De Gloria Mundi

It's not often that games provoke reflection on a wider scale than the role of entertainment as a diversion in our lives, but Europa Universalis IV has provided quite a lot of munch on. 'All's fair in love and war', and now I am somewhat more acquainted with histories and causes the latter than I have been.

Of course, one cannot possibly hope to encapsulate all the intricacies of nations on anything processable by a domestic computer, even if Moore's law continues to push our limitations. EUIV however, does a much better job than most other games, notably the Civilisation series. Bringing in religion, geopolitics, dynastic struggles and colonisation, and revelling in the sheer inequality of it all.

When one begins a campaign, plans for aggrandisement and expansion help to drive the first hundred years or so of gameplay. You are put in the shoes of a ruler, and that drive to build something that will last, achieve domination and preeminence, becomes something relatable. 

Halfway through, if one plays aggressively, it is easy to become a virtual world power, maybe controlling the most trade, being a dominant land power, or unifying the lands of one culture group. The game suddenly loses steam, that drive to be the first gives way to a strange purposelessness. The player begins to wonder what was so appealing about achieving to begin with.

This sentiment of nihilistic disenchantment is exacerbated, when after thirty to forty hours of campaign time, everything ends abruptly in 1821. The game gives you a little pat on the back, and shows you the door. The sandbox gameplay has revealed how countries define their own goals based on their self interest, but in the end, when one considers all the circumstances, the entire exercise seems so futile, even detrimental. 

Thousands of lives were given to the service of the nationalistic dream, whether than dream was centred around the Valois or the Ming. Alliances are forged and broken when convenient with a perfunctory swiftness. Then as we know from history, European hegemony came crashing down, in a great destructive debacle where the flags of many empires flew for the last time over people who could no longer naively endorse the casus belli of their rulers. 

In that age is was easy to believe in the power and vision of a king, but events have conspired to deconstruct that lie. In its wake we came up with new reasons to fight, new causes to champion, new ideas to die for. The modern world has saturated itself with glories even more transient and fleeting than the legacy of the Habsburgs or Pax Britannia, and we buy into them because we need something to buy into, but Empire is so last century. I suppose it's time we turn to more eternal goals to strive for.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, Sed Non Transit Gloria Dei

De Psalmis

I recently shared a testimony on my reflections on the nature of personal relationship, inspired by the time that I've spent over the last few months meditating on the psalms during my quiet times. As one might expect with this process, planning out a sermon in a clear and systematic manner yields further insight, hence this post.

Most interestingly, the psalms have helped me to rediscover what the rest of the bible truly is. I was reluctant to read through the volume of the hundred and fifty songs embedded in them middle of the Bible. But I reached a point where I had read through just about everything else- the prophets, major and minor, the torah, the gospels and epistles. Thus, I began with 'How blessed is the man who...', and proceeded with one psalm a day. I took them each as a poem, since their musical settings were unknown to me; something for David to explain to us all when we do meet him I suppose. Who knew that my IBDP English would help with my quiet times? God does use everything. As someone who devours stories and appreciates good characterisation, now reading through the psalms, I had the realisation that I had been reading the Bible as though it was fiction, another novel, another fantasy. Beginning with the most prolific, David, was not just a king who reigned some two thousand seven hundred years ago, who committed adultery and inspired 'Hallelujah'. He was a person, a fully realised human being, who had his deep struggles with reconciling the idea and character of God to the circumstances which he encountered in his life, as all of us do. Extend this to every other psalmist, Solomon, Korahites, exilic Jews, Moses, the other unknowns; and further, to every 'character' in the Bible, to every prophet, apostle, king or shepherd. going further, to each name mentioned only once or twice, names in the genealogies, and note that each is a person, an object of the love of God, and He knows them more than just by name. We are not stars, we are far more complex. Biblical sonder if you will. I find it amusing that sonder is listed as an obscure sorrow. Why should it be? Yes, you are not the most interesting and multifaceted person out there, but should we not be excited that everyone is? Each person represents a whole new world, a fractal in a set of fractals, developing and dreaming in their own capacity. Each life is another that I can get to know, that God can redeem for His glorious purpose.

Going off that previous point, why do we use the misleading phrase 'bible character'? The lives we read about in the Bible are people, not characters. We may not have a lot of details about some of them, but by calling them characters, we sink into the trap of thinking of them as characters. Characters are great constructs, from Heathcliff and Daisy, to Arwen and Daneel. But as flat or round as they may be, they are not people. They can only have as much significance as we grant them, and once we have read through their story, they never surprise us with anything new again. A person however, does surprise, does change and develop in unexpected ways, and has a naturally imbued significance that comes from the Creator, as a certain declaration would affirm in addition to the Bible. We may know more about certain characters than we do people, but that has nothing to do with how much more significant a single human life is than a whole slew of characters in an epic like the romance of the three kingdoms. It would be a lot better to call the names in the Bible something like 'people in the Bible', or 'Biblical people'.

Far more than the people in the Bible, there is a tendency for us to view God as another, or perhaps the main character in the Biblical narrative. He creates, he loves and nurtures, he judges and destroys. Some may even view God as the most mutable of the characters, going from a wrathful, immature being to one of benevolence and agape. Far from it. The psalms more than show how God has always been a relational and personal God, who is not after sacrifices and legalism but after obedience and trust in His character and plan. The revelation of Trinity shows us that God is inherently relational between His three persons, even before any interaction with His creation.

God is in fact, the source of our understanding of what it means to be truly personal. On our own, we so quickly sink into classifying people as their professions, their ages, their family relationships, their past experiences, or their interests, and so on. Only as we come to know God as a person and develop our relationship with Him do we get a better and better glimpse of how people ought to relate in a way that is truly mature, loving and thoughtful. Every positive aspect that you have known in a relationship is a pale reflection of the kind of relationship that God has within Himself, and desires to extend to you, and desires for you to demonstrate to others.

One final point- Why do we ask 'What would Jesus do?' The same way that we might ask 'What would Darcy do?' Jesus is alive and active, and He'll surprise us from time to time with something unexpected. A character is not alive, and cannot help but respond to something in the same classic way. Of course you could ask what a character would do and get a simple response. Jesus, in contrast, is alive and responds dynamically to situations. Yes, He does have a consistent character, but the way that He wants to act might be completely unexpected. Let's not ask 'What would Jesus do?' but just ask God directly, 'What would You want to do?' and listen out for His response.

Thoughts : The Catcher in the Rye

Well, I cannot hope to approach the sophistication of some analyses of this book after a single reading, but Holden is a fascinating character. It's wonderful how he manages to encapsulate a strange paradox of existence. He is trying to avoid the phoniness and sins of adulthood, deeply critical and condemnatory of these qualities in others. Yet, hypocritically, he is a compulsive liar himself, needlessly deceiving a mother of a yearmate that he meets on the train. In many ways, he is just as phony as the adults he despises; trying to lie about his age to buy drinks is another example. As a construct, Holden could represent a contradiction in all of us, that we make excuses for our own failings but have no qualms about passing judgement on others. Sometimes we put others down because their faults cause us to be uncomfortably reminded of our own. We can choose to realise that we ourselves are flawed, or as Holden does, run from self-reflection and maturity.

Holden has another quality that makes him easy to identify with, a fear of change. He does not want to leave the realm of childhood, but it is clear from his actions and thoughts that he has left it irrevocably. He longs for a past, predictable and stable. While I doubt any of us can claim to relish uncertainty, we have to keep up with the tide, adapting to circumstances lest we be left behind.

The complex interplay between loneliness and Holden's cynicism is wonderfully depicted. A second paradox of being. Holden desires company, but is unable to appreciate it when he has company. He arranges to meet Sally and ruins the date. Perhaps he looks for company of a very specific nature, looking for it in various people, unable to determine what he is missing. I think it has to do with Holden's tendency to idealise and condemn. When he is alone, he is free to believe that the next encounter will be just what he's been waiting for. But when he is right in the thick of it, he cannot ignore all the flaws and irritating qualities of others that so glaringly present themselves to his judgmental notions.

A final quality that I found noteworthy was Holden's desire to be unique. His red hunting cap as a representation of this. He wears it as a way of indicating that he is different from the rest somehow. Taking comfort in the fact that he is different, and in that difference, somehow superior to the rest. We all believe this about ourselves quite easily. To think that we alone make decisions of our own volition while the sheeple around us are subject to the forces of society. It's a belief that consumerism exploits, to make you think that you're making the choice when in fact, you're making the same choice as hundreds around you. Our individuality should be a source of wonder, but it should not grow at the expense of our regard for the individuality of others.

The world of the Catcher in the Rye is not a beautiful one. Holden chooses to notice what he wishes and most of the time, he focuses on the negatives. No one is perfect, so everyone seems to have given up trying. Perspective does change a lot of how we live our lives. Our world in its entirety is both beautiful and horrific, awesome and awful. Depending on what we choose to observe, consider and internalise, we can come away with vastly disparate experiences. 

Notably, Holden's world is also a Godless one. To me, that explains why the Catcher in the Rye remains so captivating and Holden so identifiable decades after the book was published. The world remains, as it was then, largely a Godless society. Only when the Kingdom comes will we look back and find that Holden's incisive comments, his conflicted being and his disillusionment no longer seem relevant or necessary. I am of the belief that God alone can never disappoint our hopes in social interaction, He alone can allow us to express our true selves without inflating our egos, He alone gives us assurance in the face of change and He alone enables us to live out authentic lives, without a shred of phoniness.

Thoughts : Temporal Speculations

A venture into special relativity has precipitated an unnerving analysis of the nature of time. Is there any absolute time running independently of an observer, or do we, by our perception, define time? When I say 'High school lasted two years.' I am really saying that high school lasted for the same amount of time as it took for the Earth to orbit the sun twice. A day? The same duration as the revolution of the Earth about it's axis. Well, now we have better clocks, more accurate measurements. So we can define time in terms of the properties of the caesium atom under exact conditions, but really, is that any less arbitrary? It may have less variation, but we are in essence, defining time by a regular unit of change in the natural world. If we considered the day as the definitive unit of time, then we could just as well say that the vibrations of the caesium atom were varying in duration instead of the progression of the day.

Have I then arrived at the conclusion that perceiving time can only be in terms of change? Perhaps, but the change that we define time by must have specific characteristics. Change can be slow, as in the growth of a redwood tree over centuries, or it may be fast, as on that hot summer day of Chapter 7 in 'The Great Gatsby'. So that unit of change that we measure every other change by has to be regular. This also implies that if we cannot perceive change, time does not appear to pass. Clearly, if no energy is being transferred or no particles were journeying on their Brownian paths we could not tell if time was passing. If so, what is time? The observation of change? Does time not exist apart from the understanding of an observer?

In that case, the absolute situation has shattered into a bewildering multitude of perspectives. By the conclusions of special relativity, the only clock that runs regularly to myself is my own. I would see moving clocks in any direction tick off slowly compared to my time. If time is an observation of change, then that means the world in motion is changing more slowly than a stationary one. So every particle, every quanta, every consciousness, is changing at different rates in different perspectives. What an awful subjective mess.

Does change also have to be permanent for time to pass? If a change can be reversed in exactly the same way that it was developing forward, did it change at all? The reality before and after the change would be identical for all practical purposes. Did time pass at all? Did it pass backwards? We would not be able to tell without the ever-present arrow of time and entropic increase.

Of course another point to raise is the role of the observer. If the observer defines time, then did time pass before it could be inferred or observed? In Eldawn, did time begin when Eleyon first stabilised and began a process of irreversible change? In the empty field of the ether, time would pass forward and backward as easily as space until there was a mind, a mind that learned and hoped, a mind that gave time a direction. Perhaps this is what we mean by God existed from the beginning, for the beginning was only defined when God manifested.

This also fits in with the psychological perception of time's passage. When there is no apparent change in our lives, time appears to pass slowly, or not at all. After many months of performing the same routine, we aren't going to look back on that phase and feel like it took a long time. It would seem compressed, nothing changed in that time, everything that transpired could be summarised in a quick description of daily repetition.

On the other hand, if change is rampant, so much seems to have happened in a short span of time that we perceive that period as taking longer than it actually did. We recall details, expressions and gestures with a burning intensity that extends the subjective experience of a reminiscence.

All the mysteries of the world that may never be solved by the odysseys of human endeavour. The more we know the less we understand.

Thoughts : Revelation Space

I recently delved my way through the final book of Alastair Reynold's 'Revelation Space' universe, and I must say I have been taken through a brilliantly and imaginatively constructed sub-reality.  It was such a thrilling journey that I am compelled to write something in response, I don't think that's too far out of line of the focus of this blog, which is on stories after all. The series was engaging from beginning to end, always brimming over with fresh ideas. There was no lack of beautifully vivid descriptions, but they were always kept slightly off-kilter by their juxtaposition with unsettling, sometimes quite horrific, circumstances.

The cross references between the books made the series another notch more enjoyable and culturally believable. There was such a powerful sense of history and place, despite the stories being set on other planets, in lighthuggers or in the distant future. It is grandiose in scope, beginning from the first human forays into space and the Conjoiner Transenlightenment, ranging all the way into the distant future, the rogue Greenfly terraforming agent. I love the realistic tone that the series has, for example, doing away with faster-than-light travel and exploring the social and political consequences of the massive starships gliding, isolated, in the vast emptiness of interstellar space.

Part of why the series was so appealing was its constant quality of pushing the speculative limits of technology. I find, well... I suppose this is quite obvious, but I find that for the most part fiction can only look ahead to future technologies that are just beyond the fringe of what we know. We certainly couldn't expect H. G. Wells to write convincingly about nanotechnology and relativistic time dilation in the same way as a modern science fiction author would. I suppose Reynolds is advantaged in this respect by his knowledge of astrophysics, so he can forge ahead based our most recent understanding of the universe's fundamentals. And golly... what technologies he envisions : marvels of human and alien engineering abound in the novels, their exact mechanics teetering on the brink of what we could consider possible. Enhanced mental and physical physiology, extensive smart materials, alpha-level simulations, cryo-arithmetic computing, alien neutron star computers and augmented reality, to name a few.

Societies in the Revelation Space saga are just as impressive as the technology; the post-human Conjoiners, the ruined Demarchists, the exotic Ultras. While the picture he paints of humanity's future is grim and bleak, there is still a strong thread of ingenuity, tenacity and courage that plays with my hopes for restoration and recovery, a coming period of prosperity after the storm. I should be glad to relive the experience of this riveting narrative again. The dynamic moods shifting from intense activity to quiet pensive lulls, the poignant vision of a largely unpopulated lighthugger in the solitude of an all-embracing night, the truly alien, inhuman life apart from Homo sapiens sapiens and the fortitude of the characters in the midst of it all.