The Color of Everything

January 28, 2005 at 10:53 pm (babbling, brain, psychology)

A friend just sent me a link on synesthesia. I definitely fall into the numbers-having-colors category. For example, two has been yellow, three has been green, and four has been red ever since I learned to count. 4,196 is black, red, and grey (and all of those colors get more intense if you remove the comma; they tend to dilute numbers). 9 is also a shade of red, and 1 is dark grey (varying in shade depending on context) while 6 is black. However, 239857 when taken together is a lightish blue, despite its constituent digits — the red of the 9 gets drowned out completely by everyone else. 8’s are yellow, 5’s are brown, 7’s are grey with a hint of pale blue. The constant e (~2.718), so commonly used interest computations in accounting, is appropriately a disturbing, disorienting combination of its constituent yellows and greys. One of the reasons π is my favorite number is because it’s so Christmasy (the 1 after the decimal is nearly invisible to me).

Letters also have color for me, as do words (e.g. “letters” as a word is a light, tannish fleshtone despite the strong red and black of the r and t’s, respectively). Vowels are highly saturated, bright colors, while consonants are duller but have subtler variations in value. And so on.

Music doesn’t have color or imagery for me, but it has movement — more precisely, I associate it with tactile sensations. I often find myself doing things with my hands when I listen to music alone. Not just drumming my fingers or “playing” along, but just doing weird things that it looks like an autistic person might do. And, like the unconventional behaviors of autism, I find such movements extremely satisfying/comforting.

Words, both written and spoken, also elicit a tactile response in me. Clavier, incommunicably, Gothic, and Esgalduin are all very tactilely pleasing words to me. It’s hard to generalize what will make a word feel good to me, but it almost always has to have a non-aspirated glottal consonant in it, and I happen not to aspirate any of the consonants in those words.

Okay, I think I’ve beaten this topic to absurdity now (despite the fact that I could write much more). Maybe I should actually read more than the first paragraph of that web page, just in case it says something like “people who have this thing are really, really screwed.”

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On the Unimportance of Smart

November 15, 2004 at 11:41 pm (business, enlightenment, psychology)

An acquaintance of mine prides herself on being smart and having accomplished things in life because of being smart. But, to me, it’s obvious from listening to her words that her intelligence — her raw IQ — barely threatens to eclipse the average. That may sound brutal, but such a perception is exactly the point of this entry. So where do her accomplishments come from, if not her surpassing intelligence? Mainly, she just has gumption — the spark of passionate desire, the dedicated hardheadedness, and the sheer ballsiness to pursue her goals. But she rarely credits anything resembling such qualities; she prefers to credit her smarts which I believe just aren’t anything to write home about.

From casual observation, I’d say this is true for a lot of people, too. Among the “smart kids” I knew from high school and college, very few of them truly seemed to possess exceptional intelligence. What was chalked up as raw Brain by teachers, parents, and the individuals themselves actually seemed to me a glorious, diverse palette of other virtues that went strangely unrecognized, or rather misrecognized as simple cognitive ability.

Collectively, we seem to revere intelligence extremely highly — higher, I’d argue, than any other virtue that has application outside the confines of our private lives.

This has certainly been my own judgement over long periods of my life. What could be more valuable than being innately smart, I thought at one time, since it is the one virtue that can give birth to all others? At other times in my life, being a smart kid was the only aspect of myself I didn’t altogether hate; I valued intelligence because, I thought, it was all I had to cling to in this world, all I had of worth.

But of course not all virtue can be born of raw reason. Our postmodern science fiction is replete with stories of passionless, superintelligent computers receiving their most powerful enlightenment through a proverbial Android’s Holy Grail: the smallest drop of human emotion. And early Romantic works like Frankenstein also express that side of our culture that believes in the danger of embracing our rational intelligence too zealously, neglecting our other faculties. Clearly there has existed a thread of our culture that has recognized over-valuing of intelligence ever since the Enlightenment vaulted intelligence to the primacy of our values.

But the Enlightenment, I’d argue, in addition to being an historical term not without a twinge of irony, never really ended. We’re still living it. We pour gobs of money and manpower into an educational system that produces the occasional poet and ridiculed philosophy major, but mostly recognized academics like lawyers, scientists, journalists, and doctors. And as a result, our doctors have ensured that we’re living longer than ever before.

But aren’t most of those long lives still lived in quiet desperation?

A conversation with another friend yesterday partially prompted this post. “There are many more important things to have,” I told my friend, “than smarts.” “Like what?” she asked me. I fumbled a couple of trite-but-true poetic virtues, but then a big one struck me: humility. Humility is the central ingredient to Taoist values. It’s also the key to Christian repentance, forgiveness, and compassion. And it’s also that virtue that encourages us to recognize our lack of understanding of the universe — that virtue without which even the most brilliant scientist might be prone to embracing a fallacious hypothesis. Humility is the virtue that, nowadays, I would find far easier to argue as the one virtue from which all others are born.

But we certainly don’t teach humility in schools. Nor do we teach compassion, or peacemaking, or selflessness, or awareness. I believe we don’t teach them in schools because, to varying degrees, virtue always implies a value judgement, and we’re collectively offended by any value judgements in public or government-sponsored arenas like schools. The only value judgement our schools tacitly teach kids is the value of being smart above all else; anything else is outside schools’ purview.

But more to the point, are other virtues really in demand? Ask yourself when you last looked at someone, deeply awed, and said, “Wow, that person is so humble.” See? No one cares about humble.

No one cares about “humble” because “humble” doesn’t get you stuff. Humble won’t let you rise to the top of a corporation, or let you patent a new hybrid fuel engine, or let you release a multi-platinum album. “Humble” does not lead to power, fame, or glory of any kind. People don’t talk about the humble, because there’s probably not much to talk about; they’re quiet people whose actions have largely invisible consequences. The humble seem powerless. They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I say the opposite: absolute power is wrought by absolute corruption. But if power and corruption are mutually exclusive with humility, then what could humility possibly get you?

Humility lets you sleep at night.

Christ so famously said, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” I’ve always been somewhat puzzled by this, since the meek have no desire to possess the earth in the first place — that’s what makes them the meek. But the greater message of the Beatitudes — that the humble underdogs are more receptive to God’s saving grace than any others — is something I recognize as absolute Truth. And though I make the point in the context of Christianity for the sake of high-profile recognition, the virtue and its rewards span all faiths — even a lack of it.

What finally got me thinking about all this enough to write about it was a walk to the mailbox yesterday evening. Inside I found my new Mensa membership card. I had renewed my old membership over the web during a bad night a couple weeks ago. I had been depressed, stewing, and a little drunk. I had felt like I couldn’t do anything right, but at least I was smart, damn it. I even had a test that said so. A quick renewal fee charged to my credit card, and five to ten business days later, and I had a card that said so, too. Beer and brains was all it took to give me worth to the world.

And, in truth, intelligence does have worth. But intelligence can accomplish little good as a virtue respected solely for its own sake, without the greater context of humility, compassion, and whatever other virtues you care to recognize.

More importantly, intelligence has no bearing on our worth as human beings. Intelligence recognizes worth in only that which has reason to be. Ultimately, no matter one’s faith or lack thereof, the only answer to “why are we here?” is the fulfillment of our great ministry to one another. That ministry could be of God’s love or of secular humanist love, or any of the other shades of color that come from the great box of faith and philosophy crayons (heh). Without our great ministry we are utterly reasonless. Intelligence cannot give our lives worth; only our other virtues can do that.

That’s why, when I consider a person’s intelligence to be not among her outstanding virtues, I don’t see that as brutal. That person happens to be a wonderful, well-rounded human being. I can learn much just by quietly paying attention to her, and I’m already a better person just for having known her. Her life enriches my own. But these are not opinions formed through relentless logic, nor should they be.

No matter how intelligent a human being is, he can never find worth in his own life or in those around him through the means of reason. No matter how smart he is, he must lay down the craving for intellect and embrace his humility before he can end his life’s quiet desperation. No matter how sweet the fruit of knowledge tastes, he must forsake his appetite for it before he can walk back into Eden.

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Treatise on Gaming

August 29, 2004 at 11:56 pm (gaming, psychology, smoking)
Tags: , ,

Most of us know one of those guys (rarely girls) who is obsessed with video games. Maybe he’s smart and talented and could be excelling at school or work or otherwise broadening his horizons, yet he chooses to do little else with his free time than sit in front of a glowing box, pushing buttons, and watching the pretty lights. Some of us were that guy (…he said, sheepishly raising his hand).

Having been steeped in that video game obsessiveness for long periods of my life, and looking at the phenomenon from the outside nowadays, I truly believe it to be a psychological addiction, just like gambling or nymphomania.

But what’s the mechanism of that addiction? Gamblers are hooked by the thrill of risk, and nymphomaniacs by hedonistic ecstasy. What about gamers? Gaming has elements of passive entertainment, like TV or movies: pretty images for the eye and electronic symphonies for the ear, but if those things were the “hook” of the addiction, then film and television would be the addiction of choice, because, though the margin narrows over time, they still easily outstrip the world of gaming in those respects of eye and ear candy. Similarly, gaming often has elements of storytelling, but if that were the “hook,” then gamers would put down their controllers in favor of books, for even the most intriguing Final Fantasy can’t touch the satisfying complexity or depth of the world of literature.

I believe the key to gaming addiction lies in its artificial sense of participatory accomplishment. This is, I believe, an entirely separate phenomenon from the sense of accomplishment involved in sports. Sports, for one thing, do often require a finely honed sense of teamwork. But more relevantly, the goals of sports are entirely arbitrary and abstract: take this object and place it over here; increment a meaningless number so that it’s higher than our enemies’ number. It requires a certain degree of self- as well as collective motivation to sustain involvement in something so transparently contrived: you have to really dedicate yourself to being excellent at sports.

But gaming is, by and large, a solitary affair. And gaming, through the means of sound, imagery, and storytelling, clothes its arbitrary goals with concrete, emotional meaning. Think about how games like Doom 3 can appeal directly to the R-complex of our brains: through its immersiveness, it’s scaring the crap out of thousands of twitchy mammals who possess an evolutionary history of being prey more often than predator. So it really means something when you finally give that boss monster its death blow with the BFG — that is, you get the hormonal rush because you were sucked into the world of the game and felt the giddy, primal thrill of survival by the skin of your teeth. While Doom 3 represents only one exceptional example of a particular genre of gaming, I think it serves as a perfect example of an important trait it shares with all successful video games, even the cerebral, strategic Civilization III: while excelling at sports requires a sense of dedication and a cultivation of a psychological and emotional link to their arbitrary goals, gaming cuts through all that and appeals directly to the primal psychology and emotional links of the gamer. And so it’s through these direct links to our psyche, like jacking into the Matrix, that video games deliver their sense of accomplishment.

I think everyone has a basic need for a sense of accomplishment in their lives, just like their need for security or love or any other pleasure. But normally it requires a great deal of dedication and hard work in order to satisfy these needs, just like it requires dedication and hard work to be successful in athletics and sports.

Gaming is like a recreational drug in that it delivers a packet of primal joy directly to the brain with minimal dedication or discipline. Just like Ecstasy is “joy in a pill” or marijuana is “tranquility in a breath,” computer and video games are “success on a disc.” And just like drugs reinforce behaviors of instant gratification in exchange for potential long-term negative consequences, so does gaming.

Since I think most gamers would concur that, on average, games have gotten slowly easier over the years (how many of you beat Contra without the up-down-up-down-left-right-left-right-a-b-a-b-select-start cheat?) while delivering more of the “candy,” one could even argue that gamemakers, consciously or not, are creating more and more accessible “gateway games.” With our minds so enthralled, might we be rapidly approaching a potential for overt manipulation? Or are we already there?

Of course, gaming, like drugs, is not an entirely destructive world. Despite my earlier disclaimers, a lot of truly stunning artwork, music, immersively escapist fantasy, and compelling storytelling is produced solely for the sake of a game. I have to confess how much I’m looking forward to Myst 4 for exactly those reasons. And sometimes gamers even do something good with their often elitist community. I’m confident such things also come from the world of illegal drugs. But that doesn’t make investment in either a healthy pursuit; that simply shows them to be overwhelmingly self-destructive instead of completely so.

Some of you may be thinking I’ve gone off on some Lieberman-esque rant against the evils of video games, but that’s not really the case here. I don’t think games should be censored or barred from sale to anyone. But then, I think the same goes for drugs.

Because in the case of both drugs and gaming, I’m simply arguing that personal responsibility and consciousness of self-development should take overwhelming precedence. I spent years addicted to video games, living off their artificial sense of occupation and accomplishment. I’m embarrassed to say that, at the time, I considered beating a certain game my most noteworthy accomplishment of a particular semester in college. And I’ve also been connected with the world of illegal drugs, though to a much lesser degree. I was never steeped in an addiction to marijuana, which I’m sure is at least as common as addiction to gaming, but if circumstances had turned out slightly different, I very well could be struggling with a weed habit right now. I stay away from it entirely now, because the relief and tranquility I get from doing things that are actually constructive far outweighs the price or even the reward of weed’s instant gratification. And while I still play a video or computer game once in a while nowadays, I rarely find myself playing for longer than half an hour at a time, or more often than once every week or two. Again, the rewards just aren’t rewarding to me anymore, and the price is simply absurd when weighed against the benefits of doing something that’s actually constructive.

But there was a time when my depression, my inability to face the world, or my inability to face the responsibilities I’d accepted would prompt me to buy a new game, and to play it obsessively. I used gaming to defer the onset of overwhelming emotional force held barely in check, just outside the borders of my conscious thought. I used it to escape my problems. I used it as a psychological crutch. And that’s where the problem lies, and that’s why I’m writing this. Far too many people, like myself, have or continue to use gaming or drugs as a crutch, while believing the illusion that things are getting better. But things aren’t getting better as long as the habit persists, as long as the crutch exists. There is no cushion from the Issues in one’s life. Sooner or later we have to “hit bottom,” and suddenly face all of the emotional responsibility we’ve deferred, as if we’ve defaulted on a student loan. Far better to do the responsible thing, and address the Issues as they come up.

So let the gaming world perpetuate itself, I say, and let the world of illegal drugs be able to perpetuate iself without the hyperinflation and fear the Law instills. But let us all partake of each world sparingly, if at all, and only in the greater context of sure-footed self-evolution.

[UPDATE 9/3/04: Interestingly the BBC just posted this article on some of the psychology of gaming. They come at it from a business/marketing angle instead of my addiction angle, but the subject matter is stilly closely related and very interesting.]

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Talk Smart

July 16, 2004 at 12:10 am (mac, psychology, windows, writing)

An article entitled, “Are Mac Users Smarter Than PC Users?”

Oooooh, them’s fightin’ words.

I found myself nodding, smiling, and even uttering, “Right On!” while reading it, but not for the reasons you might think.

True, I still prefer the Mac above any other platform out there right now, but I’ve left my zeal behind. The argument over which operating system is “best” is, to me, like arguing over which car is “best”: everyone has different needs and preferences, and isn’t it by now painfully obvious to anyone with a brain that SUV’s are an unjustifiable waste of money and fossil fuels for all but the most adventurous outdoorsman? Ultimately, the operating system debate nowadays just leaves me as disgusted with the American deities of Consumerism and Fashion as does the car debate. Though you still might choose or be coerced into using it for one reason or another, if you have a brain, you can tell Windows sucks, and that Microsoft is out to screw you as roughly and coldly as possible.

No, the reason I like this article so much is because the author uses written communication skills as a benchmark for intelligence. I don’t claim to be in the upper echelons of the communication skills continuum, because — Lord knows — I’ve failed to make myself understood on even the most basic level to many people over the years, and continuing to this day. But I’d still argue that one cannot claim to be an exceptionally intelligent person without being an exceptional communicator in the vast majority of cases and contexts. If one is unable or simply uninterested in using language with finely honed correctness and with expressive subtlety, then one’s intelligence is either largely* moot because it’s impotent to affect anyone else, or that intelligence is simply non-existant. The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding of intelligence is language. (Best metaphor ever.)

</arrogant soap box>

*Okay, granted, someone could be a hermit unable to communicate but who invents a quantum computer all alone. That’s pretty undisputable intelligence. But that’s why I qualified that sentence with “largely” instead of “entirely”.

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