MMO As Philosophical Embodiment Of Sociological Movement, And Of Vital Ennui
Apparently, I'm feeling a mix of existentialistic and nihilistic at the moment (not that there's not some significant overlap). But I'm feeling very acutely, at the moment, the... sensation (I don't want to say "pain") of temporal loss. That is, loss over time - not loss of time, though that's also at play.
I took a break from reading to randomly browse a bit - as I'm not in my room/at my computer, I'm borrowing a laptop, with which I'm marginally handy (the keyboard is annoying, but I can manage, certainly for using letters and typing words, the functional keys being the main problem, while I can only very roughly make use of the touchpad or nib mouse), so it's a somewhat plodding going.
I got into browsing WOW related stuff. WOW is the opiate of the geeky masses - or, at the very least, it makes a fine opiate by which to, if only momentarily, free myself from the affects of neuro-trauma (by distraction brought upon by immersion, primarily of my concentration).
Anyway. I decided to pull up my original server. The old guild has 5 "active" members (they're visible, anyway, but for all I know - and what it may well be - the members haven't played in a year or more). Moving on. The server we (I, Cooke, Sue, Nicole, Joe, sorta Jon) mass-transferred to, before Nicole and I, and eventually Cooke and Sue, left it. That guild is a skeleton - not the least of which is because it was primarily the 5/6 of us. But I can't find Joe's character - did he rename it? Transfer it? Delete it?
Current server. Sue hasn't played in a while, though she did play briefly a month or two ago - and prior to that, not for some months. Nicole makes a new character now and then, but she's primarily on a completely different server now (yet again). At least, she has mostly gotten over deleting characters at a whim. Jon hasn't played for a year or more. Joe didn't join us on this one. Cooke? Playing much less. Aubrey had been with us on the old server, but hasn't played for sometime now.
I play because I like to do something with people - ideally, friends. I started playing Dark Age Of Camelot some 4-5 years ago because Heather bought it for me one Christmas, and it was interesting, and fun. I tried getting Jon and Cooke and Nicole to play it (they all at least tried it). But by then, WOW was the dominant player, and 2 were already or soon playing it, and so shortly so were Nicole and I.
There were some times when at least 5 of us were on at a time - 5 being the standard group size. Didn't matter what we were doing, or where - it was fun. It was useful.
I have met - via Nicole, and then via people I met via Nicole (the guild I, Cooke, Sue are in is one Nicole brought us to) - some people I enjoy doing things with, and in the odd surreal nature in which the term can be applied to people you've never met physically, who may be in the house down the street or 3000 miles away, can call "friends" (at least in-game). But... it's not the same, and there's that much less motivation to do something with them for the sake of doing it.
The WOW train of thought was fleeting and quickly carried out - a few server queries here and there, a few browser tabs. But it's also extended through time (as we move servers, roll new characters, stop playing or pick back up playing). And it's also a close analogy to life.
One of the axiomatic principles of life is that it consists of never-ending change. There are periods of stability - to a great extent, it consists primarily of these periods of stability, life requiring a certain significant threshold of order that it may continue living - but even through these, there is change, small and large. Much of the time, perhaps most, we're not aware of it. And if we are, it is generally those cases in which it is most jarring that we only then register it (perhaps only momentarily, soon forgetting).
Nicole's in NC. The Cookes (Cooke proper, Chris, and the married-in Sue) are halfway across the county, in Hyde Park - and may be moving to NC. Jon is still across the river - but as he's now practically living with his girlfriend, he's several miles further away (and generally unavailable, either through reasons of distance or balance of time). I'm hard-pressed to conjure up anyone else whom I would readily call up at any hour of the day, or plan significantly ahead with, short of Heather - but then, these are also Heather's other go-tos.
There's a thought experiment presented in philosophy, specifically the problem of identity. Take the Argonaut's ship - the Argo. Built fresh, it consists of this timber, this metal, these fabrics. Over time, through simple exposure to the environment, trauma, accident, or purposeful modification, parts of it are changed and (more to the point) replaced.
At what point in time does the Argo become not-Argo, as a result of this continuous replacement of constituent parts?
The answer, threshing accomplished, is that the Argo remains the Argo. The continuous shedding of dead skin cells and hair, the annual replacement rate of tissue cells, the ongoing metabolic homeostasis that keeps us alive - through all this change, we remain the same individual throughout.
But that's the simple answer. Complications arise in the fact that, while some fundamentals may remain the same however they change (that said, keep in mind that it is this slow but ongoing replacement that eventually results in death - either cells that have replicated so many times that the genetic errors thus accumulated result in cancer, or that the cells, replicating so many times, have cut into the genetic material to the extent that necessary proteins are no longer produced, resulting in cell death), at a higher level, things do no stay the same.
While the cells in my brain maintain, perhaps replace, themselves, the patterns of thought that dance across them do not. My memories change, my concepts change, my personality (perhaps the very core of what identifies "me" as me) changes. In most of us, most of this is unintentional, and incidental to our actions. In some of us, some of this is purposefully guided. In all of us, there is a limit to our volitional involvement.
And where in each of us, one level of our existence may endlessly change but remain roughly the same, while we ourselves may drift, so too may we individually remain "roughly" the same (the same person, regardless of what changes may take place) while the higher order bodies we exist within, as parts of, may drift.
(Cells may be members only of one particular tissue, but in a wider sense, they belong also to a system, as well as the entire body - so that a single cell may fulfill various purposes, even if their direct purpose is, say, to flex a muscle. This cell acts both as a part of a muscle tissue, but can be affected by chemical and neurological signals both individually and collectively, but all it does is not strictly for the purpose of the tissue, but of the organism as a whole. So to do humans belong to families and social circles of various orders, communities and societies, clubs and organizations, parties and movements.)
At which point does one social circle so change that it remains the same... but, after all, it is not.
I realize that while I call my home region "home" out of a familiarity with it, a love of its locations, memories attaching me to it, what really makes it "home" are those persons residing within it. I might feel a twinge of sorrow were I to leave it, but accompanying enough others in so leaving it would more than salve what pain there might be. What then of the piecemeal departure of those persons?
So this is the nihilism - that, all of this considered, eventually comes to naught. There will come a time when this change ends - neither I, nor these others, nor the metaphorical superorganisms we comprise will exist. There was also a time when none of these existed. Can one really begrudge losing what was freely, even joyfully, given?
But this is the existentialism - that, all of this one day ceasing as it may, all of this is what is truly valuable.
To some very great extent, this is compounded in several ways.
I have been greatly restricted in my abilities by external forces acting upon me internally - a traumatic blow to the head resulting in long term debilitating neuro-cognitive difficulties. I've been unable to connect as well as I might like, as a result - missing out on events, losing coherency in scheduling them, being unable to willingly, freely, drive so much as a few minutes.
A long-standing complaint is that even when I have been at my best, both working and involved in the community, and also now, near my worst, I've been capable of scheduling events and responding to them - all while my healthier fellows seem somehow grossly incapable of so much as returning a phone call or an email inquiring about an event they have enthused at length about.
A consequence of these things has been, while others at least tread water professionally, financially, I sink to the sand below - or would, if not for the assistance of others who should not need to so assist me. Others can freely pursue housing, employment (or financial freedom), or the like. I'm stuck.
And I can do nothing either about my own circumstances, and neither can I do anything about those of others.
What happens when units of a whole are pulled away in several directions? One reason I left DAOC: first one and then another competing MMO was released, which sniped much of my guild in one way or another, while others simply vanished over time. Eventually, it was more or less down to myself and one other. And then I followed the economic necessity of pursuing entertainment (and socialization) in the logical direction - skipping "town", to join persons and factors known to me.
And so a logical whole decoheres.
I took a break from reading to randomly browse a bit - as I'm not in my room/at my computer, I'm borrowing a laptop, with which I'm marginally handy (the keyboard is annoying, but I can manage, certainly for using letters and typing words, the functional keys being the main problem, while I can only very roughly make use of the touchpad or nib mouse), so it's a somewhat plodding going.
I got into browsing WOW related stuff. WOW is the opiate of the geeky masses - or, at the very least, it makes a fine opiate by which to, if only momentarily, free myself from the affects of neuro-trauma (by distraction brought upon by immersion, primarily of my concentration).
Anyway. I decided to pull up my original server. The old guild has 5 "active" members (they're visible, anyway, but for all I know - and what it may well be - the members haven't played in a year or more). Moving on. The server we (I, Cooke, Sue, Nicole, Joe, sorta Jon) mass-transferred to, before Nicole and I, and eventually Cooke and Sue, left it. That guild is a skeleton - not the least of which is because it was primarily the 5/6 of us. But I can't find Joe's character - did he rename it? Transfer it? Delete it?
Current server. Sue hasn't played in a while, though she did play briefly a month or two ago - and prior to that, not for some months. Nicole makes a new character now and then, but she's primarily on a completely different server now (yet again). At least, she has mostly gotten over deleting characters at a whim. Jon hasn't played for a year or more. Joe didn't join us on this one. Cooke? Playing much less. Aubrey had been with us on the old server, but hasn't played for sometime now.
I play because I like to do something with people - ideally, friends. I started playing Dark Age Of Camelot some 4-5 years ago because Heather bought it for me one Christmas, and it was interesting, and fun. I tried getting Jon and Cooke and Nicole to play it (they all at least tried it). But by then, WOW was the dominant player, and 2 were already or soon playing it, and so shortly so were Nicole and I.
There were some times when at least 5 of us were on at a time - 5 being the standard group size. Didn't matter what we were doing, or where - it was fun. It was useful.
I have met - via Nicole, and then via people I met via Nicole (the guild I, Cooke, Sue are in is one Nicole brought us to) - some people I enjoy doing things with, and in the odd surreal nature in which the term can be applied to people you've never met physically, who may be in the house down the street or 3000 miles away, can call "friends" (at least in-game). But... it's not the same, and there's that much less motivation to do something with them for the sake of doing it.
The WOW train of thought was fleeting and quickly carried out - a few server queries here and there, a few browser tabs. But it's also extended through time (as we move servers, roll new characters, stop playing or pick back up playing). And it's also a close analogy to life.
One of the axiomatic principles of life is that it consists of never-ending change. There are periods of stability - to a great extent, it consists primarily of these periods of stability, life requiring a certain significant threshold of order that it may continue living - but even through these, there is change, small and large. Much of the time, perhaps most, we're not aware of it. And if we are, it is generally those cases in which it is most jarring that we only then register it (perhaps only momentarily, soon forgetting).
Nicole's in NC. The Cookes (Cooke proper, Chris, and the married-in Sue) are halfway across the county, in Hyde Park - and may be moving to NC. Jon is still across the river - but as he's now practically living with his girlfriend, he's several miles further away (and generally unavailable, either through reasons of distance or balance of time). I'm hard-pressed to conjure up anyone else whom I would readily call up at any hour of the day, or plan significantly ahead with, short of Heather - but then, these are also Heather's other go-tos.
There's a thought experiment presented in philosophy, specifically the problem of identity. Take the Argonaut's ship - the Argo. Built fresh, it consists of this timber, this metal, these fabrics. Over time, through simple exposure to the environment, trauma, accident, or purposeful modification, parts of it are changed and (more to the point) replaced.
At what point in time does the Argo become not-Argo, as a result of this continuous replacement of constituent parts?
The answer, threshing accomplished, is that the Argo remains the Argo. The continuous shedding of dead skin cells and hair, the annual replacement rate of tissue cells, the ongoing metabolic homeostasis that keeps us alive - through all this change, we remain the same individual throughout.
But that's the simple answer. Complications arise in the fact that, while some fundamentals may remain the same however they change (that said, keep in mind that it is this slow but ongoing replacement that eventually results in death - either cells that have replicated so many times that the genetic errors thus accumulated result in cancer, or that the cells, replicating so many times, have cut into the genetic material to the extent that necessary proteins are no longer produced, resulting in cell death), at a higher level, things do no stay the same.
While the cells in my brain maintain, perhaps replace, themselves, the patterns of thought that dance across them do not. My memories change, my concepts change, my personality (perhaps the very core of what identifies "me" as me) changes. In most of us, most of this is unintentional, and incidental to our actions. In some of us, some of this is purposefully guided. In all of us, there is a limit to our volitional involvement.
And where in each of us, one level of our existence may endlessly change but remain roughly the same, while we ourselves may drift, so too may we individually remain "roughly" the same (the same person, regardless of what changes may take place) while the higher order bodies we exist within, as parts of, may drift.
(Cells may be members only of one particular tissue, but in a wider sense, they belong also to a system, as well as the entire body - so that a single cell may fulfill various purposes, even if their direct purpose is, say, to flex a muscle. This cell acts both as a part of a muscle tissue, but can be affected by chemical and neurological signals both individually and collectively, but all it does is not strictly for the purpose of the tissue, but of the organism as a whole. So to do humans belong to families and social circles of various orders, communities and societies, clubs and organizations, parties and movements.)
At which point does one social circle so change that it remains the same... but, after all, it is not.
I realize that while I call my home region "home" out of a familiarity with it, a love of its locations, memories attaching me to it, what really makes it "home" are those persons residing within it. I might feel a twinge of sorrow were I to leave it, but accompanying enough others in so leaving it would more than salve what pain there might be. What then of the piecemeal departure of those persons?
So this is the nihilism - that, all of this considered, eventually comes to naught. There will come a time when this change ends - neither I, nor these others, nor the metaphorical superorganisms we comprise will exist. There was also a time when none of these existed. Can one really begrudge losing what was freely, even joyfully, given?
But this is the existentialism - that, all of this one day ceasing as it may, all of this is what is truly valuable.
To some very great extent, this is compounded in several ways.
I have been greatly restricted in my abilities by external forces acting upon me internally - a traumatic blow to the head resulting in long term debilitating neuro-cognitive difficulties. I've been unable to connect as well as I might like, as a result - missing out on events, losing coherency in scheduling them, being unable to willingly, freely, drive so much as a few minutes.
A long-standing complaint is that even when I have been at my best, both working and involved in the community, and also now, near my worst, I've been capable of scheduling events and responding to them - all while my healthier fellows seem somehow grossly incapable of so much as returning a phone call or an email inquiring about an event they have enthused at length about.
A consequence of these things has been, while others at least tread water professionally, financially, I sink to the sand below - or would, if not for the assistance of others who should not need to so assist me. Others can freely pursue housing, employment (or financial freedom), or the like. I'm stuck.
And I can do nothing either about my own circumstances, and neither can I do anything about those of others.
What happens when units of a whole are pulled away in several directions? One reason I left DAOC: first one and then another competing MMO was released, which sniped much of my guild in one way or another, while others simply vanished over time. Eventually, it was more or less down to myself and one other. And then I followed the economic necessity of pursuing entertainment (and socialization) in the logical direction - skipping "town", to join persons and factors known to me.
And so a logical whole decoheres.