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.