The Dark Knight is a film about the myth of the Hero. A cursory view might say that it is a film deconstructing the Hero: it emphasizes, after all, that Batman/Bruce Wayne is not a hero, and this is true, depending on how we define “hero”. The film seems to mean the popular sense of an individual who acts ethically to eliminate injustice and preserve society’s righteousness. I’m not going to dispute that definition too much; in fact, I want to look much closer at several parts of it and what they mean, and how they impact the status of Batman as a Hero.

The Hero is an archetypal figure, defined by Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey as the the protagonist of the ultimate archetypal story, the stand-in for every person in the stand-in for every person’s journey through life. The most important aspect of the Hero is that he (the Hero is generally considered to be an inherently masculine concept–it is, after all, a character whose story is defined by penetration) is an individual. While he may (and usually does, e.g. Campbell’s mentor) have friends, assistants, sidekicks, whatever, when it matters the responsibility is shouldered by the Hero alone, and he acts alone to achieve victory.

Despite being an individual, however, the Hero’s actions reverberate across society. The Hero may act by himself, but he saves the entire world (or city or tribe or whatever; enough that it is something larger than himself). The Hero is a protector (a knight!) who is intrinsically separated in his actions but connected in their effects. The Hero is intrinsically positioned in a hierarchical structure above those he protects; he is an authority, who acts according to his own will but but restricts the ability of others (those beneath him) to do the same.

Bruce Wayne claims that as Batman he is not a hero, and does not want to be; but the position of Batman is intrinsically Heroic. He is an individual, a lone actor, whose decisions are made without (apparent) regard to the larger community but which affect the larger community vastly. Bruce Wayne positions Batman as not a man but an incarnation of Order, the ultimate imposition of his will on reality–what could be more Heroic? And, his fatal flaw, despite repeated statements that he hopes to find someone to take his place, he refuses to allow anyone to share the throne.

Batman first appears in The Dark Knight during a sequence involving a drug deal between Gotham gangsters and the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy). The deal is interrupted by a figure in a bat suit, but it is clearly not Batman, for this bat wields firearms and is accompanied by several accomplices dressed similarly. These batman-pretenders engage in a messy brawl with the gangsters until the real Batman arrives and saves the day, as expected. At the end of the sequence, after Batman has told the pretenders to go home and let him do the work, one of them asks why he alone has the “right” to protect Gotham. Batman’s infamous response: “I’m not wearing hockey pads.”

The moment is played for laughs–and like much comedy, it reinforces an assumed foundation without ever examining the integrity of it. In this case, the foundation is that fighting crime in Gotham City without the resources of a billion-dollar multinational corporation is dangerously foolish and unnecessary. That idea is played tragically later in the film, when the Joker releases a video of him interrogating a captured, beaten, and tortured batman pretender named Brian Douglas. Douglas explains why he dresses up like Batman: “He’s a symbol that we don’t have to be afraid of scum like you.” The Joker responds:

“So you think Batman’s made Gotham a better place? Hmm? Look at me. LOOK. AT. ME. You see, this is how crazy Batman’s made Gotham. You want order in Gotham? Batman must take off his mask and turn himself in.”

At the end of the film, Batman destroys any status he has a symbol. Having shouldered six murders to prevent the demise of Harvey Dent’s public reputation, he destroys his own, forces the police to end their clandestine cooperation with him and hunt him as the criminal he is. At least Batman won’t have to wory about people like Brian Douglas.

The problem is, Brian Douglas–and those like him–are the only real possibility Gotham has for saving. The absolute authority of Batman only birthed the absolute chaos of the Joker. This is always the result of an attempt at absolute authority, supreme centralization: dissolution, failure, collapse. Batman defeated the influence of Gotham’s gangsters only by making himself more influential; the people of Gotham are still not free, still subject to others’ will. This lack of freedom is manifest physically towards the conclusion of the film with the cell phone surveillance system that allows Batman to observe the entirety of Gotham from one central terminal–the centralized authority’s ultimate dream of observation and thus control.

Brian Douglas was wrong, in that he believed Batman was a symbol of people taking back control of their city and their lives. Batman doesn’t want people to be free–the Joker, after all, is the ultimate incarnation of freedom, a nihilist free of ethics, reason, even belief in general (he “just do[es] things”). But Brian Douglas was right to try, because Batman is wrong, too, and much moreso. Batman wants to save the world–which is really just another way of saying he wants to make the world into his own image. He wants to be God–the original personification of absolute authority. Brian Douglas simply wanted the freedom to decide for himself who he wants to be.

Brian Douglas believed that people can save themselves; that they don’t have to be afraid–of scum like the Joker, or Batman. He talked back to Batman, after all: why do you have the right, he demanded, and I don’t?

The lie of the Hero is that anyone has the right to impose their will on another. That anyone can save the world–that anyone can be God–or that anyone can be saved by anyone besides themselves. The lie of the Hero is that someone can do something to someone else “for their own good”; that lying or concealing the truth can ever be the right thing to do.

The lie of the Hero is the lie of the individual: that anyone can act alone, without being influenced by others. The lie of the Hero is that order and reason and belief are more than arbitrary illusions and crude attempts to understand the infinitely complex networks that are our existence.

The lie of the Hero is the lie of the villain: that some people are bad, or evil, or wrong, and must be stopped. That some people cannot be reasoned with, and just want to watch the world burn, and must be stopped. That that which is not us, that which is other, must be made into us, or eliminated.

The lie of the Hero is the lie of fate: that every person does not choose who they want to be, every single moment, and that that freedom is ever escapable.

Brian Douglas (Andy Luther)

Despite its cinematic presentation (and what cinematic presentation it is!), Mass Effect is rooted in the Western RPG tradition (whether or not it actually is a Western RPG first and not a third-person action game with elements of western RPGs ala Deus Ex), which means players have a significant influence on how their character acts within the game–after all, the game was developed by Bioware, best known for Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Knights of the Old Republic, the epitome of Western RPG tradition. Mass Effect begins with a player choosing their name, physical appearance, and history. Before the opening cutscene finishes the player is already presented with their first choice: will they chastise a sarcastic crew member or listen to their concerns?

Those who have played Bioware’s other games know the drill. The first two-thirds of Mass Effect play like a better, Star Wars-less version of Knights of the Old Republic. The plot is authored, and so are the menu of your character’s responses, but you do have a menu of responses. You always have the choice: fight or negotiate. Kill or don’t. Or, of course, don’t do anything at all, for the myriad side quests. It may not be much of a choice, but combined with the custom appearance and custom “talents” (AKA skills, spells, whatever you level up when you level up in an RPG), most players come to feel a sense of authorship over their character, a sense that they are their character. That’s (generally) the point of Western RPGs, in the way it is absolutely not in their Japanese counterparts.

At the conclusion of the introductory mission, the player’s character is affected by an alien “beacon” and experiences a vision. A player only sees quick cuts of unintelligible images, but when approached by party members, the character starts talking about killer robots and mass extinction. It’s a startling disconnect between player and character, but digestable: alright, so that’s what it was, what now? But the disconnect doesn’t go away; it grows. As the player continues through the game, the character expresses more and more certainty that the killer robots from the vision are the real threat, not the renegade special forces operative the character has been persuing, going so far as to demand action from the Council that rules most of the galaxy. The Council’s response is predictable: you had a vision. We’ll wait for a bit more evidence before starting a war.

The problem with this was that I thought the same thing. Following the “paragon” path (the “good” way, which also emphasizes cooperation), I wanted to agree with the Council, agree to look for further evidence first, agree to continue searching for the rogue operative. But the options presented to me were: demand the Council take action against the killer robot threat, or demand it nicely.

I understand why the character could have such conviction–direct visual experiences (even if illusionary) can obviously inspire certainty that seems ridiculous to others. But I didn’t see what the character saw, and I don’t have that conviction. And everything up to this point has told me that I’m the character. I get to decide what my character thinks and says. Suddenly what control I had (and certainly it wasn’t much) has been ripped from my hands, and all that’s left is a decision on the tone of the character’s statement.

It could have been an interesting device. Lead the player to identify with this character, become immersed in it. You choose what your character looks like, where they’re from and what they’ve done, how they act, what they say, who they travel with. Let the first disconnect, the narration of a vision the player never saw, hang in the air. Lead players to ignore it, to dismiss it as an aberration and continue as before. Slowly introduce the certainty of the character into conversations, slowly build up other characters’ growing fear and distrust of the character’s certainty. Introduce a few moments like the above, wherein the player has no choice, wherein the character demonstrates absolute certainty and righteousness. And then, in some climatic moment, the character acts without regard for the player, following this certainty–perhaps does something terrible, though it needn’t be, and perhaps shouldn’t be, in order to emphasize only the loss of control. Force the player to suddenly confront the illusion of immersion they have been experiencing all this time and reevaluate their relationship to the character and the game.

The Bioshock moment, more-or-less. Of course, it wouldn’t even have to be that. It could simply be the Knights of the Old Republic moment, wherein a sudden revelation about the player character forces a massive shift in the player’s perception (assuming they didn’t see it coming). But that’s not what this is. It isn’t even Bioware stepping in to railroad the plot in the right direction: the confrontion with the Council doesn’t impact the plot. A later, similar confrontation does, but by that point the player has encountered one of the killer robots in reality and can be reasonably expected to argue for action; I certainly was. It seems, simply, to be sloppiness.

Authorship is–or should be–a central issue of video games. A medium has the most to say about itself: prose can best talk about words, film can best talk about cameras. Video games, a medium defined by interactivity, can talk about choice better than any other medium yet invented. That was the genius of Bioshock, targeting itself directly at the problem of choice–even if it was only about the lack thereof.

I wasn’t expecting Mass Effect to do the same, and I quite enjoyed the game despite this hiccup. Yet even in a game that’s not about authorship and interactivity and choice–or perhaps especially in a game that’s not about those things–developers need to be careful. Because if you just want to make a game where the player is the character (within certain predefined boundaries) and don’t want to call attention to these issues, you’d better damn well make sure you don’t accidentally call attention to them and then leave them hanging. Broken immersion in Bioshock was the point; broken immersion in Mass Effect is a mistake.

In our civil war, we’ve seen death. We watched our people die. Gone forever. As terrible as it was, beyond the reach of the resurrection ships, something began to change. We could feel a sense of time. As if each moment held its own significance. We began to realize that for our existence to hold any value it must end. To live meaningful lives we must die, and not return. The one human flaw, that you spend your lifetimes distressing over – mortality – is the one thing . . . well, it’s the one thing that makes you whole.

In “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner”, Natalie, the Six who leads the Cylon rebellion, gives this speech to the assembled Quroum, humanity’s elected government, arguing in favor of a joint strike mission to permanently disable the Cylon’s ability to resurrect themselves into new bodies following death. Later, in “The Hub”, with the exploding resurrection hub in the background, Helo and the leader of the rebel Eights fly the last surviving Three back to the rebel base ship:

Three: And with a whimper, every Cylon in the universe begins to die.
Eight: Yes, that’s right. And it’s a good thing, D’Anna, because now there’s no difference. We can all start trusting each other.

The first thing that follows this, of course, is Helo’s betrayal of the Eight’s trust by taking Three to President Roslin and denying the Cylons access (on the President’s order). But there’s a larger issue here than the Eights’ pereptually foolish optimism. And that’s the idea that the only way the Cylons can be “whole” is for there to be “no difference” between humans and Cylons.

Much of Battlestar‘s thematic weight in its later seasons–from “Downloaded”, at the end season two, onwards–has been thrown towards understanding the Cylons as people instead of impenetrable bogeymen that attack from the dark of space (or faceless crowds, as with the suicide bombing Five in season one’s “Litmus”). Many might even say that the series has “humanized” the Cylons–but that term is in this context disingenuous. It is of course right to assert the Cylons’ basic rights (their “human rights”, normally): their right to live, which Laura Roslin dismisses early on in her infamous airlocking of Leoben in “Flesh and Bone”; their right to unrestricted movement, until “Revelations”, the last aired episode, only granted to the Eight known as Sharon Agathon; their right to not be tortured or raped, the flashpoint issue of season two’s “Pegasus”.

Make no mistake, it’s positive progress. But there’s a big difference between recognizing Cylons’ basic rights–granting them freedoms they weren’t previously–and taking away a fundamental feature of their nature. Were it merely a human decision, of course, this would be not much worse than all the other egregious transgressions against the Cylons. But here it’s the Cylons themselves who have decided to cut off a fundamental part of them in order to make themselves more “human”.

It’s an understandable mistake by the Cylons, a young race who have floundered about in search of a plan (despite what the series’ opening credits continue to attest to) since the start of the series. After “Downloaded”, the first major visible shift in Cylon attitudes, they changed their mind merely six episodes later, at the conclusion of the New Caprica arc in “Exodus, Part II” (between which, granted, some eighteen months had passed within the series’ timeline). Since then the Cylons have changed their minds again and again, desperate for an answer to the same existential questions humans have always struggled with.

Natalie, the Cylon leader who first declares a death a necessary part of Cylon evolution, is one of the most noble characters in the entire series (necessitating, of course, that she doesn’t even survive half a season). After giving that speech, she returns to her compatriots and assures them that the humans do indeed intend to betray them, apparently justifying the Cylons’ plan to betray the humans as well, but decides that in spite of this they should back down:

Natalie: No, I was wrong. We’re not ready. We’re decieving them. [. . .] Out of suspicion. Fear. Why haven’t the Final Five [hidden Cylons in the human fleet] come forward? What if they’re watching, judging us on our actions? We’re about to resort to violence and coercion. What if they refuse to come with us? We can’t do this. [. . .] We have to tell the humans the truth.

The other Cylon rebels convince Natalie not to tell the truth (although they do abandon their plan for betrayal, only to have it put back into play by Three once she returns). But the poitn is that Natalie is a character whose opinions are intended to be respected. She alone among all the characters recognizes the futility of the cycle of betrayal and mistrust (at least until “Revelations”). So when she says that Cylons need death in order to be “whole”, it seems to be something else that the audience should respect. Certainly, the only characters in the show to dispute this are the villains–Brother Cavil and his allied Ones, Fours, and Fives. Cavil declaims the destruction of the hub as “mass murder”–which is true not only in the sense that all Cylons who die will now die permanently, but also in that all the Cylons living aboard the hub are (permanenently) killed by its destruction–yet no other characters acknowledge this.

The Cylons are people, yes, but for all their similarities to humans, they are not human. To try to become human is a fundamental mistake. They are a people who have only seven (or twelve, but the Final Five should probably be discounted) faces, only seven bodies. They are a people who have extreme difficulty reproducing sexually and rely on cloning and “downloading” to perpetuate themselves. They are a people for whom physical death is a rarity. Yet none of these things take away their people-ness (what we might otherwise call their “humanity”); mortality, as the humans of Battlestar and reality have aptly demonstrated again and again and again, does not make a people whole; it only magnifies the tragedies of their actions.

Of course, Cylons don’t exist, and it might seem that this problem is something relevant only to science fiction; but the Cylons have always been representative of the demonized others who in reality are always human. (Consider even that word, “demonized”–to transform into a demon, something not human.) But the trap of reconciliation is not just not killing others, but accepting that differences are acceptable–that the other need not become the “same” as us in order to be “whole”. (I am reminded of the infamous “understanding” positions of certain “liberals” that “accept” Muslims–so long as they act like American Christians.)

Battlestar is a smart show. I hope very much that its apparent endorsement of this idea is just that–an unfortunate appearance that will be proven wrong in the upcoming final ten episodes. But I don’t know. (And actually what I’ve heard of the final episodes suggests that the series will go in an entirely different direction with regards to the differences between humans and Cylons.)

Major Premise: All rational/logical structures/systems can be fundamentally represented mathematically.

Minor Premise: Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, which collectively demonstrate that a mathematical system cannot be both consistent and complete (i.e., contain irreconcilable contradictions and/or errors).

Conclusion: All rational/logical structures/systems contain irreconcilable contradictions and/or errors.

Facile, perhaps. But the point is this: never forget that rationality, logic, structures, systems, order, et. al., are not ends to themselves. They are useful but dishonest; they are an attempt to bound, limit, define what is fundamentally unboundable, limitless, indefinable: physical reality and the human experience of it.

The Palio di Siena (source)

Having watched Quantum of Solace for the second time today, it seems so obvious to me. Hindsight, of course. The first big action sequence–Bond’s chase after traitorous MI6 agent Mitchell–is intercut against shots of a horse race. I noticed this the first time I watched the movie, and was amused by it: juxtaposing the exciting chase against an obviously artificial game expressly set up for the entertainment of the masses (and repeatedly showing us those masses as well as the actual racers). One way to read it is a contrast, life-and-death against a game, but of course it’s the opposite: it’s a reminder that we, too, are watching something constructed purely for our entertainment. Right from the start, Quantum of Solace seems to be saying: remember that this is a movie meant for your entertainment.

Yet . . . it wasn’t that entertaining. The first time I walked out of the movie theater, I felt not entertained, not excited, not even cathartically drained by a relentlessly pointless quest for vengeance (what I expected of the movie), just . . . dull. Emotionless. I didn’t feel anything. It bothered me, obviously, and I couldn’t figure it out: the action sequences are great, as expected, Craig remains wonderful, the other actors more than hold up their part, the directing works . . .

I think the first time, I felt nothing because I spent much of the film waiting and looking for something that wasn’t there. This is a film about vengeance, and so I expected what we expect of vengeance, what M herself says Bond is acting out: inconsolable rage. I expected not the ruthlessly calm Bond but one clearly boiling just under the surface, taking the violence far past what was prudent or efficient. And M does chastise Bond repeatedly on taking things too far, for killing every lead he comes across, but every kill is cold and clean. Emotionless. Dull. Bond isn’t enraged; at times, he almost seems bored himself–acutely aware that all of this is irrelevant to what he really wants, an awareness I was expecting to be the resolution of the film, not its starting point.

I don’t want to get into a discussion of cultural biases, but I can’t help but think some of this lies in the difference between archetypal British and American heroes. American heroes–I always look to Indiana Jones and John McClane, icons of American popular culture–get dirty and get angry. They’re not the best at what they do, they get hurt, and most of the time they survive only through sheer stubbornness. Cleanliness and efficiency tend to be the traits of American villains (often played by British actors–nothing says ruthless composure to an American like a British accent).

John McClane (Bruce Willis) in Live Free or Die Hard (2007)

I said I don’t want this to be about cultural differences, and I honestly don’t know enough about British culture to identify an iconic British hero besides James Bond (The Doctor, maybe?) who demonstrates such a clear opposition to this. But Bond clearly does. It struck me on the second watching that the opening car chase is too clean–even as Bond’s car is covered in dirt and has a door torn off. But it’s not the physical grit that gives this impression; it’s Bond consistent composure. Unlike an American hero, Bond never loses it. Bond never allows anything to (visibly) disturb him, throw him off his balance. It’s why he’s James Bond, and I shouldn’t have expected anything less.

But Quantum of Solace is still a movie about vengeance. I just missed the manner. The second time through, I was struck by the action sequence near the midpoint of the film, crosscut with the climax of the Tosca opera. Once again artificial entertainment is juxtaposed against the film’s real action–even more obvious than the first sequence, given that this artificial entertainment involves a false execution, yet I didn’t see it until my second viewing. Once again, the film says: remember, this is for your entertainment. Yet the moment immediately following this action sequence contradicts this directly: Bond, atop a rooftop, surprises a guard chasing him and holds him over the edge. The guard tries to disarm Bond, and Bond simply lets go. The guard plummets anticlimatically to the ground–it’s not even far enough to kill him, let alone give the audience the satisfying visual and audio cue we’ve learned to expect and love when a body drops from a building.

I’m reminded, as I often am, of the moment from Gladiator that I consider to be one of the best and most concise statements on action blockbusters ever: Russel Crowe’s Maximus, having just cleanly and efficiently dispatched his opponents, looks up at the stunned crowd and shouts, “Are you not entertained?!” Maximus’ owner and mentor Proximo later explains to him: no, they aren’t. The crowd doesn’t want to see the best of the best easily kill everything before him without breaking a sweat; they want excitement, and complications, and challenge.

Russell Crowe in Gladiator (2000)

Audiences haven’t changed, of course. And Bond has the same problem. Initially I couldn’t figure out what the point of this was, other than to mock the many who would come to see Quantum of Solace for exciting action and nothing more. But ultimately I think it’s not about entertainment at all. It’s not even about the audience. It’s about Bond himself, and the show he is performing.

The action sequences are an artifice for our entertainment, to be certain, but they’re also artifices for Bond. Not for his entertainment, but for his fulfillment. As a jockey finds purpose in racing horses and an actor finds purpose in playing a ridiculously over-the-top death scene, a 00 agent finds purpose in protecting Queen and country. Bond was chosen to be a 00 agent (as Vesper identifies in Casino Royale) because as a maladjusted orphan he has no other ties, he has no other loyalties, he can be depended on to dedicate himself fully to this purpose and to truly believe in it.

The climax of Quantom of Solace involves another set of intercut action sequences, but neither one is diegetically artificial: Bond fights with Dominic Greene, the film’s central villain, while Camille (Olga Kurylenko) gets her revenge on the corrupt General Madrano for torturing and killing her family. But I think the two earlier sequences are intercut precisely so that in this finale we do look for one to be artificial–and since we’ve already been told and shown how real Camille’s hatred for Madrano is, the conclusion is obvious: Bond’s fight is the artificial one. What point does it have, besides to entertain us? Greene, though frenzied by an obvious fear of death, is a business executive and no real match for Bond. The central question of the fight ends up not being, will Bond survive? but will Bond kill Greene?

Bond lets him go. While he later recaptures him and gets information from him about Quantum (which will undoubtedly be a driving force in the inevitable third film), when he does Bond must believe that he is letting Greene go for good–his next act, after all, is to find Camille and prepare for both of their deaths to the fire blazing around them. It is the moment, I think, when Bond finally faces that everything he has been doing up to this point, everything in his quest to stop Greene, has not been about defending Queen and country, or about getting revenge for Quantum trying to kill M (as he oddly suggests to Camille), or even about getting revenge to Vesper. It’s been about going through the motions. Doing what he’s been trained to do, because it’s easier than moving forward. It’s easier than facing the futility of defending a country that lies down with terrorists and orders you arrested when you try to actually defend it. It’s easier than facing that Vesper took any sense of fulfillment he can have to her grave and he will never get it back.

Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and James Bond (Daniel Craig) in Casino Royale (2006)

At that moment, Bond is ready to die. What else is there to do? But when the opportunity for survival presents itself, he reacts instinctively and takes it. Outside, he spots Greene stumbling into the desert and leaves Camille behind to go after him. One moment, Bond is ready to die; but the next, he decides that if he can live, he will, and if he can’t be fulfilled, he’ll do what he can, what he knows how to do, what he knows is helping some even if it’s not him. He goes back to doing his duty to Queen and country. But this time, it’s not an artifice, or at least not as much–it is an artifice, in the sense that Bond doesn’t really care; but it’s not an artifice in that, unlike when Bond kills every lead he comes across, Bond is actually helping. He doesn’t kill Vesper’s “Algerian boyfried” but turns him over to MI6. He’s actually doing what’s best for his country, as he abandons one artifice–the necklace and the picture that pretend this is about vengeance–for a much more frightening, almost nihilistic truth: what Bond cared about is gone permanently, and so he doesn’t care about anything. He’ll do what he’s asked, do what he’s been trained to do, but not because of loyalty or duty, but because there is nothing else he can do.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. (Robert A. Heinlein)

Who are the pinnacle of modern Western society? Our political leaders, variously despised and mistrusted? Our philosophers, who don’t exist in the minds of a majority? Our artists, ignored if they don’t produce carefully constructed entertainment to numb the pain of living our lives of quiet desperation? I think a strong argument could be made that the pinnacle of modern Western society, from the view of modern Western society itself, in terms of those paid the most and getting the most media coverage (easily argued, I think, to be the two primary definitions of status for modern Western society), are professional sports players. (“Most of them don’t make that much and aren’t known”, yeah, yeah. Same goes for all the other aforementioned categories, and everything in general.)

I’m not looking to judge whether that’s right or wrong. I’m simply looking to understand why. Because it is, I think, a very strange thing, and if you spend a few minutes thinking about it I would hope you’d agree. Especially if you adhere to modern Western society’s (yes, I’m getting tired of typing that out) apparent worship of rationalism and efficiency, then you have to wonder: how are sports players rational or efficient? They don’t do anything useful. They provide entertainment, sure, but as an explanation for why we consider them the best of us it’s like saying we like them because they give us pleasure. It’s redundant and cyclical. The question is, why do they give us pleasure? Why do we enjoy them?

Heinlein–for all that he was, good and bad–would cast a negative judgment towards this, obviously. He believed that the Renaissance man (to use a terrible term; maybe the Jack of All Trades?) was, or should be, the pinnacle of society. Of course, in a technological society, or a globalized society, or any society of sufficient complexity, it’s more-or-less impossible to be a Renaissance man (and even the real Renaissance men probably weren’t all that Heinlein wanted us to be). Because specialization is an intrinsic part of sociological development–more, it’s evolutionary. Heinlein’s true heroes would be single-celled organisms, who have to do everything for themselves because they have no one else. Of course, they don’t do a whole lot–intake energy and reproduce, mainly. We can do all the things Heinlein wanted us to do because those single-celled organisms specialized and evolved.

But–this is the real argument I’m looking to make–there’s nothing intrinsically useful about specialization. It’s inherently arbitrary. You may say, how can that be? We’re clearly better off than single-celled organisms. But of course we’re not. Insects (which are much more generalized than we are, whatever Heinlein says) outnumber us in the trillions, and single-celled organisms outnumber them by orders of magnitude more. We may be the most powerful lifeforms on the planet, but we’re far from the best survivors. Every step towards specialization is a step away from independence, a step away from basic survival and towards arbitrariness. Why do we use money? Work jobs? Play games? Wear clothes? There are explanations for all of these, of course, and good ones, but from a survival standpoint, they’re all pointless (more-or-less).

Why do we specialize, then? Why did some of those first cells evolve towards specialization? After all, they didn’t make a choice. It was survival of the fittest, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t we have never evolved if it wasn’t a better route? I don’t have a particularly good answer to that–I’m not a biologist, or anywhere close to one–but I do know a little about something called the “handicap principle”. Think of a peacock. Why would anything evolve to so clearly identify itself to predators? Peacocks aren’t particularly dangerous. They’re not particularly good at escaping predators. It’s a very dangerous thing for a peacock to be colored like it is. It’s supposed to attract peahens for mating, sure, but why are they attracted to a peacock that’s doing something idiotic? The answer is the “handicap principle”: animals demonstrate they are fit for survival by demonstrating unfitness. That doesn’t make sense, of course, so let’s try again: animals demonstrate they are good enough to survive by deliberately handicapping themselves and still surviving. Peacocks are still around, so clearly they’re able to survive despite their idiocy–and that makes them impressive.

This is, I think, at the core of specialization and its arbitrariness, at the core of why we value professional sports players more than any other type of person. Because they’re pointless. Because they’re useless idiots. Because they are supremely able to do one thing that absolutely cannot benefit themselves or anyone else in any real way. They are the ultimate specializers, the ultimate handicapped. And we love them for it, because they survive in spite of it. And yet–they survive only because we love them. This is, in its way, as cyclical as the answer that we like them because we are entertained by them. But I think it’s closer. I think we intrinsically value specialization and arbitrariness on a genetic scale, and we can’t help ourselves but love professional sports players because of it, be fascinated by them and shower them with attention.

And you know what? That’s not a bad thing. Because remember, this is completely contrary to modern Western society’s worship of rationalism and efficiency. Rationalism and efficiency are about accomplishing what’s most important in the best way possible. They’re about survival. But there is a part of each of us that doesn’t care about survival. There is a part of each of us that wants to be specialized arbitrarily, that wants to be idiotic, that wants to be irrational and inefficient, that wants to be–different. That’s what specialization really is, after all–difference. If everyone was rational and efficient, if there was only one best path to survival, then we’d all be the same. And many in modern Western society would greatly prefer that.

But you can’t take away our irrationalism and inefficiency. You can funnel it into the worship of professional sports players, turn it into massive spectacles of distraction away from the dark horrors in our hearts, but you can’t take it away. And eventually it will break out, and people will wake up, and they will tear down those false idols of rationalism and efficiency and act beautifully idiotically, beyond any authority. Until someone asserts authority and begins it all again, or we all die, spectacularly unfit for survival.

I look forward to the end of the world.

• Pushing Daisies be dead. Terrible, horrible, depressing, expected. On the very minor positive side, Bryan Fuller may well end up running Heroes and perhaps save it from the abysmal joke it’s become. (During Heroes’ second season, the first time I watched the show as it aired, I repeatedly took it to task for ugly sexism until I eventually concluded it was just lazy writing, not actual misogyny, and gave up. This is still the case, and still one of the few things I actively despise about the show. Please save it, Bryan Fuller. Make it whimsy and fun!)
• Far Cry 2 is a great game, but I’ve barely played it (or any other games) since I started Letters from Africa. As a result, I haven’t updated that particular project since then. I hope to get around to it eventually, but at this point I kind of just want to play the game. I also bought Overlord during its 75% price reduction on Steam and played it for an hour or two. It’s cute.
• I’m a terrible DM. Not really, of course, but not a very good one, anyway. I don’t intend to continue the campaign log, although I do intend to keep the wiki updated with shorter summaries and to post some thoughts on DM-ing (and how much I suck at it). Seriously, it’s hard (especially when the online campaign I’m playing in is so well-designed. Here’s to you, stabs!) I almost want to start something new next semester (with a month of preparation over break), but I think the players would prefer to continue, because they don’t have as much of a problem with what I do as I do (and that’s what’s important, anyway)–and there are still some (hopefully) really interesting moments to get to.
• Quantum of Solace is a conundrum to me. I’m planning on writing some more thorough thoughts (and I’ve thought a lot about what those will be) but I’m waiting until I probably see it again this weekend.

But every time I come home I am devoured anew, trapped by the prison I created and continue to create, because I can’t let go and say, it is just a building. I should leave, walk about this town that used to be mine, and sometimes I do, but I have nowhere to go. I used to go the park and admire–the people, nature, whatever; but it’s too cold now. I used to walk two hours one way to the nearest movie theater, and then come back, six hours gone, because it was better than being here.

The worst part is that I see myself. I never look in mirrors except at home, and here, they are everywhere. I get up in the morning and look into a mirror and I think–not, I wish I was someone else; not even, that is not me; but simply, who is that? Because I do not know. It is a foreign face, a foreign body–gaunt and pale and scarred and so very, very tired.

I used to tell people that I didn’t care about my appearance because I didn’t have to look at it. It wasn’t true, of course–while certainly there is less care involved, I do consider what clothes I’m wearing on what day and why. I would be impressed by someone who has endured modern American society’s conditioning and can avoid that. But it was true, somehow, that I dissociated myself from my own image, not from the clothes but from my physical body itself; somehow I mentally divorced myself from my own embodiment, became a floating brain, always fascinated but ultimately confused and distanced by the way my hands move, tendons twisting on bones beneath the skin, the way my leg steps forward with such instinctual confidence, the way my eyes glisten and contract and stare without comprehension.