Self-centered, entitled, thoughtless, clueless of their limits and immoral both in their fantasies and in their online actions. Children basically, in a modern world where Extended Adolescence defines the new common man. The impact is everywhere and is of course increasing.
- In the 70s gamers were a small crowd playing complex historical wargames
- By the 80s the wargames with their values of history and simulation had been replaced by complex table top fantasy RPGs
- By the 90s the assault on complex RPGs was well under way. Amber, FUDGE and the like.
- The 00 saw the rise of the Forge GNS movements, not only were the games mechanically simply in the extreme- they by design could only contain one campaign idea.
Today the gamers say that the games of the early 80s are impossible to play. Too complex. No matter that people played them and did quite well. They remind me of people who claim mankind couldn't have built the Great Pyramids. Small minds thinking small thoughts. Of course they'd have to play small games.
The moral side of the hobby has decayed as well. It always had it's underbelly. But it was either by today's standards almost innocent (D&D's succubus artwork) or known to be a niche stupidity.
In the age of moral relativism, things can't be that simple. From Little Fears to FATAL to poison'd to LotFP we have the progress of fifth and increasing acceptance. Now days even the mainstream of online gaming is willing to accept artwork of women being torn apart from their sexual organs out as long as they think the game design displaying it is... what? A cool rewrite of original D&D?
That's how low we sell our morality. We don't even require a new game, just a fluffed up version of an old one.
What set off this, my latest rant on the subject? An experiment of a sort. I wanted to see if the OSR crowd was any different.
So I decided to respond to a recent post (together with this older one on the same site) that was something of a bugbear for me, the idea that a modern gamer can take history and remake it in their own image. Not a genre (like say Westerns), but history.
A timely concern, given today's efforts to rewrite history. Even Texas is considering removing the Alamo from being taught in school. Too offensive you know.
I wondered what response a call for respect of history, and the people who were part of it would receive from the OSR crowd. I got the same one I would have expected from the gaming world as a whole.
Self-centered, clueless, and lacking in any respect for others. They felt the dead were owed nothing.
I asked them if they were dead, would they feel that they would be owed something? What if what we considered horrid deeds today were accepted in the future? Would they then be accepting of future gamers labeling them with those deeds because it made them more acceptable to that future?
I got no answer, only claims that I was vile for asking the question. They hold their values dear, but they won't even accept the question asking if those standards should be applied to themselves.
In over 100 posts, there was not one person besides me willing to claim that people deserve the respect of truth after their death. Not one. We may as well get rid of the graveyards now, and let the vermin eat well. For that is now what we are.
Self-centered, entitled, thoughtless, clueless of their limits and immoral both in their fantasies and in their online actions.
Extended Adolescence indeed.
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14 comments:
Your biggest complaint is that Texas wants to remove the Alamo, and I know you're a teabagger, but even you have to admit that political correctness or whatever is not the biggest problem with the texas educational system.
I love Anonymous posts, it reflects a person who is such a coward (at worst) or so lazy (at best) that they won't even use a internet handle. They prove much of my point even before they type a single letter.
No, I don't have to admit it.
Remove the mindset that education need worry about offense at all- and you solve most of the problems out of the gate.
Although I will admit that if that step was taken today, it's likely a large chunk of teachers wouldn't know what to do. Teaching actual education is now beyond them as they've be trained to do nothing but political correctness and moral relativism.
@Anonymous...In a post about the lack of respect for history and a single minded belief that ones own views are the only acceptable one and you go after a single line about Texas claiming that it makes the poster a "teabagger" and thus someone that can be ignored...that is just sad.
As for the post itself I have to agree with most of what is stated there. I just can not understand how everyone now seems only to hold to the view that the new is good and all else should be tossed out and any who disagree should be shut up.
I'm not going to wade into this one, except to say how can Texas not teach the Alamo? It's part of what makes Texas Texas.
I think Zachary that's the whole point.
The people that push PC changes like this don't want Texas to be Texas, Kansas to be Kansas or the US to be the US.
They want it to be something else. For a while it was the Soviet Union, then Cuba or Sweden. Or here in the Southwest, Mexico.
Anything but the traditional America that they've been taught to hate for petty and unimportant reasons.
Texas is generally different, but we have loony parts of the state that bring these things up. Most of the time the rest of the state tells them to shove it.
But bit by bit, it advances and bit by bit Texas dies.
There are days when I think the last American will be a Texan, and then after he's gone, there will be... nothing worth having.
I can find little to disagree with in your post. Sadly, while the political left continues to lose any sense of moral outrage in its headlong embrace of political correctness, the political right seems equally intent on abandoning reason for mindless religious fundamentalism. All that remains of public debate is the idiot clamour of talk radio and 24-hour television news.
Opps... Hit a delete when I didn't intend to and couldn't recover.
But to answer the question about the source for Texas removing the Alamo from schools- my source was local news reports from some years back. While it was purposed, it of course failed.
What did happen instead is that the textbooks and classrooms were altered to present the Mexican view of it (i.e. turning a major point of Texas history into another moral relativism lesson), giving hispanic defenders special attention soley because of their race, etc.
Currently as part of the wider culture war, Texas is attempting to reverse some of those changes.
I was following along okay with your defense against historical revisionism on Jeff's blog, but then your vitriol and name calling completely lost me. That is unfortunate as it could have stimulated some true discourse on the topic.
Just to be sure, I want back to look for naming calling.
Didn't find it until long after it such things was directed at me, and looking back at it- I'm somewhat surprised by my restraint. That group of people didn't deserve it.
As for vitriol (defined as Cruel and bitter criticism), nope none of that either. I'm not bitter nor was I cruel.
I suggest growing a thicker skin, or at least noticing what both sides are doing. As is, you're coming off as someone looking for an excuse to hide your head in the sand.
Current culture may reward you for that, but in the long run you'll pay the piper.
Interesting, thanks.
On a tangent, your post made me realize that current common usage of "moral relativism" is different from what I understood to be the definition. To me, your statement here - with which I agree - is the essence of moral relativism:
"I should point out that which is worse of those two items, or if they are equal depends completely upon the time, place and people we're talking about."
In other words, the morality of an action is relative to "the time, place and people we're talking about". Since I agree with that quote from you, I've considered myself a moral relativist.
You don't seem to use the term "moral relativism" that way since you consider it a bad thing rather than a good thing. I suspect your usage is closer to today's common usage than mine is. I'm still unclear on what that common usage is, though. So, any chance you could provide your definition of the term?
Also, since you're from Texas, I'd be interested in your opinion of Perry. I feel like I have a handle on the other candidates after the debate a couple weeks ago, but while Texas seems to have done a lot of things right, I haven't been able to figure out how much Perry had to do with any of that. If you'd prefer to respond privately, hopefully you still have my email.
Warren Dew said...
You don't seem to use the term "moral relativism" that way since you consider it a bad thing rather than a good thing. I suspect your usage is closer to today's common usage than mine is. I'm still unclear on what that common usage is, though. So, any chance you could provide your definition of the term?
Sure.
First, my statement: "I should point out that which is worse of those two items, or if they are equal depends completely upon the time, place and people we're talking about." is a simple fact.
Moral Relativism is
a mindset of how to react to that fact.
Confronted with the idea that different cultures have different morality, The Moral Relativist *ideally* refuses to say that one is better than the other. All are judged equally good and valid.
Thus we get acceptance of things such as the thread I highlighted and other worse perversion. It's all just as good and no one can judge your actions in game (or out for that matter) as wrong.
In practical terms, this would make the Moral Relativist unimportant and Inconsequential.
They couldn't for example complain in the least about me saying that certain things is wrong for the simple reason that my culture considers them wrong. And my culture is as right as any.
That's why the real world of the Moral Relativist is completely different than the idea. There is one culture that they judge evil and wrong.
The traditional Western Culture most strongly reflected in traditional American Values.
This link is an excellent overview of the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c
I'll respond about Perry in email. Unless it touches on gaming I tend to keep politics off this blog.
Thanks. So basically "moral relativism" has come to mean rejection of nothing except traditional American culture - an attitude I too have seen a fair amount of - an attitude which is actually a form of moral absolutism.
Ironic, but I think you are correct.
I don't know my position on this debate, but I think your vermin would say something like this:
"The Dead, whatever they owed the future, whatever they were supposed to do for us, failed. They were supposed to give the present something they didn't. That was the deal, The Dead would [I can't say what's supposed to go here, outside my expertise] and in return, we would give them proper honor. But they didn't hold up their end, so we won't hold up ours."
The sense I get on a college campus today, is that some teens and many young adults feel like the past is one huge Bernie Madoff that promised them... the real tragedy is that they can't even say what they were promised, beyond the material trappings.. and now their looking down the barrel of getting nothing, their entire inheritance frittered away by generations past. So they don't think they owe the dead anything, figure it's perfectly on the level to take their cut right out of the story of history.
Maybe they're right, I couldn't tell you... because as a member of that generation, I'm not sure what I've been cheated out of either, or if it was even mine to begin with.
Nicholas said... I find that a interesting comment.
I'm not sure how many would agree with you about it as their motivation, but I'm sure some wound.
The fault lies in the fact that we no longer teach what the past has given us, we only teach what they did wrong.
The correction lies in the old saying- "You want respect, you first give respect".
Treat the men of the past with respect and learn their virtues as well as their faults and one may be amazed at the wisdom they've gifted you- and is now yours to past along.
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