We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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GamerGate ain’t going away any time soon When Forbes writers say there is something very wrong with the games press, highlighting the very same points the gaming community has been arguing for many years, you sit up and listen. These pernicious and – contrary to what the average video game reviewer would have you believe – systemic problems were beautifully summarized in Kain’s article.
– James Fenner
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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The fight against the “Social Justice Warriors” is very important.
Popular culture matters.
As the article makes clear – the left (in this case the gamer press) are a hive mind.
They use the same words and all “think” alike.
There is nothing supernatural about this – physically the leftists are actually humans.
However, they are people who actually believed the propaganda they were fed in then education system – the attitudes, the habits of mind.
It is not a lack of intelligence (leftists can be very intelligent) it a certain type of mind – that accepts indoctrination and then acts on it.
They are not to be underestimated – as I said they are often highly intelligent.
They work as a group (automatically without even needing to formally coordinate).
And they have no pity, no conscious, no remorse.
No doubts.
This is not their weakness – it is their strength.
Politics follows the culture. You can’t have the kind of culture the SJWs envision if you want even a modicum of personal freedom.
I followed the link to the article, and the article’s link to a review by a Kate Cox. There I found one of those statements that hit one like a ton of bricks, that I think is worth quoting before it dissipates and floats away in cyberspace….
—–It may be “the core of Christianity” (although I think that said Core goes much deeper), but it seems to me it existed long before the time of Christ.
Anyway, this raises questions pertinent to our apparent penchant for tribalism (whether the Tribe is defined by blood or ideology) and collectivism.
And we surely do revere the hero who gives his life for — Which is it? The tribe/collective, or the goal, the vision, the ideal/ideology? What did Nathan Hale die for?
Both. Intertwined. The practical goal (in this case, winning the Revolutionary War) is the link between the collective and the ideal.
Miss Rand thought that the Hero properly speaking did not give his life for the tribe or collective, nor even, strictly speaking, for his “ideology”; but rather, for his vision of a world in which he, and those he valued, would be able to live his and their lives as free men. Of course, as a result everyone else would have at the very least the opportunity to choose to do so. And about that vision: No matter the outcome, better to die in a fight for freedom than to live as ordered by somebody else.
But in view of the Legend of the Archetypical Hero as above, absorbed into our culture over eons until we (today, at least) see it as an inseparable part of what it means to be human, we can see that Miss R.’s rewritten Legend was not one that would be generally understood, let alone welcome.
Just musing….
Forgot. Link to the Kate Cox review:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150331075802/http://kotaku.com/5892074/why-mass-effect-3s-ending-doesnt-need-changing-spoilers
But viewed from the other end, “who we are” determines what we will produce. If we are beavers, we will produce dams (and baby beavers). If we are humans, we will produce art and culture (as well as dams and baby humans); and our culture will grow out of what it is to be human.
And since we are humans, we do form groups and sometimes we do act together to defend the group, and it gets complicated when we lose sight of the fact that to defend the group is to defend the individuals who constitute it, or at least the values that they all share; which is the reverse of the idea that the reason to defend the individual is that he serves, or at least defends, the group.
In the latter case the individual would be rightly, i.e. morally, expendable.
Game journalism has always been corrupt, with shilling rampant from the early days. And its always been stupid; witness the reviewers who gave Herzog Zwei, now regarded as a classic, low scores.
Idiot journalists falsely claiming Sony would fund Shenmue 3 (thus undermining the Kickstarter) when that is not the case really deserve a good kicking.
The only thing I disagree with in the article is that they are somehow different from other journalists.
All journalism is like this. The only difference is that gaming (like football) is one of those areas of life where the general public can see the subject matter in its entirety AND are more knowledgeable about it, so the standard shabby practices of journalism are embarrassingly obvious.
Do you game, Perry? If so, what do you play?
#PCMasterRace
On my third sublime Witcher 3 replay 😀
Was MMO’ing a fair bit until I ran out of hours in a day (too busy with other meatspace things, at least for now). The MMOs involved were The Secret World (was great, became dumbed down and much less great), before that SWTOR (ugly game with ok gameplay), Rift (pretty game, superb mechanics, ok gameplay), ST:O (ground combat complete rubbish, space combat outrageous fun: played a Klingon. Sadly even the bugs in this game had bugs) and Age of Conan (awesome but another utter bugfest). But not Warhammer. Have long been tempted by EVE but do not want to risk it eating my life so, no.
Played Dragon Age series (Good/Dire/um…Ok). Mass Effect series (Great/Great/WTF? I mean seriously WTF???). Bioshock series (all Good). Portal series (the cake was indeed a lie but the games were splendid). Halflife (all marvellous in their own ways). Fallout series (all great, albeit total bugfests. I love you Bethesda but one in ten of your coders needs to be taken out and shot after each game is released ‘pour encourager les autres’).
Used to do various shooters but not recently (Gears of War, Soldner, Unreal Tournament) and before that various flight sims.
Looking forward to the Division and Fallout 4 and after many years might give Lara Croft another look (Angel of Darkness killed the series for me).
Used to be a BioWare fanboy, now am emphatically not. The only company I pre-order from is CD Projekt RED.
I’m often tempted to speculate on how a person’s gaming tastes reflect on their character. Even now I am tempted to reach for some crude caricature… centrist leftists might prefer Civilisation or Sim City to the social, dog-eat-dog, interactivity of MMOs and FPSs, etc.
Regardless, Half-life and Fallout and Bioshock are all firmly canon. Ah, to be a gamer. I have made the Black Mesa run three times, I was on Citadel Station, I docked with the Rickenbacker, I have escaped from Rapture with my soul intact, I have been baptised in the waters of Columbia, I have felt the bite on the hours of my own life, the constants and variables, I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe…
…and at the same time I have seen nothing but my own screen. I avoid MMOs for the same reason as you.
(Going to chuck in an unbidden recommendation. I thought Spec Ops:The Line was fantastic.)