Feeds:Tuesday, Seventh Week
"Only authentic German Made Pyramids Make family memories last forever" -MyGermanPyramids.Com
Google is great, if you don't mind your mail being read. Sam pH sends out an e-mail about Egyptian slaves, I get ads about "Collectible Pyramids" (a note: apparantly, the ancient Germans also built pyramids: tiny, wooden, flame-powered ones). So.
So I was in the shower just now, thinking about two things. Leah will occaisonally (by which I mean "on occaision", by which I mean "on certain occaisions") ask me, "Why?" To which, on the occaisions I refer to, the answer is "[Because] I love you." This answer, as it happens, does not seem to satisfy her. In the shower just now, I (possibly) realised (part of) why this is so. It is like saying, "My hair is blond because my father's hair was blond." Now, most modern people will understand this as an acceptable cause and effect, but it is not, most of them probably also realise somewhere, not actually true. I have blond hair, and my father had blond hair, because of certain sequences of genes that we both have. Saying, "Because I love you," is somewhat like that. The same cause generating the love is what I believe to be genrating the course of action under scrutiny, but the way I am used to express this is by focusing on that love instead of the somewhat more inscrutable motives below.
Observation the first: My hair is also blond because I don't dye it. It is not unreasonable (though perhaps also not useful) to extend the analogy to say that some of these actions in question also occur through a direct lack of intervention on my part. I should justify this by noting that I like my hair blond. You may draw the appropriate parallels yourself.
Observation the second: There also exist actions for which such love is a direct cause. These should not be discounted.
The other thoughts were not concluded by the time I was towelling of and shaving (yes, shaving, I am now chopless for a whole day, and patchless for several), and so I may get into some stream-of-consciousness-ness, but something -certainly not the dozen people telling me, in a tone of voice suggesting they believe it may have missed my attention, that I haven't updated for a while*- tells me that shouldn't be a problem. Not like those llamas were. Oh, man. Llamas. Anyway, thoughts: I was involved in a discussion the other day that touched on whether Happiness is the ultimate motivation or not. This was not he focus of the discussion, but came up briefly when someone, who had been assuming that A, it is; and B, it should be; realised that not everyone shared these assumptions. She seemed amased by this in a way that strongly suggested this was something she had never thought deeply about. Being the kind of person not to be satisfied with such a state of affairs, I must presume she thought about it; indeed, last night, in another conversation, I believe she mentioned something further about it demonstrating that, while she certainly had not yet formed a solid opinion, she was thinking about it. Now, I'm no big fan of the idea that Happiness is the ultimate motivation, and especially not of the idea that it should be, but I have to concede that it seems likely that it is. 'Should be' I am still thoroughly wary of. But this got me thinking, as I have been occaisinally -and with, typically, good results- in terms of The Sims. Now, The Sims is a game where the goal is the happiness of the characters, accomplished by meeting their needs and delivering them from evil. Or, if one prefers, saving them from times of trial. In any case, this is largely different than, say, Oblivion or Command & Conquer.
Now, the first possible alternative to the pursuit of happiness (See? I'm not the only one who thinks it makes sense. Then again, they probably read Aristotle, too) as an ultimate motivator to occur to me is the puruit of righteousness. Perhaps honor, virtue, or valour would be better words. But by now, I hope one knows what I mean; the amorphous concept hovering about these words, all that. I would argue, is my point, that these games are so motivated. The virtual happiness of the character is rarely a concern, and actions should be dictated, if one is to succeed, by sense of what is "right". In OBlivion, and other such games, it is saving the kingdom, or princess, or whatever. In C&C, it is victory for the faction you represent. The protagonist in Oblivion dares the gates of Hell, which the player endures, and hours of training, which the player, thankfully, gets to skip. These are not pleasant things, nor do they fundamentally play a role in making the player happier on a larger scale. Similarly, but more blatently, do the infantry units in C&C really want to make all those suicide charges? Doubtful. But they do it because it helps destroy the GED base.
Both games being fun and immersive to play, I would't try to decide the question on their basis. Well, I mean, on top of the obvious reasons. I guess I've just been thinking about the question some more myself: Is it more valid to have internal or external motivations? They're not universally exclusive, but it comes up. Hmm. I still don't have an answer. But I am really, really hungry, and I want to eat and spend time with Leah before the Scav Meeting. And I've been sitting here typing in a towel for, like, an hour. So I'm gonna go.
Oh, yeah, and short people totally can't catch.
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