Where Honor Starts

I am told that waiting to die is a condition to be avoided. But I feel like I am waiting to die all the time. I feel this way even though I am applying myself to work tasks. I don't want to rot in a puddle of my own vomit but I still feel like I am waiting to die. I feel like I am among the most irrelevant people inhabiting this earth.

I sometimes feel like my career has had unfair bounds around it, and this feeling damages my motivation to keep working. I start to feel like one of the characters Ayn Rand favors in Atlas Shrugged. But, when I see that life is depressing, and that work is the only way I can make it not so, then I am able to get motivated to work again. Work is how I keep my life interesting.

Honor starts with the recognition that life is depressing.

When we (I) hear the word honor, I have a knee-jerk reaction which is to picture a Japanese samurai. Such was an honorable life, right? I don't think honor should be associated so firmly with such a stereotype, though. If you simply recognize that life is depressing and walk forward through it anyway, illuminating what's around you as you go, then you are as honorable as that samurai.

The Lord of the Rings franchise and the character of Gandalf was a reminder of this second type of peaceful honor. Gandalf used to say that Hobbits were a source of courage for him. At the end of the Hobbit, Thorin tells Bilbo to go "back to his books" and to plant his trees. Thorin sees in Bilbo plenty of honor.

Ghost in the Shell

Today I watched small pieces of both Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and Ghost in the Shell. I was not really repulsed by either one right away. MI I dropped after I started it from the beginning and watched the opening jail break scene. It felt very callous to me. I don't know why I had to watch three inmates beat up a guard, much less the ensuing chaos. But at least the middle of it was exciting.

Ghost in the Shell immediately brought back memories from my teenage years. I think what it made me feel back then was a sort of goal, an aspiration to be like the Major. She wakes up in a dark appartment in a futuristic world, and we conclude very early on that she has no friends outside of work, is financially stable, and does work that suits her. It so happens that she risks her life regularly, too.

I prefer the Ghost in the Shell plot because I too want to be able to say, whether I have friends or not, that I am living my life the way one is supposed to, by all other measurements. In MI, we never get much of a look into Ethan Hunt's personal life and the setting is not science fiction (which usually makes us feel more alone, in either the vastness of space or anonymization of technology). Ethan is just effective. In one of the other MI movies we see that he struggles to maintain a relationship with his girlfriend because he doesn't tell her about his life with IMF. But the mood of the film is decidedly more cheerful than that of Ghost in the Shell. Even though he and the Major have very similar job descriptions.

Ghost in the Shell communicates to me that friendship is optional. But the truth is indispensable. For the Major, the security of Japan is the highest calling. With some juggling, one can speculate that while not all of us work in the army, we are all still responsible for being just as courageous as the Major is, when it comes to being honest with our family, coworkers, and whatever friends we may have. When it comes to falling into formation and moving as a nation.

However, the gloominess of the Major's life is supposed to be temporary. No one actually wants to be risking so much on a regular basis, and no one actually wants to be without friends. Sure, we can say that Ghost in the Shell in an analogy for the storm or dark forrest that awaits us as we pass through adulthood. But we are meant to emerge from that once and for all.

I do not believe that we relieve the elderly of responsibility for protecting our nation just because the age of 65 sounds "about right." I think we do it because we make the educated assumption that the elderly have already taken a side in the war against ignorance and wrongdoing, and have already paid the price for whatever stand they took. And so extracting more performance out of them is deemed redundant and inappropriate.

So it's hard to me to feel like Ghost in the Shell still speaks to me.

Squaresoft Died with Final Fantasy X

This post contains John Wick and Star Wars spoilers.

The Playstation 2 marked the end of Squaresoft's reign of glory. This is because they made the decision to feature voice acting in Final Fantasy X, while not supporting the PC platform. They stayed confined to a console box.

If you look at The Longest Journey, an RPG with voice acting, it was on the PC. I've never played this game (for a meaningful amount of time) but it did catch my interest as an onlooker. The game features voice acting and it's a PC game. It is, to me, of the same era as Final Fantasy X. And it feels remarkably different than Final Fantasy X does. Final Fantasy X feels like it's in a cage compared to The Longest Journey.

Final Fantasy X as an RPG hits the notes it's supposed to hit, judging by the number of people I've encountered who say it's a good game. Its battle system is fine. Its story is fine. Its music is fine. But it's in a cage on the PS2. I'm aware that it has more recently been ported to the PC. That's way too little too late to save the Squaresoft brand. AFAIK they went entirely through FF XIII without porting FFX to the PC.

This brings me to Final Fantasy XIV. It is just a generic MMO. It is the best chance that Square Enix has ever had at recapturing my respect, and it fails. It has nothing innovative to offer to compensate for the damage Final Fantasy X did. It is the best product that Square Enix has had since those old days, and it fails. I can't even try to see whether New World outranks it because they're both lame and generic. They feel like they're just checking off boxes, whereas World of Warcraft still sits on firm footing.

John Wick 3 killed its franchise. The plot twist of John having to go after Winston is critically in aristic error. I never purchased John Wick 4 after that.

The Force Awakens was picking up a story that was of the highest order. Its storytelling was way beyond what World of Warcraft tries to do. WoW's story is like a soap opera and it is up front with you about that. The gameplay is left to make up for this (and it does). And the story is kept fun.

Episodes 1-6 of Star Wars define a single saga, culminating in Luke Skywalker's ascension over his insecurities and enemy in the form of Darth Vader. It is inappropriate for him to be an overthrown recluse in The Force Awakens. It is inappropraite for Han Solo to be rewarded for his adventure with Luke by being murdered in The Force Awakens. I never bothered with episodes 8 and 9.