Social Justice

Span or Tandem?

Lester

Image by bafritch from Pixabay

In my head are two horses. One is a creative force, prone to enthusiasms, award-winningly clever, easily bored, easily dispirited. The other a disciplined adult, clear-eyed, trained as an editor and educator, tempered by experience. Faithful, honest, enduring.

As a writer, I’ve learned to nurture the first when starting a project. After all, it’s the one that came up with the idea in the first place, the one with a view beyond the horizon.

And when the creative horse falters, the disciplined one nickers encouragement: “This really is a genius concept, and only you can envision where it’s headed. Only you can carry it through.” But once the first horse is knackered, it’s the disciplined one who analyzes the product, polishes the language, fills in any holes, and trots it out for others’ feedback, before carrying it over the finish line. (Meanwhile, the first horse is dreaming up something new.)

As to the metaphor, I’m unsure whether span or tandem best suits. Are the two horses walking side-by-side in span the whole time, or am I switching the lead horse in a tandem fashion?

Whichever. The point is that there are two very different horses in my head, working together to write things. And of late they’re being forced to haul two very different loads in the same wagon.

One is a load of joy. Not just from creating my own games, essays, and poems, but also celebrating and promoting other people’s creations. It’s fascinated by well-crafted things, from a clever choice of words, to the perfectly timed rotation of a microwave. (Have you ever noticed that punching the “30 second” button brings your coffee cup handle conveniently back to where it started?)  It stands in  awe of the transcendent art of humankind. And of the simple kindnesses shared.

The other is a load of horror. That while some create beauty, others build bombs. That a millenia-old sculpture can be forever destroyed in seconds. That a museum’s worth of art and knowledge can be crushed and burned in minutes. That a hospital devoted to healing can be targeted for cannonade. And all at the direction of a few highly placed people, either hoarding wealth or seeking to leave their mark on history. Those few, and the many they convince to support them, through fear or greed (which is just another type of fear).

Beauty is difficult and ephemeral. Brutality is easy and lasting. And I can’t champion the one without actively opposing the other.

All of which is to say, I suppose, that if you’ve noticed my social media lurching from announcements about new games to shaming or lampooning tyranny, it’s the same two horses as always.

The nation is just on a really rocky path right now.

Fight or Flight in the Time of Trump

Lester

We’re all familiar with the “fight or flight” concept: Our early ancestors, when faced with danger, instinctively either fled or fought that danger, depending on the situation. It’s easy to think that we’ve somehow outgrown those instinctive impulses. We’re more civilized, and life is less perilous for most of us than it was back then.

Although I think of myself as a cerebral guy, I can say from personal experience that the genetic instinct remains—red flags that flash before the danger becomes consciously evident. An instant at Canyon de Chelly twenty years ago, during a pleasant conversation with a resident, when genetic flags flashed and I found myself mounting my bike and leaving, only to learn afterward the danger I had been in. The many muggings that had been reported to the Park Service.

But there’s a more subtle version of this “fight or flight” instinct that we need to be aware of right now. The twin emotional responses to tyranny.

One is the impulse to resist. To speak out. To picket. To march in frog costumes. To call bullshit on abusive authority.

The other is an impulse to avoid it. To acquiesce to its every advance, perpetually yielding moral ground. Or worse, to join it, in hopes that its skirts will protect you.

That second impulse is cowardice. “Let’s not talk about it.” “I have a right to my opinion and you have a right to yours.” “Let’s agree to disagree.” “All politicians lie.” “Who can know what’s true and what isn’t.” “Don’t let ‘politics’ come before family and friends.”

Let me say it again: That second impulse is cowardice.

And the only way I can think of to fight that complacent lethargy is to shame it. To call it the spineless chickenshit it really is.

Too Much Credit

Lester


Image by Constance Kowalik from Pixabay

I have been told by a European buddy that I fret too much about being impolite to objectionable friends and family.

And honestly, yeah, before posting, I take a lot of time to think things through, craft my words, and research and reevaluate my position. Then after posting, I wrestle for days with guilt about having been impolite—but always coming back to the same conclusion: “Somebody had to say it.”

Nevertheless, I feel like an asshole. See, I’m doing it again. Fretting over having been confrontational in whitewashed America.

My takeaway is that in trying to reason with them, I give those objectionable friends and family too much credit for goodheartedness and goodheadedness.

So let me be blunt and be done: If you’re mourning Charlie Kirk, there’s something wrong with you. You’re either too lazy to research his words, too selfish or hateful to care, or too stupid to understand. Take your choice: lazy, selfish, hateful, or stupid.

In any case, you’re not listening. You don’t care. You’re bad people.

For the rest of you reading this—friends, family, and especially those marginalized in America—even if we’ve never met, I love you. If Charlie Kirk and his ilk can hate people they don’t know, then you and I can love people we don’t know.

And honestly, I need you. My privileged, white, Midwestern, late Boomer, mid 20th Century, Evangelical Christian, heterosexual cis male background leaves a lot of ignorance. I’m doing my best here, but I could use a hug.

On Separation of Churl and Fete

Lester

Granted, the wordplay of that post heading is a bit of a stretch. But the point is a perceived somewhat bipolar nature of this website.

Let me start by saying that I grew up poor. Not destitute, but noticeably so to my classmates. I’m not complaining, but you know how kids are. Teasing me for offbrand jeans and homemade shirts. For always having a sack lunch. In middle school I bussed the cafeteria tables after other kids ate, to earn a hot lunch for myself.

To earn my way to church camp each year, I memorized a list of 100 Bible verses to recite to the church elders. (Their mistake, because I studied those verses in context and noticed how poorly church doctrine matched up.) And one year I did so for a gift certificate to a local Zondervan bookstore.

Where I found near nothing worth reading for a kid. I spent nearly all that money on art supplies and geegaws. But I did discover a C. S. Lewis sci-fi trilogy, and his Screwtape Letters.

Now we come to the point of this reminiscence. The Screwtape Letters is a collection of missives from the demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, who has been assigned as tempter of a man in London during World War II. At one point, Screwtape chastizes Wormwood for allowing the man an hour of reading a novel during a Zeppelin bombing. Wormwood considered that escapism a frivolous temptation away from God. Screwtape told him the opposite, that the hour of escape was a gift from Heaven.

That thought gave me some comfort, years later, when I took a job as a game designer, while my church at the time preached against “America’s sinful preoccupation with fun!”

I came to the conclusion that entertainment is an honorable profession. A Friday night role-play group in a friend’s basement had gotten me through a decade of drudgery and fear of injury in factory work. And it built lifetime friendships.

So it strikes home when someone complains about having come to this website for game reasons, and is confronted by posts opposed to their politics.

On the one hand, this blog talks about game design, poetry, writing, and things I do for fun. The “fete” of life from this blog title, the celebratory party that life can be.

On the other hand, this blog critiques and often lampoons the politics and economic disparities of our nation. The cruelty of unchecked Capitalism. The un-Christian abandonment of the poor and suffering. Some people consider that critique “churlish.”

But recently, while responding to an email, it occurred to me that I never bring this stuff up with strangers at a game table or convention. Those places are sacrosanct, like that hour of escaping into a novel during a London bombing.

This blog is a different story, literally. It is a public journal, thoughts of life in which gaming is only a part. You must forgive its jumping from a photo about ICE and Klan, to promoting a friend’s Kickstarter or my own game designs.

Thank you.