Sunday, December 23, 2012

The World's Still Here. I'm Mildly Dissapointed.

Hmm.  I haven't posted here in a while (I've actually been using a blog-space connected to a fandom message board more often because I happen to be popular enough at that board that sometimes people read it and I feel generally informal there).  I have a short story / experimental novel chapter I could post, but I'm not sure it's very good, plus I'm trying to bring together more of the ideas I have for the greater story in my brain.  I shared the little chapter I have so far with a friend and she "wants to know more about how the world got that way" - and, frankly, I do, too... I'm waiting for the details to come to me. 

A lot of news going on in the world. You could say it's part of the reason the world dissapoints me by still turning, but that's sort of dark. The short story/chapter I mentioned had a mention of gun nuts vs. people who actually use guns to hunt because of when I was writing it...  I could use this space to say something about the woeful state of mental health care in this country, but I'm all ranted out from responding on news sites and serious blogs by people who actually count in this world.  Besides, who wants to listen to a crazy person?  As for the gun issue... I quipped to my guy "I think we should have a compromise.  We keep the 2nd Amendment on the grounds that civilians are only allowed to have guns of the models that were around when the 2nd Amendment was drafted!  Imagine how rampages would go if someone had to muzzle-load a musket between shots!"  - Okay, so that's not a real solution to anything, just a joke.  Take it as an interest in historic weapons.  I have relatives who know how to hunt with powder-rifles, so you know, it *does* happen as a sporting and meat-getting thing in the modern age.

 I wasn't expecting the world to end on the Solstice.  I did what I'd planned to do that day: Whipped out "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" and started playing a new file.  For those of you unfamiliar with that videogame, its major theme is Apocalypse, in that you play a child-hero character who gets trapped in an alternate world (of his homeworld, it's a sequel to "Ocarina of Time") and must save it from the machinations of an angry child, a demonic mask that wants to make his darkest desire come true and a falling moon that will crash into the world on a "three-day" time-limit from the start of each gameplay session. Every Legend of Zelda fan I know was making references to Majora's Mask and the 21st.  I also remember playing a bit of MM during that May 2011 end of the world claptrap.  It's a beautiful game, too... you cleanse corruptions, ease the regrets and pains of the dying (seriously, you comfort dying people in this, it's how you partner with their souls in form of masks that give you powers) and, of course, you meet The End of the World and kick its ass!  It's all basically what I describe as a "whimsical nightmare."  If one wants me to get philosophical about the game, I sort of see the villain of the game (Majora's Mask) as nihilism personified and Link (your player character) fighting against it for all he's worth - because people and the world (even when it's not his own) are worth something! 

Which brings me to something I saw today... some comment on an article about the "Mayan Apocalypse" with someone talking about how the end of the world nuts will just move on to the next fad... we survived Y2K, we've survived the end of the last Ba'ak'tun (spelling?) and the person was wondering "why" about that.  I think the reason why is that these "End of the World prophecies" are distractions from the real problems going on. If you're stocking up for "doomsday" you aren't as likely to be worried about today, are you? I seem to vaugely remember a passage in one of the letters of Paul in the Bible's New Testament where he was basically rippinig into his fellow Christ-followers who'd decided to give up their jobs and sit around waiting for the Second Coming.  If more self-proclaimed spiritual leaders of today had that kind of wisdom...a lot of people wouldn't be distracted from their solid real-world work. Then again, a favorite blog of mine wouldn't be nearly as popular if it didnt' have a certain apocalyptic book series to rip into...At least I know that's how I found out about it.

We have a lot of problems in our world that are essentially "destryong it" - making it an unfun, dangerous place to live (not that it hasn't always been), but we have some major things going on now, in our interconnected age.  The spectacular pronouncements of "The world is going to end on this day!" or "on this year!" priming people to expect some major cataclysm perhaps serves as an mind-catching distraction from the "slow path" things that are happening every day and whittling away peace and justice by increment. I don't even mean a vague "belief in Heaven," either, because I know a lot of people who believe in somelace nice to go after they die who care about here and now *more than anything* (myself included).  It's the whole idea that the world is going to end in some kind of sucidial bang and it's going to happen on this date, this hour that's the distraction from the problems of the world that seem ordinary, but are still problems.  It entertains people, nothing more.  The idea of the world's sudden death probably hurts less than the slow death.  I know that I react to a lot of news these days with sheer, staggering apathy, and that scares me.  The Conneticuit shooting... I saw something blip online about it and thought "Okay, another one" and thought it was something that had happened a month or so ago with only a couple of deaths.  It was only when I turned on the news and saw the mass death - and child deaths - that I cried.  Before I knew the magnitude of it all, my attitude was sort of "ho hum" because what was once and should be EXTRODINARY has become ORDINARY. 

Ordinary evils and dangers tend to be met by apathy. Only the dramatic and the cataclysmic catches our attention anymore. 

The moon is falling slowly.  Are you going to fight the darkness, free the good?  Is the world worth it?