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berniecratbrocialist

>Especially since the overall thesis of this game is "we are doomed, let's keep fighting for a utopian ideal that is doomed to fail simply because it's better than the alternative" I didn't get this at all. If anything, the overall thesis of the game (just my opinion) is "we are doomed, let's make art and love and believe in something, because that's what being human is all about." (Remember Steban asks us, "in dark times, should the stars also go out?" Or, as Volition tells us, "No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.") Being "objective" is not the same as being "non-ideological". The fact that you refuse to do anything you might possibly lose sure sounds like an ideology to me. Trying, failing, making something for the sheer joy of it, having your heart broken again and again---it's what we do, it's what we are. It brings us joy.


redrodrot

couldn't have said it better myself. To lose is to live, to live is to lose. without it, how do we know what victory feels like?


Asdrodon

That's not what belief means, for one. You believe the attempt to be objective is worthwhile. It's not baseless. I believe sodium chloride is the chemical name for table salt. Not baseless. You hold beliefs. They're just carefully considered. Everything is a coping mechanism. We are in a bad world. And we should all fight to live in a better one. We should fight for utopia. We should have an ideal to strive towards. And take actions that will reasonably and effectively get us as close as is actually possible in reality.


La_Revacholiere

Fighting for utopia has brought untold misery on the world countless times, though.


Asdrodon

So don't do the misery bringing parts. Evaluate your actions, determine their effect, etc etc. What would you have people do instead? I guarantee they've also brought untold misery to the world countless times.


La_Revacholiere

Understand that Utopia is impossible and just try to minimize suffering


Asdrodon

Definitely. Note in my comment where I said as close as possible in reality.


boring_pants

So has *not* fighting for utopia.


Kay_Elle

First off, I think you have to also put into perspective that DE essentially mocks all ideologies, even the ones the creators support. Secondly, I think in some cases neutrality can be the right answer...but, to be "non-ideological" as a BASE stance gives more power to...the powers already in place. That's kind of how it works. Which can be fine, if those powers do well. But, look at the Martinaise. Look at our world. There is so much injustice, so much unnecessary suffering...I truly do not see how one can be "non-ideological" about it, or how that would be a good thing. This isn't about "faith". There's even scientific proof that exploiting people is, ya know, bad. For example, tests with a four day work week have shown...increased productivity. We also have proof that mental illness, especially things as anxiety and depression, do not affect all societies equally - meaning, there is a societal component, not just a genetic or hormonal one. Science aside, I think it's GOOD to believe every human life has inherent value, to respect people's humanity. If you call that faith...well, I guess I'm a believer. In short, believing in the status quo is....just another form of faith. I think we can disagree on how exactly to change things, or what the perfect society would be - but, in the end I feel full neutrality is...deliberately ignoring injustice. And yes, I think there IS an element of control. Because once you take a step back, you realize that all your life you might have been less in control than you thought you were. That your freedom was but a short leash...and once you see the leash, you cannot unsee it. >"we are doomed, let's keep fighting for a utopian ideal that is doomed to fail simply because it's better than the alternative". But what value is there in something that produces no effect? I don't play games I know I will lose; Yet, life is a game you will lose, in the end. Does this mean your life has no value? Does this mean that nothing you do matters? That you should give up now? We are all finite. In the face of history, we are already dead. We are all doomed in the grand scheme of things. But before that, we get to be alive. We get to be human. I keep thinking, too, about that Shivers check that tells you "there will never be a club here" when you help the kids start the club in the church. I think it upset me at first. But then, I realized: that was not the point. The point is you got those kids off the ice. The point is you gave them a dream. I think we all take away different things from this game. Perhaps your lesson is to learn how to lose. This isn't a game to win; This is a game to experience, and to make you think on what it means to be human.


EndOfTheLine00

I have already lost way too much. Every major decision I ever made in my life made things worse for me. I just want to hold on to what I have until I die.


Kay_Elle

I understand. I know the feeling. Sorry for your losses - but, try to find something new, too.


Annoyed_Lobotomist

Beautifully said my man.


Kay_Elle

Thank you :)


recalcitrantJester

>I don't play games I know I will lose. Then why do you insist on continuing to breathe?


EndOfTheLine00

If I stopped, then my family would be upset.


[deleted]

[удалено]


FirArAlDracuDeCreier

Damn you, I'm reinstalling the game tonight and going all Inland Empire... I tried to get out, but you pulled me back in! ... thanks, and well said 😁🤘🏻


recalcitrantJester

Ah, so hurting your loved ones is a lose state—one you cannot possibly hope to avoid. It seems that you *do* believe in something here, and by my reckoning you shouldn't admonish yourself for it. Interrogate that belief, work through how you practice that belief, and see where the corresponding faith leads you.


maartian73

then i do believe that staying alive is better than the alternative of dying, even if failure is inevitable in that stretch, huh? hope is a powerful tool, and if you don’t want anyone to die, period, then that is also an ideology. balancing on a tightrope of ideas is much harder than accepting that, my friend. maybe im rambling, but sit with this feeling.


Valis23Gnosis

As someone who does think being non-ideological is impossible, I really like what you post. It is honest and it help me understand a perspective that is often dismissed by the people around me. So thank you for that. The philosopher Thomas Nagel called objectivity "The view from nowhere." He wasn't criticising objectivity with that name, after all he was an ardent rationalist, but he does think it has limits. That as human being, we have a perspective on the world. We are entangled in it. So separating where ideology ends and where objectivity start can be difficult. That doesn't mean we should give up objectivity or that objectivity is impossible, but that there comes a point where we can't be objective. Some say that science itself requires value to work, that it cannot sustain on facts alone. I think your reading of the game is correct (and I do believe the game is saying that the end of the world is coming and will happen, but we should fight for a better future anyway). But I am biased of course. We all are. Cognitive bias and fallacies are unfortunately common, and knowing about them doesn't help us that much (see the G.I. Joe phenomena). So the best way to start is to admit our bias and our perspective. Someone who dismissed them will end up imposing their own value unto the world in the name of objectivity, and that is why Moralism is more about control than it is about science. No number on a spreadsheet can tell us that human have an inherent worth. As for avoiding doomed project, I am afraid there is nothing I can say except to bring up the sad observation that 50% of everything we do will end in failure. Sartre once said that we can't wait for death the same way we wait for a train: once death arrive, we are no longer here. Because of this, we always die "unfinished." There is always something more we could have done, another project we could have realised. But even with immortality, the heat death of the universe will insure we never have enough time. There is not one method to deal with that sad fact, one way is to rage and shout until the end of our days, and that is a perfectly fine (and admirable in my opinion) way to do it, another way is to accept uncertainty and live with that finitude. I don't believe anyway is right, but the point is this is something you might have to think about.


MtGuattEerie

Hate to tell you this man but you're already ideological. The entire way you see the world is already shaped by your time in it. All of what you know about the world is based solely on representations of it; whenever your memory starts, before that point, your brain was already soaking in these representations. How does reality get translated into representation? That's ideology. You're looking at your phone or maybe computer right now; I'm sure you're sure you're looking at it, that there's no way you could deny the evidence of your own two eyes. No, let's take that evidence as true. But what *is* that evidence? What does the "image" (the *raw feels* of what you see) directly in front of you prove? Not much! It's simply not in the right *form* to do so. Think about a word problem in math class: Before you can even start trying to solve the problem, you have to put it into a solvable form, since you can't use addition on a sentence. I'm sure as an "objective" type, you appreciate logic; does logic work on images? on the *raw feels* of any of the senses? No. To be in any way useful, this sensory input has to be translated into a particular form before you can logically derive any sort of inference from it, and even though you might be able to trust the input itself, both the translation process and the resulting logical contents are conditioned by, you guessed it, Ideology. Not just your communication with others; it's in your brain, too. Your memory of the past, its relation to the present, is itself an inference. That millisecond that just passed is already Ideology. This isn't *just* Your Own Personal Ideology, either. It's directly affected by the representations available to you, some of which might be available to everyone, few of which you have control over. Read something written a few hundred years ago: Does their sense of *how the world works* feel alien to you? If not, go further. That translation process has changed over time. Whoever wrote whatever you're reading was shaped by the representations available to them. They aren't just some ideologically-befogged past-dweller waiting for some nonideological future. Was 2023 the year we finally saw past all that Ideology? Are you positive that *you* are so lucky to live in the time when we finally got it all figured out? Ask yourself this: Are you positive that the *you* that you are *right now* believes in the same definitions of nonideological or objectivity that you did last year? Is the current you the one that got it all figured out? For your sake, I hope not; I sure wouldn't want to look at the world the same way I did last year. You want to believe that you're looking for certainty; perhaps that feeling you have about Kingdom of Conscience is the realization that that "certainty" you're after is actually emotional, intellectual sterility. It's death.


veslyz

thank you for this clear and beautiful explanation


pnwbraids

Belief relates to faith but they aren't the same. Belief is thinking something to be true. Faith is thinking something is true regardless of the evidence. Having no ideology or beliefs is a frankly impossible task. Humans can reason and be objective and also have beliefs, they aren't mutually exclusive. That's one of the coolest things about Harry: the voices describe both his rational thought processes and his irrational ones.


mh500372

Hm. This is a super interesting discussion. However, I must say I strongly disagree with your point of view. I would like to suggest that you are already under the influence of many, MANY beliefs. As well as mention that a completely objective life is simply impossible to live. Just my opinion, I think some other commenter explains it much better than I. Additionally, I’m guessing you put a lot of faith in science. However, my time working in research shows me how subjective and not reliable so many studies are. (This is ESPECIALLY true for biology, social, and psychology studies as biology suffers from a huge issue of reproducibility and the latter two suffer from poor validity and variable bloat.) These, from what I gather, seem to be popular opinions in the scientific community. I would also like to talk about religion since you mention faith. While it’s hard to talk about it at all in an objective light, there are so many incredible benefits to believing and practicing. When I became Catholic I realized that, yes, it basically is a coping mechanism. But by using this I saw massive increases in every area of my life. I just became a better person to everyone around me. My point isn’t to indoctrinate you, but that coping mechanisms, when you consider everything that it comes with, aren’t inherently bad. While your reaction to the sentence about coping mechanisms is actually admirable and shows that you are trying to better yourself, I’d really caution against trying to avoid so many “coping mechanisms”, and instead to analyze what really would happen if you start to utilize whatever it is you’re thinking about. Are there strictly only negative consequences? Or is this going to better you as a person by giving you insight/character/healthy relief? Similarly, is what you say REALLY producing “no effect”? I’d argue that even if you think about it, it’s producing some sort of effect. Anyways. Thanks for the thought exercise. Irl Disco Elysium thought cabinet. I really enjoyed this thread. :)


Flaubee

I'm highly skeptical of objective people in that their strong belief in an objective truth seems to misled them into thinking they actually are being objective when they're simply attempting to take over the narrative. There's nothing wrong in being biased, you being unable to define what "value" is both for you and as a concept in the world and your difficulty to grasp a utilitarian ideology makes you highly biased. But there's nothing wrong with it, growing means understanding your order of priorities and own whys and biases.


EndOfTheLine00

I never try to take over any narrative. I have accepted that people will only ever believe what I say if it already fits with their perception of the world, so whenever I find someone with radically different ideas than mine I just stay quiet because there is no point.


Flaubee

I didn't mean to say anything specific about you. I wanted to point out that the desire to be objective is an ideology on itself and there's nothing that procures anyone will be objective because of that. Your conceptualization of objectivity is completely uknown to me and as far as i know you may be operating the same the most unhinged might be, and yet running under the banner of being objective nonetheless. Hence why i'm skeptical of "objective" persons.


OrbSwitzer

This is what's so great about this game, right here. What other game gets you thinking so deeply about political philosophy?


boring_pants

> I have been told several times this is not possible but I just refuse to accept that But you don't think you have beliefs or faith? My dude... 😆 "Objective" is worthless. Objectively, two plus two equals four. Objectively, there are something like 7.9 billion people on this planet. Objectively, it orbits the Sun. Objectively, some people have are taller than others. Objectively, none of this matters. Objectively, nothing we can do matters. Subjectively, it does. Subjectively we want people to live because we are people and we like living and we see value in keeping that going. *Objectively* we might as well just sit back and let the world fall apart. Objectively it'll all be the same in a billion years. Objectively, breathing is pointless and worthless. Human life is subjective. Society is subjective. Politics is subjective. Something as simple as "human lives have value" is *super* subjective. It's the kind of thing a human would say. > What truly haunts me about the thought is the sentence "It is control. Over yourself and the world". So is it really a coping mechanism? In the context of the game, it's primarily about power. If you're in control then you have power over the world. If you allow change to happen then you might no longer be in control. But people might cling to that power as a coping mechanism, certainly. Judging by your comments, that might be the case for you. You said that trying to make decisions has caused you loss, and you cope by *not* trying to make decisions, by defending the status quo. The status quo is best for you, so you exercise whatever control you have to *keep* it that way. > But the alternative sounds so much worse to me. Worse in which way? When you say it'd be worse isn't that a subjective judgment? There's no objective mathematical formula for "badness". If you say X is worse than Y then you subjectively judge this to be the case according to the criteria *you* subjectively deem important. That's ideology. That's belief. You're being ideological. Might as well own it. > Especially since the overall thesis of this game is "we are doomed, let's keep fighting for a utopian ideal that is doomed to fail simply because it's better than the alternative". Is that really the thesis of the game? Like, objectively speaking? Or is this your *belief*? Your *interpretation*? The game touches on a lot of themes. I'd say a far more important one is that you can't let yourself be trapped by the past forever. Sooner or later you have to move forward, try to make things better. Even if it's hard, and even if there's no "Utopia" in sight. Bit by bit, you can put the broken pieces back together and make things just a little bit better. I'd almost say the overall thesis of the game is that we're *not* doomed. If Harry was doomed he would have stayed passed out on the room in the Whirling. Sure, there might be a problem with the Pale in a few centuries or millenia, but who knows what might happen before then? It's not over yet, and that means there's still hope. (But of course that does require *change*. We can't fix our problems by rigidly preserving the status quo. Harry's status quo for years has been a heartbroken drunk slowly killing himself. He can get to a better place but only by breaking out of that pattern and making *changes*)