Tuesday, January 27, 2009

There was turmoil the day the after...

It's been awhile since I wrote last. I'm sure that I could invent a reason for my absence; I haven't been studying, I haven't been reading, I had an elephant knock on my door and announce to the neighborhood (personally I think just the Pepsi machine across the street) that it was living in the alley, having taken two trash cans as it humble abode, and that it was hoping for some visitors from time to time to have peanut tea and strawberry crumpets with. (Just for those of you who haven't been to my house, the part about the Pepsi machine across the street is true, the neighbors make $3.75 a year of it, enough to buy a small welcome mat that says, "Don't be too surprised but we're rich.")

The real story of why I haven't written for a while is much more boring, involving my utter lack of anything important to proclaim to the world, a momentary hatred of technology, and some rather deeply ingrained personal issues. I have been studying, quite a bit actually, about Religion and English and Actionscript 3.0. While I have found everything that I have been studying lately of great interest and importance, I have doubts that anyone else will. So in lieu of discussing any of that here I will discuss something totally off subject. (Off subject? you ask, how could anything be off subject with you Lance? Dear Reader, I love you, but don't ask silly questions.)

I play World of Warcraft. I do. I love playing that game. I love paying 60 dollars to buy the game, and another 14 a month to keep playing. I love the fact that my wife plays with me. In short, I love playing World of Warcraft. Now to the point: I have issues while playing that game. It is a MMORPG (google it) and because it is a MMORPG I interact with people who don't know me and I don't know them. Normally I try to avoid people in general and even not in general, (one of the many side effects of having deeply ingrained personal issues) but because it is such a random environment I feel that I can interact in a much free way than I can in person. SIDE NOTE: I have an up coming assignment in my Business and Professional Speaking class where I have to go out into the community and interview a person of influence; I'm dreading it. END OF SIDE NOTE. I have noticed that people at random are much worse than people in general. Because they don't know the person on the other end of the game they don't care how they treat them, what they say, or even trying to get to know the person. Human nature at its worse. (Not true actually, I imagine that Black Friday is the worse day of the year for the Human Race...). That bugs me.

I recently finished a book (fantasy finally I enjoyed every minute of my break from non-fiction and even examining every detail in the book) called Blood and Honor. It was about Orc and Humans (bad blood there) and how they both want to kill each other. It reminded me of the issue with the Indians and the English during the Colonial times here in America, but more on that later. One human runs into one orc and they fight. In the process they slam into a ruined tower and the human is buried under the rubble. The next thing the human knows is that he is in his bed, healed. To shorten the story process the human finds out the orc saved him, the other people in his village want the orc killed and the human stands up for the orc (who is about to hang) and the human is exiled from the village.

The story brought together many issues that I have been dealing with in my mind. How can human nature be so cruel? Why is it that we have this burning desire to critique and exploit everyone around us? Humans and Orcs are different races, I understand that, but the point is drove home all the same: where is the honor in our lives today? Why is it that when put in a situation where we don't know people at all we serve our baser desires (shooting a man over a PS3? Why?)

I don't know the answer. And there are many examples of people trying to do the opposite and ending up hurt, or worse. I guess what I'm dealing with deep down is whether or not I could accept the elephant in the trash cans behind my house.

What would you do?