Wreck-It Ralph

A movie about video games and featuring video game characters. What's there not to like? Wreck-It Ralph will appeal to gamers for sure. Especially veteran gamers.

The movie is a typical hero's journey style narrative, with the usual redemption theme. The difference is that they manage to create the impression of a living world (a'la Toy Story) in the arcade, chock full of references to the characters and their current state of being. Oh Q*Bert, you poor thing!

While the movie brings nothing new into the narrative space, the characters invite sympathizing if not outright empathy and the redemption story can be particularly poignant to certain folk. I personally liked it, and figure the movie deserves 8/10.

Motivation In Life

What do you live for? Why do you go to work every day? These are questions that I ask myself from time to time. I've even asked my friends about it. The answer I often get is that the appropriate response is "Money". I find this response strange, because I do not go to work for the money.

A cheap retort some people have for my statement is that I might as well hand over all the money I earn because I don't need/want it. That's cheap because they know I can't answer that, and more importantly it's beside the question of motivation. I could easily retort that since they aren't working for the air they breathe, why don't they just stop so that I can get more oxygen?

I guess the point is that if one's at work exclusively (or at least primarily) for the money, one will find it hard to stay on when the going gets tough. In fact if I worked for money, I'd just go to another place that offered more money. Because the work doesn't matter. I guess that's one way to live, but it's largely without a true aim. There's no end point to money, and honestly the applications of money can be somewhat limited. At some point you have so much money you don't really know what to do with it. But before you can get there, you'd probably need a good dose of passion.

Passion is what gets people up even if the work's painful, and I guess that means one needs to work in a line which one likes. In some smaller economies that's just not possible, but should one have the fortune to do so I think one just doesn't work another day in their life. Ultimately, with passion, one has a motivation besides money to keep doing a good job, which tends to improve one's skills, which tends to attract money anyway. Interesting, no?

If I Were God

I was pondering what my conversation with myself would be like if I were God. This is what came out of it:

Me: Ok so let's get down to the questions. Players have been complaining about the recent game balance fixes that just don't make sense. Do you intend to fix them anytime soon?

God: Uhhh...there haven't been any recent patches. There haven't been patches for thousands of years.

 Me: ... none?

God: Yup. I basically put a few rules in place a couple billion years ago, then sat back to watch the system develop. It's really just injecting some order in the primordial chaos.

Me: What did you do after that? God: I rested. Then played video games. And played with knives and took photos. And read books...

Me: Ok... Uh... So you're telling me that all of existence is just basically a random system?

God: Not random. Just randomness with a few simple rules to allow it to evolve by itself.

Me: Right. Well we've been hearing lots of complaints about the lack of customer support over the last few millennia. Do you intend to release a patch to address some emerging imbalances in the system?

God: Nope. Actually that was written in the patch notes. It says no further patches will be provided.

Me: Patch notes...?

God: Yeah nobody ever reads patch notes.

Me: Wow. That's...unexpected. So I guess it begs the question: Why was Reality created?

God: I was bored.

Me: There's no meaning to life, huh.

God: That's not a question, but yes. You guys made all those meanings up.

Animals

Those who know me will be familiar by now that I regard the majority of humans as animals. That is, as creatures that live primarily by their base urges and instincts rather than conscious thought. When thinking about the animals in the arena of statecraft and particularly economics or public policy, I find the label particularly apt. The average human is predominantly obsessed with their day to day existences and "survival", and thus leave no room for considering the wider world that affects them no less. I have raised this issue with friends, who have pointed out that poorer people have no time to consider such things as they're too busy trying to stay alive and feed their families. The suggestion gave me pause, because it seemed plausible. However, I quickly recalled where we stand right now, standing on the shoulders of the geniuses who have built up the high technology that we take for granted today. Surely these people had to have thought beyond their everyday lives to bring humanity forward step by painful step. Surely these people didn't start off in a world of plenty the way we are today. Of course, I should qualify what I mean by world of plenty. True, there is certainly hunger and extreme poverty all over the world. However, considering the incredible populations we have this day and the fact that we're feeding a goodly bit more of them than we did back in the day is indicative of the progress made towards sustaining the population. Despite this state of humanity, we do not see a sudden flourishing of amazing new developments and the spontaneous emergence of new philosophies that serve the betterment of humans. Instead, all I see is the blind pursuit of material wealth by animals. Is this the boon that wealth brings, now that there is a great big group of people who no longer fight for survival and have the capacity to ponder greater things?

Politics

It is interesting to note that the average human dedicates so few mental resources to the comprehension of grand strategy that their comprehension of the words of politicians may as well be nil. Simply put, a politician needs only manipulate their emotions and reframe their thoughts in order to push forward a plan that would make little sense to any learned thinker. The politician operates without independent scrutiny or intellectual audit. When I think about how politics works, I cannot help but be both amazed and disgusted by it. I am amazed by how easily it works when one understands the principles, and disgusted by the same. Can it be that the majority of humans are little better than animals in comprehending such matters? This is applicable in the workplace as well, whereby a more politically savvy co-worker may climb the corporate ladder and thus gain more command than one of his/her intellectual capability may suggest. In fact, it seems that the people who dedicate more time/thought to developing political prowess than technical skill wind up on top. This creates a vicious cycle that is detrimental to organizations. It seems to me that there is a sweet spot that must be hit whereby a person has a basic grasp of political savvy while primarily developing technological savvy. A good example of the archetype would be successful technopreneurs who successfully market their own product while being rather adept at the technologies themselves. This, I think, would be a fairly productive balance point.