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New contest: Make a new background for my blog. Winner gets a Steam Key for Syberia 1 and 2, or another Steam game.

Great! Thanks Baron. A real useful feedback. I wasn't expecting that! But thanks. I always had this "problem": I'm not very accessible. But I'm not complaining. I'm not aiming for success.

This is the English version, and it is shorter than the original version, at least for the game reviews.

It will be updated daily from now on. Still more boring and confusing posts that I'm translating from Portuguese. I do not recommend it.

I have no agenda. I stumbled on those complex subjects because I'm weird. Other weird people will find it and like it, maybe. Trust me: You would not want to read it. Hope I'm not being rude. Crazy, at most, but not rude.

Thanks

Here's my blog. About games and... stuff? Now you can judge me.

http://janosbiro-en.tumblr.com/

I think that "Where THE HELL are we running?" is a very good question. My first PC was a 386, back in 1996. Then we updated to a 486 in 1998 and a Pentium in 2000. It stayed that way until 2010, and I did some amazing things with it. Then my friends started giving me their old PCs whenever they bought a new one, until I really bought one, last year, which is a Pentium 2.9 GHz. Originally it had 2 GB RAM, then I bought another 2 GB RAM to make it 4 GB, and this month I finally bought a GeForce 9800 GT to be able to play some games I already had on Steam. I'm a pretty new consumer of games and computer parts. The only commercial game I bought before 2010 was Neverwinter Nights, and it costed 8 dollars. Now I fear that in some years new games will come that I will want to play but I will need a even better computer, and I will have the money to buy. I wanted to buy a console so I can play with my brother, but still very expensive here in Brasil. And I still prefer playing computer games.

In other words, I could never play those beautiful AAA games because my PC was always shitty. Now I can, and I'm loving it, so don't spoil my fun!

Sorry about that, Khris.

Ghost,

Child slaves DO dig up ore for our computers parts, and this IS really terrible, and we SHOULD do something about it. But this situation comes long before computers being invented and will remain the same even if people magically cease to use computers right now. It has nothing to do with individual consumption practices. Even if you and I could stop using computers, our society can't. Banks need it, hospitals need it, schools need it, every little shop need it. The fact that we need something doesn't nullifies the fact that is made by "slaves". Only better working conditions can change that. You can achieve that by organizing political actions against those who use "slaves", by bringing them to justice. See? It's really simple. I hope we can be friends now.

...

I think I get it. When you read what someone writes, you aim at understanding what that person believes, rather than looking at the reality that person is pointing to. Is that right?

If you were not arguing like my argument is that buying computers is wrong, why you said it was hypocrisy to point to how computers are made and to buy a new computer? Where is the hypocrisy, if you understood I never said buying computers is wrong?

I know, my discussion back there was pretty radical, pretty boring, pretty strange and pretty useless. I'm sorry, okay? Will you ever forgive me? What bothers you, Ghost? Why you kept that in your mind until now? I totally support the view I presented, but this view never had anything to do with buying or not buying computers.

What I said in this topic was simply that what I personally think about it doesn't matter, and not that I do not believe in what I said, you see? You keep thinking in terms of what I believe or not. What is the relevance of this? Does it change the fact?

Ghost,

Sigh... NOTHING of what I said or quoted implies in the idea that buying computers is wrong. You keep arguing like that was the case. How can I understand that you did not misinterpreted me? The issue was NEVER about buying or not buying. If you read it like that... What can I say, besides that you were reading it wrong?

So I can understand you don't feel guilty about buying things made by people working in terrible conditions? What do you feel about it?

I'm really sorry for staying off topic, but I'm being accused of hypocrisy and I have the right to defend myself.

miguel and Ghost,

I don't think I'm smarter than anyone here, that's why I'm sure you all can understand what I'm saying. It WOULD be hypocrisy if I stated anywhere that people SHOULD stop buying things. I never said that, and I gave you my reasons for believing that stop buying has nothing to do with the problem I addressed. Your tendency to misinterpret me makes me think you feel guilty about buying stuff made by people working in terrible conditions, and you are trying to deal with this guilt by mocking those who bring this fact to your attention. It's not "gaming industry evil plots". People are being explored because of historical conditions, and this will keep happening either you buy things or you don't, because consuming "too much" is not the cause of capitalism. The production system is the cause of poverty, and there's nothing you can do about it as a consumer. Only politically aware citizens can do something about it. Your insistence in the idea that I should stop consuming computers because I know they are a product of exploration is illogical. Poor people wont get better jobs just because I refrain from having computers. Think about it before you say something like that. My main point in that old topic was not about what I DEFEND, was about a FACT. You can't deny that fact by pointing to contradictions in my personal attitude. Blaming consumers for poverty in India and Africa is like blaming old catholic ladies for the Inquisition and the Holy Wars.

What is happening here sounds to me as the reaction of people who want to deny reality by mocking people who point at this reality. My attitude towards this problem goes way beyond a consumer choice. I feel bad about people being explored too, but I deal with it by doing more than useless "simple living". I do it by political activism. If you don't want to do the same, fine. But don't come trying to mock me just so you can feel less guilty about it. If you believe that stop buying is the best you can do, then do it. I don't think it is the best I can do, so I do something else instead. But don't matter what you do, the fact that some things are made by people working in terrible conditions remains true, even if we don't give a shit about it. What bothers me is that your comment seem to try to deny that, like saying: Janos says computers are made of minerals extracted by war prisoners in Congo, by he buys computers too, therefore he is full of bullshit, therefore the game industry have nothing to do with what's going on in Congo, therefore I can use my computer in peace...

Absolutely not! I never advocated boycotting practices as the solution to anything. If you think that you have to stop consuming to be able to criticize something like that, the joke is on you! No amount of boycott could ever change society, because boycott is a consumer right, very different from a political change. See Why personal change does not equal political change

Just theory, again. You are not coherent with the ideas you defend. If I am totally against CO2 emissions and preach about it on the internet is it okay if I buy a muscle-car from the 70's? I can do it, but to some (if not all) I'll just be and sound like a fake.

I find amazing that you still insist on this idea. Look, I would be incoherent if the theory was limited to an individual consumer choice. Some (if not all) people who would find it fake to criticize CO2 emissions and buy such a car simply didn't understood where the CO2 emissions come from. They naively believe it comes from people buying inefficient cars. Bullshit, only a small fraction of CO2 emissions comes from that. Besides, you can't possible compare the act of buying a better computer with buying a "muscle-car from the 70's". Consoles are much worse. I used old computers for all my life. This one not such a luxury, it is just enough so I can play L.A. Noire. So stop trying to find excuses to attack me. You don't really care about the problem I pointed out back there. It simply bothers you because you don't want to admit you were wrong.

I recently updated my computer to be able to play some recent games I always wanted to play, and never could.

Wow. But what about all those slave kids in the mines, man, digging the copper for that machine!
With their tiny tiny hands!

I love you Ghost!

You have to admit it, Janos: you were just asking for it. It sounds like all you did on those topics was to defend therories that you clearly don't follow.

Absolutely not! I never advocated boycotting practices as the solution to anything. If you think that you have to stop consuming to be able to criticize something like that, the joke is on you! No amount of boycott could ever change society, because boycott is a consumer right, very different from a political change. See Why personal change does not equal political change

I recently updated my computer to be able to play some recent games I always wanted to play, and never could.

Wow. But what about all those slave kids in the mines, man, digging the copper for that machine!
With their tiny tiny hands!

You are making fun of something very serious.

"In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed" - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I recently updated my computer to be able to play some recent games I always wanted to play, and never could. I think the question here is why we need to update faster and faster. It is not just because things get better faster and faster, but because corporations need to sell parts faster and faster to get more and more profit. We are now concentrated in throwing things away to make room for new things, because stopping doing that could lead to an economic disaster.

dactylopus, miguel and Babar,

About gaming, I understand what all of you are saying. I agree with you: there is a market for almost any game, I want more and more games too, times are changing and the game industry works with ups and downs just like any other capitalist industry. If there is nothing wrong with the capitalist world view, then there is nothing to worry about. But don't you have the slightest doubt about it? Never? You seem to be so certain. I envy your conviction.

To be honest, I have more than doubts, but I don't want to discuss this here. So all I will say is: I seriously doubt it.

About civilization, no stress at all. I've seen this argument many times. Again,  all I can say is that I agree: You can surely look at it as a pendulum. But is civilization really as simple as a pendulum? Or it is like trying to mess with a very complex system without the proper knowledge, in which the tendency is that the more you interfere and try to "correct", more problems are created? We can create a lot of metaphors, but what really counts are the facts. And we don't have them.

Civilization doesn't need to be fundamentally against nature to be fundamentally unbalanced. Many things in nature can become unbalanced. Things will eventually come back to balance, usually after being destroyed. The problem is not the destruction of nature as a whole, I know this is impossible. The problem is that we can destroy our balanced relation with other living things, and then be excluded from the community of life. Again, if capitalist environmentalism is right, no problem! But I seriously doubt, and admit this is not the right place to discuss my viewpoint.

Congratulations!

Babar,

Here's a perspective: Civilization creates the problems and then sells the solutions. That means the “trend” in civilization always was to solve its own problems and then create more problems so it can keep on solving them. That's because civilization, contrary to the traditional ways of living, can't really have a balanced relation with nature (including human nature). It depends on growing complexity and instability, on things changing faster and faster. We take this as something very good and other ways of life as simply “stagnant” and very bad. And that is pretty much why civilization is fundamentally unsustainable. Everything that exists needs balance. We are fundamentally against balance, and that's what we call a “wrong” thing in civilization. But it is not morally wrong; it simply goes against the laws of nature. It simply can't go on without destroying everything else. It needs to stop eventually. I hope that helps clarifying the idea (no, it's not about money). Like in the game, civilization mistakes progress and evolution.

What is the cost of solving problems one by one? Slavery, for example, is not just an ethical problem, it is an economical problem. Civilization can only substitute slaves for a more or equally productive alternative: Industrialization, for example. But industrialization polluted the world and created poverty. Okay, let's go ecological them, and this time, unlike every other times we tried to fix the problems one by one, we will not inadvertently create more problems. Because THIS time it will be different. That's what I'm asked to believe. That's where I get a little skeptical.

What is wrong with technology, according to John Zerzan, is that it can alienate us from the natural world. A good example is portrayed in the Wall-E movie. But I won't get deep into this because it can cause too much stress.

--

About gaming, maybe we can make an analogy, because gaming is growing very fast, but this growth can't go on forever, right? We know it's going to end, because nothing lasts forever. But how can we separate doom-saying from a reasonable prediction? We need something better than opinions. We need knowledge.

I need to explain what I mean by “too many games”. I mean there is a “vulgarization” in games. When you make art, you want to make sure no one else made the same thing you are making. You don't want to simply repeat what was made in the past or what someone else makes, even if it is very good. You want to add something new to the world, not simply another product to be sold. I never said there was something intrinsic wrong in video games. I'm not saying the game industry is simply “wrong”. As far as capitalism goes, it is doing fine. But as any other capitalist industry, it needs to grow, and I think its growth is very close to the limit, and it will need to change or face the consequences. The game industry is now a relevant economic force. It means people need to keep making and buying games, or else we may have economic problems. This can trample the art, because art can't be done with schedules and risk management.

Think about the time before video games. We needed a new game being released every day? Why do we need so many games? Why do we need the game industry to be so big? Why do we need to spend so much money on games? Why do we need to spend so much time playing them? I don't think we are taking these questions seriously, that's all.

tzachs,

I agree with everything you said. Capitalism can be blamed for all that. But before capitalism, things were not that different. Utopias like that date from Ancient Greece. Aristotle said something like that about 2400 years ago. He said that slavery/exploitation could be abolished if machines could do most of the physical work, letting all people free to do the intellectual work.

This idea was kept away during the Middle Ages, partially because of the Fall of Man dogma. This dogma implied that human nature is inherently flawed and corrupted, and there is nothing we can do change that. Based on that belief, the best to do is just to keep things the way they are: the selected few rule and the rest obeys. That's how God wanted the world to be.

But that began to change for various reasons (the Reform, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment), people began to read the classics (including Aristotle) and to welcome the scientific world view instead. In the nineteenth century, when people began to worry about the consequences of industrialization, many utopias were thought. One of them is the communist utopia.

At the heart of the communist utopia was the idea that people could cooperate and share everything equally, if they really want to. As you say, theoretically, this could work. In reaction to that idea, two guys that liked to discuss philosophy and economy began to write criticisms. Marx and Engels said there was a fundamental mistake in the communist utopia, and proposed instead a communist scientific theory, that explained, in economical terms, why capitalism would be dialectically surpassed by another kind of society, and why the "will" of the people wouldn't be enough to do that. To do that, we would need political struggle and a global revolution. Any other proposal should be opposed as a reactionary ideological strategy.

Now, let me share a curiosity. There was another movement at the time, which is called anarchism. I've studied many anarchist theorists, like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon and Goldman. And, while reading some of the answers in this topic, I get the weirdest impression that most of the people here would agree with the general view of anarchism. Maybe that's because capitalism is moving towards the direction of anarcho-capitalism, maybe it's for another reason. Allow me to demonstrate that by quoting some anarchist thoughts:

“the private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear”

“all requisites for production must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the producers of wealth”

“the political organization of society is a condition of things where the functions of government are reduced to a minimum, and the individual recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfying, by means of free groups and federations--freely constituted--all the infinitely varied needs of the human being.”

"For the first time in the history of civilization, mankind has reached a point where the means of satisfying its needs are in excess of the needs themselves. To impose therefore, as has hitherto been done, the curse of misery and degradation upon vast divisions of mankind, in order to secure well being and further mental development for the few is needed no more"

"All progress has been essentially increased freedoms of the individual with a corresponding decrease in authority imposed on it by external forces. This remains true in the realm of physical existence as well as the political and economic"

In other words: People have the natural capacity to govern themselves. Modern science is a tool to rebalance the scales and give power to the people.

EDIT: I forgot to state my point: What you are proposing may not be the end of capitalism, but the evolution of capitalism. Capitalism is just the last manifestation of civilization. Communism is another one, supposedly superior to capitalism. Even anarchists believe that anarchy is the evolutionary trend of civilization. None of them ever thought that civilization might be a problem. Instead, everyone thinks it's just a matter of trying harder and reducing the unexpected bad effects of progress. And all I asking is this: Is it? Really? Are we supposed to just keep trying those "theoretically possible" solutions for civilization until when? Forever? Why? Is there no other option at all? This is what amazes me.

Ghost,

Well, I'm not used to discuss in English, I have asperger syndrome, and this subject is very complicated. This all explains why we are having difficulties to understand each other. Not only language issues, but also cultural and contextual ones.

I'm having a hard time understating your disagreement. I tried to correct the way you summed up my view. What do you think of it now?

I also said why I don't think "it's all made-up". Some things are and other are not. I don't think civilization is what makes us human. I don't think civilization is the same as culture. The problem is not that it is not perfect. Nothing is perfect. I'm not saying the small things are irrelevant. They are irrelevant relative to the "ship's course", understand? I'm not taking away the value of smaller goals. But those values are relative. You can't focus on the forest and trees at the same time. I believe you are insisting in thinking from inside civilization, while I'm trying to tell something that requires you to think from the outside. I mean, you are thinking of civilization as the context (or the background), while I'm thinking of it as the object (or the figure). Get it?

I believe small changes lead to large changes, but I think there are some necessary large changes that no amount of small changes can lead up to. Some global problems can only be fixed globally, not locally. Trying to fix them locally will only change the problem, not solve it.

Again, small changes aren't worthless, they are all we have for now, but yet, they may not be enough to change the "ship's course", no matter how important they are for a number of individuals. This may be depressing, but what can I say? It's the only realistic thing I can say.


Babar,

I'm introducing the notion of "civilization critique", because someone asked me too. According to that line of thought, we are very good at criticizing everything within civilization, but we rarely think twice about civilization itself. We take it for granted, as they say. So, one thing that we may question in civilization is the dependency on slavery, expansion, exploration and technology. Now, the bit about gaming was originally in my response to sunny penguin, but the two subjects are separated, not really mixed. Making people feel bad for consuming games was not my intention. But I'm really worried about the gaming industry, and I'm not alone in this. There is a pretty cool channel on Youtube that discuss this and other issues about gaming. I really recommend it.

I was using myself as an example for the idea of doing your best.

Hum, okay, thanks! But what viewpoint you're disagreeing with? I didn't understood that.