Darkness on the Edge of Town
It's a dull rainy Saturday, with time spent at craft fairs eating cake with lovely ladies and just generally relaxing, and I don't think I can be bothered doing anything useful.
This last week we finished our marathon watching of Battlestar Galactica. While it is a great series, and they do lots of great stuff throughout it, just like many Japanese anime it has very poorly constructed end. Basically I feel that the last episode should have ended about half way through thru as the Galactica passed over Earth's moon and we got to see and recognize continental Africa. Other than the very final scene of the angel versions of Caprica and Baltar, which was amusing, the whole "settling on Earth" bit was annoying, completely unbelievable, and horribly anti-climactic.
It was annoying because there were far to many, completely unnecessary, flashbacks. It fel like , in the last three or four episodes, the crreators didn't have enough story to complete the series run, so were padding it out with flashbakcs
It was annoying because Kara Thrace just disappeared, and the prophecy of her being "the death-bringer" made no sense, though admittedly she did "lead them all to their ends" in some sense of that phrase. It was annoying because it implied the whole thing from start to finish, all the drama all the killing, all the pain, and suffering had been orchestrated merely to pollute Earth's gene pool with that of the "13 tribes humanity" and the Cylons. Nice. Shows whoever did it has no sense of efficiency.
It was annoying because it was unbelievable as well. What space-faring race, colonizing an unknown planet, with a known enemy out there (they'd destroyed the Resurrection Hub, they hadn't destroyed all the Cylon fleets) sends all of it's space-ships into the sun stranding itself on the unknown planet? That is so utterly stupid as to completely defy belief.
BSG was worse than The Return of the King for having anti-climactic ending after anti-climactic ending. Almost nothing from the last half of the final episode gave us useful information or made the story any better. It would have been better of Kara hadn't just disappeared, and we were left guessing about how she got there. Why did we need to see Laura die? There really was nothing useful that came out of that section except that Hera was our "common ancestor", and as mentioned that basically trivialized the whole series.
I'm almost tempted to believe that, like Hideaki Anno with Neon Genesis Evangelion , the creators actually designed the ending to annoy fans of the series. In fact , the negatives in both shows are remarkably similar, as are many of the positives. Maybe there's a sort of neccessary balance there, a series cannot be really good, without also containing some really bad. Yin & Yang.
Anyway, just felt I had to get that out of my system.
Have just finished reading this interview with Dr. Phillip Zimbaldo, the organizer of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. It made me think. As most of you know, I have a strong interest in both BDSM and LARP, and while the Stanford Prison Experiment was psychological research, it ended up being very much about both live role-playing and BDSM, though I don't think the psychologists have really followed through on those links. Of course, I haven't done a survey of the literature so I may be completely wrong about that. In fact, the LARPers amongst us would look at the Stanford Experiment and be horrified at the lack of understanding of role-playing safety displayed by those arranging the experiment.
Still, in the interview, Dr Z speaks about becoming so heavily immersed in the role-play that he made significant mistakes in his handling of the experiment. He doesn't directly use that RPG terminology, but any role-player who has experienced deep immersive role-play will fully understand how he could make those wrong decisions. Dr. Z. was called as a witness for the defence during the prosecution of some of those accused of crimes at Abu Grahib, and there is an interesting discussion at the end of the interview around the way we, as a society, go after the war criminals as individuals, and try to make them seem monstrous, when in fact it is the situation that is monstrous, and the majority of those involved are acting like the majority of all people would when placed in the same circumstances.
But it's not the situation, it's us at fault. Yes, we should go after the individuals, both those who acted improperly in the situation , and those who created the situation. Demonizing the perpetrators, or blaming the situation, are both avoiding the primary issue, which is that as a species we tend toward these things, and that we know that despite protestations of high moral fibre, we'd likely do the same in the same situation.
Just as we try to demonize sociopaths and serial killers and paedophiles by pretending (often with a lot of help from the scientists) that they are very different from "normal" people., in fact the demonization is an attempt to try and pretend that the normal people are far removed from being those demons.
But it it's apparent just how close to the surface that demonic nature is, a mere two days in an improperly controlled environment such as the Stanford experiment. Wiliam Golding managed to capture that essence in Lord of the Flies but he had to use children instead of adults, and write an SF allegory, because, of course, back when Lord of the Flies was released, everyone knew a properly raised adult would never descend into barbarism like that. Later media like Straw Dogs, managed not to flinch away from how these things happen to normal people, and media, in general, now portrays this sort of thing well, but there is still the belief in many, most especially those who feel they are morally upright, that they at least, are not like that.
I feel that, like with addiction, you cannot start to deal with the problem until you acknowledge it exists. So, accept that you're capable of horrendous acts, don't pretend that you are somehow a paragon of virtue, be aware of your fallibility, your built-in weakness for oppression and you will have a better chance of resisting that desire should you ever find yourself in a situation where you are tempted.
And, just as an immunization aganst a disease gets your immune system used to the disease and more able to fight it, like a flight simulator helps a pilot practice for things that he hopes never to have to do in a real plane, like martial arts kata help mold our responses to combat situations we hope we never experience, I feel that both BDSM and role-playing provide people with the experience of being in those situations of potential darkness by choice and with consent of the participants in a controlled environment, making it to my mind more likely that those who have had those simulated experiences, are more likely to be able to resist those built-in urges that we all have, and act correctly should we find ourselves experiencing them in a non-consensual, uncontrolled environment.
Hmm, a Saturday afternoon rant. Haven't had one of those in a while, been too busy working. I blame Gaius Baltar.
This last week we finished our marathon watching of Battlestar Galactica. While it is a great series, and they do lots of great stuff throughout it, just like many Japanese anime it has very poorly constructed end. Basically I feel that the last episode should have ended about half way through thru as the Galactica passed over Earth's moon and we got to see and recognize continental Africa. Other than the very final scene of the angel versions of Caprica and Baltar, which was amusing, the whole "settling on Earth" bit was annoying, completely unbelievable, and horribly anti-climactic.
It was annoying because there were far to many, completely unnecessary, flashbacks. It fel like , in the last three or four episodes, the crreators didn't have enough story to complete the series run, so were padding it out with flashbakcs
It was annoying because Kara Thrace just disappeared, and the prophecy of her being "the death-bringer" made no sense, though admittedly she did "lead them all to their ends" in some sense of that phrase. It was annoying because it implied the whole thing from start to finish, all the drama all the killing, all the pain, and suffering had been orchestrated merely to pollute Earth's gene pool with that of the "13 tribes humanity" and the Cylons. Nice. Shows whoever did it has no sense of efficiency.
It was annoying because it was unbelievable as well. What space-faring race, colonizing an unknown planet, with a known enemy out there (they'd destroyed the Resurrection Hub, they hadn't destroyed all the Cylon fleets) sends all of it's space-ships into the sun stranding itself on the unknown planet? That is so utterly stupid as to completely defy belief.
BSG was worse than The Return of the King for having anti-climactic ending after anti-climactic ending. Almost nothing from the last half of the final episode gave us useful information or made the story any better. It would have been better of Kara hadn't just disappeared, and we were left guessing about how she got there. Why did we need to see Laura die? There really was nothing useful that came out of that section except that Hera was our "common ancestor", and as mentioned that basically trivialized the whole series.
I'm almost tempted to believe that, like Hideaki Anno with Neon Genesis Evangelion , the creators actually designed the ending to annoy fans of the series. In fact , the negatives in both shows are remarkably similar, as are many of the positives. Maybe there's a sort of neccessary balance there, a series cannot be really good, without also containing some really bad. Yin & Yang.
Anyway, just felt I had to get that out of my system.
Have just finished reading this interview with Dr. Phillip Zimbaldo, the organizer of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. It made me think. As most of you know, I have a strong interest in both BDSM and LARP, and while the Stanford Prison Experiment was psychological research, it ended up being very much about both live role-playing and BDSM, though I don't think the psychologists have really followed through on those links. Of course, I haven't done a survey of the literature so I may be completely wrong about that. In fact, the LARPers amongst us would look at the Stanford Experiment and be horrified at the lack of understanding of role-playing safety displayed by those arranging the experiment.
Still, in the interview, Dr Z speaks about becoming so heavily immersed in the role-play that he made significant mistakes in his handling of the experiment. He doesn't directly use that RPG terminology, but any role-player who has experienced deep immersive role-play will fully understand how he could make those wrong decisions. Dr. Z. was called as a witness for the defence during the prosecution of some of those accused of crimes at Abu Grahib, and there is an interesting discussion at the end of the interview around the way we, as a society, go after the war criminals as individuals, and try to make them seem monstrous, when in fact it is the situation that is monstrous, and the majority of those involved are acting like the majority of all people would when placed in the same circumstances.
But it's not the situation, it's us at fault. Yes, we should go after the individuals, both those who acted improperly in the situation , and those who created the situation. Demonizing the perpetrators, or blaming the situation, are both avoiding the primary issue, which is that as a species we tend toward these things, and that we know that despite protestations of high moral fibre, we'd likely do the same in the same situation.
Just as we try to demonize sociopaths and serial killers and paedophiles by pretending (often with a lot of help from the scientists) that they are very different from "normal" people., in fact the demonization is an attempt to try and pretend that the normal people are far removed from being those demons.
But it it's apparent just how close to the surface that demonic nature is, a mere two days in an improperly controlled environment such as the Stanford experiment. Wiliam Golding managed to capture that essence in Lord of the Flies but he had to use children instead of adults, and write an SF allegory, because, of course, back when Lord of the Flies was released, everyone knew a properly raised adult would never descend into barbarism like that. Later media like Straw Dogs, managed not to flinch away from how these things happen to normal people, and media, in general, now portrays this sort of thing well, but there is still the belief in many, most especially those who feel they are morally upright, that they at least, are not like that.
I feel that, like with addiction, you cannot start to deal with the problem until you acknowledge it exists. So, accept that you're capable of horrendous acts, don't pretend that you are somehow a paragon of virtue, be aware of your fallibility, your built-in weakness for oppression and you will have a better chance of resisting that desire should you ever find yourself in a situation where you are tempted.
And, just as an immunization aganst a disease gets your immune system used to the disease and more able to fight it, like a flight simulator helps a pilot practice for things that he hopes never to have to do in a real plane, like martial arts kata help mold our responses to combat situations we hope we never experience, I feel that both BDSM and role-playing provide people with the experience of being in those situations of potential darkness by choice and with consent of the participants in a controlled environment, making it to my mind more likely that those who have had those simulated experiences, are more likely to be able to resist those built-in urges that we all have, and act correctly should we find ourselves experiencing them in a non-consensual, uncontrolled environment.
Hmm, a Saturday afternoon rant. Haven't had one of those in a while, been too busy working. I blame Gaius Baltar.