Bad Influence?
Mar. 14th, 2011 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cloudy_oneI've been playing a game (inFamous) where the main character can make Good or Evil decisions. It's pretty clear cut stuff: do you give this food to everyone to eat or do you thin the herd so there's more for you? Sharing = Good ...... Murder = Evil. I've been playing the game with the intent to be as good as I can be. The upside to being good is that people like you and you get a special selection of powers (though you get separate powers for being evil). Today when I played I started a new game where I would try to be evil (since the game theoretically plays out a little differently based on choices you make) because I didn't feel like getting frustrated over the difficulty of the point I had reached in my other file but still wanted to play the game. The system is pretty interesting in games, and I've played others where it was similar, but it makes me wonder something. Could it be a bad influence to portray morality to young people (though let's be honest, children play M rated games too) in such a two-face way?
The reason I think about it is because that's been a problem of mine. I have had an all or nothing mentality where if I make one mistake it takes away all of the progress I had made, and balked when me having a good day didn't make enough of a difference compared to the awful week I gave people earlier. Most of the time in my relationship with Sam (and family/ friends) I've noticed that black/ white...good/ evil isn't the way it works. There are things I've done that would seem obviously bad which have had good repercussions as well. There were things I thought were good that had some bad consequences which I didn't keep in mind. Saying and doing is what makes up a relationship and both have their place. Both are also governed by a rainbow (or grayscale) of differences and not just a 1 or a 10. In fact it seems to me like it's been far more harmful than anything to try and see the world in black and white.
Thinking about the game, if the main character (Cole) decides the horde the food for himself and his family, who's to say that isn't in fact the best decision? The whole city is scrambling to get to that food, how do we know that it's not mostly a bunch of ruthless folks who fought/ killed others just to get there in the first place? If there is a food shortage, we can't be sure that some people won't take more than their share if no one looks over the food. On a base level it's an obvious decision, but when we look further into it there are other factors. It's easy to accidentally make a bad decision while we're thinking about how awesome of a job we just did. I guess that's where the saying "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions," comes from.
Something that I've thought about for quite sometime now is also how difficult it is to look at something from multiple angles (probably also a programming nightmare, hence the simple dichotomy coding in the game). Sam has this chaos theorist side to her which comes out quite often. It's frightening to hear her vocalize every aspect of her thought process, especially when it comes to planning something. She's talked about having back up plans for her back up plans (I've heard others do the same) but describing it doesn't quite do justice for all the angles of an event she's looking at to make it happen. She thinks of things most folks would never dream could happen to put a damper on something. Of course those impossible moments have happened to our family and then we get bailed out by one of Sam's plans. It's crazy she could have figured so many aspects in. But she doesn't look at just the black and white. She doesn't look at "this is how the picnic should go" and "but let's do this if it rains." It's so much more than that. Having that trait is something I would like to work on more, even though it's hard to do because it requires so much conscious effort and attention. It's almost like writing a book, look at all the scenarios. Before you give that homeless man a dollar, think about it. Before you bad talk someone behind their back, think about it. And then think about it some more.
These aren't decisions that can be made in a split second like a do or don't decision, but sometimes they have to be. That's when it gets tricky, and that's something to practice toward. But maybe I'll start by doing that with more long-term plans (like trips or shopping next week).
The reason I think about it is because that's been a problem of mine. I have had an all or nothing mentality where if I make one mistake it takes away all of the progress I had made, and balked when me having a good day didn't make enough of a difference compared to the awful week I gave people earlier. Most of the time in my relationship with Sam (and family/ friends) I've noticed that black/ white...good/ evil isn't the way it works. There are things I've done that would seem obviously bad which have had good repercussions as well. There were things I thought were good that had some bad consequences which I didn't keep in mind. Saying and doing is what makes up a relationship and both have their place. Both are also governed by a rainbow (or grayscale) of differences and not just a 1 or a 10. In fact it seems to me like it's been far more harmful than anything to try and see the world in black and white.
Thinking about the game, if the main character (Cole) decides the horde the food for himself and his family, who's to say that isn't in fact the best decision? The whole city is scrambling to get to that food, how do we know that it's not mostly a bunch of ruthless folks who fought/ killed others just to get there in the first place? If there is a food shortage, we can't be sure that some people won't take more than their share if no one looks over the food. On a base level it's an obvious decision, but when we look further into it there are other factors. It's easy to accidentally make a bad decision while we're thinking about how awesome of a job we just did. I guess that's where the saying "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions," comes from.
Something that I've thought about for quite sometime now is also how difficult it is to look at something from multiple angles (probably also a programming nightmare, hence the simple dichotomy coding in the game). Sam has this chaos theorist side to her which comes out quite often. It's frightening to hear her vocalize every aspect of her thought process, especially when it comes to planning something. She's talked about having back up plans for her back up plans (I've heard others do the same) but describing it doesn't quite do justice for all the angles of an event she's looking at to make it happen. She thinks of things most folks would never dream could happen to put a damper on something. Of course those impossible moments have happened to our family and then we get bailed out by one of Sam's plans. It's crazy she could have figured so many aspects in. But she doesn't look at just the black and white. She doesn't look at "this is how the picnic should go" and "but let's do this if it rains." It's so much more than that. Having that trait is something I would like to work on more, even though it's hard to do because it requires so much conscious effort and attention. It's almost like writing a book, look at all the scenarios. Before you give that homeless man a dollar, think about it. Before you bad talk someone behind their back, think about it. And then think about it some more.
These aren't decisions that can be made in a split second like a do or don't decision, but sometimes they have to be. That's when it gets tricky, and that's something to practice toward. But maybe I'll start by doing that with more long-term plans (like trips or shopping next week).
