“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law

In 1968, Clarke and Stanley Kubrick finally finished 2001: A Space Odyssey – the book, and the film. It would change the way the world looked at evolution and ethics; artificial- and extra-terrestrial life. Religion and genesis.

But those are meaty topics that I couldn’t hope to cover in a simple blog entry. Instead, I want to talk about all of them combined, magic. Events that leave you so mystified, so jaw-droppingly nonplussed that you can only call out in disbelief that’s impossible! Perhaps you mumble it incredulously, wiping away an emotional tear, your raw nerves leaving you overwhelmed. It’s the same thing, though, magic: the impossible, in the blink of an eye, becoming possible.

When magic occurs, it’s like the world has been re-written. You have one moment in time, the past, where it seems impossible. Snap. You’re in the future, impossibility split asunder and replaced with a new reality. Magic occurred before your very eyes. The world changed around you. The flat line blips and shows a pulse. The Great Wall of China disappears. Poof.

And that’s all magic is, whether it’s performed by Harry Potter or Gandalf, a heroic doctor or David Copperfield. Now, the fun bit, and the tie-in to religious ‘miracles’ — magic is based on what we, by consensus agreement, deems impossible. We agree that it’s impossible for a man to disappear. We agree that, really, you shouldn’t be able to step through a plate glass window.

Once upon a time we agreed that being chained and helplessly dumped, submerged in a tank of water spelled certain death. And then Harry Houdini did it, and it wasn’t quite so magical any more; it’s only magic once, afterward it simply becomes a talking point, a fantastic improbability. The magician moves us from an impossible past, to a future full of possibilities where his ‘magic’ continues to occur around us, unabated. The cat’s out of the bag. Pandora’s can of worms hasn’t just been opened — it lies broken upon the floor, exposed, the world looking on in wonder — so that’s how it’s done! – our decision of what constitutes reality is rewritten in that moment. Magic becomes mundane.

It’s by this logic, sadly, that you disprove the existence of magic. The last 200 years have more than adequately proven that declaring something ‘impossible’ is stupid and counterintuitive. It’s not impossible, someone just hasn’t done it yet! It’s not a miracle, it’s just utilising mechanics that you didn’t know existed. Perhaps someone close to Jesus invented the sterile bandage and handed one to Our Lord — ‘Here, try this, mate’ — maybe he didn’t actually cure people with the power of God.

That’s what Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law is all about. Technology — a sterile bandage — is magic. Magic changes history, redefining our universal axioms, redeclaring what can and can’t be done. The impossible, as the cliche goes, becomes possible. Stone Henge, the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower — pure impossibilities, paper-only pipe dreams, fabrications only extant in the minds of great thinkers until someone actually devised a way to make them. Technology allows engineers to transport ideas from the realm of fantasy to reality. Imagine bringing a Roman forward through time to modern-day and showing him a computer. Magus he would say. Magic.

It is for this reason that inventors and scientists belong in a higher echelon. Without them, we’d still be in sitting in a cave, lamenting the taste of raw meat.

Would you rather be an artist or engineer?

This is a question I often ask myself on trains and planes or as I lay in the still solitude of my bed. Do I want to create art so beautiful, so inspirational that people actually enjoy life a little bit more? Do I want to develop infrastructure and technology that provides clean drinking water for the billions without?

In this crafted and cultured world, this world without boundaries that we have persisted in creating and destroying over ten long, illustrious millennia, which is more important: art or engineering?

Which was more instrumental: myth and wisdom — or creating fire?

The Bible — or the Roman Empire?

Michaelangelo’s David – or Kodak’s film camera?

Band Aid’s Feed The World — or a network of satellites that enable global communication?

Lennon’s Imagine – or Apple’s iTunes?

Art or engineering?

Do I want to be the person that enables and improves the lives of millions through advancing technology? Should I be the one that converts magic, wished-for technologies into the accessibly mundane?

Or should I be the culmination, the end point, the person that uses contemporary technologies to create art? Art that resonates within and amplifies emotions; art that triggers further explosions of creativity until we have a more beautiful world.

I keep trying to be both an artist and an engineer but I fear that it’s time to choose just one.

Michelangelo or Edison.

Einstein or Plato.

I’ve covered the sorry state of knowledge and inherent lack of truth that plagues contemporary society.

But it didn’t start yesterday or even 100 years ago! It’s an eternally recurring theme of dumbing-down and almost-truths dispensed by nasty people posing as intellectual authorities over thousands of years. There is an endemic ‘loss of wisdom’ that has an iteratively degenerative effect, gaining more momentum with each generation.

Historically these lies, these tales, were of a philosophical or mythical nature and virtually harmless. They were stories that became true through retelling: Hercules, Romulus, Arthur. The stories were told first by the travelling bard, then more abstractly through tribalism and shamanism. Polytheism followed with its anthropomorphic (god of wine, god of war) pantheon of valiant heroes and demigods. Finally monotheism trumped them all and wrapped up with its epic, fearsomely vengeful tale of apocalyptic events.

Old wives’ tales (or fables or myths or whatever!) might’ve been lies or half-truths but they didn’t really harm anyone; they might have been ‘not ideal’, but that’s not the point — they were moving towards the ideal — they were retold to children with good intentions! The same could be said for the basic spiritual maxims of most religions: everlasting life; don’t murder; try your best not to sodomise your brother’s wife; treat others how you would like to be treated. All good but… it sadly didn’t last. Something changed. All of a sudden enforcement entered the equation. Arbitrary enforcement: rules, laws and peer pressure with little or no basis in moral/cultural advancement or ethical living. If abstract/intellectual enforcement wasn’t enough, there was a strong physical aspect too: witch-hunts, the Inquisition and the Crusades are but a few obvious examples.

Why did it happen? For thousands of years our focus had been on becoming a more advanced race. But one day, probably after the fall of Rome, we woke up and well… we fell asleep again. Life was no longer about pushing the progress of civilisation. Perhaps it was our growing understanding of human anatomy and psychology that caused the change. Maybe it was due to the formation of metropolises like Rome and the urgent need to control large groups of people quickly and easily. Personally I think the continued development of written and spoken language — and rhetoric — played a big role. Whatever it was, something snapped. No longer was storytelling used to share wisdom or morals to improve our progeny’s standard of living. Gone were the tales that frightened children away from actual dangers like dank caves or poisonous fruits.

A new breed of story started to appear, tales that weaved lies and believable half-truths into their narrative. And we know that words, both written and spoken, have a terrible power. Instead of cresting taller peaks and pushing towards new horizons people started to fear their surroundings. Authorities of knowledge slowly faded away to be replaced by scary chieftains, oppressive teachers, greedy priests and, of course, a vengeful God.

I’ve written about magic before and how it is ultimately synonymous with technology. Television was magic (find an old person that was around when television was invented and talk to them about it!) but sure enough, it very quickly became mundane. What do you think would’ve happened to the inventor of the television if he had been around in the Middle Ages? What do you think ‘witchcraft’ actually was? With such an attitude towards innovation and revolution (or evolution, hah!), is it a surprise that books, education and intellectual enlightenment all but disappeared for 1,000 years?

For a very, very long time the pursuit of knowledge and truth — science! — was frowned upon, persecuted. Scientists were shunned or burnt at the stake. Why?

Because they were dangerous. Knowledge is power.

We humans learnt just enough for the monotheistic surge to take place. We learnt how to exploit the human love of mystery with smart wit and sharp turns of dogmatic phrase. We have become a scared and tentative flock too fearful to break from the pack. In essence we learnt just enough to be dominated and no more.

And now we await — or do we create? –  the next Renaissance where veracity of knowledge is returned to us.

***

Still more to come, I think; on prejudice and ignorance. Oh, and if you’re reading this on the blog itself, remember you can double click a word to find out what it means!

Recently I was contacted by a very nice Canadian chap called Lee. He writes for a big Internet blog and news source — the kind of site that has a million unique visitors a month — and he asked me if I’d like to write for them! Apparently, I’m a bit snarky. Apparently that’s what they want; someone that tells it like it is. Someone that isn’t afraid to step on a few toes.

And that’s cool. I can do that. Artists will do anything for a cheap buck.

But I can’t believe he actually called me SNARKY! Of all the things he could’ve called me! Intelligent, wise, bright, charming, charismatic… even tall or hairy would’ve been fine. But snarky? Who the fuck does he think he is? I wouldn’t mind if he was American — that would explain a few things — but a Canadian? A civilian pawn of the mighty, Earth-spanning British Empire? Really, some people ought to know their place.

Which brings me neatly onto the topic of the Internet class system. Or the sickening and complete lack thereof. Online, everyone is born equal. From the moment you plug that cable in and battle your way through Internet Explorer’s shit MSN homepage redirection, you are… A NETIZEN — an Internet citizen — a very grandiose term that basically means you belong to the Online Community. A small monthly fee, a modem and a computer — that’s all you need to become a fully paid-up member of the largest, most powerful and ubiquitous community in the world.

You can become a civilian of the modern society — the only real society that counts — where rules and etiquette are created and destroyed as technology and peer pressure dictates. This often happens so quickly that no one really knows what’s going on: The Internet is in disarray! Anyone and everyone rules the roost, or their small part of it. The Internet is an anarchic system of authority. And therein lies the problem: there is no social structure.

Historically the citizens of a country are those that are born there. Changing your nationality was something that very few people did; you only emigrated or sought asylum during the most dire of situations. Why? Because there was a class or caste system in place; a pecking order. Jobs would be given to specific families first. If you were born into a family of cleaners or chimney sweeps, you really didn’t have much of a career choice. The rich died rich; the poor died poor. When you move country you drop down to the bottom — and trust me, there is always someone worse off than you — a thought petrifying enough to scare off all but the most desperate emigrants. In a world where class means everything, losing your class is not unlike dying. Social status, perks, opportunity — all gone.

But there’s one exception: a new country. You can move to a new country where everyone is equal, at least for a short time. A new, primordial society, amorphous and malleable. A new culture just waiting to be defined by creative and daring individuals. A New World. America.

Is it really a surprise that five hundred years later we’ve created the virtual equivalent of America?

The Internet is still at that stage where everyone is equal. The loud-shouting neophyte is as much a patron of the new world order as the venerable Internet veteran. Is that correct? Should we be born equal in this New Virtual World? After being on the Internet for 15 years should a jumped-up newbie with bold, brash ideas be able to tell me what to do? No! Should I defer, prostrate myself and shuffle nervously around those that have been online since the very dawn of our current epoch 40 years ago? As much as it pains my ego to say so: yes, yes I should.

In the hope of achieving a more sane and useful society, in true Virtual World style, I propose a level system. When you first connect to the Internet, you are level 1. Every year of continued use thereafter, you gain a level. It would need to be tracked by some kind of governing body — like the Censor’s Office in Roman times, or the peerage registers in the UK.

Each level would bestow rights, privileges. Perhaps you could mute lower levels in chat rooms or on forums. You would be eligible for more bandwidth when downloading illegal movies and music. Perhaps if the level difference is great enough you could even bestow ‘time outs’ on particularly irritating runts by cutting their Internet access for an hour.

You would be forced to use an Apple Mac until level 5.

Smileys would be banned until you reach level 10.

Streaming porn would remain unavailable until you reach level 15.

How about it, peons?

… it’s because I’m busy playing video games.

If, for some Godforsaken reason, you still don’t play video games, let me tell you something: Winter is gaming season. The summer blockbusters have been and gone. The warm, hazy friend-filled nights spent outdoors have dissipated with the first chills of September. Slowly but surely we retreat to our warm, cosy caves, fall to our sofas, plump our pillows and… turn on the TV! Autumn is when most big games and TV shows are released — no big surprise, considering that’s when the biggest, voluminous-backside-on-seat audience is available!

Now, historically this time of year wasn’t a problem — far from it! There used to only be 2 or 3 big games a year. I could stagger them and start one every few months. But now with the industry ballooning and game budgets growing to the size of feature films — because they are that profitable — there’s simply too many games. There used to be one big FPS a year, one or two RPGs, a sports simulator and… that would be it. There’d be other oddball games that could entertain you for a few hours, but nothing big. Some years you might not even play a single stand-out game!

That’s not the case nowadays though, and I suppose it never will be again. Just in September alone, I have the following games that I need to play through: Guitar Hero 5, Rockband: Beatles (well, I might give this one a miss…) AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (really a game), Murumasa and Batman: Arkham Asylum. That’s just on the PC and Xbox360. If I include the DS/Wii… well… you would probably never see me again. I’ve never been able to pull myself away from the Cake Mania series of games…

October’s even worse, but I won’t bore you with the specifics. All I’m trying to say is: if you’re the kind of person that keeps track of at least five TV shows a week (or four, if you’re a True Blood fan and you’ve just watched the finale — please don’t spam me with comments on how you want to have Cullen’s babies. Wait, that’s Twilight! Ahh, I can’t keep up…) — anyway… if you watch a lot of TV, perhaps you will now understand why it will almost feel like hard work being a games player this Autumn. Think about it: an average, big-budget game takes between 20 and 60 hours to finish. That’s the same length as a standard 24-part drama season on the short end, and three seasons on the long! And I have to play three games a month if I want to keep up with all of the releases this Autumn/Winter! That’s a minimum of 60 hours a month, or as much as 180 — or 8 solid days of gaming…

But the best thing? The caveat and saving grace? It doens’t even make me a nerd any more! Video games are now part of popular culture. They are as much a consumable commodity as movie DVDs or TV box sets. In fact, I laugh derisively at those people with LoveFilm or NetFlix subscriptions! HAH!

The point of this entry was actually to warn you that you may get an awful lot of games-related blog entries over the next few weeks and months. But that’s healthy. I’ve been ignoring the gamer side of me for much too long. And there are actually a lot of gamers that read this blog: so these months are for you, gentlemen (and lady).

* * *

Incidentally, if you’re not a gamer, but you are interested in playing them, you should read my guide: A Beginner’s Guide to Gaming. It will walk you through from the very beginning (it doesn’t tell you how to hook up a console to your TV, but everything else!) Think of gaming as ‘interactive TV’, or ‘entertainment for the intellectual’, where you give a little of yourself to make it a much more interesting (and sometimes fulfilling!) experience.

There is a reason it’s the only growing segment of the media industry.

I seem to get my teeth stuck into particular subject matters and, like a big, deep-growling mastiff, try to tear it to pieces. Hopefully it’s not like an annoying and yappy terrier. Again, this is on the topic of immersion — does the lack of immersion in real life cause us to be lonely?

First some questions: Why, given an unprecedented number of ways to communicate and bond and share experiences (Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, forums…), do we remain resolutely bereft of companionship? Are we only ‘relatively’ lonely? Is ‘lonely’ a phrase that oldies throw around so much that the younger generations start echoing its sentiment, and eventually feeling it? ‘We don’t see each other face-to-face any more… using the telephone/MSN/Skype just isn’t the same…’

It isn’t the same — but because it’s different does that make it worse?

Are we only ‘lonely’ because we are told, as we guiltily hunch over our computer screens, we should feel so? Because we are told we must surround ourselves with friends and loved ones lest we don’t make it through the cold, hard winter nights? Is being a ‘loner’ bad, or just a wild break from the cultural norm?

Is spending most of our day behind a screen really a problem?

Some answers: It’s not that we meet relatively few people online — quite the opposite — but people seem to think that the bonds we make online are somehow less substantial because they stem from virtual places and virtual obligations. When I help someone find the right monster to kill in World of Warcraft, is it not the same as counseling a friend’s real-life woes in a real-life bar, ala Cheers? Can you be friends with someone you’ve never met face-to-face? If you tell a friend that you will be somewhere at a certain time, you’ll try your best to be there! If I arrange to log onto MSN and chat with a virtual friend, and then fail to show up, does that make me a bad person?

Right now, some (most?) of you are thinking: ‘no, real life overrules MSN’ — and I’m thinking that my friend on MSN is just as important as anything that might come up in real life. They’re virtual, I know. They are not substantiated or grounded in reality. There is no real-world repercussions if you fail to turn up. But they are still real people. It’s almost the epitome of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. We [don't want to]/[can't] be friends with someone we’re unable to touch or feel; it seemingly takes a super-human effort to feel for someone you may never meet.

And that’s fine. Virtual, just-add-water apply-where-necessary friends have their purpose. But… this situation isn’t going to get any better. More and more of our interactions will be virtual. True, some of us do take our online relationships into real life; heck, online dating accounts for a huge portion of Internet usage! But what I’m talking about here is more endemic — it’s laziness. It’s being satisfied with vague, tenuous, barely-scratching-the-surface friendships — if they can even be called that. It’s the Fight Club idea of ’single serving’ friendships taken to the next level: instead of making them on planes and trains, we make them while buzzing and zipping around the Internet and various social portals.

For some reason we are satisfied with ‘friendship lite’; instant gratification, none of the mess!!!

It’s a hollow feeling of satiation. Fed with juicy friendliness for just long enough — no more, no less.

Does being able to avoid the long-term difficulties of relationships (friendship) really have such an irresistible allure? By keeping everyone at a safe distance we can successfully deal with arguments or heartbreaks — because there’s no one to conflict with. These virtually-non-existent friendships enable us to focus on what we want to do. How selfish. We use the computer screen to screen real life, letting only choice morsels that lay within our comfort zone through.

Maybe we’ve always wished we could control how close people got to us, but until now we lacked a way to hold people at bay. This could just be a manifestation of self-preservation. Or just the pinnacle, or trough, of our Instant Gratification Society.

The scary thing is that this ‘thousands of acquaintances, but few friends’ lifestyle is going unchecked, unabated. It’s actually acceptable to merely tap your acquaintances for information or job offers and go skipping off. When one of my acquaintances asks ‘how are you?’ I simply answer ‘what do you want?’ — I don’t even feel rude; I feel like I’m doing us both a favour by cutting out the small-talk.

If contemporary society continues along this path, where real, tangible interaction will be limited at best and non-existent at worst, we need to start treating our virtual friends just as we would real friends. I’m not saying we should try to meet everyone that we know online, but we should try to nurture friendships. We must move back towards the friends-of-friends model and away from utilising and abusing a sea of faceless acquaintances. We have to start caring. Ick…

Ultimately though, because if anything humans are predictable, we won’t change. Technology will work its magic and dig us out of yet another hole. Before we know it we’ll be lounging in Star Trekesque Holodecks with holographic, computer-controlled projections of whichever acquaintance we feel like spending time with. Or we’ll simply get a robot friend; or better yet, a pet dog or cat. They can’t talk back and are very obedient.

[Welcome to Thoughtful Tuesday! You know the format by now: I rant, I rave, I reveal thoughts that bounce around in my head that don't necessarily make sense yet, but may do with a little more thought... This week, a particularly meaty subject that pops up on the blog fairly regularly: Transhumanism.]

It’s a long word that sounds a lot more complex than it actually is but the most important part of its definition, as defined by the Transhumanism Declaration (2002), is thus:

Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We [Humanity+] foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet Earth.

I know. This is serious business! But let’s not get bogged down with long, complex words and ideology. Transhumanism is, basically, the next step in human evolution; in enlightenment.

For the longest time imaginable we’ve been limited by our body. We push its boundaries, we perform feats of extraordinary endurance and power, but at the end of the day it is limited. Eventually, something snaps: a bone breaks, we grow senile — and, sooner or later, we die.

Progress in the areas of humanism and enlightenment are all about prolonging (and improving!) our mental, physical and and spiritual well-being. Thus, that’s exactly what transhumanism is all about: we’ve reached our current, imposed-by-our-physical-body limits; now it’s time to let technology do its thing. It’s time to modify our bodies to take us to the next level!

Let me just throw out some possible modifications (upgrades!) that are covered by transhumanism:

• Biotechnological implants/replacements. Strength, speed, eyesight and endurance limits/thresholds raised way beyond current human bottlenecks.
• Modification of our genetic makeup. This is the one that’s currently under scrutiny from the media. This area deals with the modification of ourselves (or our progeny) to make us inherently more resistant or to damage/pathology. Immunity to disease, removal of short-sight — that kind of thing (though obviously ‘designer babies’ with blue eyes and perfect, beautiful appearance would be quite popular…)
• Prevent ageing (aging). Transhumanism covers the slowing of aging, or even prolonging life until we’re effectively immortal (Who wants to live forever?). Cryogenics also come into play here, though the real ‘philosopher’s stone’ is immortality, of course. This will probably take a biotechnological form — replacement organs, repairing cellular damage, etc.
• A lot more that hasn’t been invented yet…! As a general rule, most things that are speculated or appear in sci-fi novels later appear in real life. We can expect to see some really crazy technologies appear in the future. Artificial intelligence (think Terminator), proper virtual reality (think holodeck in Star Trek) and my favourite — mind-uploading, ala The Matrix: ‘I know kung fu…’

Obviously, along with such awesome abilities come a seriously large number of issues, most of which are of an ethical nature:

You can’t play God!

You’ll turn… into a Frankenstein!

Perhaps it is the existential issue that is most worrisome: When do we stop being human? It’s certainly not when we replace the heart or any of the limbs. It’s the brain, right…? Or is it? How do we know until we try? Do we really trust Bible-thumpers that, let’s face it, know absolutely nothing about cybernetics? That’s why we’re afraid: we have absolutely no idea what we’re getting into. But if history has shown us anything, is it ever beneficial to shy away from, instead of facing, the oncoming torrent of technological progress?

As with any technology there are good and bad uses — as to what defines good or bad, I won’t attempt to state — using transhumanist technology is a two-edged blade. You could enhance only yourself or the genetics of your progeny — a selfish act? — or, with the same technology, you could genetically modify those living in sub-Saharan Africa so that they could live without food.

It’s not guns that kill people…

The thing is, I could go into the ethical repercussions, and whether transhumanism should be allowed or not… but… really, it’s inconsequential. We’re going to do it anyway. Of course there will be devout naysayers — sociologists, psychologists, humanitarians, Christians — (the whole gamut!) — but there always is. The truth — the technology – will out. You can’t stop everyone from kite-flying in thunderstorms.

There is something about technology. It’s all there, just waiting to be discovered. As I’ve already covered, we really like turning over stones. We really like uncovering mysteries. This is the biggest of them by far. What makes us human?

This is going to happen in the next decade, by the way. If you have moral, ethical or philosophical disagreements, you probably want to settle them now, before upgrades for your bionic eyes and ears start appearing in the supermarket.

Discussing ethics is a little fruitless, at least if you like reaching conclusions. Generally they are rules that govern a particular area or school of thought: medical ethics, political ethics, social ethics — in any given setting, there are ways in which you ’should’ act or behave or even think.

Fortunately, due to us pesky humans being at the top of the food chain, it’s been fairly easy to decide what is and isn’t ethical: that which helps mankind is good; that which harms mankind is bad.

But… how would you about creating a system of ethics for that which isn’t human?

If you can save a human or a cat from falling into a chasm, you save your fellow man.

What if the cat has to decide whether he saves you or another cat?

* * *

The ‘classic’ Robot Ethics example is this:

If a robot murders, who is accountable?

Robots can not yet program themselves; so must the designer be sent to jail?

Robots can not yet build themselves; so must the engineer be sent to jail?

Or… can we actually blame the robot? What good is justice, jail or the death penalty if the robot does not feel? If a robot is a senseless, emotionless killing machine, will justice have been served by just unplugging the robot?

* * *

Now the really sticky bit: what if we (somehow) create robots in good conscience, robots that never murder, never steal — robots that always act ‘ethically’. What if, as they would surely follow in the footsteps of their human creators, they learn to program themselves? What if robots can build themselves?

This is all a very old train of thought but it ties in with the question I asked yesterday: ‘What makes us human?‘ — at what stage do these robots become sentient, self-aware? Better yet: if you unplug a sentient robot, do they cease being self-aware? If there’s a soul, what happens?

In the original falling-into-a-chasm example, you don’t hesitate to choose the human as more important than a cat. What if a robot has to choose between saving one of us, or another robot? What’s the ethical choice from the robot’s point of view?

<Mind explodes>

* * *

Back to humans and humanity. What happens when we finally play around with cybernetic brain implants? Does this become a religious or spiritual issue? If having a soul is what separates us from the rest of the food chain, surely we must somehow look after this tenuous physical/spiritual link; would modifying our brain with artificial technology alter or sever that link; would it make us soulless?

At what stage do we, by definition, become robots?

Looking into Pandora’s box I can see another nastier, gloopier issue: what if we’re already soulless? What if there’s really nothing to differentiate us from our finely-engineered robotic brethren? Would that just make us our android overlord’s herd of cattle?

This is a continuation from a series of entries I wrote chronicling my childhood and teenage years. For some reason I got sidetracked — I wrote about ‘that tale from my teenage years‘, and before I knew it I was writing about my crazy relationships and sexual encounters.

And then I got talking about The American. I often write as if I’m not affected by what unfolds — chilled, objective — but the truth is… I am. I am effected. I’m not soulless. I’m not frigid or cold. I just don’t often let my feelings bubble to the surface. I don’t linger or fester. But yes, you might look at these broken relationships of mine, these squandered chances, and wonder: ‘How come he sounds so remote, so unbothered?’ – well, the real truth is: I am bothered. I am right there, reliving the memory as it flows through my synapses to my fingertips. Unfortunately — or fortunately — I have an incredibly vivid imagination. I can recall almost any instance in time and be there – and when I write, I’m tapping into those memories. I frown and smile and sigh and cry as I write. You just don’t get to see it… (Should I apologise here? Maybe?)

As to why it all comes out ‘a little distant and removed’, I have no idea. It seems I’m objective and sensible to a fault. Perhaps I’m just too damn rational, if that’s possible.

Anyway, when I was younger, from 10 through 17, I was a lot less rational. I was shy, reticent. I could be made jealous very easily. I had little to no self-confidence. All I really had were my dreams. And computers.

I know it sounds dramatic, but it’s true. I had two immutable things that no one could take away from me: dreams and computers.

I think you probably already know quite a lot about my love affair for computers… so dreams are what this entry’s about.

These are the roles I dreamed and the fantasy lands I drifted to when I was being teased, pushed around, bullied.

Things I’ve Wanted To Be, Since The Age of Three

What do you want to be when you grow up, Seb?

I’ve never wanted to be an astronaut, believe it or not. In fact, my mother and I can only recall three things that I’ve ever wanted to be:

• A driver. I’ve always loved cars, vehicles, speed, acceleration. I don’t know if this comes from some innate love of engineering, maybe. At the age of 24 months I famously located the keys to my school’s bus, got into the bus, and started the engine. For a long time I wanted to be a Quad bike driver, off-road style. Later, after I was allowed behind the wheel of my dad’s Porsche, I wanted to be a racing or rally driver. I have some fun stories to tell about me and cars; I’ll try to tell them soon. I’d still like to be a rally driver.
• A lawyer. I’m pretty sure my mother came up with this one, rather than me showing an actual interest in litigation. ‘You’re great at arguing’ she would say. ‘You enjoy arguing a lot, don’t you dear?’ — and she wasn’t wrong. I love arguing. I love proving a point. I banter for the sake of bantering — though that’s not something you are likely to see unless you are a very close friend, or family member. I can be very intense when arguing something. But I don’t think I ever really wanted to be a layer. I’d probably be a very good one, but there’s no… urge there, for whatever reason.
• A military engineer and/or spy. Structural engineer that is. I’m not sure where this one came from, but from about the age of 16 through 20 I wanted to work for ‘king and country’ (or queen, as the case may be.) I wanted to build bridges over rivers in war zones. I wanted to be a ‘sapper‘. I think my dad’s dad was a sapper, but I never knew him, he died when my dad was young, before I was born. Later, when my attention turned more towards technology, I wanted to be a spy. Not quite like James Bond, but perhaps some social engineering involved… and a few hot Russian girls. Counter-intelligence, hacking, propaganda — behind-the-scenes stuff! I’d still like to be a spy. But not as much as I’d like to design video games…

Which brings me up to almost-present time! After school I went to college and studied photography, purely as an artistic outlet. At university I studied Computer Games (and computer networks — and if you’ve read my ‘About’ page, you’ll know that I now want to make video games).

After I graduated university I knew only two things: 1) I didn’t want to work in an office from 9 to 5 — and 2) I want to travel the world and see what the rest of Earth (and the universe?) has to teach me. I learnt more about life in four years at college and university than in the 16 years beforehand. In the last few years, as I’ve travelled from continent to continent, country to country, city to city — and across the Rubicon! — I’ve learnt a lot more than university could ever hope to teach me.

I’ve discovered that it’s very hard to have a purpose when you’re always discovering new things that you can be. How can I stop and design video games when there might be something even cooler just waiting to be discovered? (This bit ties into my ‘What makes me tick?‘ entry.)

I honestly can’t fathom why anyone would cease moving, set up shop and extend their tendril roots. Why work in an office from nine through five for 45 years. Why.

What do you want to be when you grow up, Seb?

I don’t know, mum. I might never find out. But the journey is the best bit, right?

The stagnancy of human culture and later, the formation of civilization, is staggering.

Think about it for a moment; think about just how far we’ve come since the dawn of art and culture 10,000 years ago. Or how far we’ve not come, as the case actually is. Sure, we have technology. Sure, we have philosophy. But are we actually any different? Is it the way we do something that defines us? The way we ‘think’ about something? Or is it deeper than that? Let’s go back to the beginning and have a look.

There is — and was — a split between the east and west. The split goes far beyond skin colour or hair type, but it is the very same environmental differences that caused the West/East genetic and cultural schism.

In the West, we hit things. We hit things so that we may survive a little longer but at the expense of others — other humans, other animals. We spend our entire life killing.

In the East, we cogitate. We cogitate until the tides of cosmos take us from the land of the living. We spend our entire life thinking.

And then occasionally, but on a fairly regular timer, as if it’s running to some kind of universal schedule, religion pops up.

The funny thing is, despite any misgivings you might have, religion is actually the injection of aesthetics. It’s as if killing or thinking can only take you so far down the track of social and cultural development — and ultimately modernity of civilization. Killing puts food on the table; you subside, day after day, year after year until you die — but at least you survive. It’s the same with the Eastern sitting-and-thinking: pondering stuff certainly doesn’t put food on the table, that’s for sure, but perhaps through sifting and thinking and thought permutation you come up with ways for future generations to put food on the table.

The West are in the now and the East are in the future and the past. But neither of them move — not by themselves, anyway. There’s no impetus. No driving force.

Then, after a long period of subsistence, something snaps and faith enters stage right: the Western gods of War and Famine and Wine; the Eastern gods of Creation, Knowledge and Maintenance. The singular, unified, vengeful God didn’t come into existence until much later, after plenty of intermingling and amalgamation of West and East — unsurprisingly, through the body of land we call the Middle East, though it is actually… the middle. Middle West-East doesn’t quite spill from the tongue so easy, eh.

Even with religion, we don’t stop with the killing or thinking though. Religion doesn’t stop us from our age-old rites and customs. It just gives us something to attribute our acts to. This is where the phrase ‘practising’ enters the equation. Are we killing an animal for food, or are we practising our religion and sacrificing an animal for Zeus? Are we raping and pillaging for gold and glory, or are we you cleansing the world of disbelievers for God?

Ultimately, we are still killing. We are still thinking.

We continue to seek solace and recompense and meaning for our actions in religion.

We are not moving. Just grinding our gears.

What we are today is the build-up of thousands of years of repetition, contagion, custom: mother to daughter, father to son. Our cultures might now change, given that the geographical division between West and East has been blown to pieces by technology. But it will take time, an awful lot of time. For now, we in the West are stuck with our incessant need to kill, to win.