On wealth, simplicity, charity, spirituality, and video games

Saturday I lost 13 hours playing Bioware’s newest MMO: Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR for short). I’ve also played it about five hours on and off while sick, when my energy is high enough to kill droids, but too low for keeping up with work email. It’s super awesome, and I highly recommend people trying it out. I was skeptical of the whole WoW + Lightsabers + Bioware cutscenes, but my friends talked me into playing it, and I admit, it’s really fun. I actually care way more about my characters in SWTOR more than I ever have in WoW, the cut scenes really add to the experience, and I feel like I’ve gotten a chance to really chose how I want to play my character’s persona.

One of the key elements to the persona is the choice whether to be light side, dark side, or ambiguous side. This isn’t about whether you chose to fight for the Republic or the Empire, but the choices within that. Do you charge a bounty to find some chick’s kid? (dark), do you strike down a traitor? (dark) or get her to confess (light)? My favorite was the rather morally ambiguous situation of two jedi trainee lovers. Some older jedis asked you to spy on them to see if they were getting jiggy. If so, they would be kicked out of the jedi order (passion fuels hatred of course). The light side choice was to turn them in, while my moral compass said let them keep on keepin’ on, which was darkside. Bioware has done a good job keeping the situations from being one sided or trite and so it’s often interesting (especially if you “roleplay” a character).

From what I can tell, there are three ways to optimize this choice: max light, max dark, or alternatively somewhere in between. My first character was a Mis’inam a dashing Twi’lek Smuggler. I’m playing him as a mostly good guy (he can get irritated, especially when people have tried to kill him). My second character was blind yet attractive Nadasia a  Jedi Shadow, and I’m playing her full lightside. Don’t worry about her disability, she can still see using the force. My third character I decided to try was a Jedi Knight, and I opted to play him evil. So of course I made him a race with horns, a bunch of scars, weird face tattoos, and made him all aged. To top it off, I named him Lucifern (I was going to steal Piers Anthony brilliant palindrome and named him Natasha, but alas ’twas taken).

Here are the photos of my low-level dudes:

The moral of this story why did I feel it necessary to make my evil character be ugly? Even in a fever induced state I had trouble with the idea of playing an evil character. Did I feel the need to disassociate with him by making him scarred?  Was my choice to make dashing good guys and ugly bad guys similar to how other players chose? Or is there no consistent pattern? I’m curious, and I may try to see if Bioware has any extra information on this.

After reading an amazing Harper’s article on fasting while with charity:water in Ethiopia, I’ve decided to do a 48 hour water fast. My last meal was Saturday brunch (ending at 12:00). It was probably not the healthiest: blueberry pancakes, eggs, orange juice and lots coffee. I’m 27 hours in, and here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• It’s really not that hard
• Hunger seems rather habitual or cyclical
• I had weird food / fasting dreams last night
• Hurling (the competitive Irish sport I play) wasn’t as bad as I expected
• People eating bagels and drinking coffee in front of me, was worse than I expected
• I miss coffee more than food
• Lastly: it’s way easier to spend 13 hours straight playing Star Wars: The Old Republic when you don’t need food breaks

56% of the way through The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. For anyone keeping track, this book is holding strong as one of my favorite non-fiction books and I believe will be in the running for one of my most influential books.

I already blogged the other day about the first section, Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second, which covers the concept of why the elephant (intuition) is actually in charge of the rider (rationality) as it relates to morality.

The second section is titled There’s More to Morality than Harm and Fairness. This section covers Haidt’s Moral Foundation Theory. Building off of the idea that our intuitions are running the show, Haidt then explores the ramifications on morality, and shares his main theory. He states that everyone has six moral “tastebuds” of which everyone has a slightly different blend (which are somewhat effected by cultural upbringing). The foundational morals are: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Liberty/Oppression, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, and Sanctity/Degradation.

He makes a great argument laid out over hundreds of pages in his book, so don’t take my explanation. Read the book (please, I want to talk about it with people).

What I will say is what I’ve developed by reading this book:

• An authentic and non-judgemental understanding with conservative viewpoints
• A deeper appreciation for the power and benefit of “tribes” in our society
• A framework for dealing with ideological differences in a healthy way
• A set of communication tools for people with different moral viewpoints
• An understanding of why gay marriage may seem a threat to marriage (and why it matters)
• An appreciation for pro-life advocate’s passion
• An idea how to help motivate groups of people better to achieve objectives better for all (both politically and at PopCap)
• My own beliefs

I guess the overall summary is that I’ve always looked at the world from a very liberal viewpoint. While I continue to maintain the same moral compass and believe in many of the same solutions, I understand my own beliefs in a way that opens my mind to everyone’s understanding of the world. I’ve always thought empathy was an under appreciated skill and this book has helped take mine to 11. I’m curious to learn what I will make of my new found understanding.