Nintendo Algorithms vs. My Heart
It's 3AM, and as custom goes, I play Animal Crossing before going to bed. I get a letter, sans present, from Cube. He left. GONE.
Today in my discussion sections, I talked about atheism and morality. There was a short Nietzsche reading, the famous passage where the madman runs around saying "God is dead! We killed him!" and so on. This is obviously a rejection of theistic morality, where moral right and wrong are defined by a monotheistic god's approval or disapproval. To an extent, this means that we are free to come up with our own value systems. Morality isn't universal, we should appreciate this material life, and so on.
This freedom entails both awful and awesome consequences. One might think, Oh no, God doesn't exist? Everything I know ceases to have meaning. I'm scared. Or, one might think, Oh really? God doesn't exist? Well...to each his own! I'm going to create new meaning. How exciting!
In some sense, I have really lost meaning in my Animal Crossing life. At the moment, I really hate Nintendo. They have created algorithms that seriously fuck with my heart. It cannot be totally random. I even tried to time travel (Ultimate Sin), but the game knows. Yet in another sense, Cube was not everything in Animal Crossing, so it'd be stupid to reject the entire game for this one travesty. I could rationalize Cube's departure and move on with my Animal Crossing life. I could make Mordecai try to get Cube in his neglected town; he'd have more incentive to play, with an almighty Cube + Static combo. I certainly almost cried.
What do I do?
2 comments:
Ultimate Sin?
Strangely I feel like I know what you mean about being messed around by Cube's departure, even though the extent of my Animal Crossing play has been digging holes and avoiding running on flowers, in your town.
Maybe he's on vacation.
For me, I subscribe to your view exactly, except for one condition: I have to leave about 25% for uncertainty.
And I wonder what it would be like to have you as a TA.
And as for your existential crises in this strange Animal Life, you could... pray.
haha, thanks for the email... I have a draft in progress.
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