Slashdot Mirror
Gaming Memories Helping to Heal Katrina Wounds
waterlogged writes "Lara Crigger writes a compelling account of the effects of hurricane Katrina on a person's sense of videogames in The Escapist. From the article: 'Hurricanes destroy more than just property; they destroy the sense of property, as well. They smash that universal belief that objects intrinsically carry some emotional gravity or weight. Acts of destruction remind us that physical substances are only equal to the exact sum of their parts: Plastic and cotton, metal or wood. What's left over is a painful buoyancy, an unbearable absence of feeling; you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless. Even if they do remain intact after the storm (like the Samus poster), the only entity that really survives is you.'"
All this is a good thing. Eventually you'll realize that even you don't exist. That'll be even better.
so it's a new thing that deriving your life's worth from your material possessions leaves you lacking in the long run? Don't feel sorry for these people whose stuff was destroyed: at least they have a chance at gaining perspective. Feel sorry for the guy that's still got his XBox and wastes all day, every day on it, or the guy that has a bright shiny car but no sense of personal worth.
"It's only after you've lost everything," Tyler says, "that you're free to do anything."
Which is why if a hurricane comes and crushes my console and sweeps away my games, I've lost nothing. The atoms don't matter -- I can buy another plastic console, and buy another piece of plastic and aluminum with some bits on it. I've lost nothing. The long numbers (a DVD with a game on it is just a multibillion-digit-long number) that, when read into a properly-configured piece of plastic and ceramic (say, an XBox or PS2), come to life as video games are of no consequence because they're easily replaced.
But if a hurricane sweeps away my only copies (and my not-remote-enough backups) of the somewhat shorter numbers (million-digit-long strings of bits) that represent my digital photo archive, and then we can talk about pain.
All numbers are unequal. But some are more unequal than others.
It's called a reality check. Believe it or not, stuff doesn't last. Not even big stuff. Life goes on...it's good to be reminded of what's important; we all need that from time to time.
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose"
--Janis Joplin
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Wait, have we gone so far into materialism that this becomes a wake-up call -- holy crap, my copy of Halo 2 doesn't matter in the long run!
...but if you vote for CowboyNeal in the slashdot polls -- that, my friend, can lead to the cure for cancer. Keep that in mind next time you click on the other options.
Sure, I guess we all need that reminder one way or another and great disasters have a way of giving us that reality check...but Katrina linking us to reality through ownership of Video Games? How frickin shallow are we?
Just to get it over with, here are a few things to remember:
Material posessions don't mean jack in the long run.
Your SAT score doesn't mean jack in the long run either.
Your high score in Tetris, your Super Mario Brothers speed run, and your 100pct completion rating for San Andreas...all insignificant.
Really, when it comes down to it, stuff doesn't matter much at all.
So, video games aren't really that important when your personal Maslow Hierarchy goes Jenga.
Big. Fucking. Revelation.
Boy, I was drowning this one time and I sure needed air and not video games. Makes you think LOL!!111
First the disclaimer: I'm not an American, I'm not in the USA, I don't even have relatives there or anything. And I'll be the first to bitch and moan about contemporary American politics and about the occasional chest-thumping redneck. But this... you, sir, are a fucking lunatic and it's people like you that are the problem with the world today. Seriously.
For starters even if you make everyone who voted for Bush personally responsible for all of Bush's idiocies, only slightly less than half the votes went to Bush. So what's your problem with the other half, then? You're willing to dance on someone's grave just because they were born in the USA, or what? How fucked up is that?
And at that point, how does it make you any better? If you're willing to cheer for destruction and suffering inflicted upon civilians, just because they're in the USA, then how does that make you better than those who wish the same on people just because they're born in Iraq? No, seriously. What moral high ground can you claim, from which to look down on them, when you're as big an idiot as the most retarded bible-thumping rednecks they have?
And I'm serious about the "people like you" part. The whole vicious circle of inflicting nasty stuff upon each other is based on people taking the whole Us-Vs-Them thing too seriously. People willing to wish you a flaming death just because of where you were born or who your grandparents were. It's _precisely_ such people who thought it would be a great idea to fly an airplane full of innocent civilians into a building full of innocent civilians, or anything of that calibre. All the way back into ancient history, when an army entered a city and proceeded to rape, kill and enslave just to show them who's the new boss, it was just that mentality that was the problem. That it's "Us" vs "Them". That if you happen to be born in Carthage, you're personally to blame for what Hannibal did to Rome. Or that if you were living in Jerusalem, you're personally responsible for the Muslims' being in command there. (See the Crusaders slaughtering a ridiculous number of the very Christians they were supposedly trying to save.)
And you're willing to cheer for... what? For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, i.e., for permanent psychological damage? Because under the whole bullshit philosophy angle in the summary, that's the cruel reality. It's not that those people had a flash of Nirvana-like enlightenment that material possessions are worthless. It's that those people had the trauma of seeing everything they owned turned into junk or washed away, and went through some hell just keeping onto their very life. A lot of them are probably _affraid_ to get attached to any item any more, and are looking forward to a life spent in fight-or-flight mode, and of waking up in cold sweat after a nightmare about it.
PTSD is a bitch. Your brain gets switched into a semi-permanent mode of trying to learn how you should have dealt with the horror where you actually had no control and no way out. There is nothing to learn, but that's the only thing that would naturally end it. So you're stuck re-living it over and over again. And yet avoiding anything that reminds you of it. So, yes, a lot of them will be stuck fearing the very notion of ever getting attached to something or someone ever again. It's not just their gaming life that's taken a change, it's that their whole _Real_ _Life_ is fucked up now. Including any hope of a meaningful family life, social life, etc.
Yes, it's not fun for the people who got it in Iraq. (Both American soldiers and Iraqis.) But it's not fun for the poor buggers that got it from Katrina.
And frankly, I find it distasteful to use someone's hell to make some personal political point with. That goes for both you, and the pseudo-philosophy in TFA. Those people didn't reach some Zen enlightenment, they were scarred for life. And if all someone can think about is how it affects the gaming habbits, that someone is either a prick or completely out of touch with reality.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Do you have any clue? It's called literature, pick up a book one day and you might discover it. When you are writing to express an emotion you felt strongly at a time and you want your reader to relate, you use emotive language. This is a descriptive passage, about 'life' (you may have heard of it), not yet another review of yet another Madden '0, of course it's gonna seem emotional.
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.
It is actually not surprising that disaster situations tend to change people's priorities when it comes to physical possessions and property. Would you rather have your intact XBOX (w/working controllers) but no power OR MREs, Jeep Wrangler (or other four wheel drive vehicle), jerry cans w/fuel, waterproof matches, and your trusty sidearm (w/box of ammunition)? Actually, getting Americans to be more self-sufficient in a survival situation is probably a good thing as opposed to the throw away, outsourcing, let someone else do it society that we live in today. It is unfortunate that people suffered and in some cases lost their lives, but perhaps this will remind people that the government is not responsible for the survival of any one citizen, but rather society in general. You have to be prepared to take matters into your own hands because the police, government, coast guard, etc...will not always be there to help you.
Been to New Orleans since Katrina? The place will have that effect on you. Even now, almost a year after the storm, it still does. Everyone who comes here and visits Lakeview or Chalmette says the same thing -- the scale of what happened here can't be conveyed by photography or video or even writing. You come thinking you know what to expect because you've seen the pictures and the TV reports and it still just knocks you down.
This is just one more person who tried to convey what it was like, and ultimately as we all do failed.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]