Slaying the Dragon

After a rousing re-listen of Dumb Ways To Die, my friend +Jón turned to the infamous Double Rainbow video and asked if I had seen it. I had, and after then showing him the Songify-ed version, I became curious.

I used to watch a show, and browse online clips of said show when I didn't catch it live, that was basically an hour-long mash-up of pop-culture and technology, and consequently, video games. I will spare links and identifying references to this content because you will in no way be enriched by it. The show had a segment running down the top web videos of the day, and I wanted to see how they treated Double Rainbow when it became big a while back. I had no luck with Google, and jumped straight to the parent website for the channel that hosted the show.

I was shocked to see on the front page a series of videos featured of the channel's two primary shows saying "goodbye" on their last aired episodes. The shows were the one just mentioned and half-hour to one hour one devoted entirely to gaming. This was the channel's bread and butter programming. The whole channel was disappearing. 

The real reason for my shock, though, was that these shows used to be a big part of my life. I strongly identified with them, their stars and their content. They made up part of my very worldview. My focus on all things media and gaming not so long ago had a lot to do with these two television and web programs, and were enforced, if not developed, by them.

I watched the three videos and felt myself tearing up. I immediately felt bad that something so inconsequential moved me like this. But as I tweeted earlier today, "Nostalgia is just delusion in the past tense". A follower of mine totally disagreed with me, but I think it's often true in my case.   

I often find myself nostalgic about every phase of my life except the current one. Even in the recent phases of my life when I was nostalgic about phases before those. How can you be nostalgic about a time when you were nostalgic? I think it comes down to a simple lamentation of things past, of change, of time lost. In this particular case, about four years doing largely nothing in my free time but pursuing and spending money on media in all forms, but especially video games. For those that know, this is not a cheap hobby. I am in thousands of dollars of non-student loan debt today almost solely because of my media habits during this time.

Addiction is hard to describe to someone who has never experienced it. It is especially difficult to describe one of a psychological, non-chemical nature. "Video game addiction" sounds like an exaggeration rather than a diagnosis, but I assure you it is not. From them I have derived more than mere entertainment. Far more. Distractions can be had many ways, but games became my sense of accomplishment, my scholarship, and my community. I made it my business and my world.

Different kinds of games came to fill different roles. Role-playing games gave a strong sense of persistence and progress, of achievement and the assurance of gaining the victory through struggle, persistence and a hint of wit, often in fantastical settings with enchantments, quests and dragons. Action and racing games gave a sense of immediate thrill. Puzzles challenged the rational and abstract problem-solving. One of the strongest of all became the online multi-player military shooter. This one gave all of the above; it was a live meeting of individuals in a contest of pride, where faithfulness yielded better equipment and awards, and a close struggle over a choke point or flag was fought with intensity. I even had a clan. They played as much as I did, and I spent more time interacting with these people over a microphone than I did almost anyone else I knew in my life. There was collaboration on the "battlefield", strategizing and communicating on the fly how we would come out on top. I ramped up the amount I played solely because of this clan, even quitting something else I was doing to lend a hand in the next skirmish. It gave the sense of needing and being needed as part of a close team. I imagine this is a microcosm of the actual brotherhood of blood experienced by soldiers throughout time on actual fields of conflict.

I listened to podcasts about gaming, sometimes as abundantly as a couple of hours per day. I used my Twitter account nearly exclusively for the purpose of keeping up throughout the day on news about gaming, also extensively and daily. I wanted to be able to hold my own in a sophisticated conversation about the industry with anyone I met. I wanted to "get" the  references that the culture of gaming became full with. I wanted to be able to draw the line of the development, history, personalities and influence of gaming on culture and on later games. The TV channel became a fulcrum of this desire and a font of this information.

I was so disrupted that I felt an immediate desire to commiserate with (be comforted by?) someone who would understand. I called my older brother. Even he was not quite as understanding as I would have hoped, and our relationship shown on a pie chart of the topic of our conversations over the years would be dominated by a Pac-Man shaped wedge of video games. Sadly, this is largely true, even now. The truth is, I am not sure what other things to talk about that he will also respond to, and I have an obvious lingering fascination with the world on the other side of a controller. (I wrote a poem to this effect in community college a few years ago, my favorite of the entire poetry section, and with which I won $100 in a writing contest)

I believe that all of these desires are legitimate, and are only perverted by the inadequate fulfillment offered by an activity like gaming. We all want community, adventure, challenge, achievement, knowledge and surprise in our lives. There are certainly more dangerous ways to seek these things, but the very danger may lie in its unseeming-ness. By beholding we become changed. To this day, I cannot look long distances without having to constantly and actively remove the mental overlay of sniper crosshairs. That's what hundreds, perhaps over a thousand, hours of these games have done to my mind. 

The answer to these human longings lies in the center of the heart of God.

¹⁰ For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

¹¹ For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

¹² O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee. 

-Psalms 84:11

Even as soon as this Spring Break, I have still had to wage war against (or simply lay down the gun and raise the white flag toward) this old habit of mine. 

Something that I've had to grapple with is the fact that understanding a disease does not cure it. Despite the advances of sociology, psychology and their therapies, people are not made whole by merely these methods. It may assist in the struggle of overcoming a habit or character flaw or impulse, but it will not alone give you the mastery over it, even if you understand exactly why you crave or loathe something you shouldn't. Christ must do this. I am in need of a renewed heart, as much, and probably more, than I ever have.  I have a strange, deep fondness still for periods of my life where I spent a lot of time with my pet habits even when I recognized their depleted promises of happiness, and I have not the power to sever these tendons bound to my stony heart.

What I have come to realize is that I can never give up. Falling down is not good, but still worse is choosing to stay on the ground.

For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief. -Proverbs 24:16

~

I attended a lecture at the local library on CS Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia. I have only read the first two books, and the first more than once, on top of a couple of the movies, but one story struck me harder than anything else brought out that evening.

Here, a boy named Eustace has become greedy, turned into a dragon, and has met Aslan the Lion, King of Narnia.

“The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. but the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.

I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and , instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

Then the lion said – but I don’t know if it spoke – ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.

Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I was smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The most beautiful, frightening and powerful truth of the gospel is the change of nature from selfishness to selflessness that God will effect in all those who choose to give it to Him to tear apart, and remake.

That Awkward Moment

I just left worship tonight for the week of prayer evening meeting, and before the message there was a student skit.

I'm not sure how I feel about skits. I can understand why people think they are inappropriate for a worship service or in the sanctuary, but I'm not quite ready to say that. I think they could effectively portray a spiritual message in a different medium as easily as a sermon or even a video (which pops up in the sanctuary much more frequently with far less controversy).

Contemporary Christian music begins to play over the PA system. +Lauren Tieri enters from stage left. There is no dialogue. She is surprised by a man from behind, and is overjoyed to see him. There's a moment leading up the embrace where the audience wonders if this is supposed to be a significant other, or Jesus. The motions are deliberately non-romantic. Then she pantomimes amazement at what is obviously the wounds in his hands and side. He begins to lead her out stage right, when Archie Wheeler, clearly the Devil himself in all black and red, and he snatches her from him, treats her roughly, and throws her through stage-left door on the other side. Jesus and Archie dispute.

Lauren returns being shoved and handled roughly, being shamed, beaten. Others enter with dark brown bottles, sweep her off and get her to drink. Archie shoves her to her knees. Her body wracks with sobs as "Jesus" bends in near.

By this time, it feels like there is a palpable awkwardness in the sanctuary. I feel like we are all thinking this is a tad cheezy, a bit poorly acted, a skoche amateurish, or perhaps just a misguided effort to try and effect a reaction to the gospel in drama for a bunch of private-church-school students who have seen all this before.

Then the camera affords a close up of our victim and Jesus. The performance is shockingly convincing, the crying uncomfortably true-to-life. She is actually pleading.

Then it hits me. Maybe it's not awkward because it's bad. Maybe that's our front for not engaging with these all-too-real life pictures. This is our way of holding a flood of real, often painful, emotions at arms length, and looking at them without feeling them, without acknowledging that we have ever felt that way, that we know people in these situations, that it's happening the world over right now.

Jesus begins to escort her away. The demonic throng in black surge from the other side and pull her. There are six on her left arm, Jesus on her right.

But Jesus never lets go.

"Nothing is apparently more helpless, yet really more invincible, than the soul that feels its nothingness, and relies wholly on the merits of the Saviour. God would send every angel in heaven to the aid of such an one, rather than allow him to be overcome."—Testimonies for the Church, Volume 7, page 17

Lucid

After desiring for at least a year specifically to start a blog, and generally to do more writing in my life, my friend Tom pushed me over the edge a couple days ago when I posted a C.S. Lewis quote on Facebook that would have been over twice as long as their previous status character cap with the preamble, "I think this is my longest status post to date...". The first comment was Tom's: "This isn't a status update. It's a blog post." 

I don't know what kind of blog this will be yet. The length, content, form and purpose may yet change entirely before long, and I certainly don't know how often I will post. For now, this is merely something I could not let slip past undocumented, even if unread by others. Putting it into the blogosphere (I am one of those people now) at least gives the illusion that this is going beyond me. If you are reading this, I thank you for your interest, and ask that you bear with the length of this particular post, and those that follow until I begin to know what sort of beast this is that I have invited home and adopted. Any feedback is appreciated.

After debating a bit between Tumblr, Wordpress and this, I came to the point of writing after a season of pondering this afternoon.

~

I received an email today from Textbooks.com. I'm not certain why I don't delete these kinds of email subscriptions, but the "just-in-case" in me is now incorrigibly reinforced by the content of this one.

"Student success, lucid dreaming, and studying weird."

Perhaps the most intriguing subject header from spam I have ever seen, I was particularly primed for this moment by the discussion that preceded it two nights ago. My good friend Jon was over visiting my roommate, Bill, and I, as he does about weekly on campus here, and he had his friend Zippora with him. After I had shown Zippora, a Netherlander, a video about the difference between Holland and the Netherlands, we were sharing our interesting YouTube finds lately. Jon discussed a particularly cruel video prank that would have made anyone believe they were in the middle of an Asian horror film, and the subject of nightmares naturally came up.

This made me immediately think of a podcast I had listened to some time ago that discussed dreams, and specifically the story of a man confronted by a terrifying dream every time he came to a stressful point in his life. After about 20 years of this, he overcame his mysterious tormenter within the dream itself after learning a method of lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is one wherein you realize you are having a dream, and instead of waking up, you take control of the dream. I wasn't able to play the podcast while they were here, as I wanted, but we did begin a discussion of lucid dreaming.

"We've talked about this, haven't we?" Jon asks. We had.

He says, "I think it's interesting, but I feel like it might be a little spirtualistic. Don't you think?" I did.

"It's only happened to me a few times," he shares,"but I LOVE flying in dreams." I agreed.

I told him that, although I haven't had a flying dream in years, a lot of times it required a great struggle for me to fly in the dream; a tremendous focus, or exertion of mental power. Sometimes, I could only get a foot or two off the ground, even if I really wanted to or needed to. It was like a suppression of a fulfilled hope, even within the freedom of a dream.

After a graphic of the measure of life success by students in a survey (34% = "happy marriage", 32% = "satisfying career", and 27% = "graduate degree". I agreed most with marriage, and wondered: "Why?"), Textbooks.com had a small ad for "The Remee Lucid Dreaming Mask". I Googled it (since the ad took me to a Facebook page) and found a video of the product. It uses small, red, blinking LED patterns to gently convey to the sleeper that they are in a dream, using a pattern they recognize, but not so strong that they wake up. They then are free to take the dream wherever their mind desires.

The idea is intoxicating. I tried a technology-free method once after I initially heard the podcast. He mentioned some routines to go through while you are awake that you will then repeat in your dream and thereby recognize an inconsistency in order to become aware. It never worked, and I gave up. Imagine the power to virtually do whatever your imagination could conjure.

I looked for reviews to see if it worked, and found a video of a college-age kid saying it worked on his first (or second) night, that it was the best $80 he ever spent and that he totally recommended it. 

Eighty dollars. I'm a private college student operating on grants and loans.

"I would absolutely do it if I knew it worked consistently," I told Bill.

I began thinking: "What would I do in a lucid dream?" And then I thought, "What would I do right now if I realized I was lucid dreaming?" 

I started envisioning fire. Summoning things. Disappearing through the floor into the basement of the library under me. Breaking the window with my mind before flying out. They were all displays of power. 

Someone in the video, when asked what he would do in a dream if he could control it, mentioned that he would, "Avenge myself of all those who have wronged me." I didn't agree; I was actually kind of shocked. I understood the principle, though. No one would get hurt, right? But then: why even do it? At that point it would be entirely about you. A catharsis. The same would be true of anything involving anyone else, like a relationship. Anything I could do with, to, or for another would really be all about me. It would be, by definition, selfish.

This was actually how I envisioned heaven before I had begun studying the Bible. After I died, God would hand over the keys of infinite power to me and let me go in my own little omnipotent universe, free to do whatever I pleased for all time. I had even come to the point of consciously marking things in my mind for later exploration after I had gained this power, as though I would comb through my earthly experience then and satisfy every earthly desire I ever had, when I had it. I only imagined this, of course, because it is what I wanted most. This is, it just so happens, the very central draw of a video game, a hobby that was introduced to me very young and that has been reluctant to release it's talons from my heart. 

I have since wondered about the nature of the things that bring joy to us, and to me. There are things that give me pleasure, that I believe always were designed to do so, such as good food and helping others, but there are many others that are a product of a human inbred and learned perversion. Culturally speaking, there are a great many things people do in this world with relish, that I would never even want to witness, let alone try. So if our derivations of joy can be so skewed and personally developed or informed, it would seem that if I had even somewhat more of a holy mind or perspective, I could not imagine how the things I have come to love could ever be delighted in by any reasoning creature. If eating soil, to use a tame example, gave me more pleasure than I have ever known otherwise, would I now from my distanced position choose that as a habit to indulge? As an eternal indulgence? And if joy, sheer hedonism, becomes the perpetual object of my concern, why not just place myself into an ethereal, non-stop flow of euphoria into my consciousness? 

I have heard my stepfather say that if it were possible to hook a button to the pleasure center of the brain, and pressing it had no other effect than stimulating this with no dependencies or side effects, the button would be repeatedly pressed to the exclusion of all else in that individual's life. This has been successfully demonstrated in both humans (pressing the button 1500 times in a 3-hour session) and other animals, a case of which was reported to me as resulting in the death of the primate merely because it did not choose to eat, drink or sleep any longer. It repeatedly pressed the button, because nothing else mattered. 

We cringe at such an idea intrinsically, and this gives me hope. But I also know that the most famous killers of all time have been thought well of by those that knew them closely. We never think we could bring ourselves to the point that we have heard about in the lives of others, and yet people do it all the time, everywhere. "There, but for the grace of God, go I." I know that I have certainly found my own self in a position that I could not believe I had lowered myself to. What, really, is between me and any of the rungs below that on the ladder of morality?

I have been reading C.S. Lewis' masterpiece, Mere Christianity, lately, having finished it just this morning. One thing he has emphasized in the latest chapters is that Christianity does not have as it's aim the making of nice people, but new men. He describes in one of my now infamously long posts from my readings:

"We begin to notice, besides our particular sinful acts, our sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts: they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated.
On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul. Now that cellar is out of reach of my conscious will. I can to some extent control my acts: I have no direct control over my temperament. And if (as I said before) what we are matters even more than what we do—if, indeed, what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what we are—then it follows that the change which I most need to undergo is a change that my own direct, voluntary efforts cannot bring about And this applies to my good actions too.
How many of them were done for the right motive? How many for fear of public opinion, or a desire to show off? How many from a sort of obstinacy or sense of superiority which, in different circumstances, might equally had led to some very bad act? But I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God." -C.S. Lewis

I was thumbing through a theological book years ago, and the author asked the question, "If you had the power to do absolutely anything, and you would never be punished or found out, would you still sin?" The answer had always been swimming around as a resounding "Yes! Who wouldn't?" I was alarmed because I could tell by the nature of the question that the author did not expect such an answer. If what I would do if I had all power and no repercussions involves acts of violence, or dominance, or lust, or pride, than that is what and who I am; I am become merely a shell of a Christian, or even a "decent ordinary chap", and full to the brim with festering selfishness. Everything is soaked with it. I cannot even imagine an unselfish thing.

The answer for a diseased self is not addressing individual expressions of lawlessness, but a salve for the whole soul. Christ desires to take all of me and make a new creature. This is not figurative talk, but quite literal. Here, now, a transformation of the mind, character and personality, and a full restoration of all parts physical and spiritual upon resurrection and establishment in His new kingdom. Only faintly now does this form reflect His likeness, then it shall be unmistakable. But I must choose to let Him have it, and leave it there with Him by faith. That is not complicated. It is merely the fiercest battle ever fought.  

Russell