A Time to Kill.

Where to begin… I always ask myself when I sit in front of the page ready to type.  Millions of thoughts cloud my judgment.  How does one sort through so many topics, and hear just one echoing.  Yet one voice stands out from the rest.  Yesterday I found myself trying to answer the question, “Do video games cause violence?”  I kept trying to come up with logical arguments to support my views.  You see I grew up playing video games, for as long as I can remember I’ve had a controller in my hand.  Whether it be an Atari, a Nintendo, a Sega, a Playstation, and then lastly an Xbox.  Video games are perhaps one of the most important things in my live.  I know it sounds stupid, such a waste.  But that was where I found my escape.  I could bury my hate, my fears, and my loneliness into these devices.

            I think it was games that led me onto literature.  Designers would pluck realities from real life and bury them in the game.  It was from these, Easter Eggs as the industry calls them, that I learned about things like history and mythology.  First person shooter evolved from historical battles, like World War 2, Vietnam, and so forth.  But they evolved from that, somewhere the story was muddled, and multiplayer battles became important.  Sometimes when I pulled the trigger in the game, for a brief moment I wondered… Does a video game character have soul?  Does he have a family?  Did I kill someone’s dad?  I can remember that even when I was younger and Golden Eye had just come out on the Nintendo 64.  I would drop down in the bathroom and kill the guard using the bathroom.

            It seems a stupid thing to wonder, if a pixilated image whose whole world is revolved around ones and zeros possesses a soul.  It’s not a person; it’s not real, but it left an impression on my mind.  This trail of thinking is personified within the confines of ashow known as Battlestar Galatica.  The show is set in a futuristic post apocalyptic world.  One where humans are hunted down by robots, however the robots have become human (think Terminator).  The characters begin to question if the robots have a soul.  Where is this going you might be asking yourself at this point?

Last night as I was watching Battlestar Galatica, the President of the Twelve Colonies (Twelve Tribes anyone?) was asked, “why… why are being hunted down?  Is it because of our violence?”  She responded in turn, that question isn’t one that can be answered with simplicity.  She said that as humans, “we are trying seek the simple answer, so that we believe that we are in control.”  And I believe that is how the argument of violent video games will play out, a complex question, that seems so simple to answer.

For the moment lets take a look back into time.  Now I’m not a very religious person.  But one of my favorite stories is from the Bible.  The story of Kane and Able, stands out to me.  I find myself wondering about the first murder.  Was it an accident was it out of malice, self-defense,  or perhaps defiance?  What sots of emotion transpired? Perhaps we are straying to far from video games.   Let’s shift this train of thought back to video games.  In the game of Warhammer, one of the gods is named Khaine (which is in my opinion a beautiful spelling of that name).  And within the game, he is the God of Murder.  Now back to the biblical story of Kane and Able.  It has been theorized that this story might be a representation of the clash between the hunter-gather and the farming communities.  This reasoning should be thought about carefully.

Regardless of your faith, two things have become apparent: the first is as follows, murder is wrong.  Look at any culture murder and you’ll find that murder is an act of radicalism.  The other is seemingly unrelated to the first, however it bears careful consideration as well, the fact of the matter is we evolved from the hunter-gather society.  If we bear in mind that the story of Kane and Able are a representation of the two, then it could be reasoned that violence is in fact perpetrated by society.  Let’s examine this notion further.

Prehistoric man is generally thought to have roamed around in bands of less than twenty-five members.  They were nomadic, following the hunt.  The fact that they relied on the hunt is an over used generalization, and perhaps misconception. Alas that is a topic for another paper on another day. The fact of the matter is that their staple diet was from foraged nuts, fruits, and other plants of that nature.  Philosophically speaking, the very nature of gathering was suited for child rearing.  Along the same lines, physically speaking hunting large game was better suited for the males of the tribe.  So naturally it fell to the women, to act as the guardians of the tribe by raising the children and foraging the food.  It should be mentioned that since their diet relied on the foraging it was imperative that women didn’t fail.  Where as with the men, they could return to the tribe unsuccessful with little to no bearing on the tribe.

Now the next leap in man’s evolution would be to farming, I’m not sure how this leap was made.  Or if it can ever be explained.  Two arguments that take the forerunner are: beer (that’s right I said beer) and the other could be related to hunting.  It has been speculated that, when large game was caught, that the animal’s young were given to the children of their tribe so that they might become familiar with their prey.  This in theory could explain the domestication of animals.  As the animals grew into adulthood they could be farmed at will.  Thus leading to the planting of crops.

As farming tribes evolved, other tribes did not.  They would’ve retained their hunter-gather nomadic lifestyle.  Eventually one of these tribes would have ended up foraging a farm.  Now this also bares careful consideration.  With stable food in the form of crops and animal rearing, the hunter has now become obsolete.  Thus we see these hunters evolve into craftsmen and builders.  As the tribes begin to become familiar with the lay of the land some began to learn the weather patterns.   Others learned to read the celestials lighting our nights sky.  We can start to see the forming of our first mystics, ones who can read the sky and predict the weather.  Recall the defunct hunter, as the hunter-gathers begin to raid… no that’s not the right word; as they begin forage the land as they have for thousands of years.  We can see the first clash, the hunters become soldiers protecting their land.  From here we can see the evolution of armies, protecting other farmers.  And we can see the first forms of taxation evolve as payment for their services.  Governments evolve.  But we have trailed way of our topic of video games at this point.

Perhaps the argument shouldn’t be whether video games perpetrate violence.  But rather that society itself perpetrates violence.  All to often we forget our past, focus on what is trending now, “the spark burns brightest” a famous author once said.  The very truth of the fact is that Sandy Hook isn’t the first school shooting.  It’s just one of the latest in a long line of tragedies that our nation has had to face since the Union was formed.  We forget that we have seen this played out before.  We sympathize with the victims, reason with the aggressor, and it becomes a spectacle that fuels our emotions.  Anger, fear, remorse, sadness… the Human Condition, all these emotions swell within us.  For thousands of years scholars, philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, even religious leaders have all tried to explain this phenomenon we call violence.  Their literature, their media, their doctrines, their philosophies have failed to address this issue.  The fact of the matter is that such a complex emotion cannot be explained away by something as simple as video games, and yet there is another side to this coin.  Human are imitators it would be just as naive to think that video games don’t perpetuate some violence.  And that is what I have stayed up in the dark to write.

A Time to Read.

I have read that J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings started simply with a hole in the ground.  It was his imagination, his desire that filled the world we would come to know as Middle-Earth.  He is considered the father of High Fantasy, the forerunner of Dungeons and Dragons.  Yet even his story can’t be traced to a singularity.  Clearly his monsters and heroes are rooted in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon traditions.  I think perhaps this is a much more suited introduction than what I had previously planned;

“Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this.”

I’m sorry but what is this?  This seems like nothing more than sensless babblings, simply words written on the page.  Sure there is a certain beauty, but I fail to find reason here.  Intellect sure, but knowledge without wisdom is like words without logic.  It is simply nothing.

I’m not sure why Picasso’s work is famous or highly sought after.  I should think my nephew equipped with a highlighter is a better artist than he.  He paints nothing, and she writes nothing.  Yet there is a certain beauty in their nothingness.  The truth of the artists talent can be found within their work.  Although I do not see the muse nor the inspiration, I can find the diamond in the rough (Arabian Nights anyone?).

Gertrude writes, “a single image is not splendor.”  I think that this is perhaps the… single most beautiful line of the poem.  But I have a very analytical mind, grounded in logic.  However, I can see the splendors of this world.  Rarely are they a single image, or a single entity.  Our bodies are composed of billions of combinations of elements.  Even in nature these elements, are rarely isolated.  In its pure form, oxygen is found in pairs.  Yet the air we breath is 70% Nitrogen.  An image, a picture they say is worth a thousand words.  A picture is a memory, and memories feed more memories.  Memories and ideals are what connect the world.  The world is connected through these ideas, and rarely are they a singularity.

It is through these ideals, these sparks that the world has become connected.  Perhaps the greatest invention of mankind was the internet, the World Wide Web.  As I type this paper my feeble mind barely grasps the concepts of a computer.  Let alone the complexities of the internet.  I often wonder how does the internet work?  I mean I understand the concepts of waves being transmitted at certain frequencies.  But how does it work?  Who figured it out, how did they figure it out?  Where did this spark of intellect come from.  What caused this spark and, “why is this spark brighter.”

There is a certain philosophy interlaced within this text.  Computers and the Internet must be powered.  The spark, the electricity is what makes the machinery.  But “What is this current… What is this current that makes machinery.”  What laws of nature dictates this flow of electrons.  Was Franklin really flying his kite in the perfect storm, or perhaps his key is simply a myth of literature.  We come to the philosophical question, “What is the wind.”  We cannot see it, nor can we hold it.  But we can feel it, we can feel it dancing in the divine.  Just as we can feel the emotions within literature.

“What is Nickel.”  Gertrude asks.  Is it an element on the periodic table?  Or perhaps it represents five cents.  Nevertheless, either definition limits the word.  The defined term constricts the mind like a Bao Constrictor tightening its grip around its prey.  Death is eminent, it is only just before it dies that it realizes its fate is hopeless. 

But there is hope…”Hope what is a spectacle.”

It is this specter of hope that drives us on, it is the spark of a new dawn.  It seems that we take each day for granted, no each second for granted. We hope that when our time comes that we are ready, we are prepared to take on “a desperate adventure.”

We hope that god will show us his mercy, for “there is no gratitude in mercy.”  What is God, who is God?  Is he nature or the devine?  Heaven or Earth?  Alas, God cannot be defined, for to do so would to limit him or her… Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, he can be referred to by many names.  But to do so would establish preconceived notions that would limit the limitless.  Each name; each Idol maintains its own set of Doctrines, its own Canon, no its own Literature.  But I digress…  I do not know if I have fully understood what I have just read, but I tried to make sense of it.  I tried to find its inspirations, and I struggled to find the emotions that were imparted on me.  From fragments of this poem I was able to find my own story.

Once again I find myself pondering what Literature is, however it is such a large encompassing question.  Perhaps it would be be best narrow the topic down.  Whittle away at the edges, if you will.  Perhaps the question should be what is American Literature?  Even that is such a disputed topic, yet again I find myself at the edge of a philosophical question.

The other day I stopped by my mom's, having very little to say about myself I began to speak of school.  I told her of the two stories we read.  I briefly summarized them in the raw.  She asked me what the point of the literature was, or rather what was the significance of their work.  She said that she hadn't heard of either author.  I wasn't sure. I had never heard of either authors either.  Then she asked me the question that really hit home, "I wonder how they decided which author goes into the text book?"  I told her I didn't know the answer to that either.  I looked at our syllabus with her to show her what other authors we were going to read.  She said that she was familiar with Booker T. Washington.  I could only picture the wrestler from the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment).  I wonder if there is any connection between the wrestler and the writer.  I left for home pondering.  Trying to clam my mind I turned to Booker T's "Up from Slavery."

That night as I lay in bed, my mind began racing as it often does.  My mind shifted from the immediate present to the distant future.  I began to think of the project that is due.  Half thought's swirled.  Literature in... rap?  I know that, that genre of music gets a bad rap.  An old man once told me that rap stood for Rhythm and Poetry.  But that is another story in and of itself.  Perhaps Literature in... Movies?  The Hobbit just came out, I love fantasy that's were my affair with literature began.  However I doubt Tolkien could be considered American Literature.  Perhaps video games, after it is just an interactive story.  I find myself thinking of my favorite books, and the author R.A. Salvatore.  Where to begin...

The next day at work I was thinking about the short speech I had read, and I made the comment to my coworker, "I can't believe how racist this country was a hundred years ago."  It's something that has slipped from my mind, it's not something I've witnessed in my life.  Sure I've heard racial slurs, and been witness to discrimination.  But nothing on the level of the turn of the 19th century.  It's not something we talk about.  It's a scar of a once open wound, the outline is fient, but it there.  It's just below the surface ready to be scratched at.  But she said something that opened my eyes.  "You have to remember, it wasn't just racial discrimination there was social discrimination too."

Perhaps that's it the key to American Literature.  It provides us with a glimpse into a world we cannot walk in ourselves.  I began to think of "The Lost Beautifulness".  In this story we get a glimpse of the harshness of the struggling immigrant.  And in, "The Other Two", we get a glimpse of the social hierarchy, and perhaps the possession of women.  In, "In the Land of the Free", we get to see America through the eyes of Chinese Immigrants. Each of these stories come from a distant past, yet it is our job to relate them to our world.

It is something beautiful; it is something that stirs the soul... if you will I don't mean to impose.  This sounds like a philosophical question if I've ever heard one.  It's not one I've asked myself, and I doubt I'll be able to answer it on the first attempt.  I doubt if I'll ever be able to answer it.  I fear the best I can do is provide an archetype to the question.  But I digress.

In the beginning there was the word, I bet this sounds familiar.  But I suppose it’s the truth, whether it was nothing more than a guttural growl or something as mystical as the Om.  It can be all but certain that man's first communication was the word.

But where to from there?  

Perhaps the cave the drawings of the ancients, while we can't be certain that it was anymore than a shopping list.  We know that they took the time to draw in the shelter of their caves.  As time passes the primitive people grow wise.  They gain the wisdom and the knowledge from the natural order of the world.  They begin to form families, and as time passes they form tribes.  Villages begin to develop, then towns, cities, empires.  

But what of the written word?

Perhaps it started, perhaps it always was.  History places writing in the realm of business, in order to keep track of ancient world's trade.  It makes sense.  But I can no more guarantee that than I can that of Adam and Eve, or for that matter evolution.  Somewhere literature made its leap from the oral tradition to the written word.  Somewhere it evolved from something simple to something complex.  Just look at the great epics of the old.  Look at Britain’s Beowulf, the Hindu's story of Arjunna, Greece has the Iliad and Rome Hercules (even if they borrowed him).

I suppose literature is nothing more than written works, whether it is nothing more than a shopping list or as something as complex as an epic.  It is as they say, "the eye is in the beholder."