As I've gotten older, I've come to the conclusion that the reason why youth is favoured and celebrated in our society has nothing to do with us preferring to see Tom Daley in a pair of Speedos than Gerard Depardieu. It's because the young are more pliable, less cynical - and easier to convince that what they're doing matters.
That's not meant to sound jaded; there are lots of things that matter in the world - and what's important differs for each of us.
Yet a lot of the stuff we're told is important growing up - not putting your elbows on the table, or being a "success", or not eating your dinner off the floor - are just constructs.
From the moment we're born we're taught the rules, and those rules so become part of who we are that it takes enormous energy to break them. Not having a degree in some way makes you defective. You're weird if you don't have kids. You must like The Beatles. Support our troops. The pressure to be what our world has deemed normal - or valuable - is immense.
If I was more cynical than I am, I'd suggest that society doesn't care what we do, so long as what we do serves to raise tax revenue, and not rock the boat.
The purpose we're all assigned is to help maintain the structure of our civilisation - but that's never explicitly stated, as it's too big and abstract an idea. Instead, society doles out invisible, unobtainable prizes upon which our feelings of worth can rise or fall.
That's not meant to sound jaded; there are lots of things that matter in the world - and what's important differs for each of us.
Yet a lot of the stuff we're told is important growing up - not putting your elbows on the table, or being a "success", or not eating your dinner off the floor - are just constructs.
From the moment we're born we're taught the rules, and those rules so become part of who we are that it takes enormous energy to break them. Not having a degree in some way makes you defective. You're weird if you don't have kids. You must like The Beatles. Support our troops. The pressure to be what our world has deemed normal - or valuable - is immense.
If I was more cynical than I am, I'd suggest that society doesn't care what we do, so long as what we do serves to raise tax revenue, and not rock the boat.
The purpose we're all assigned is to help maintain the structure of our civilisation - but that's never explicitly stated, as it's too big and abstract an idea. Instead, society doles out invisible, unobtainable prizes upon which our feelings of worth can rise or fall.
NOTHING REALLY MATTERS
Go through enough in life - as most of us do - and you realise that none of it really matters.
Literally nothing is important, except what's important to you. Getting older means that priorities swirl around, and take on new shapes.
Focus shifts - much as my eyesight is, with alarming speed, going from being shortsighted to longsighted.
I don't just see things up close anymore. To read something I have to hold it at arm's length, which gives me a wider perspective.
Those big, scary, upsetting, life events can leave scars, but they're also transitory. You see them in the context of a life. Right here and now for you is all that matters, not whether you're working towards having a number one single.
It's hard not to view the importance society places on ambition as an effective carrot dangling on the end of a stick. We'll work harder, faster, earn more money if we think there's a pot of gold at the end. Being successful, getting that promotion, publishing that book... because if you don't then you've failed. You're a failure. And nobody wants to feel like that.
But the concept of being a failure exists only because it has been drummed into us from birth.
Go through enough in life - as most of us do - and you realise that none of it really matters.
Literally nothing is important, except what's important to you. Getting older means that priorities swirl around, and take on new shapes.
Focus shifts - much as my eyesight is, with alarming speed, going from being shortsighted to longsighted.
I don't just see things up close anymore. To read something I have to hold it at arm's length, which gives me a wider perspective.
Those big, scary, upsetting, life events can leave scars, but they're also transitory. You see them in the context of a life. Right here and now for you is all that matters, not whether you're working towards having a number one single.
It's hard not to view the importance society places on ambition as an effective carrot dangling on the end of a stick. We'll work harder, faster, earn more money if we think there's a pot of gold at the end. Being successful, getting that promotion, publishing that book... because if you don't then you've failed. You're a failure. And nobody wants to feel like that.
But the concept of being a failure exists only because it has been drummed into us from birth.
STRING THEORY
The strings which control us, and shape us when we're young have, for me anyway, become that much looser. It feels that as I've started to see that ambition, and success, is something they want me to reach for - because it helps power the engine of society - that the society loosens its grip on me. It turns its back on us, to face the young, beautiful things.
Who are - lest we forget - all complete idiots staring into their phone cameras, who are still too stupid to realise the enlightenment which comes through maturing. The best thing is... I don't even really care.
Because we live in a holographic universe, where everything we do or feel is a part of every other thing we do or feel, big or small... I can apply this to video games.
When I was younger, I took the rules of a game at face value. Suspension of disbelief was easier. It didn't matter that I couldn't do literally anything in Skool Daze - I ignored the walls of the gameplay, and took it at face value. I could mostly forget it was a video game, which only wanted me to do certain things.
I wonder whether the backlash against No Man's Sky is because we all thought we were getting a game without walls, without rules, where we could go anywhere and do anything. When it came to it, and after spending a good length of time with it, those rules were everywhere.
The game has a very narrow focus, and after a time it feels constricting. Perhaps if there had been some sort of more structured narrative, more of a reason to be doing what the game allowed you to do, it would've been easier to suspend disbelief, and go with it. But no. Instead, we were given a game where the strings which pulled on us were all too visible.
The strings which control us, and shape us when we're young have, for me anyway, become that much looser. It feels that as I've started to see that ambition, and success, is something they want me to reach for - because it helps power the engine of society - that the society loosens its grip on me. It turns its back on us, to face the young, beautiful things.
Who are - lest we forget - all complete idiots staring into their phone cameras, who are still too stupid to realise the enlightenment which comes through maturing. The best thing is... I don't even really care.
Because we live in a holographic universe, where everything we do or feel is a part of every other thing we do or feel, big or small... I can apply this to video games.
When I was younger, I took the rules of a game at face value. Suspension of disbelief was easier. It didn't matter that I couldn't do literally anything in Skool Daze - I ignored the walls of the gameplay, and took it at face value. I could mostly forget it was a video game, which only wanted me to do certain things.
I wonder whether the backlash against No Man's Sky is because we all thought we were getting a game without walls, without rules, where we could go anywhere and do anything. When it came to it, and after spending a good length of time with it, those rules were everywhere.
The game has a very narrow focus, and after a time it feels constricting. Perhaps if there had been some sort of more structured narrative, more of a reason to be doing what the game allowed you to do, it would've been easier to suspend disbelief, and go with it. But no. Instead, we were given a game where the strings which pulled on us were all too visible.
LESS MAGIC
I remember playing Castle Master on my Atari ST, and it feeling like a limitless world to explore. It wasn't, of course, but it felt that way, because it never felt to me like there was a human hand behind it.
These days, we know the faces behind the games. We know the work that goes into them, and we're given unprecedented access to the development process - more than at any time in the history of gaming. Our games arrive with the explicit knowledge that they've been made by people.
Consequently, just as I can see now that ambition and other societal constructs are simply that - rules that have been invented by human beings - I can see that games are nothing more than a set of rules. Once upon a time, when I was young, it felt as if their horizons stretched on forever. They felt like they'd grown organically, or were a portal to somewhere else.
That doesn't mean I necessarily enjoy games less, but they certainly have less magic for me than they once did. But that can be applied to the world as a whole. The longer I stay alive, the more I see how everything works and fits together, like parts of an engine. Whether that engine is one powering our video games, or our society. You have to work harder to suspend your disbelief.
I remember playing Castle Master on my Atari ST, and it feeling like a limitless world to explore. It wasn't, of course, but it felt that way, because it never felt to me like there was a human hand behind it.
These days, we know the faces behind the games. We know the work that goes into them, and we're given unprecedented access to the development process - more than at any time in the history of gaming. Our games arrive with the explicit knowledge that they've been made by people.
Consequently, just as I can see now that ambition and other societal constructs are simply that - rules that have been invented by human beings - I can see that games are nothing more than a set of rules. Once upon a time, when I was young, it felt as if their horizons stretched on forever. They felt like they'd grown organically, or were a portal to somewhere else.
That doesn't mean I necessarily enjoy games less, but they certainly have less magic for me than they once did. But that can be applied to the world as a whole. The longer I stay alive, the more I see how everything works and fits together, like parts of an engine. Whether that engine is one powering our video games, or our society. You have to work harder to suspend your disbelief.
RSS Feed
