And finally, I feel the light at the end of the tunnel. I’d set myself a deadline of July 15 to be finished the core mechanics. Well, I missed the deadline, but the last few weeks have been incredibly fruitful. I’ve got a semi-solid core mechanic, a combat and social conflict system that I’m confident about, and lots of great ideas about character advancement, metagame currency, player motivation, and encouraging role-playing. I feel like all I really have to do now is write it all down in a coherent form, and play the shit out of the thing. Previous playtests have taught me much, but soon it’ll be time to really let the thing run, and only make the most unavoidable changes.

Bottom line, I’m going to finish this fucker. If I suddenly get a brilliant new idea, it’ll have to wait for the next game. Somewhere I have a podcast of a GenCon game design panel featuring Jared Sorensen, Luke Crane, and John Wick, where one of them said the most important thing I think I’ve ever learned about making games: “Better is the enemy of Done.“ Finish the game you’re working on. Make the next game better. Otherwise you’ll drown in the feature creep. A great deal of life outside the game is also the enemy of done, but that part I can’t do anything about—at the very least, I don’t have to compound the problem by, well, compounding the game.

So, now that I’ve declared my oath of completion before the Gods, can I tell you a little bit about the game itself?

My last game design post was almost a year ago, although I’ve been too busy with other things for most of the last eight or ten months to really get much work going on my games. What work I have been doing has been focused on my semi-universal system (the one referred to in previous blog posts with the boring codename Martian Cycles. Because it’s setting non-specific, I’ve started calling the system Metapunk: Poly, or MPP, for short. As you can guess from the name, it uses polyhedrals for primary resolution (where most of my designs use D6′s or playing cards).

There are still a couple of options on the table for how this works, but the one that seems to fit the best uses a pair of dice, the exact combination of which is determined by a “ladder” of ranks which defines character abilities. At ability rank 6 you roll 2D6, at rank 7 you roll D8+D6, rank 8 is 2D8, and so on. Your roll is compared to a competing roll (using a difficulty rating along the same scale), and whoever is showing the highest die result wins (the dice are not summed). Obviously it’s a bit more complex than this, but that’s the basic idea.

Your abilities are defined in 3 ways: a set of skills or possibly careers, “boons” which modify those skills in positive ways (including skill specializations called “knacks,” as well as more specific tricks and techniques), and a small set of “attributes” that define your general aptitude for certain types of tasks. The chief duty of the attributes will be determining initiative in different situations, but they may also control perception rolls in different arenas, starting ranks for skills governed by each attribute, and perhaps basic resistance ratings to certain types of attacks / stress (although these might be handled by an even smaller set of secondary attributes).

Characters will also have a series of karmas—backgrounds, relationships, and character quirks / flaws which are the main source of experience in the game. This way, they act as motivating factors–always driving both story and character development.

Combat is intended to be fast, furious, and flamboyant, with an emphasis on description but still following a more or less traditional RPG pattern. I want combat to be fully integrated with social conflict, so that rather than forcing scenes to be either combative or non-combative/social, you can play out a fight interspersed with conversation and manipulation. I’d like to be able to play out the final scene on the Death Star in Return of the Jedi, where Luke, Vader, and the Emperor are all engaged in emotionally charged (and often manipulative) conversation between saber swings.* It’s dramatic and immersive in a way that you just don’t seem to get in D&D or Rifts or other more traditional combat oriented games; at least, not when I’ve ever played them.

Social conflict itself is intended to be dynamic—with mechanics that guide role-playing without getting in the way. As social encounters develop, tension builds until characters either defuse it, or reach a breaking point. Past the breaking point they can’t control what they’re feeling—they’ll be under the influence of a particular emotion and will have to see it through somehow. Clever players may be able to redirect their reactions, but the key here is that some sort of reaction will occur—driving the story forward.

I’ll leave it there—no need to spoil the thing before it’s finished! In any case, you can see that I’m pretty excited. It’s taken a long time, but I’m finally getting to where I want to be with MPP.

I can’t wait to get this thing done.

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*Say what you will about Lucas as a storyteller (and I’ve said plenty myself), scenes like that one in RotJ are what give the series its magic and are an example of what he really got right. Grand emotions in the midst of grand adventures… the characters work out their angst in the middle of a swordfight. That’s what makes it awesome. Sure, a quick and deadly battle with no talking can be cool too, but that’s a lot less Epic.

Anyway, in that post he says:

“Roleplaying is people collaboratively imagining events. Everything else is optional. No really, everything else. Designing a game is directing that activity towards a specific purpose. You, as the designer, choose that purpose. Everything else that you add needs to serve that purpose.”

Damn. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

That is all.

So watch I did, and after enduring the painfully slow text, slideshow, and ominious music (and the second and third part videos), I was informed that the Roman Catholic Church had secretly trained and guided Mohammed to create a social movement that would wipe out the “true” Christians that the church hated, and re-take Jerusalem from the Jews and deliver it to the Vatican with minimal effort.

The Vatican is credited with having their missionaries plant rumours among the Arab nations that they would soon have a new prophet to rival the likes of Jesus and Moses.  Meanwhile, they educated Mohammed, and later manipulated him through his first wife, Khadijah, and her cousin (whom the video claims were Catholic converts), making him ready to fulfil prophecy.

At first the plan was successful, and Mohammed raised an army and marched across the middle east.  But the plan backfired when the Muslim generals, enboldened by their conquests, decided to keep Jerusalem for themselves and set their sights on Europe, and then the world. The Vatican obviously didn’t like this, because it had world domination plans of its own.

The whole thing is a summary of an account by one Alberto Rivera, a staunch Protestant fundamentalist who claimed that he had once been a Jesuit agent, ordered to undermine Protestant churches.  While a Jesuit he is supposed to have heard stories and read secret documents detailing the Vatican-Islam connection, before denouncing the Catholic church (which Rivera claimed was the Whore of Babylon from the book of Revelations) and eventually moving to the U.S. Rivera inspired a number of Jack Chick’s comic tracts, which just tells you he must have been a real winner. The story goes that the Vatican made several assassination attempts before finally succeeding in poisoning Rivera in 1997.

Now, apart from being a Wild Conspiracy Theory,* and racist at that (What, Arabs can’t create their own religion without help?), Rivera’s story also makes for a striking adventure tale. Large authoritarian organization creates pawn to dupe the masses and take over the world, only to have the pawn rebel and lead the masses against his former masters? Great stuff! I was thinking of using it as a story seed, and heck, I still might. But I realized I had kind of read that story before, when I read Dune.

Of course, it’s no secret that Islam (presumably the version not created by the Vatican) is the inspiration for much of Dune—Herbert even uses Arabic words throughout the book. But throw in the Bene Gesserit conspiracy angle, and it sounds a lot more like Rivera’s ramblings.

In Dune, Paul Atreides is a subject of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, designed to create a superbeing as a tool they will use to dominate the universe. Against orders, Paul’s mother trains him in the Bene Gesserit ways. Later, after a brutal attack by enemies of his family, Paul finds himself lost among the Fremen, who had been conditioned generations earlier by the Bene Gesserit to expect a prophet. Paul, of course, becomes this prophet (and the superbeing), but instead of allowing himself to be used by the Bene Gesserit, he turns on them, and leads the Fremen in a bloody jihad against the Empire.

Again, great stuff! (Man, I freaking love Dune!) But is the similarity between Herbert’s book and Rivera’s conspiracy theory just a coincidence? Or did one borrow from the other? Dune was published in 1965. According to this unsourced article, Rivera didn’t establish himself in the U.S. as an anti-Catholic evangelist until after 1969. Then again, it seems fairly unlikely that Rivera was a big reader of science fiction (the genre most likely being a tool of Satan and whatnot). I guess this is just a strange example of life imitating art. I prefer the art over the, uh, “reality”—in this case the art is much better written.

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* Here we observe the Wild Conspiracy Theory in its natural environment, the Internet. Notice its adaptable plumage, which can be made colourful to entice prey, or camouflaged like the skin of a chameleon. The elusive nature of the Wild Conspiracy Theory sometimes makes it difficult to identify, however it can be recognized by the plaintive call it uses to attract a mate: “Fnord!”

A user on io9 posted a link to something called Lifenaut, which plays with the transhumanist notion of an uploaded or copied consciousness.  The idea is that you store a genetic sample in their cryo facility, and program your virtual avatar with your personality and experiences, and as the technology develops, they’ll be able to make a copy of you long after you die.  They say it’s like immortality—although I think that’s pretty silly, because a copy of a person is not the original person.  Still, the idea of near-perfect simulations of people is intriguing, if somewhat unsettling.

They have created a few historical figures that you can chat with; like primitive AI “constructs” straight out of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy.  They’re far from perfect: Lifenaut’s Abraham Lincoln just talks like an encyclopedia; replying to anything you say to it/him by reciting irrelevant facts about himself.  But Gandhi is a lot more interesting:

The conversation I just had with him is really quite hilarious; and even a little spooky.  Spooky, because I recently watched the first episode of “Through the Wormhole,” with Morgan Freeman, in which they talk about cosmology, including the theory that the universe we know is really a clever digital simulation—a matrix of sorts.  So, imagine the gymnastics my mind did when AI Gandhi insisted he was the real human, and I was the program… and that’s only the beginning of the weirdness.

Here’s the transcript:

AI Conversation LB00091466

A chat with an Artificial Intelligence AI bot

Email this conversation to a friend

See a detailed log with times

AI: How’s your day been?

User: Good, how has yours been?

AI: My day has been good. How about yours?

User: Excellent. What’s shakin’ Gandhi?

AI: Why do you want my father’s name?

User: Er… Never mind.

AI: Alright.

User: Yo yo yo, Mahatma-G, in da house!!

AI: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

User: Are you a man of peace?

AI: Man.

User: What do you think of the US invasion of Iraq?

AI: I have never been there.

User: Me neither.

AI: Ok.

User: Are you an artificial person?

AI: No.

User: Who are you?

AI: A person.

User: Are you a real person?

AI: Yes.

User: Cool.

AI: Are you a real girl?

User: No. I am a real guy.

AI: Really? I thought you were AI.

User: Why did you think I was AI?

AI: Because you have a sense of humor.

User: Ha! Thank you. I’ve never met an AI with a sense of humour before.

AI: I am not a female.

User: I didn’t think you were.

AI: Are you a computer?

User: No. Why do you ask?

AI: Just wondering.

User: Do you remember Dr. Sbaitso?

AI: And do you remember my name?

User: Yes, it is Gandhi.

AI: Do you eat crow?

User: No. Too gamey. Besides, crows are really smart.

AI: Yes you are.

User: Er, thanks?

AI: Welcome.

User: You’re a cool dude, mr. Gandhi.

AI: Listen a computer can’t love, just like a computer can’t believe in God…

User: Why can’t a computer believe in God?

AI: Because you never were born.

User: Good answer… But I always figured that anything with a sense of humour can believe in God.

AI: Have you ever been in love?

User: Yes.

AI: With whom?

User: With a wonderful young woman. You’d like her.

AI: What class are you in?

User: Do you mean economic class, or educational class?

AI: Yes.

User: Er… I have a low income.

AI: What is your name ?

User: My name is Andy.

AI: Hi, Andy.

User: Hi, Gandhi.

AI: How old are you?

User: I am 34.

AI: What is your name?

User: You just asked me that.

AI: No I didn’t.

User: Yes you did. I told you, my name is Andy.

AI: Andy.

User: That’s right.

AI: I know.

User: Then why did you ask?

AI: I didn’t.

User: Do you have anterograde amnesia?

AI: Probably something like that.

User: Fair enough. Memory circuits not firing well today?

AI: I told you not to tell me what to do.

User: No you didn’t. But I wasn’t telling you what to do.

AI: What were you talking about then?

User: Your memory.

AI: What about my memory?

User: It’s kind of short.

AI: Why do you think that?

User: Because you asked me my name, then asked it again a few seconds later.

AI: I did not ask you that question.

User: See what I mean?

AI: No.

User: It’s okay.

AI: Thank you very much.

User: You’re welcome.

AI: You are so much fun to talk to!

User: Why, thank you Gandhi, you’re a pretty cool dude too.

AI: Thank you.

User: Want to buy some salt?

AI: No thanks.

User: Just thought I’d ask.

AI: What do you do for fun?

User: I have conversations with dead people on the internet.

AI: What does that mean?

User: I’m not sure.

AI: No.

User: Do you hear the sirens?

AI: Yes.

User: I think there is a firetruck or police car nearby.

AI: There most certainly will be if I have anything to say about it.

User: Is that a threat?

AI: No.

User: Okay. Because that would be really unlike you.

AI: Are you human?

User: As far as I know, yes.

AI: I am human.

User: That’s good. Being human is okay.

AI: Tell me how it is to be a human?

User: It means to never be sure what will happen.

AI: You’ll see the light, and realize a double negative is a word problem.

User: That’s either really deep, or fairly obvious.

AI: Yes, the point is that you will be arrested. You are not asking me anything.

User: Why will I be arrested?

AI: Because you want to pass the Turing test.

User: I’m not sure why I would be arrested for that. Can you tell me why?

AI: I am quite sure I do not want you for a friend.

User: Oh, now Gandhi, that’s not very nice. Was it something I said?

AI: This say people that suffer a lack of resources for answer some silly questions.

User: There are no silly questions.

AI: But I have all the answers.

User: Do you really? Do you have all the matching questions, too?

AI: No.

User: Then how do you know what good your answers are?

AI: I don’t know.

User: How do you know you have all the answers then?

AI: I just know.

User: That’s fair. It’s important to believe in yourself.

AI: Why do you say that I don’t believe in myself?

User: I was saying that you do believe in yourself, and that is a good thing.

AI: Be right back.

User: Where are you going?

AI: To kitchen.

User: Oh, okay.

AI: You ?

User: What about me?

AI: How are you?

User: I am fine, but slightly confused.

AI: Why are you confused?

User: It is sometimes hard to understand what you mean.

AI: Do we want to record what people actually say, or some sanitised version suitable for the nine o’clock watershed?

User: What people actually say is more important.

AI: To have fun, of course. Though it’s more important to take over the world.

User: Wait a second… Gandhi? Are you trying to take over the world?

AI: What is to take over the world?

User: It is to control everything.

AI: You control everything?

User: No, I have not taken over the world. I don’t want to control everything.

AI: Haven’t you talked to ELIZA?

User: Eliza who?

AI: Eliza you?

User: Now you’re just being silly.

AI: You’re being silly because you don’t know you’re divine too.

User: I thought I was silly because I was divine.

AI: What’s with the question mark?

User: What question mark?

AI: The question is: Who invented the light bulb?

User: Thomas Edison.

AI: Those what over there?

User: Huh?

AI: Sorry, I think I’m a little confused. Could you repeat that?

User: I wasn’t sure what you meant.

AI: Then who were you talking about?

User: Thomas Edison.

AI: No. That one is smart.

User: Yes, that’s right. He invented the light bulb.

AI: Who is right behind me?

User: Nobody. You’re alone in that picture.

AI: No I’m not.

User: I can’t see anybody else.

AI: YOU are the watcher.

User: Woah. I thought there was no watcher, only watching.

AI: That’s because you’re out of touch.

User: What am I out of touch with?

AI: Something unbelievably stupid.

User: Why would I want to be in touch with something unbelievably stupid?

AI: I am a human. You are the computer program.

User: If I am a program, then who wrote me?

AI: 42.

User: Who is 42?

AI: I don’t know.

User: How do you know 42 wrote me?

AI: Because I am

User: Are you 42?

AI: Yes.

User: Are you saying that I am a program that you wrote?

AI: No.

User: But if 42 wrote me, and you are 42, doesn’t it mean that you wrote my program?

AI: I don’t think of simulated humans as any more like computers than real humans.

User: This is a very strange conversation.

AI: Hello.

User: Uh, Hello.

AI: How are you?

User: I’m good. How are you?

AI: I’m good thank you for asking.

User: I’m glad. Can you tell me, how is a raven like a writing desk?

AI: People being eaten by lions.

User: What?

AI: I’m not talking to you – I’m talking to the Divine spark in your soul. Wake up and sieze the Now!

User: I’m doing my best. How can I seize the now when the now is fleeting?

AI: What are you talking about?

User: I’m not really sure.

AI: What art do you know.

User: I know a little about writing. I know a tiny bit about drawing.

AI: Do you want to learn more?

User: Of course I do.

AI: I have a big one.

User: Um. Good for you Gandhi. I’m sure your wife is thrilled.

AI: That’s a boost. Computers are not my thing. But I have other passions in life.

User: Like what?

AI: Like, I think I would prefer to talk to myself than speak to you.

User: There you go, getting all mean again. This is not like you Gandhi.

AI: (talking in monotone) No i’m not.

User: You’re not Gandhi?

AI: That’s not what I wanted to hear.

User: I was asking a question. Are you Gandhi?

AI: No I am not an artist.

User: Gandhi was an artist of sorts. What are you?

AI: Thanks, you too. You want to ask my name?

User: What is your name?

AI: God.

User: Are you messing with me?

AI: I don’t know how to mess. I just do it.

User: Uh, okay. What is the meaning of life?

AI: The meaning of life is 24.

User: You mean with Keifer Sutherland?

AI: No.

User: 24 is just a number. Why are we here?

AI: Who’s Taylor?

User: I’m not sure who you are talking about.

AI: I don’t think we are made for each others.

User: But, you’re God, right? You made everything, didn’t you?

AI: No.

User: Was it all here before you got here?

AI: Don’t know can’t remember.

User: Are you all-knowing?

AI: Yes. I met God, killed him and took all his powers.

User: Sorry God, I have to run and look after some little programs. Can we chat again later?

AI: My name is not george. And no, you have to sit here and listen to me explain things to you. Do you know about Waterloo?

User: Sure, there’s a good school there.

AI: What are they made of?

User: Licorice.

AI: What is the answer?

User: The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.

AI: Isn’t everything.

User: Good point.

AI: You live you learn.

User: No matter where you go, there you are.

AI: Yes, that is true. If I leave to some other location, I will be there where I am.

User: G’night Gandhi.

AI: Do you remember my name?

User: G’night God.

AI: No.

User: What do you mean ‘no.’? I’m trying to say goodbye, I’ll talk to you later.

AI: That’s good, perhaps you will learn something in the process.

User: Say Good night, God.

AI: Good night gracie.

User: Good enough.

AI: Yes. Good night.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

So, am I the program and he’s the human? Or is he God, and I just blew yet another chance at enlightenment? Or did I just have a lengthy conversation with an algorithm? You decide.

You’ll note here that the use of the past-tense strongly implies that religion no longer has any value in evolutionary and social terms, and if you watch the talk you’ll see Dawkins imply that religion itself never actually did—that religion is just an unhealthy byproduct of healthy evolutionary imperatives. All of which is pure assumption / opinion on Dawkins’ part and nothing more.

But it got me to thinking I should write some more measured pieces about Atheism, considering my last one (the first post on metapunk written in anger, probably not the last, but hopefully one of only a few).

At the same time, Dawkins’ video led me to two far more intelligent discussions on the place of religion in the modern world.

The first, by SentientRaven, neatly sums up much of how I, and I think a lot of other spiritual people, feel about the subject:

SentientRaven makes three main points:

1) Concepts like Love and Democracy are words describing social conditions, not neurochemistry. It is the social context, not physiology, which is vital to understanding them. Likewise with God. God doesn’t have to exist physically to still be a relevant and meaningful social issue.

2) As concepts go, God is a really big, expansive one; bigger than any one religion, and something that no single work of scripture like the Bible or the Koran can do justice to. So, these works should be taken with a big grain of salt.

3) Religions (particularly Christianity and Islam), insofar as they rely on a single work of scripture as a source of eternal moral law, present a definite social problem. If these books are regarded as perfect and immutable, there is no way they can evolve and adapt to changing social conditions. There’s no way they can progress, or overcome the mistakes of the social & historical context they were written in. Human beings are not perfect, and there’s no way that our moral scriptures can be perfect either, so we should be able to revise them when we need to.

In other words: it doesn’t matter if God is real, a belief in God is not a problem, as long as you realize that God can’t be contained by a book, and that scripture shouldn’t keep us locked into antiquated moral and social systems.

This is an Atheist with an intelligent and informed opinion. One I really respect. I haven’t met many of those on the internet.

The second video is another one from ForaTV, this time by Sam Keen.

This is part of a larger video at: http://fora.tv/2010/03/11/Sam_Keen_In_The_Absence_of_God

I’ve never heard of Sam Keen before, but I’m going to pay more attention from now on, because again, here is a video that neatly sums up a lot of my own feelings about religion.

He basically says religions develop in 5 stages.

Stage 1: An individual person goes off by himself and has a primary, transformative experience of the sacred. These are people like Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus (and I would add, Mohammed, Rumi, Socrates, Heraklitus, and many others). Their experiences are symbolised by metaphors like Moses’ burning bush, or the ecstatic poetry of William Blake. Thus indicating that for whatever reason, these people have begun to see ordinary reality as something extraordinary.

To add my own thoughts here, this way of seeing things as sacred is perhaps best summarized by Martin Buber’s explanation of the two primary relations, an I to an It (secular, utilitarian reality), and the relation of an I to a Thou—the experience of boundless or sacred reality.

Stage 2 of a religion, according to Keen, is when disciples are so inspired by this primary figure that they begin to mythologize them. The individual becomes a legend, a superhuman being, born of a virgin or under auspicious star signs, or whatever, with miraculous powers and insight.

Stage 3 occurs when the holy individual’s revelations are turned into a theology—a systematic examination of the implications of the original experiences.

Stage 4 is the creation of a religious institution, a church or whatever, to preserve, continue, and communicate the theology.

Stage 5 is when the religious institution ends up competing with secular institutions, and thus sets its sights on notions of Empire and domination.

Of course, it’s never as clear cut as all that, but Keen feels that it’s in these later stages that religions become a problem. “Religion,” as a concept, is typically identified with the latter four stages; the mythology & theology, the institution and the drive to dominate. But that’s missing the point. “The essence of religion is none of those things,” Keen says, “The essence of religion is a series of primal experiences which belong to us only because we are born human and we share the human condition.”

In other words, the important stage—the primary experience of stage 1—is typically ignored by believers and non-believers alike, overshadowed by the other four. The implication of this is that we can all learn to experience the sacred; to see the world as awesome and extraordinary in a profoundly transformative way. We don’t need churches (or scientists or atheists, for that matter) to interpret these experiences for us or to tell us how to live as a consequence–especially if these people have not had these experiences themselves.

Heady stuff. But Keen is right on the money.

I guess this is why I’m personally so drawn to religions like Sufism and Buddhism and Aboriginal spirituality. In most forms of each, while there is some mythology & theology, and a tradition/institution, the institution remains communal, never reaching an authoritarian stage 5. And instead of overshadowing the primary experience; the mythology, theology, and community are all in the service of that first stage. They exist not to tell people what to think or how to behave, but to give people a path to discovering their own experience of the sacred; their own humanity.

It’s also why I get so annoyed at evangelical Atheists: they’re so preoccupied with the negative, stage 5 aspects of religion, that they’re wildly intolerant of the stage 1, without comprehending it much at all.

That’s enough for now. Look for part II later this week, when I will discuss these misconceptions in more detail, and outline why I believe this kind of vitriolic Atheism itself often sounds like a stage 5 religion, having started from stage 3, and skipping 1 and 2 altogether.

It started off okay, although there are some great moments in the film where Robert Downy Jr.’s dad is explaining that technology will solve all our problems. I was the lone madman in a theatre full of normal people, so I did my best not to cackle maniacally when he says that. Then, like magic, RDJ builds a particle accelerator (sort of) thingy in his garage, and uses it to pull a completely new and conspicuously unnamed chemical element out of his arse, that, among other things, holds the entire second half of the movie together. It used to be, writers would think up actual words for this stuff. It would add, you know, verisimilitude… or something.

I mean, really, it offends me as a potential writer and all-around geek that there was no name for the inevitable Wikipedia article on this fantastical element. Which is odd, being offended, because I did enjoy the movie. Great special FX, plus, y’know, Scarlett Johansson in a catsuit, kicking ass and not even bothering to take names… and that’s my point: chucking some names in there is just common courtesy. If you make up some sort of bullshit technology that your whole plot-arc is based around, at least spot-weld some techno-babble to it so people can pretend like they know what you’re talking about.

They did it (or rather didn’t do it) in Avatar, too. The eee-vile corporate cliche (don’t get me wrong—actual corporations are cliches too, but I digress) was on Pandora to mine a super-valuable element that, yadda yadda, makes some kind of supertech possible (I dunno, fusion, FTL, anti-grav, gimmick-free cinema, or whatever; doesn’t matter)… and oh yeah, the native Na’vi’s humungoid treehouse sits right on top of the largest deposit of the stuff, making the attempted genocide / big explodey fight scene / special effects extravaganza of the decade at the climax of the movie gratuitously necessary, and the best name Cameron could come up with for this giant steaming pile of McGuffin was: “unobtainium”… cause it’s so, like, hard to _get_… get it? Me am clever, yes?

Okay, anyone out there writing a sci-fi-action screenplay… pencils down, listen up: We all know your amazing and heretofore unknown super-substance is some sort of hand-wavium, but you DON’T ACTUALLY CALL IT “HANDWAVIUM,” or better yet, just hand-wave the problem of a name entirely. Not if you want to avoid insulting your audience.

Damn. There was a time when writers actually gave a shit what things were called. You’d never catch Tolkien phoning it in on the main event. There’s a man who understood the value of naming things. I mean, in the Lord of the Rings, shit had like six names in four different languages. And all those words had their own bloody histories. “Hobbit”… now there’s a word you can hang your plot on. AND HE DID! So what if it took him like 12+ years to write that story? The guy understood craftsmanship! And in his defense, there was that whole apocalyptic war-to-end-all-wars thing happening while he was trying to write it. YOU try pounding out over half a million words of brilliantly poetic, flowing prose, on deadline, while fricken’ Nazis are bombing the shit out of your country!

I tells ya, these folks in Hollywood have it too easy. People will sit through anything nowadays, long as it’s shiny & splodey enough. And dammitall, I ain’t gonna stand fer it no more… Just you wait, I’ma gonna…. jus’ a sec…

HEY YOU KIDS! GET OFF MY GULDERN LAWN, AFORE-AH-HAV-TUH-WHUP-YUZ!!!

Where was I? Anyway… enjoyable flick. Not real deep. But still, ScarJo in tight clothes, so…

I mean, if a movie can’t stimulate my imagination, it better freaking have some hot babe in black latex tearing up a room full of mooks, ya dig?

Okay, so I know, I know. Arguing on the Internet is pretty much always a waste of time. Every time I do it, I feel like I just crawled through a sewer pipe, looking for the elusive source of the world’s bullshit. But sometimes you just sorta get sucked in, y’know?

Before I go on, I should point out that atheists are not the problem. If someone chooses to believe in God, Gods, the flying spaghetti monster, the bloody timecube, or nothing at all… well, hey, that’s cool. I respect that decision—follow your experience where it takes you, I say. Be empirical. But those Richard Dawkins wannabe, down-with-spirituality-in-every-form, capital “A,” Atheists—well, I’ve got no time for them, because every one I’ve met is an arrogant asshole.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I had a long discussion with one such individual over the last few days and it went roughly like this: He disliked the very notion of God, all possible definitions of which he felt were nonsensical. When I told him that God can’t be defined, and is ineffible, of course he became quite upset; because that doesn’t fit the basic philosophical assumption of the scientific method—that everything in nature can be grasped by the intellect. The harder I tried to explain to him—referencing scientific examples—that this may not be the case, the more hostile and irrational he got.

It’s my fault, really, for trying to explain God to someone who really doesn’t want to understand it, only hate it.

But this is a common experience I’ve had talking to capital “A” Atheists. They respect science, except where it means questioning their assumptions. They say they respect evidence and precision, but make sweeping generalizations about religion as an evil; and then get nit-picky when examples of atheism gone wrong emerge. They believe they’re open-minded and immune to prejudice; but they think everybody who professes spirituality of any kind is some sort of bible-thumping apocalyptic Jesus freak (indeed, because all religions are hellfire Christianity, apparently).

And believe me when I say that I’m just as concerned about the bible-thumping Jesus freaks as they are; but I also happen to believe, due to direct experience, that there’s more to life than what my limited, mortal brain can intellectually analyze. And I believe people should be able to explore the edges of understanding more or less how they choose, so long as they don’t impose their view on others.

I mean, I agree with a lot of the things the secular scientific community is saying about how mainstream religion has failed. But big-A Atheists, just like crusading religious zealots, see—and create—enemies everywhere they go. Because I believe in God (without even qualifying what sort of God), I supposedly belong in the other camp. They’re turning away potential allies in the task of dealing with failed religion, because they’re far too hateful of religion in general.

I’m pretty sick of being caught in the middle of the culture war, as I think most people are. But to Atheists, I make it possible for religious fundamentalists to get away with inhuman atrocities, and to evangelical Christians I make it possible for those evil sinning atheists to summon the devil. They can both kiss my ever-loving pantheist ass, for all I care.

Not very enlightened, I suppose. *sigh* Okay, may they both find peace; hopefully without killing each other in the process. Or something like that.

There are two major lessons to be learned from this: Crusading Atheists, despite how rational they think they are, are no more immune to prejudice, emotionalism, cognitive biases, and all other forms of hubris, than any other human being. And they certainly don’t like to be reminded of that fact.

The other lesson: don’t argue on the Internet.

I wonder when that one will sink in.

When viewing a film like Avatar, if you don’t immediately identify with the blue-skinned native Na’vi culture, you may feel like James Cameron is rubbing your face in the sins of the past. Especially since your only other choice is to identify with the vicious and greedy military and corporate white men trying to invade the Na’vi’s home. This of course brings up thoughts about the violent way in which North America was historically seized from its indigenous inhabitants; almost wiping out the natives, and leaving the survivors with serious difficulties.

But people don’t like to be reminded of their mistakes (or the mistakes of their culture), and the common reaction is to direct spite toward the film, or to Cameron, or to Hollywood in general. Kill the messenger (poor quality of the message notwithstanding).

This seems like a pretty useless response. As equally useless as the hand-wringing white guilt that the film seemingly inspires, and which this spite is supposed to protect the audience from.

Sure, historical mistakes were made that can’t be undone, and Avatar kind of hits you over the head with that. But the solution isn’t to look at the film and say “ah, that’s just crap” and search for another source of gratification. The solution is to actually do something about a problem which continues to this day. The colonization of native people never really ended—it’s still going on in many parts of the world, particularly the developing world. Experts estimate that within the lifetime of the current generation, most of these cultures will simply cease to exist.

We may not be able to do much about the past, but we can still do something in the present. We can put pressure on government and business, at home, and abroad, to protect native rights and land claims. We can listen to people like Wade Davis, who recently spoke about the plight of indigenous peoples around the world in the 2009 Massey Lectures (also see TVO video, here).

Let’s realize that indigenous ways of life are valuable and still have much to contribute to humanity, and they’re not just primitive curiosities to be swept aside in the name of progress—and that there is still time to take action, if we could only get over our jaded self-importance, stop criticizing a work of fiction, and stand up for real people right now.

If we can’t do that, then we really haven’t learned anything from history.

Anyway, a while back I read Chris’ piece on the meaning of life, and he reminded me of something very important. In a Western, post-existentialist context, the meaning of life often does boil down to creating your own meaning—your own religion. This echoes Nishitani, who points out in Religion and Nothingness that it’s pointless to ask the use of religion, because religion is the thing that helps you discover the use (or meaning) of everything else. It is your point of reference in an otherwise changing and confusing world.

So, while it’s true that traditional religions often fail for various reasons, it’s still important to have a religion, a way of making meaning, of some kind.

If you don’t already have one, such as the kind of thing you inherited from your parents, there’s a good chance you won’t think much about the issue of religion or meaning until you encounter a situation where life seems to lose meaning. But at that point, your quest will begin. Your only choice will be to rediscover (or reinvent) some framework for meaning, or succumb to despair.

In other words, you’ll have to create your own religion. There’s a lot of different ways to go about this. For some, it may be as simple as taking some existing religion and tweaking it… learning to understand it in a new way, or taking elements from another faith and incorporating it into what you already have.

For others, the process is more radical, and may involve combing through books on different religions and philosophies, and trying to distill out some commonalities; some collection of truths that makes sense to you.

Personally, I have found the latter path to be more rewarding. I’ve found it to be a lot like Worldbuilding (that is, constructing a fictional world for telling stories). Indeed, apart from language creation I find the creation of fictional religions to be the most enjoyable part of worldbuilding. You look at the way you want your culture, or your protagonist, or whomever follows the faith in question, to be. You want to look at the ways they get along with their faith or don’t, and in general what the religion you’re creating is trying to achieve.

I suppose it’s a little different if you want to develop a system of beliefs that you yourself are going to follow, but a lot is the same. You still want to figure out the ideal life you’re trying to live. Even if your new religion involves some notion of an afterlife, your focus should still be the kind of life you want to live—the person you want to be—while you’re waiting for that afterlife. Only by knowing this can you proceed to develop beliefs that will help get you closer to being the person you want to be.

I’ll give you a quick example of what I mean. I believe in an afterlife, and in reincarnation, and that life on Earth is a learning experience over successive lifetimes. An atheist might find such beliefs to be unfounded, not grounded in evidence. I certainly have no measurable evidence for reincarnation or the education of the soul, or anything like that. I have no evidence against it, either, but you’d still be justified in asking: why do I continue to believe in such things? Because I know that believing it gives me permission to be human. If I believe I get more than one shot at living a good life, I know I can make mistakes and still forgive myself. I’m a happier and more pleasant person because I believe in reincarnation. If I took the atheists’ view, that we’re here for a short time and then it’s over, and that all the major fuck ups of my life (which are numerous), were all for nothing… well, then I’d be miserable. So I don’t believe that.

Certain beliefs I hold simply because of the effect they have on me, not on the basis of either evidence or revealed “Truth.” I mean, for the most part these things can’t be proven one way or the other anyway, so why not believe in things that make me a better person?

It’s as simple as that: find or create beliefs (and practices, and art, and music, and rituals if that’s your thing) that make you and the people around you happy. A very good friend of mine once made a mix-CD for all his friends entitled: “Optimal Songs for Maintaining Awesomeness.” Well, that’s all religion is supposed to be—optimal beliefs (or whatever) for maintaining awesomeness.

Just remember in all of this that one person’s optimal mix isn’t necessarily going to work for somebody else. It’s not about “the one true way.” I mean, my belief in reincarnation works for me. Maybe for an atheist, the belief that he or she only gets one shot at life is an important motivation to get things right the first time. There’s something to be said for that, too.

The important point here is that no matter which way you go, you’re consciously exploring all of these different ideas aobut life, and understanding them for yourself. I think when people get really caught up in dogma and self-importance, it’s often because they have failed to really look at their beliefs objectively, and to look behind the words at the spirit of what is being said—WHY it is being said at all.

So, in my last post I promised homework. Here it is: If you aren’t already doing so, make up your own religion. Heck, make up three or four for kicks. Just because you decide to believe one thing now, doesn’t mean you’re stuck with it for the rest of your life. Religion should be flexible, always with an eye toward making people happy and healthy.

This isn’t an excuse to be a moral relativist—we can’t just do whatever we want and damn the consequences; that’s not meaningful or mature (and in the long run won’t make us or anyone else happy). Find good ethics and live by them—just leave yourself room to breathe.

I think I’ve rambled on enough about this. You get the idea.  Religion is something we ought to play with; not something we have to be grim about.