent to which that actually impacts us.
I tend to agree with him.
Things have reached such a point of absurdity that Socrates wouldn’t even know where to begin. But the irony there is that Socrates’ ancient endeavour is so far from what is considered valuable that he has travelled beyond the vail. You might say he has mounted the stairs and stepped out into the Forms and that his ideas are a legacy of effort determined to lead us to a better place, but the reality around us tells a different story. Maybe there is enlightenment out there. Maybe there is hope and understanding and the overwhelming sense of fulfilment that accompanies grand insights. But we’re not even trying to shake off the chains anymore are we? We’re strapped in for the long hall. We’re Truman tying himself to the boat in the blind mania that accompanies a willingness to lose everything for our beliefs. Only Peter Weir doesn’t have control of our narrative. That wonderful revelation – the overcoming of fear and the light of that warming false sun – doesn’t exist. There’s no final wall or Ed Harris to act as the last bastion we need to overcome. The stairs to freedom aren’t obscured – they don’t exist. It’s not a matter of perspective, it’s actually just the devastation of the present state of affairs. Maybe we’ll never even realise. Maybe it will come as a serene, oxygen starved synaptic flash, and in that moment we’ll know that we tied ourselves to a sinking ship and that we’re actually going under.
This is all rather dark, I know. But the light is increasingly difficult to find when the world is populated by conscienceless officials and the demonstrably vacuous ramblings of one incapable of genuine reflection, let alone self-awareness.
What light is left during such an eclipse of moral and ethical ideas?
I’m angry about this development and I feel like a failure every time I hear such small-mindedness usher forth from the mouths of any of those given the opportunities to recognise alternate viewpoints. But more than that, the things that I’m angry about are big and shapeless – they permeate the fabric of the world and undercut all that might once have been acceptable and good.
There is no clear solution to such anger – excusing earplugs and a blindfold and the kind of total sensory deprivation that would leave little room for emotion and no room at all for hope. It torments me to think that the world has crossed into a twilit place where the real is little more than desire and so much less than the speckled complexity of shapes uncertain and poorly defined. Actuality is reality and none of it is grand or possessive of qualities we might wish to cultivate.
***
I’ve been retreating into nostalgia of late. Perhaps it’s merely a reflection of the world and the present disposition for the ‘good old days’ when things didn’t seem quite so dire at every turn. It could also be a response to getting older – a desperate grasping directed at my youth in the knowledge that not only is that time gone, but what I perceive as normal today is also on its way out. This brings me to a point of interest though: what role does nostalgia play that isn’t detrimental to present psychology? Its very goal is to soften present concerns with the rose-tinted hue of past successes. By extension then it must serve little value beyond stoking the fire of psychological delusion. Despite the fear that nostalgia might be securing my place in the cave of human disaffection, I’m inclined to seek another angle. If the argument is that nostalgia is the equivalent of a comfort food, then it could be claimed that comfort is disconnected from enlightenment. But a life without comfort is hardly a life that the average person would pursue – the implication being that I am the average person. Perhaps we must consider to goal of nostalgia, what does it achieve? What does it seek? This appears to be deeply intertwined with those same feelings of reinforcement and tartuffery which led me down this particular path.
I am playing an old video game at the moment. A game from my childhood. One which I have spent countless hours enjoying before, and am presently spending many hours enjoying again. Is this joy only problematic if it means that I am disconnected from things deemed more valuable to daily life? The definition of value here carries the weight of the world. But rather than this philosophical exploration, I’m more interested in what it is about this game and its story that is so compelling. Let me be clear that my memory certainly paints the experience as closer to Shakespeare than the generic medieval fantasy on offer. I remember a heroic grappling between the light and the dark. An intrepid force of young people forging a path into the unknown and demonstrating that with careful tactics and good friends, anything can be achieved. As an adult I can appreciate the transparent storytelling in the knowledge that game mechanics in the 90s far outweighed the effort to spin a suitably nuanced yarn.
But I do remember it being better.
Does this diminish my joy? Not really. I can remember the escapism of it all. The desire to not only direct these pixelated characters in their quest to save the world, but to be them. To become a part of their world and venture out with friends to rescue everyone from impending disaster and save the princess. Of course, the damsel in distress trope is played out in large print here, but that only ignores the strong women who are members of your inner cadre. My only lingering question as a youth was: “Why is the princess so desirable?” Her character was one dimensional and her presence acted as little more than a plot point. In fact, her lines in the story probably amount to less than 50 words. This, in conjunction with how overshadowed she is by prominent women in the team who demonstrate strength and determination in fighting off the forces of evil that far exceeds the uninspired desperation of a plea to be saved, always left me a little unconvinced. It should be noted that the women fighting alongside the protagonist usually say little more than their introductory lines which amount to less even than those of the princess. Moreover, it might even be a point worth considering that there are very few characters with extended dialogue who happen also to be women (on top of which only six women become members of an extended team of thirty total). This is not exactly balanced out by the progressive lines given to NPCs throughout the game’s duration, but it’s a nice inclusion that the women both fight just as convincingly as the men (more convincingly in the case of several characters) and that their voices are often more than just the flattery of obedience. Frustratingly, as a final comment in this little aside, none of the women fulfil traditional fighting classes and are instead relegated to roles weak in defence despite their potential magical or distance-based strengths. Perhaps this is a product of the time. Or perhaps it’s an insidious commentary on gender roles and was the effort to subtly teach a young me that men are strong and protect the women by standing between them and eminent danger.
I was always more convinced that the protagonist would be bored after all his adventuring by the trappings of a princess, let alone the fact that he barely knew her before she was kidnapped, and he has spent countless months traveling the world alongside his extended group of companions.
***
It may never have been true, but my young self believed that there were things in the world that were good, and things that were bad. In Shining Force II you play a hapless and silent youth who happens to be a beacon of goodness. The story lacks the nuance of a modern game with choices that shape your experience, and the opportunity to commit heinous crimes in the safety of artificiality doesn’t exist. But despite this, or maybe it’s because of this, who you are and the role you play is never in question. Your hero might not speak, but his intentions are felt and the direction of the action clearly puts him in the category of lawful good. This is a traditional caveat of old games – that they don’t cater to the devil inside – but it’s also undeniably nice to travel to a place where the lines are clear.
When politicians are all bad, and even the good ones seem to be responsible for bad things – where the world’s resident super-hero is only one tweet away from outing himself as a super-villain – there is nowhere out here to turn for my inner child. Stories give us the framework in which to enjoy a world where the boundaries are clear. These clear boundaries instill in us a sense of how the world should work, ideally, and encourage some of those old virtues to aren’t so well-valued today. But with the increasing move towards obfuscation and the moral grey, video-games and films have left us in a place of great philosophical uncertainty, and also one of potential apathy.
If everyone is bad for a reasonable percentage of the time, what obligation do I have to save them? If everywhere that I see good I can also rationalise bad, then isn’t the good tarnished beyond repair?
As the unassuming leader of the Shining Force, you have clear goals – stop a devil from destroying the world, protect my friends and my city, save the princess for a heartbroken king – and there is no question about their rightness. They are right. The devil has no nuance. He is simply bad. He is the imaginary terrorist of early 2000s cinema who is irredeemably evil, who has no cause but the destruction of everything we love. He is one dimensional and the majority of his minions mirror him in their simplicity. There are moments in the narrative where the question of whether or not the enemy you’re fighting is actually as bad as you think, but these are quickly overshadowed by the fact that they support a being whose only goal is the destruction of everything. It’s comic book stuff on many levels. The problem is that as an audience in 2018 we don’t appreciate simple bad guys – or good guys for that matter. We question the realism of their motives. Even half a film was devoted to providing insight into the idiotic goals of Thanos, the MCU’s big baddie. We need to see a reason for their actions otherwise they’re not convincing, or we can’t identify, or whatever.
Is this because we’ve come to realise that the baddies are often just like the goodies? That perspective is a killer and that to judge one side evil is to deny them a voice in any future discussion?
The moral of the story is that I’m sad about the state of the world and frustrated by the sense that the rug is constantly just about to be pulled from under us all. But I love this old game, even if it doesn’t stand up so well to the progression of time.
Shining Force II was originally released in 1994 on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis.
I was 11.
