My Sunday School Class

I'm starting to think I would enjoy leading a Sunday School class, provided anyone else showed up.
Especially after having many good and many terrible experiences with different styles of leadership and facilitation over the years.

Here are a few classroom rules I would put into effect from day 1.

1) No pressure to pray aloud.
Starting with this one because my wife and many of my more spiritually sensitive friends are introverts and or/suffer from social anxiety. Christian churches are notorious for applauding long, eloquent prayers as if prayer is an oration before a crowd instead of an intimate moment with God. Part of my goal in forming a class is to attempt to undo some of the long-term effects of this policy upon the community and upon its perception of Christianity by, insofar as I am able, removing the peer-pressure to pray loud and long and loquaciously. I will not take the go-around-the-circle approach to taking prayer requests, taking the responsibility of praying aloud upon myself and letting those who wish me to address their anxieties or concerns specifically mention them of their own volition.


2) No lectures.
As anyone who has read my blog in the past can attest, I have sufficient struggle dealing with the typical church service's sing-then-lecture format, and thus have no reason to extend that struggle to Sunday School. A Sunday School class is a small, more intimate setting, designed not for a single speaker to stand above everyone else and assume they all agree with him/her, but for everyone present to be able to voice concerns and make contributions to the discussion. Having only one person speak and everyone else just nod or stare at the wall is counterintuitive to the small-group setting, and counterproductive overall.


3) No rhetorical questions.
As an extension of #2, I will take special care to never ask a question without expecting an answer from the class. Rhetorical questions in a small-group setting just fill up the time with unnecessary and awkward silence that could have been filled with discussion and opportunities for growth.

4) No one-word answers.
A step up from #3, I will also take special care to either design my lesson plans to ask deeper questions than can't be answered with "God" or "Jesus" or "faith" or "sin," or push anyone who answers thusly to further elaborate, in order to challenge the class to think more profoundly and delve more deeply into the concepts we discuss.

5) Controversial topics welcome.
I fully expect to have disagreements among and with members of my class. How we handle disagreement among ourselves as Christians demonstrates our Christianity so much more deeply than how we behave sitting in church. Especially since many of the topics which would arise in class discussion are those which directly affect our perception of the world and/or our daily lives. I hope to ask the kind of armor-piercing questions that lead to major, long-term shifts in thought and spiritual perspective.

6) No platitudes. Ever.
This one gets a little gray for the locked-down church-kids in the class, but anyone who has left the church and/or left Christianity can see platitudes coming a mile away. This rule will likely step on more than a few hidebound toes because it will require a change in word choice, in an environment (the church building) which encourages using the same words over and over again until we're saying them in our sleep and are totally numb to them.

7) Cliches will be avoided whenever possible.
I differentiate semantically between platitudes and cliches because platitudes are used in place of genuine sentiments, while cliches can be genuine sentiments expressed in a repetitive manner. As the class leader, I would also differentiate in my approach to pointing out cliches vs. platitudes. Cliches can be addressed without confrontation, because in many cases the person is using an overused phrase or term without realizing that it is overused. Platitudes need to be shot on sight whenever they rear their ugly heads because their use only drives people away from the church and away from Christianity, and reinforces the negative stereotypes associated with American Christianity.

8) All Bible study will involve a holistic approach.
Too often, church Bible studies involve one person spoon-feeding a preselected set of dogma and the scriptural interpretations which support them to a group of blank-faced acolytes who can only sit there and nod.
Expanding one's understanding of the Bible requires its examination from literary, historical, and cultural perspectives, in addition to examining translation conventions and denotation/connotation (for ourselves in this place and time and for those who wrote it at their place and time).



Obviously, it's entirely possible that more items would be added to this list overall, but this seems to be a strong starting point, especially for anyone who has become disillusioned with Sunday School classes in general.

I don't want to say "There is no such thing as the devil," but...

I've apparently been very motivated theologically lately.


The character called "the adversary/the accuser" ("ha-satan," not capitalized and not a proper noun) doesn't show up until Chronicles, which were written after the conquest of Babylon by the Medes and the Persians.

Which resulted in the introduction of Zoroastrianism to Judaism.
Prior to that, Judaism was strictly and utterly monotheistic.
Meaning they treated God as the only force in the universe.
EVERYTHING, good and bad, was attributed to God.
A key doctrine of Zoroastrianism is that the universe is held in constant tension between two equal and opposing forces, one good and one evil.

The introduction of this doctrine influenced monotheistic Judaism to adopt the idea of an opposite-yet-not-equal number for YHWH/Adonai.

Compare 1 and 2 Samuel/1 and 2 Kings with accounts of the exact same events in 1 and 2 Chronicles.

2 Samuel 24 vs. 1 Chronicles 21 is a good example of this.

"Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.' So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, 'Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.'"
-2 Samuel 24:1-2

"Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, “Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.” So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, 'Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.'"
-1 Chronicles 21:1-2

Events attributed to God in the former writings are attributed to "the accuser/adversary" in the latter.
Apparently, it was only the need for a named spiritual bogeyman upon which to cast all blame which created the tradition of capitalizing "ha-satan."

As well as the tradition of assuming that the serpent in the Genesis creation myth is also "ha-satan," even though there is zero evidence that "the serpent" was given any such negative deification until after the Persian conquest.
Moses made a statue of a bronze snake in Numbers (in response to an invasion of venomous snakes which like everything else pre-Zoroastrian Judaism is attributed to God), and none of the Hebrews are recorded crying "Ha-Satan is here!" or referencing the story recorded in Genesis at all in response to the real snakes or the bronze snake.

Even the accounts of Jesus interacting with "the devil" (in Matthew "ha-satan," in Luke "diabolos," Greek for "slanderer") are from JEWISH sources, who had inherited the centuries-old Zoroastrian-influenced Judaism.

And notice the lack of Jesus-adversary interactions in Mark and John, especially the latter, who in every other way devoted his account to the deeper truths of Christ's life and ministry.


The tradition of treating "ha-satan" as a proper noun was in full force by the time the English language rolled around and needed translations of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.

So it's no surprise that Jesus' rebuke of Peter in Matthew 16:23 / Mark 8:33 is read as "Get behind me, Prince of Darkness/King of Hell/Supreme Demon!" instead of "Get behind me, adversary! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Merely human concerns.
Not hellish concerns, not demonic concerns, not even overtly malicious concerns.
Decide for yourself which interpretation makes more sense.


And this doesn't even get into the fact that there are MEN referred to as "ha-satan" in the Old Testament as well.
Hadad the Edomite in 1 Kings 11:14 and Rezon the Syrian in 1 Kings 11:23 are just a few examples.


We keep ourselves in the dark age of enforced ignorance as long as we continue to pass on cultural myopia, blind adherence to tradition, and refusal to examine the texts we hold sacred with their original writers and readers in mind.

Sunday School for Introverts

For once, I'm posting more questions than opinions.
So bear with me.


As my wife and I have been trying to get back into regular church attendance, and have had vastly different experiences at the same churches, I've become more aware of just how anti-introvert/anti-social anxiety the typical Sunday School class is.

Especially for anyone not raised in church.

The pressure to pray aloud usually means the prayer will be the most forced and rushed affair ever.

The pressure to read Scripture aloud tends to lead to completely ignoring the meaning of the text in an effort to get out of the spotlight as quickly as possible.

And then there's the pressure to take part in the class discussion.
A discussion which, depending upon the individuals in the class, can go into spiritual deep water (meaning, tons of theological jargon and assumption that everyone is deeply familiar with the minutiae of Scripture) within seconds.
And which requires that each person interrupt someone else just to contribute.

All of these contribute to an environment which leaves introverts and/or the socially anxious huddled in the corner waiting for the ordeal to end so they can vanish into the crowd for the main church service......at least until "Pass the Peace," in which tons of strangers invade their personal space again and again and make them want to run screaming from the room, but that's for another discussion.

The above are all impressions and experiences conveyed to me over the years by my wife, who is very much an introvert, and generally suffers from a large degree of social anxiety in everyday situations, which is ramped up in church services, in large part due to the above and due to her not attending church regularly until adulthood.

Being an extrovert who doesn't tend to feel socially anxious, and having been raised in church, I never noticed these issues until my wife and I got married and started looking for a church to call home together.

The three sources of anxiety for my wife seem to eliminate the entirety of every Sunday School class I've ever been in (group prayer, group Scripture reading, and group discussion), so it seems that an entirely new set of activities would be required, unless the peer pressure inherent in the three could be lessened.

How do we minimize and eventually eliminate the above peer pressures, which seem so ingrained in American mainline church practices, so that we can create an environment which does not alienate introverts and those who suffer from social anxiety (a specification I make because extroverts can suffer from it as well)?

I just don't see how it could be done, aside from the class leader doing the praying and the reading and making a lecture of it instead of a discussion.
But we already have that in the form of the pastor's sermon during the regular service.

Should we just recommend that introverted/socially anxious churchgoers avoid small-group meetings and stick to the main church service?

This Might Be a Sermon Someday...

Why do church people assume that everything recorded as the spoken words of Jesus were meant to be taken as stand-alone, pithy sayings?

That's what PROVERBS is for!

Aside from the Sermon on the Mount (which only occurs in that form in Matthew's account of Jesus' life, but that's a different discussion), Jesus is seen constantly speaking in CONVERSATION, answering specific questions or rebuking/encouraging specific acts of his disciples or others.

For example, John 14:6 - "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"
Why is it the traditional practice to not mention those first two words when quoting this verse?
Because we might actually need to read the whole chapter, and thus find out what specific QUESTION he was ANSWERING?
That we might need to read the whole conversation, instead of taking a single sentence out of context to justify whatever whenever?

It was in fact a very specific question.
14:5 - "Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?'"

Which of course was the result of another statement of Jesus', which has also been stripped of its conversational context and thrown around to justify a whole lot of random dogma and doctrines over the centuries.
14:1-4 - “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

This little chunk of text has been misinterpreted to mean:
"I'm going to Heaven, and you'll be coming with me!"
And of course the 14:6 verse has been chained to that interpretation as well to lock Christ down into the us vs. them Greco-Roman version of Christianity which post-dates Christ and everything else included in the Bible by centuries.
The word "house" here is the exact same word Christ uses when running the money-changers out of the temple (John 2:16 - "To those who sold doves he said, 'Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!'"), yet no one interprets that verse to mean some existential point about the afterlife.

When we only grind individual verses into our children's heads instead of encouraging them to read the surrounding text, examine the person or persons believed to have been responsible for writing the particular book included in the Bible, and so on and so forth in exploring the context, we reduce them to spiritual parrots, or worse, set them up to be platitude-spewing hypocrites later in life.

Especially when we take a one-to-one approach in justifying dogma and doctrine and public policy with verses of scripture.
Which of course is the time-honored tradition of American evangelical leaders, just as it was with European Roman Catholic leaders, just as it is with Middle Eastern Fundamentalist Muslim leaders.

In the words of Dr. Donald A. Carson:
"A text without a context is just a pretext for a proof-text."

Bible Stuff

Part 1 - Lost in Translation
One of the most insidious tactics of the American church money-machine is to inflict modern vernacular upon ancient texts via "new translations".
Idioms, gender-neutral pronouns, definition-inserted-in-place-of-term...these are forcibly inserted in a seeming attempt to make overquoted Bible verses feel less overquoted, and more relatable or relevant to an audience which has heard them all before.

But this is not only semantically dishonest, it removes, or attempts to remove, the cultural context of the writing and skew its literary context.
The various texts chosen to be included in the Bible each have a rhythm to them, especially the more poetic works.
The word choice in these only seems trite to modern American audiences because most Americans were raised in or around a church, especially in the Bible Belt, and most mainline denominations defend their doctrines and dogma with a relatively small number of Bible verses to serve as "spiritual pillars".

This small group of verses are thrown around again and again in sermons and Bible studies across the country, to the point that elder church members treat them like mantras of the good ol' days, and younger church members get sick of hearing them (and generally yearn for leaders and teachers to convey spiritual concepts in their own words instead).

Thus, we see attempts by Bible publishers and church leaders to modernize the ancient words, but in so doing remove the sense that they are in fact ancient.

This attempt at modernization, by removing the cultural context of the texts, blurs the Old Testament's progressive discovery of God's character by the ancient Hebrews, and dumbs down the radical nature of the New Testament's "HERE HE IS" message.

Ironically, instead of being perceived as an overquoted authority, this tactic makes the Bible seem petulant and pedantic, subject to the whims of fickle vernacular rather than being the rock-steady divine Word which fundamentalists proclaim it to be.


Part 2 - Lost in Interpretation
Any Bible verse which seems cut-and-dry in favor of a fundamentalist position must, like any single line of text used to support any opinion, be delved into much deeper than "face-value".
Its cultural, historical, and literary context must be thrown open like the doors of an ancient ruin to discern whether ancient, tribal Hebrews with no concept of astronomy or biology or psychology REALLY meant that disrespectful children should be executed.

...and then decide if we REALLY want to emulate them if they REALLY believed that.

Of course, the very practice of reinforcing our dogma with handpicked lines of text without any cultural understanding was not the practice when the texts selected for including in the Bible were written...but don't tell the fundies that.

Reading the Bible Backwards

So much of our current mode of thought is the result of a combination of Greco-Roman philosophy and Enlightenment philosophy/theology.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either, and each generation is naturally the rhetorical, intellectual, and spiritual offspring of its forbears.

But it becomes an issue when we apply our modern sensibilities on ancient texts.

Many of our "traditional" doctrines are not the result of some great movement of the Spirit, but the application of Plato, Aristotle, or John Edwards to texts which predate them.

For example, the traditional doctrine of "The Fall" is basically Plato's descent into the cave of illusion.
The original tellers of the story (remember, it was passed down orally for generations) did not think in terms of perfect "forms," or more precisely, changeless states.
Especially since most of the first four chapters of Genesis were originally POEMS, meant to reflect on higher truths in figurative language rather than portray hard facts of reality.


Another negative effect of this application is that we tend to read the Bible backwards, for example reading the Old Testament with Jesus in mind, instead of forwards with the contexts of the individual writers in mind.

We fail to understand the cultural context in which each book of the Old Testament (or in the case of Genesis, in which each section of each book) was created, because we operate under the flawed unconscious assumption that the Bible is essentially a legal constitution.

We assume cohesiveness and continuity from cover to cover because our current philosophical context demands such, even though a basic reading of each book demonstrates a vast variety of literary, cultural, and historical contexts across the anthology.
Up to and including many contradictions, internally and with our present spirituality.

But the storytellers and writers whose works are included in the current canon obviously did not think of themselves as "Biblical authors", and the historically earlier authors had no notion of the historically later authors' existence or ideas or cultural context.

Thus if we are truly to apply our present standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants philosophical methods, we must abandon the legal-constitution assumption which has driven so much of the church's methodology for generations, and re-examine the Bible as a cultural exploration of an evolving understanding of God.

Too many people have been driven away by the church's iron-fisted approach to "divine inspiration" (to say nothing of "inerrancy") for us to continue to pound the pulpit with unrelenting tradition which fears doubt and curiosity and basic questions from anyone, especially those already in its grip.

Sermons and Shepherds

The older and/or more informed I become, the more trouble I have with the idea of the "sermon".
I understand and embrace the "worship" portion of church services, because it brings the congregation together in a communal experience of emotion and music.

But then instead of sending us on our way at the peak of that communal experience, we're jarred out of it to be lectured at as individuals for the remainder of the service (in some cases taking up half or 3/4 of the total service time).

This would be fine on its own, if structured like a college class, which focused only on the individual intellect, at a separate time and/or place from communal worship.

But jarring us out of our communal emotional experience just to be talked at, and then sending us out after THAT, makes the joys of the communal experience seem wasted and trod under.

Especially since a sermon, unlike a college lecture, doesn't even allow anyone being lectured to to raise a hand and ask questions.
A sermon is the antithesis of a conversation, and too many pastors use the captivity of their audiences to spew some truly awful drivel.

What confuses me is that most churches HAVE a separate activity to invoke the individual intellect.
It usually happens pre-service in Sunday School classes, or throughout the week in small-group Bible studies or discussion groups.

Why can't that be enough?

Why do we still need the authority figure from on high passing supposedly-irrefutable wisdom down to us lowly sheep?

Especially in our current age of unlimited information.

We should be having the best conversations about God and spirituality in the history of humanity!

Not sitting quietly and pretending to listen to someone else talk at us while drawing or playing on our phones.
Just a thought.


On an unrelated note, having left the image of the "good shepherd" at least a couple centuries behind us in the developed world, we need a new metaphor for God and really really REALLY need a new metaphor for Jesus.

But having made the mistake of literalizing our metaphors about a thousand years ago, and at some point between then and now turned that mistake into a multibillion-dollar business and lobbying empire, I doubt any new metaphors would really take.

It's a mark of how weak metaphor and symbolism are in our current American culture that churches STILL feel the need to explain the imagery of the baptism EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. IT. HAPPENS.

Explanations of imagery are what anthropologists do when examining another culture.
Those WITHIN the culture don't ever need an explanation because everyone knows the ritual's purpose.

But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, given that we have taken imagery, symbolism, and metaphor which are supposed to fill a niche in the human psyche, and transformed them quite against all sense into "inerrant Word of God", and given them the same level of gravitas we give plain facts.

This move to make literal what should have remained figurative has naturally and tragically caused an intellectual backlash against any and all imagery ever associated with religion.

Too many have thrown out baby and bathwater, assuming that spiritual matters which psychologists have found we NEED to remain SANE and remain coherent as a society, are not only unnecessary, but are either a plague to be cured or the quaint/barbaric practices of a less-enlightened age to be outgrown on our way to utopia.

Instead of each society subscribing to its own rites and rituals and STORIES to fill the niche in their collective psyche, somewhere along the way a few of them became convinced that their stories were the only "real" ones, their deity/ies the only "real" ones.

Even though their fathers and grandfathers had never stopped to decry anyone else's stories unless at war, usually over something actually-real like food or land or resources, and that defamation was mostly a formality.

Societies such as the Greeks and Egyptians and African tribes and Native Americans were content with an unspoken, "It's real to use in our circumstances," and content (or rather, constrained by a harsh life and low life-expectancy) with letting others worship who, what, and how they would.

From a certain perspective, we in the infinitely-connected-to-infinite-information seem less able to deal with the part of our psyche which needs spirituality for communal bonding and communal action than our barbaric ancestors.

We know more about the universe and the human body and the human psyche than any generation before us, but having turned their metaphors into "facts," and caused the backlash which resulted when reason was attacked by irrationality, we seem unable to truly recover.
We are thus compartmentalized by our more recent ancestors' mistakes, with too many elders clinging to that mistake as if by divine command, and too many youngers abandoning spirituality wholesale because some are willing to kill to defend the mistake.


There doesn't seem to be any solution to our fragmented state.
Having shed the rituals and rites of our ancestors, which helped us process the greater truths of the universe, in the fight against the literalization of metaphor, we find ourselves naked before the terrifying cosmos, unable to go back into our shell and unable to truly strike out on our own.

We shed the rites and rituals, but we could not change the fundamental nature of our psyche, and thus we lack one of the first tools for comprehending the universe which our distant ancestors developed in the darkness of pre-history.


Time will tell if we have truly taken ourselves out of the evolutionary pool, or if this is simply the next evolutionary hurdle we must overcome.

Sunday Morning Thoughts

1) Had my first good church experience in way too long this morning. It's always nice to have three strangers engage you in conversation within five minutes of walking in the door. And have seven more do so before you leave.

2) It is a sad testament to the state of the American cultural consciousness that we extend altruism suspiciously, and treat any altruism extended in our direction with suspicion. We have become so accustomed to being exploited that we can't handle genuine selflessness.

3) I'm really not accustomed to only needing five to ten minutes to get places.

4) When it doubt, picardy third. When not in doubt, picardy third.

5) The principles of Affirmative Action should also be applied to relationships. Don't have many black/Hispanic/gay/transgender/atheist/agnostic/Muslim/liberal/nerdy friends? Get some. It'll improve and expand your perception of the world and the people in it.

6) Never underestimate the emotional impact of singing the fifth over a picardy third in progress.

7) It's interesting to notice the ragtime roots of Southern Gospel piano music.

8) Too many of the atrocities suffered by the Hebrews in the Old Testament are treated by the writers therein as their own fault. No wonder centuries later the Pharisees wanted to know whose fault it was that the man Jesus healed was born blind. Also no wonder that we've had centuries of Christians trying to blame the victims of oppression, poverty, and injustice since then.

9) In my experience, a person whose mind is entirely undivided, who does not struggle with difficult questions, is either a fanatic or apathetic.

10) We assume that everyone needs unfettered access to information, that information is the key to a more educated society and thus a more enlightened society. But we also need guides to help interpret, extrapolate from, and apply that information. Otherwise we're just dumping an ocean into a bucket and hoping it will fit.

11) It's amazing how big a gap exists between "peace on earth, good will toward men" and "peace to those on whom his favor rests." This is why studying Biblical Interpretation is necessary for intellectual honesty.

12) Rituals take us out of our routines, bringing us into a communal experience away from our complicated lives as individuals. Thus, faith communities who omit or minimize their rituals set themselves on a path to splintering into factions based on dogma. Not because individual thought and study and opinion naturally leads to such, but because they have removed and/or made impotent their shared experiences and demonstrations of faith. Removing rituals removes symbolism from religious communities, and without symbolism, a religion is just a philosophy with some divine salad dressing sprinkled on top.

Thoughts, Mostly Regarding Indoctrination and its Effects

I need to come up with a simile that involves explaining the scientific method to a creationist for the hundredth time.
Something really witty that I can bring up in mixed company to vent just a little of my frustration.

Maybe...
-Starting your car with no gas in it? You can go through the steps over and over, but you won't get anywhere.
-Taking a bath in a lake? You can be as thorough as you want, but you'll still feel dirty when it's all over.

...eh. Work in progress.


It's difficult to form a straw man of religious fundamentalism.
Just like it's difficult to satirize American rightwing politics nowadays.
Attempting to skirt ahead of reality and depict it as MORE ludicrous than you think it could ever be is an exercise in eventual futility in both cases, since both appear to be hurtling away from "comprehensible, decent, and rational" territory at the speed of light.

That there are people operating the accelerator pedals in both camps simultaneously isn't a coincidence.
It makes me wish there really WAS a leftist conspiracy to institute communism or that there really WAS a plot by the scientific community to oppress religious groups into oblivion.

At least then the ranting and raving would have SOME basis in reality.
Instead of simply being violent delusions spewed forth by victims of generations of indoctrination.

And they continue to spew, even as many their children turn back on them with fact and cited sources to counter their indoctrination.
Many, sadly not all.
Though the Internet and the free and infinite availability of information has put a dent in the age-old cycle of ideological repression and worship of the irrational, there are still families who manage to squelch their offspring's intellect beneath the weight of dogma, and send them out into the world to make another generation of mental midgets who think themselves giants-by-divine-appointment.
These families are mainly of the Duggar or Duggar-fandom variety who REPRESS *irony* their children and keep them away from any and all sources of actual-not-dogmatic information.


While there have been a few voices expressly against religion in the scientific community (Carl Sagan comes to mind), most researchers, experts, and students, if they acknowledge religion at all, express at least some level of devoutness to a religious tradition.
Which, to the rational people in the peanut gallery, demonstrates perfectly that there isn't some cosmic chessgame between Science and Religion.

Science does its work and mostly keeps to itself.
Religion, at least in the fundamentalist circles, can't seem to comprehend that, much less do it themselves.


And just to clarify my terms, here's a nice breakdown:
1) Religious people say, "This is what I believe."
2) Evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and it would probably do you good to believe it as well."
3) Fundamentalist evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and you really believe it too, which you would realize if you STOPPED LYING TO YOURSELF AND SENDING YOUR KIDS TO HELLRAAAAAAAR!"


What I think the more rational and/or altruistic religious and evangelical religious people are afraid of is that a point made by the Agnostic and Atheist communities is in fact true, or coming true.
That being that all the altruistic efforts motivated by religion over the centuries cannot counterbalance the atrocities committed in its name, and that by this stage in our societal development, we shouldn't NEED the proddings of a Sky Father to get us to take care of each other.

That we will eventually outgrow religion, having finally learned to take care of each other because "It's the right thing to do," not because Heaven or Hell depends upon it.

Even as a Christian, I hope this is true, that we will one day take care of each other simply because we should, not because of morality or bribes or threats.
Notice I separate "should" from "morality".
Every other communal species on this planet has a biological imperative to care for and protect all individuals within a particular group.
Whether it's a single family or a group of families which interbreed.

Yet for some reason we humans need some abstract-made-physical thing to focus on in order to get us to do what every other communal animal does naturally.

Read Warren Ellis' Supergods for a larger breakdown of that concept.


On an unrelated note, it's nice to post a conservative-run discussion board, and get three "likes" from members and an infraction from the site admin.

Some Thoughts From Today

1) Sometimes I find myself truly torn between a personal need for rituals, and a desire to deconstruct them.

2) It seems counterproductive for churches to devote so much energy to eliciting an emotional response via music, only to cut it off and try to swerve into the intellectual just before the sermon. Maybe that's why the homily is so short during Mass. Perhaps Protestant and Nondenominational churches and university chapel services should cultivate the intellectual response in small-group settings, and reserve corporate worship for exactly that, the emotionally ecstatic state which results from the combination of prayer and music.

3) How sad is it that humans consider ourselves to be the peak of evolution, yet we require rites and rituals involving inanimate objects or anthropomorphized abstract concepts in order to take care of each other as members of a society? No other animal on this planet requires such. Each member of a community cares for each other member of the community for the sake of the community. The group must survive, moreso than any one of its members. Yet humans seem to have left that basic instinct behind with our attainment of "sentience".

4) Too many religious people try to oversimplify too many complex concepts, to their detriment and the detriment of their testimony. Seemingly in an attempt to avoid truly dealing with hard questions, avoiding the complexity of real life and the real universe, they cling to one-liners, and a very small pool of simplistic cliches and platitudes to throw at every question and concern which crosses their path. The world, with its unlimited access to information, is no longer impressed with simplistic answers or simplistic attitudes. Oversimplification in the face of honest complexity leads to outright rejection of one's beliefs and principles. People would rather know we struggle than be handed the illusion of confidence.

5) The word is "sure," people. You can't be "for sure". At all. You can do something "for sure". Such as, "I know for sure that I locked the front door." The expression is an adverb, not an adjective. On an unrelated note, the word is "regularly". "On the regular" is MEANINGLESS. "Regular" is not a noun, and thus cannot be the object of a preposition. YOU KEEP DOING THIS, AUTHORITY FIGURES AND TEACHERS, AND YOU WILL ONLY CONTINUE THE LANGUAGE'S DOWNWARD SPIRAL INTO VAGUENESS AND MISUNDERSTANDING.

6) Having no direct day-to-day experience of persecution, far too many American Christians assign the term flippantly. "That man said the Founders didn't write the Pledge of Allegiance to say 'under God'! He's persecuting meeee!"

7) I haven't needed to use the word "mezzanine" since I was last in Herrick Auditorium in 2007.

8) It's always nice to see an alto standing proud in a crowd of loud sopranos.

9) I can't imagine how frustrating it would be for an adult who leaves home right after high school, works and pays bills and taxes for a couple of years before starting college, only to be forced into High School 2.0 because of the way his/her institution of choice is run.

10) Why is it seemingly only the colleges which force religion or force a militaristic attitude via obsession with athletics upon students who are willing or able to have an intimate, caring environment on-campus?
Why can't academia and the arts bring people together without the trappings of religion or sports mania?

11) We continue to celebrate 1st-year college students, but I have a feeling that once my generation (aka the most-educated, least-employed generation) has kids of college age, it won't be something to celebrate anymore. It will either be an unspoken expectation, or a questionable decision due to the mountain of debt required.

12) Getting to hear Dr. Mark Reighard play for the first time in years was an awesome unexpected birthday present.

13) It's weird having a new phone that's lighter than the old one. Makes me think I'm going to break it every few seconds.

Some Things Aren't Up For Debate

For several months now, I've avoided getting into debates in the anonymous corners of the Internet.
Mainly because I have standards regarding any arguments I make, such as proper grammar, cited sources, as few (trying for none) logical fallacies as possible, treating all participants with respect as people even if their argument is bunk, etc.

And other people just....don't.

I've lost track of the number of times I've written or started writing a well-organized, well-researched, well-thought response to a post online, and then thrown the whole thing out instead of posting it because the person would likely not even read the thing, and only respond with cliches, platitudes, or the always-popular "I will enjoy watching you burn in hell".

So for your reading pleasure today, I'd like to post a few issues which at this point shouldn't even be up for debate anymore.
By that I mean issues which do NOT have two equally logical positions which can be taken regarding them.

These are not "just your opinion" issues, like who should be president or whether there should be a monument to Satan next to the Ten Commandments.

These are issues which should have been resolved, accepted as truth, and built up from DECADES ago, but our society continues to stagnate because delusional sheeple continue to argue them.


1) Evolution is not "just a theory".
Stop spewing nonscience regarding this subject.
That goes doubly for church people who seem to think that if anything in the Bible is scientifically explainable, it somehow insults and diminishes God.....even though many of the pioneers of the modern scientific method were CHRISTIANS who looked up at the universe they believed God made in such wonder that they believed the study and greater understanding of it was an act of worship.

Evolution Via Natural Selection is, in view of the evidence currently available, the most plausible explanation for the state of life on this planet.
"Most plausible" is the key phrase here.

Religious people are so obsessed with "certainty," having been indoctrinated to think of their particular beliefs in absolutist terms, that when a scientist tells them the obvious, that science doesn't deal in certainties and absolutes, they lose their minds.
And immediately start screaming in the public forum that science and everything ever discovered or developed by the scientific method is anti-God.
...while posting about it on the Internet using a smartphone while standing under an electric light.


2) Vaccines are necessary for the protection of society, not an optional medical treatment.
See those words "most plausible"?
Read them again.
Because science works in probabilities, not absolutes, the discoveries and developments which result from it work, based on a set of evidence, in the majority of cases.
That one child with a particular genetic makeup somewhere still got sick after getting a vaccine doesn't even come CLOSE to counterbalancing the MILLIONS who have been and are saved by them, by being treated individually AND by preventing a mass outbreak.

That we are seeing outbreaks of diseases which medicine filed under "tamed" years ago, demonstrates that the completely artificial paranoia of anti-vaxxers is a threat to society as a whole via their paranoid-delusional practices.


3) Religion has no place in the education of children.
Ever.
If your beliefs are self-evident in their veracity, let your children discover them as adults.
Shoving texts and doctrines and dogma down their throats before they've even started cognitive development is nothing but forced indoctrination.
It does not lead to greater intelligence, curiosity, or creativity, but in too many cases leads to the stunting of all three.
The more and more deeply you indoctrinate them, the longer it will take them to develop a sense of self, because everything they attempt to make of themselves will be weighed down by your indoctrination.
In addition to placing pressure upon them from day 1 to live up to an unrealistic standard that completely ignores and in some cases subverts their individual personality.


4) Religion has no place in the government of adults.
Ever.
Forced indoctrination is the opposite of a free society, and thus should be prevented at all points from infringing upon the workings of it at all levels.

A pastor who pressures his congregation to vote a certain way has crossed the Wall of Separation, and should have his organization treated as a Party promoter rather than a charitable organization, and taxed to the full extent of the law.
A politician who attempts to use religious beliefs to justify an unjust law or unjust enforcement of a law should be removed from office immediately for the same reason.


People who try to force religion into government and education seem unwilling to be honest with themselves and just shout from the rooftops that they want a theocracy built around their particular dogma, but they continue to attempt to employ theocratic methods in their political maneuvering and PTA protests.



We tout ourselves as a nation of laws, as a nation of freedoms, as a nation of progress.
It is an ideal we routinely fail to reach, in great part because too many people refuse to accept anything as true which counters their own dogma, regardless of the evidence presented.
If we cannot move beyond this, we will continue to stagnate and rot from the inside out.

Goals?

It's 2:15 AM, and I'm in this weird limbo-state between reeally sleepy and reeeally trying to process all the sugar in my system so I don't crash.
So it's time to get existential:
So many motivational books/speeches tend to focus on you getting "what you've always wanted" or your "dream job," but they all seem to assume that you know what those are going in, that you have and have had a clear idea of where you want to be or what you want to be doing, and the difference between that idea and your current circumstances indicates that you aren't there yet.

But what if you don't have the clear idea necessary for partaking in their advice?

I read awhile back that "there's nothing stopping you from throwing pragmatic caution to the wind and taking a chance on what you really want," which is a nice image, and I'm sure somebody somewhere could take it to heart and take that first step.

But for myself, it's just that much more frustrating.
Even little cliches like "Dream big!" seem to have a big "N/A" over them for me.

The future is completely unknown territory, and the past just keeps piling up with seemingly zero progress made.
This perception isn't helped by the fact that I'm turning thirty in nine days and just finished filling out yet another job application for yet another minimum-wage retail job.

I don't think I would feel as hampered if I had some clear-cut goal, that I wanted with the fullness of my being and that was only kept from me by my own anxiety.

Every time I've attempted to explore the dark recesses of my own psyche, searching for some shining bit of passion that could become the above goal, the question of "HOW?" shoots it down every time.

Specifically "How are you going to pay for crap while attempting to achieve that goal?"
Especially since pretty much every search ends at either music or writing, and the question of money-in-the-meantime-as-a-married-man kills both.

So no progress is made, nothing new happens day to day, and I feel more and more worthless.
I have zero goals, zero motivation, and in my more introspective moments (like now), I feel on the verge of depression.

Even teaching seems like something I want to do for all the wrong reasons.
Not because I feel called to teach or because I love working with kids, but just so that I can feel like I'm using my education to get hired somewhere that provides health insurance.
Which I call "bringing more voices into the discussion," as if that would ever happen below the college level, and maybe not even then.

I feel like there's just nothing for me out there, nothing that can make use of my years of training while challenging me while providing greater financial stability.
And the stronger that feeling becomes the more I feel like a failure as a human being and a husband, especially as my wife pours more and more of herself into her dream-job, and takes on greater and greater stress trying to deal with our finances.

"It's Just a Game!"

I thought this might be a good way to bridge the gap between two groups which are constantly portrayed as competing with and mutually exclusive to one another in our culture.

Group 1: Fanatical Followers of Ball Sports
Group 2: Fanatical Followers of Role-Playing Videogames.

From the extreme perspective of the former, the latter are obsessing over people and places which have never existed and will never exist, are shut-ins devoid of social skills, are blights on society because they don't contribute and/or are mooching off their parents, etc.

From the extreme perspective of the Group 2, Group 1 are brutish, plebeian, brainwashed barbarians, and/or are enablers of such, who delight in the titillation of their most base, violent urges by proxies who are collectively paid billions of dollars a year, and who are hypocrites for shaming "nerds" for religiously following anime or game series while they themselves collect player and team stats just as religiously.

Of course, from a non-extreme perspective, both groups are simply taking in a form of entertainment which they enjoy.


My choice of title here stems from arguments I've had as a member of Group 2 with members of Group 1, both offensively and defensively.

Offensively, during any family gathering during football, basketball, or baseball season. Especially in moments when the rest of the room not named Myself or My Wife are losing their minds in the general direction of the television. Saying anything which betrays the fact that I'm NOT experiencing the emotional intensity swirling around the room invites anger and an overall "HOW DARE YOU?!" attitude.

Defensively, during any discussion of hobbies with family or friends who do not share this particular interest. Conveying my emotional reaction to a particular story moment in a game is almost an act of trust in these situations, because those hearing it may not have any similar experience (or think they don't, because too many people do not or cannot equate a videogame story with that of a novel or film or television series).

Both sports fans and gamers HATE to be told "It's just a game! Why are you so upset!"
And I think this should be a point of common ground between us, especially when so many social forces and their expectations try to set us against one another instead of allowing us to peacefully coexist in a mature manner.

Of course, those social expectations don't help the case for common ground when Group 1 is treated as "normal" while Group 2 is treated as "abnormal".
Or, more precisely, Group 1 is treated as part of the Western masculine ideal, and Group 2 is treated as effeminate (and therefore unacceptable because anything deemed female-ish is somehow automatically worthy of shame).

Thus Group 1, as the established, socially acceptable group, feels no need to build bridges.
They are secure in their fortress of manliness, and simply expect everyone to join their ranks eventually.

Group 2, as the outcast, sometimes gets addicted to being the outcast.
This is why we see anyone ever smeared as "casuals," and why so many Vlogs on YouTube center around conspiracy theories by game companies to "pander to the casual base"...which is somehow the most evil thing ever.
Nobody in Group 1 seems to worry about who is and isn't a "true fan," due to the assumption that everyone everywhere is or will be a fan at some point.
Thus Group 2 shoots themselves in the foot in many cases, alienating people who want to join up because they're somehow not dedicated enough (usually due to these individuals NOT demonstrating the stereotypes listed in the extreme perspective of Group 1 above).


Of course, it should be said that I'm mostly dealing in stereotypes here.
There are many, maaany individuals who occupy both camps, playing Skyrim all week and then heading to the local stadium on Friday night.

But maturity demands that the stereotypes be addressed as such, that individuals partaking in hobbies which bring joy to their lives be encouraged to do so, and for everyone to accept and enjoy the fact that it is not, in the end, "just a game".

A Fanfic I Should Probably Develop More

After Miraak's defeat, Sabrinia Dragonborn decided in deep meditation that to restore the Empire was the destiny Hermaeus Mora had spoken of, and returned to the mainland.

Arriving at the moot to select Skyrim's next High King on the back of Odahviing, she used her Thu'um to clear the heavy snow clouds out of the sky, and declared herself High Queen before the assembly. The moot, standing in universal awe, selected her.

Her Thu'um echoing over the mountains, she promptly declared herself the heir of Tiber Septim, Empress of Tamriel, claiming that as the Empire was born when mighty one of the dragon blood declared it so, thus it is reborn.

Gathering the scattered remaining Stormcloaks under her banner, the downtrodden Dunmer of Windhelm, and the legionnaires under the command of General Tullius, his will broken by her Thu'um, she marched across Skyrim.
At her command, Odahviing and Durnehviir slaughtered (and ate a few of) the Thalmor agents gathered at their embassy and burned it to the ground.
Pulling every string she had spent years tying off, Sabrinia deployed the thieves over which she was Guildmaster and the assassins over which she ruled as Listener to hunt down and capture every last Thalmor agent in Skyrim.
In a gruesome public ceremony in Solitude, Sabrinia sliced away each agent's clothing as they hung on the pillory. Then slashed each agent's abdomen open to spill their entrails.
Then she called her dragons.
The smell of cooked Altmer flesh didn't dissipate for miles, or for weeks.

Hurling every last assassin into the Reach, she finally burned out and crushed the last of the Forsworn after three weeks of directing the hunt.

Having cleaned her house, she sent thieves and assassins abroad like creeping tendrils, spreading stories of hope and cheer for potential allies and sending any who would oppose her into panicked disarray.
With her consort Serana as second-in-command, she rode west over the mountains into Orsinium, holding the Hammer of Malacath aloft to cheers from the native orcs, who formed up in ranks of thousands behind her armies.
Meeting with the leaders of Hammerfell, with Odahviing in the skies above, she formed the Sand Snow Accord, an alliance to wipe out the Dominion and set Sabrinia upon the Dragon Throne, with Hammerfell's independence guaranteed, though with the provision that any could rejoin the Empire.

Setting sail from Stros M'Kai, her forces sailed around the Summerset Isles, smashing the Aldmeri fleets with sword and arrow and Thu'um and dragon's fire to anchor just offshore from the capital city of Alinor.
Sabrinia took only one Nord, one Imperial, one Orc, and one Dunmer bodyguard in a small boat into the port, surrounded by Thalmor soldiers and mages, every one fearing and hating her, and hating their direct orders to wait.
Sabrinia was admitted to see the High Wizard alone.
The doors slammed shut behind her with a wave from the old High Elf, and sixteen Summerset Shadows leaped from the gloom with swords drawn.
One "YOL, TOOR-SHUL!" and a blur of blades later, she stood over the throne, the High Wizard shaking like a child in the face of a storm.

"Now, your Eminence, I have only two words for you. GOL, HAH!"
He shuddered at the force of her Thu'um, but only for a moment.
The pupils of his eyes dilated until the only colors were white and black.
She smiled at him, and presented a scroll.

"Sign this, give it to your servant just outside the door and tell him to follow the instructions to the letter, and return to your throne."
He did so, in blank silence but with the slow gravity with which one in his position does everything, from eating to passing judgment.

Sabrinia let him shuffle back to his throne and sit.
Let the old mer be found reclining regally.

"KRI, LUN-AUS!"
His body shook under her Thu'um, but stopped when the black dagger pierced his robe, the armor beneath it, and the back of his throne.
She left it there for the servants or the soldiers or the gods to find.

Sabrinia Dragonborn stepped into the sunlight to see the full might of her armies arrayed around the gleaming palace which once held the leadership of the Aldmeri Dominion, but would for now serve as a mausoleum for the enemies of the Dragon Empress, May She Live Forever.

The Most Obnoxious Dogma

I was raised in church.
I consider myself a follower of Christ, and endeavor to love everyone as I believe He loves us.

But there are certain dogma and doctrines which too many church people cling to like they're Christ's undergarments, and which make my life so much more difficult when dealing with and relating to people who weren't raised in church (such as my wife), or were raised in church and eventually abandoned Christianity because of church people.

1) Biblical literalism
This single philosophy has caused the spread and solidification of so much deliberate ignorance over the centuries, especially when church officials had the power to hand down death sentences to anyone who questioned it (like, say, scientists), and today when politicians make a show of pandering to church people by refusing to act on the scientific community's findings.
To say nothing of leading to believing in a church-conjured bogeyman from Job's story (the accuser), and inflicting that interpretation upon the rest of the anthology, and upon all recorded history as well.

This has led to an abandonment of common sense (while ironically declaring the philosophy to BE common sense), and the demonization of anyone who wishes to delve into the cultural, historical, and literary contexts of the various texts included in the anthology, because we tend to reach different conclusions than the church-people-approved catechism.

2) Sola Scriptura
In conjunction with #1, this becomes all the more obnoxious.
For those playing the home game, this is a Latin phrase meaning "scripture alone".
Originally, this doctrine was codified in the midst of many church publications and tracts assuming the same authority as the Bible, to say nothing of Papal Bulls and the Roman Catholic policy of indulgences, and the codifiers (among them Martin Luther) wished to wipe the slate clean and return to the basics.
Which to a point is all well and good, but too many church people have interpreted the doctrine to mean that the Bible is the ONLY THING CHRISTIANS CAN READ. EVER.
Church people don't just want to tell you how to read the sacred anthology, they want you to ONLY read the sacred anthology. So any writings of historical contemporaries of the authors included in the sacred anthology, interpretations of those writings, new ideas and conclusions regarding the sacred anthology or any contemporaries or any later works, entertaining works of fiction, scientific research.........the list is endless, and its repression varies from church to church and within churches.

3) "Fallen" humanity
Church people like to point to the Garden of Eden story and its references throughout the anthology for this one, but even cursory research of creation myths across different cultures (ya know, the kind of research that literalists run screaming from) demonstrates that the Garden story is just like any other culture's story to answer the fundamental questions of the ancient world:
"Why is there a world?"
"Why are we here?"
"Why are we cruel to each other?"
Nearly every creation myth in every ancient culture answers these three questions in ways unique to that particular culture, and the Eden story is no different, demonstrating the priorities of a nomadic people who frequently interacted with agrarian societies.
I can easily imagine a young Hebrew boy walking with his family's herds past a city at night, and turning to his father to ask, "Why don't we live in cities and plant crops?"
And his father answering, "Back before your grandfather's grandfather, there was no need to plant crops or herd animals..."
And so on, into the story of Adam and Eve's disobedience, which forced everyone to work the soil and herd animals. And maybe the father also tells the Cain and Abel story, in which the obviously non-Hebrew farmer is rejected by God while the obviously-Hebrew herdsman is blessed by God...and then subsequently killed by the farmer.
Which sounds quite similar on a microcosmic level to the Egyptian oppression and enslavement of the Hebrews.
Hmm.
But facts and hard evidence (talking snake anyone?) do not come into these stories, because the stories weren't based on facts or hard evidence.
So extrapolating some kind of factual relationship between a story of two people disobeying God and every human ever being automatically "tainted" makes no sense, and furthermore is dangerous because it can and has led to a philosophy in which we avoid taking care of each other as fellow humans.
Either because we as the caregivers are "fallen" and use that fallen-ness as an excuse to do nothing, or because those of whom we should take care are "fallen," and thus unworthy of our care.



These are just a few that I can think of at the moment, and yes I realize that #1 seems to have caused the problems in #2 and #3.
I've interacted with so many church people online who treat these as foundational precepts of Christianity, yet my own life without them has been so much more fulfilling and abundant since I concluded that they were spiritual deadweight.
Especially in forming relationships with people of different (or no) spiritual traditions.

Happy Birthday America

What is great about America*:
1) Free exchange of ideas.
2) Free practice of religious beliefs that do not infringe upon the rights of others.
3) Most of my friends and relatives live here.
4) My wife and I happened to be born here around the same time, which drastically increased the odds of our eventual meeting and pairing.
5) A growing movement to stamp out prejudice and bigotry, which gains ground with each new generation.
6) Barbecue.
7) Jazz.
8) Barbershop music.

*Not all of the items on this list are exclusive to America.

What is NOT great about America, that I can think of off the top of my head**:
1) Greed is our primary cultural value.

2) The unfettered, irrational individualism which has stemmed from #1, resulting in a nation of individual citizens almost completely unable to connect with each other because we're all obsessed with "getting ahead," which naturally results in "getting ahead of the other person," which prevents any kind of empathy with anyone.

3) The almost nonexistent sense of community which has resulted from #2, as we have all been pitted against one another by marketing and propaganda from the 1% (who strangely enough are motivated only by #1) to prevent us from realizing that not only are we a community, we are a community of oppressed people.

4) The ignorance and hysteria fueled by the 1% maintaining #3, causing massive numbers of oppressed people to act only in the best interests of their oppressors, and which has led to all kinds of irrational hatred of art and knowledge and people who are different.

5) A fascination with excess, stemming from #2, which leads us to all kinds of delights in violence and gluttony and ignorance in an attempt to portray ourselves as greater than the next person. This includes everything from "professional eating" to Bible-thumping at the Creation Museum to cheering whenever we fling soldiers willy-nilly across the globe.

6) A near-total inability to prioritize in a mature manner, stemming from #3.
We focus more on what our neighbor is doing in his/her bedroom than on the fact that our children's school is falling apart.
We willingly donate money to buy the pastor of a megachurch a new yacht, but scream bloody murder at the idea of paying taxes for infrastructure maintenance or basic services, and when that infrastructure falls apart and/or those services become unavailable due to lack of funds, we scream bloody murder AGAIN because we treat them as our due.
We complain that our educational system is falling apart, but in the same breath demand that nonscience be taught in science classes, demand no regulation or standards for education (even though in the act of complaining we admit to some kind of standard), and complain that teachers are overpaid.


**These may not be limited to America, but other countries tend to not parade them around like they're something to be proud of.


Food for thought.

The LEGO Movie and Social Progress

And now for something completely different...

I find it fascinating and ironic that The LEGO Movie's plot involves a group of people, forced into a system in which their individual creativity is repressed or sacrificed for the benefit of a one-man oligarchy, breaking free of that system to found a system in which their individual creativity is channeled for the benefit of everyone.

Especially given that the United States has spent nearly a century treating "Socialism" like it's the worst curse word ever, while simultaneously bemoaning the loss of community involvement and general friendliness toward strangers with whom one shares a neighborhood.

But we can't really act surprised at this point.

What other result could we expect when we make "me getting ahead" our sole cultural foundation?
Especially combined with a infinite-expansion economic philosophy, in which "me getting ahead" is never enough, so it has to be "me always getting further/farther ahead".
Which naturally results in "me always getting further/farther ahead of you," demonstrated perfectly by attempting to drive pretty much anywhere other people are in America.

The more we as a culture have emphasized individual financial achievement, the more we have left things like "common courtesy," "manners," and "taking care of each other" in the past.

As much as I HATE the "good old days" mentality pervading far too much of my elders' psyches, we students of history are capable of tracing a line through American history showing a fall-off in things like communal identity.

Much of it fueled by a rise in unfettered, cutthroat capitalism.

Go figure.

HOLY CRAP 100TH POST!!
Only took........way too long.

The Internet

Aaaaand we're back. Gah.

It's interesting to notice that every electronic communication medium we have developed in the past century and a half is spoken of as if it is a separate, physical location.

I saw it happen "on TV".
I talked with her "on the phone".
We chatted "online" or "on the Internet".

So no wonder we develop psychological issues regarding these media.
We've made them a completely separate universe instead of simply treating them as enhanced forms of normal communication.

A conversation via phone is still a conversation.
The whole point of the telephone's invention was to allow people to have a conversation without being limited by shouting distance.

Receiving information via TV is still receiving information.
We who still read newspapers don't treat the newspaper as some kind of microcosm in which words are different or have different meanings than they would if someone gave us the information by speaking aloud in our physical presence.

Perhaps we have this mentality because our access to these communication media is dependent upon technological progress.

Our ancestors could have never imagined television (or radio, for that matter).
Information was in a constant state of out-of-date, depending on how long it took distributors of it to receive it, process it, condense it into a format which could be broadcast, and then broadcast it.
Put in specific terms, if an enemy army was attacking, someone had to see it and run to the king, the king would send someone to run to the town criers, and the town criers would tell everyone in the town, at least everyone within shouting distance.
This process could take weeks, depending on how big the kingdom was.

Print made it a little easier, but you still had to have someone physically take the printed information to the masses.

Compare that to today's by-the-millisecond, twenty-four-hour information stream, hitting us at home and on the road and at work.

No wonder scientists figure we've created more information in the past ten years than humanity did in the past thousand.
Which I think is partially due to not much of the ancients' information surviving to the present day.
Hard to look at hieroglyphics and figure out what ancient Egyptians talked about while drunk.
Pretty sure it wasn't Osiris being killed and cut into pieces.

It's also no wonder that we're cracking up psychologically.
The world has always been in a constant state of change (biologically, geologically, socially, culturally, technologically, etc.), but up until these past twenty years or so we weren't so keenly aware of it.

Thus old people bemoan the loss of stability, and new adults seek desperately for it, unable to gain their parents' and grandparents' illusion which held out for so many millennia.

Finishing off May Write Away - Character

You know a game character and plot has been expertly written when you're given "I would never hurt [character]. I care too much for her" as a dialogue option, and you pick it because you MEAN IT, not because it leads to a favorable outcome in the game.

Only the best-written characters can form that kind of deep connection with the player.

On an unrelated note, the love story between Serana and the Dragonborn could be a feature film by itself.

But what are some factors which lead to making this kind of connection in a game?

1) Professional-level voice acting.
Seriously. No, really. STOP LAUGHING.
Big-league games today are growing toward movies in terms of how players receive information.

...this isn't always a good thing, *cough* The Order:1886 *cough*.

In your average game balanced between cutscene and gameplay, the positive effects of voice acting are becoming more apparent, even though quality voice acting isn't something most players demand.

Mainly because they're too busy blowing stuff up or shooting terrorists or exploring dungeons or jumping on platforms to care.

But in games which are designed to immerse the player, which is quickly becoming the standard across all genres of gaming, the presence of deeper emotion, inflection, and implication in the voice acting adds a new dimension to the game experience.
Which in many cases isn't noticed until you play an older (or new but worse) game that doesn't have it.

2) A plot in which the player builds a relationship with the character.
Properly written dialogue and plot can create a facsimile of a bond between the player and the character.
This can play out in all sorts of plot circumstances, but the most common usage involves the player fighting alongside the character, and the player experiencing consequences from his/her choices involving that character.
Reactions to dialogue options, split-second decisions, or even accidents due to game lag can all contribute to the character feeling real.
Trauma can also contribute to the player's sense of connection to the character, especially in any game which masters the art of making the player experience emotions directly (as opposed to the oft-made mistake of showing the player-character feeling a certain way, and just assuming the player will sympathize).
If you feel it directly, and you see the character you're connecting with feel it, the connection is strengthened.

3) Relatability.
Spell-check doesn't like this word, or any other deriving from "to be able to be related to," which is WAY too many words.
This is a duh for any character in any medium, but especially game design and writing.
If you're going to give me a quest to save X-character, and you want me focused on rescuing rather than on slaughtering the kidnappers (both will happen, but we're talking about motivation here), you have to have created a character who feels real, and not just a bundle of pixels shaped like a caricature.

Here are two examples, both using the kidnapping idea as a framework, of relatable vs unrelatable:

A) The hero (you) comes upon a wrecked carriage. A trail of blood leads to the east. Following it brings you to the body of a young man clutching a journal. The journal mentions a group of enemy soldiers who ambushed the carriage and took its occupant, a young princess, hostage. The young man apparently slipped away and tried to follow them to their hideout, but was spotted and killed, but not before scratching an arrow on the ground pointing toward the hideout.

B) The hero (you) has been adventuring for awhile, at one point joining up with a group of comrades to clear out a string of bandit lairs. Their youngest member is insecure and lacks confidence, and really sucks up to you. You encourage him to take his own successes and turn them into self-confidence. He smiles and hopes to one day be like you.
Later, having parted ways with the boy and his fellows, you receive a message: He tried to take on a whole group of bandits, got in over his head, and is now being held for ransom. You're the only one close enough to reach him before the ransom deadline.

So, player, which one would you be more likely to want to rescue?

Obviously you'd be motivated to rescue both, but the motivation is deeper for one than for the other.

In A), regardless of your reason for rescuing the princess (money, desire to slaughter enemy soldiers, etc) the motivation comes from a caricature, the image of the damsel-in-distress in your own head as a result of seeing it countless times in literature and film and other games.

In B), while there is some degree of caricature (the novice in over his head), the motivation comes from YOUR shared experiences and relationship with the actual character.
In the ideal game setup there would even be a sense of mentor responsibility, given that you encouraged him to be more self-confident.


That we as players are able to make these kinds of connections with game characters demonstrates an astounding level of growth in videogames as a storytelling medium.
The player's ability to interact with game characters is unprecedented given previous limitations, and continues to open up new degrees of immersion and emotional experience for players.


I'm hoping to continue to write at this rate in the coming months, though it's entirely probable that I'll be doing weeks' worth of writing (still going to try sticking to the 200-per-day setup) in individual posts.
Just want to thank anyone and everyone who has found their way to this blog for your continued reading and support.

MWA 28, 29, 30 - Online Identity

And now for something completely different.
I get that I'm in this weird micro-generation on the border between "Generation X" and "Millennials," in a limbo between "I didn't get a computer until high school" and "INTERNET IS MY WHOLE LIFE OMFG!"

I get that.

I had a computer as a child, but I started with Windows 3.1, and the most powerful (aka, best-looking) computer games at the time required that lovely fossil of tech-lingo, "restart in DOS mode".

I didn't get Internet access until just before high school, and even now I refuse to get a laptop or smartphone because my concept of the Internet involves sitting behind a desk.
I still use the phrase "spending too much time online," which even many of my former schoolmates find perplexing in a world of always-online, always-connected.

So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I find the idea of being driven to suicide by emails, texts, or posts online confusing and disturbing (to vastly understate).

I think of myself as relatively tech-savvy, even as I refuse to go fully mobile online.
I can use my wife's smartphone for whatever in a pinch, but I just don't feel a NEED to use gadgets like smartphones and tablets, or to constantly be connected.

If I react emotionally (in the negative sense) to something online, I physically step away from the computer and go do something else.
Because my concept of the Internet is its own activity, as opposed to reading a book, watching TV, watching a movie, spending time with friends, discussing theology or politics or nerdage, shopping, etc.

That it is possible to do any of those using the Internet has not changed my perception of those activities, and in many cases has increased my sense of differentiation between the way the Internet allows me to do them, and doing them without the Internet.

I'll watch a movie which I don't own on a free streaming service, but I don't understand the act of doing so conceptually the same way I understand taking a physical data storage medium and watching its contents on a machine which doesn't allow more than a very limited amount of input (also known as a television).

I've had some very negative interactions with people online, especially in the more anonymous sections, where a lack of real face and real name permits the worst, most cruel dregs of humanity to grab a metaphorical megaphone.
The forums in which much of this occurs predate social media, and were some of my first encounters with other people in my early days of Internet access.

Which may contribute to my perception of the Internet as something apart from myself, a communication medium first and foremost, to be accessed or NOT accessed at one's leisure.

Which seems to be the diametric opposite of today's children's experience and perception.
The prevalence of mobile Internet devices has them plugged in constantly.
Instead of forming their sense of self in day-to-day life and play and relationships THEN taking on the Internet as solid individuals (as my micro-generation and many Millennials did), they are attempting to form a sense of self in an almost entirely digital environment, in many cases neglecting the real world with its real experiences and real relationships.

This can (and too often, has) led to them being far too sensitive to the whims of the digital medium, which as I've said can be one of the most cruel environments ever devised by man.
Thus their emotional health teeters on a shaking razor's edge, which only gets worse as the hormones roll in.

Teenage self-esteem has always been unstable, at the whims of social cliques and perceived parental disappointment/abandonment.
And that was when the only influences available were REAL people they had to interact with in REAL life.
For generations it was a character-building experience that was and is vital to maturation, since the judgmental idiots and malicious elitists never really go away.

But now?
With so many children building an identity online FIRST, and their real life either barely or not catching up?
Never stepping away from the computer?
Never disconnecting?
Suddenly their self-esteem is at the whim of BILLIONS, and most of those billions are full of bile, hatred, and cruelty.

MWA 25, 26, 27 - Random Stuff

I had meant to post this on Memorial Day, but then life.
A Short Ode to Arlington
The quiet there hangs heavy, light, the silence full of sound.
The jeer of children calms itself, and tears and prayers abound.
The knowing touch of footfalls there
Reach out to spirits in the air,
Who payed the price to earn their keep:
An honored mound in which to sleep.



Okay Fox, if you're going to do reboot League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, here's how you need to do it:
1) Rated R. Before a screenplay is even brainstormed, decide that you aren't going to pull any punches on the gore or sex or weirdness.
2) Use an ACTUAL League story. As in, one Alan Moore wrote. I don't care how much you have to pay the man for the rights.
3) Preferably, use the War of the Worlds story. And don't leave out what Mr. Hyde does to the Invisible Man just before marching to his doom.
4) On the subject of Mr. Hyde, use MOORE'S version of Jekyll and Hyde. This isn't supposed to be an equal partnership. Hyde is strength and passion and brutality, Jekyll is weakness and impotence. Your argument is invalid. End of story.
5) In keeping with the pattern I've established in these instructions, make MINA the film's main character. She's the only League member present in all continuities, she's the first one recruited by MI5, and subsequently the one who recruits the rest of them, and thus shouldn't be relegated to a side role played by a failed TV actor!
6) For the inevitable sequel-talk which will result if this movie is even made and is successful, use the Century storyline. Yes, the one in which Mary Poppins is God and Harry Potter is the Antichrist. DO IT!


I am so very contradictory at times.
I say "I can't wait to move back to a place with a half-decent public library! I haven't had the chance to read a new book in a year!"
And yet not only have I not finished reading every book I've owned for years (among them Robert McKee's Story, Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, and most of the written works of C.S. Lewis), I also recently inherited a small collection of history books from my grandfather, one of which I HAVE read.

So like many other people, I lie to myself as an excuse to complain.

I think it's interesting that when you confront someone with their failing to accomplish a given task, you get a response akin to "Well I just didn't get the opportunity".
Protip: Unless they're working three jobs and have multiple pets AND multiple kids?
They had the opportunity.
They lacked the motivation.
But we look down on people less for lack of opportunity than for lack of motivation.
...even though most of us really aren't that motivated most of the time.

So in this as in many other situations, we deem others inferior based on their outward demonstrations of our own inner failings.



It is entirely possible to act selflessly while being selfish.
Case in point: Religions with a temporal or eternal reward.
"I give to charity [so God will see and give me a bigger mansion after I die]!"

Also, can we stop using "I'm active in my church" when asked "Do you contribute to the community?"?
Please?

If you work through a program at your church to build low-cost housing for the destitute in your area, GREAT!
Say THAT when I ask if you contribute.

If you provide counseling for suicidal youth through a program organized and/or funded by your church, GREAT!
Say THAT when I ask about your contributions.

Saying "I'm active in my church" says NOTHING about actually contributing to the community as a whole.
Especially if yours is a church which requires conversion and/or membership for anyone to partake in the soup kitchens, homeless shelters, or whatever else your congregation provides, organizes, or helps to fund.

MWA 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 - Skyrim

Playing catch-up once again because life.

And yes I know this game is older, but fuck you because I've been playing Oblivion in the intervening years because rebuilding your PC every time an Elder Scrolls game comes out is fucking expensive.

So after playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for about a month now (after being informed that it would not run at all on my graphics card), I have chosen my two favorite new features.

1) Random dragon attacks
These keep the world in a constant state of flux, instead of being able to predict every monster and enemy encounter as in previous Elder Scrolls games, to say nothing of ANYONE CAN DIE in full swing. Especially since most of the landscape is mountainous, and you'll hear them a loooooong way off. This creates a sense of anticipation and realism, especially if you're currently fighting a group of bandits. It's a worldwide wild-card effect that keeps you on your toes no matter where you are.
It also means that if you're using the Smithing skill tree, you have an endless supply of dragon bones and scales with which to make the game's best non-overpowered type of armor and weapons.

2) Cinematic kills
These are just really freaking satisfying. Whether you're plowing through hordes of generic bandits or finishing off a dragon, this feature makes full use of the game's graphics capabilities.
Also I can never stop myself from yelling "FATALITY!!!" in my best Shao Kahn impression every time it happens.
Or "HEADSHOT!" in my best Unreal Tournament impression when it happens with a bow and goes into arrow-time.

And now for the two new features I hate the most.

1) No skill tree for "Athletics" and "Acrobatics".
Remember how several paragraphs ago I said the dragon attacks add realism?
Well here's where that balances out, unfortunately.
The removal of Morrowind and Oblivion's "athletics" and "acrobatics" skills makes the game feel unrealistic at a base level, since no matter how many times you jump or how much you run, you never get better at jumping or running.
This becomes even more frustrating in the early parts of the game, when you have to hoof it (or pay for a carriage) to the major cities before you can use fast-travel.


2) Fucking Frostbite Spiders.
Gah.
I thought my childhood arachnophobia had faded, but freaking spiders coming out of the freaking ceiling when I'm freaking sneaking.
Especially the boss-sized ones that can't fit through the door you used to enter their room.

Which, ironically, demonstrates my #3 pick for best new feature.
Neither Morrowind nor Oblivion created a real sense of "boss" enemies, aside from the main-quest bad guys.
Dragons, dragon priests, big fucking spiders, eight-foot tall undead kings, and my personal favorite Potema the Wolf Queen all create a grander scale of combat to cap off a harrowing dungeon or ruin crawl.

Especially combined with the Word Walls which not only provide an epic backdrop to many of those dungeon battles, but provide a different kind of reward for winning, Shouts.


So let's talk about Shouts.
This new mechanic has me torn.

On the one hand, it's awesome that Skyrim's hero isn't just a guy/girl who happens to be a reincarnation of somebody cool (Morrowind), or who happens to survive a trip through a gate to hell (Oblivion).
As with the boss battles, Shouts and the lore behind them give a more epic scale to the player character and his/her role in the world.

You're not just good with a sword or magic or a bow or all of the above.
No matter what playstyle you choose, you will always have Shouts at your disposal to enhance that playstyle, if you're willing to hunt them down and kill a lot of dragons to unlock them.

On the other hand, the degree of variety in Shout effects (super-sprint, fire breath, slowing time, changing the freaking weather, forcing animals in the area to help in combat, increasing attack speed, disarming an enemy, summoning lightning bolts, summoning A DRAGON, etc etc etc) reduces the player's need to rely on his/her chosen playstyle.

This can be especially true for magic-based characters, though Skyrim contains an entire arsenal of spells new to the series.

That being said, it's great to employ a three-pronged attack by wielding a sword in one hand, a spell in the other, and having a damaging Shout equipped.
Especially if all three are fire-based, and you're fighting...pretty much anything that isn't a Flame Atronach.
It remains to be seen if fire magic is overpowered.

Which is a feature I never would have expected to see in an Elder Scrolls game:
Different elemental magics serving different purposes.

I played Guild Wars for years, and always loved how the game employed Fire, Water, Lightning, and Earth magic to serve different roles (burning, impeding movement, hitting multiple targets, and providing armor to the caster, respectively).
Until Skyrim, elemental magic in The Elder Scrolls was basically all the same, unless you were fighting a creature MADE OF the element you were using.
Now we see Fire hitting undead harder AND lingering after casting AND being able to SET THINGS ON FIRE, Ice able to impede movement, and Lightning damaging Magicka.



Of course, Skyrim still falls for an issue that has been prevalent throughout the entire Elder Scrolls series.
One of the series' trademarks has been the degree of character customization, especially in the different abilities of the playable races.
However, a key element of the gameworld's lore has been racial tension.
In Morrowind, Argonians and Khajiit were kept as slaves.
In Oblivion, there were rumors of wars between the Nords and Dunmer.
Skyrim pulls out all the stops, with Nazi-esque elves enforcing their state religion, xenophobic Nords in open rebellion, Dunmer forced to live in ghettos after their homeland was destroyed, etc etc.

...but none of this ever affects the player.
No matter what race he/she chooses to play, no matter where he/she goes in the game, no matter what he/she chooses to do.

Because Skyrim's story contains so much ramped up racial tension (to the point of violence repeatedly), this lack of effect upon gameplay becomes that much more glaring.

One of the few, small ways in which Skyrim at least improved the feel of the series in this area is that at least the native Nords aren't pulling a "No True Scotsman" on you.
They actually greet you like you're in your homeland.

Which is only noticeable because the previous two games didn't even go that far.
In Morrowind, playing as a Dunmer still got you treated as an outsider by other Dunmer because your character supposedly wasn't born there.
Oblivion wasn't as negative, but it also didn't do anything on the positive side if you chose to play as an Imperial.


There's one final feature which I feel I have to address.
It isn't explicit in the game design, more of an overall sense within how the game is set up.
One of the other trademarks of the Elder Scrolls series is the ability of the player to play as EVERYTHING.
Be a sword-swinging, spell-slinging thief who saves the princess.
The series' skill trees allow the player to become proficient in whatever he/she is willing to devote practice to, which was and is a huge step up in realism from the EXP of yesteryear.

That being said, Skyrim is the first to truly push the player to focus on becoming proficient in a small number of skills via its skill perk system, in which the player is able to unlock abilities related to the skill as he/she becomes more proficient in it.
Which is hysterically ironic, given that Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game to be truly classless.

Instead of choosing a class (or building one of your own) which has a small number of skills which determine when you level up, Skyrim lets you level up whenever you raise any skill or skills a certain number of times.
The skill perk system guides you to focus on a small number of skills to achieve maximum output (whether weapon damage or sneaking or the kind of materials you can smith with, etc.).

This becomes especially true with the weapon skills.
One-Hand and Two-Hand both contain unlockable perks which allow you to turn a cinematic kill into a cinematic decapitation.
Yeah.

So since I'm running out of time before I have to go be productive, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim totally lives up to the hype.

Here's hoping for an Elder Scrolls VI: Summerset, or Elsewyr, or Black Marsh, or Akavir....good God this game world still has a lot to explore!

MWA 17

Leaves fluttered on the bronzed grass. Hank tightened his grip on the rifle as he crawled into the clearing, his jumpsuit and hat blending into the carpet of Autumn detritus. Thirty yards away grazed an oblivious ten-point buck, antlers almost snarling in the scrub as it chewed the fading shrubbery.
With a whisper of kissing leaves, he sighted the buck in his scope, began to squeeze the trigger...

A howl out of some twisted nightmare tore through the clearing. Hank flinched, fumbling the rifle upward and firing. The deer started, and managed three steps before a giant blur of striped fur enveloped it with a roar. Hank lay prone in the leaves, eyes clinched shut, clutching the rifle to his chest like a safety blanket.

The crunch of deer bone shocked him back to reality. He forced his eyes open, the rest of his body tensed from skin to sinew. His hunter's instinct loosened his grip on the rifle, moved his hand over its action, and kept his eyes locked on the gargantuan cat feasting on its kill, massive canines scything through flesh and bone.

The first click made the beast's ears twitch.
The second made them stand up straight.
The third laid them flat, a low growl emanating from the lowered head still tearing chunks of flesh from its prey.

Hank sighted the striped flank in his scope, praying a .30-06 with a deer load would be enough to bring down the monster.
He wrapped a finger around the trigger, keeping the scope to his eye. He began to squeeze.

The beast reared, a slitted orange eye now filling the scope.

He fired.

The beast charged, sidling left in a blur to catch the bullet near its rear and not lose forward momentum.

Only years of practice guided his hands in that moment, ejecting the spent cartridge and loading another without conscious intervention as thirty yards became three, became none.

Hank threw himself backwards as the great cat leaped.

The shot's report rebounded off trees and rocks and clouds in the clearing.

Hank lay in a mass of moss and fungi at the base of at tree, a single massive paw digging claws into his outstretched boot, its owner dead a few feet away.

MWA 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 - On The Superhero

In its initial incarnations (especially Superman), the superhero was a powerful form of wish-fulfillment for its creators, mostly young Jewish men escaping from persecution in Europe to a Land of Opportunity across the ocean.

This aspect, combined with the fact that children (read: boys) were the primary audience for comics for decades, led to thousands of stories of black-and-white morality, in which the villain(s) and his villainy were easily identified, and the hero's task was simple: the application of brutality.

A couple punches, kicks, or Batarangs, and justice is served.
No muss, no fuss.

This was good enough for the first twenty years or so, especially when the Nazis were such easily accessible villains for Superman, The Human Torch, or Captain Marvel to beat up again and again.
And of course, the propaganda potential did not go unused, especially in the case of Captain America, which led to the openly-espoused idea, previously just left as a given, that the application of brutality is somehow inherent in the American system of.....government?
Economy?
Geography?

No one took the time to clarify this connection because the country was at war, and no one clarified it afterwards because we felt like masters of the world.
Even so, it became part of our culture, especially as generations of boys and girls ate up the black-and-white morality tales.

As the seventies rolled in, writers at DC and Marvel, the last two remaining comics companies after an idiotic senate subcommittee investigation, began attempting to address deeper issues and more human concepts (and an older audience) than the "punch now, ask questions never" approach of their predecessors.

DC's Green Lantern/Green Arrow explored drug addiction, gang violence, Native American exploitation, pollution, inner city racism, and a myriad of other contemporary debates raging in the halls of college campuses and Congress alike.

Marvel took a different approach, creating more three-dimensional superheroes (beginning with the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man) who had to deal with real-life problems that the whiz-bang characters of the thirties and forties never touched. For example, the Fantastic Four at one point faced bankruptcy because they refused to bank on their fame or inventions.
Spider-Man was and is probably the best example of this shift, being the first true teenage superhero, and being the first example of a comic book character who has a hard life, and that life becomes even more terrible after he becomes a superhero. This would never have been accepted in the two-dimensional morality tales of the previous decades.

But even with these deeper explorations into real-life issues and complexities of the seventies, superheroes remained paragons of the application of violence as a primary means to dispense justice.

It wasn't until 1986, a watershed year in the history of the comic book medium, that anyone set out to truly delve into the inherent nature of the superhero.

The seventies had given rise to the deliberately campy Batman TV show starring Adam West, which had been designed as a deliberately campy satire of the then-current state of the comic: an irrelevant bit of fluff glossing over a truly dark character. Frank Miller saw the darkness, and resolved to bring it to light with The Dark Knight Returns. He started with a Batman who'd started fighting crime in 1939 (when the character was created), and by 1986 was past his prime, living in a Gotham City that had gone to hell in his absence.
This isn't the Bruce Wayne with a smile on his face. This is the guy who saw his parents murdered as a child, something the Adam West show and the comics which inspired it apparently just forgot about. This is Batman walking the streets and seeing a new generation of cold, calculating killers replace the ilk of his parents' murderer, and they're barely old enough to shave. The "hero" is portrayed here as a murderous beast which possessed young Bruce, which was given free reign starting the night of his parents' murder. He does not brutally take down criminals because of some absolute moral duty; he does so because he is haunted, possessed, and in his honest moments admits he loves every minute of it. Especially in contrast to Superman, who is portrayed as a super-sheeple in thrall to a pastiche of Ronald Reagan, blindly obeying orders and carrying out secret wars in Central America.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were hired by DC to craft a story involving several older characters from the then-recently-defunct Fawcett comics. What resulted is Watchmen, a magnificent work of art and a damning indictment of the concept of the hero. Moore created a realistic facsimile of an alternate 1986 America, in which Nixon has remained president for multiple sets of presidential terms by intentionally accelerating the Cold War to the point of walking the razor's edge of Armageddon, and masked heroes are a fact of life.
The comic, a true "graphic novel" (meaning, it contains over 40,000 words, and thus fits the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's definition of "novel"), deconstructs the idea of a person who would put on a mask and fling violence upon those they deem criminals, portraying each of its vigilante characters as socialyl disconnected, impotent, apathetic, sociopathic, and psychotic, respectively.

These are portrayed as the qualities necessary for a person to not only have a black-and-white sense of morality, but to inflict that morality upon others.

Alongside these two books and others came the first ever full-company comics crossover: DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. In what became a fairly regular event at DC, and which Marvel found its own version of, the entire decades-old DC universe was re-written, and much of the light-and-fluffy, easily-digested morality elements were removed in favor of more mature, three-dimensional characters and storylines.

The breakout success of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and the results of Crisis spurred the genesis and development what comic historians now term "The Dark Age of Comics," when the happy-go-lucky punching and kicking and funny gadgets were replaced with grim sociopaths packing heat, a willingness to kill, and a deeply scarred and/or disfigured psyche.
This led to some competition for DC and Marvel for the first time in years as comics publishers like Dark Horse and Image took advantage of the darker-and-edgier trend to market their own characters.

Writers who had grown up with the fluffier versions of the characters eventually rebelled against the trend, resulting in a synthesis of blind traditionalism and superhero psychoses.
This synthesis began in 1996, with Mark Waid and Alex Ross' iconic collaboration, Kingdom Come. In a world filling up with unstable superpowered individuals, Superman and his generation of heroes come into direct conflict with the heat-packing sociopaths of the Dark Ages, all witnessed (and eventually influenced) by Pastor Norman McKay, a completely un-superpowered old man granted visions of a coming superhero apocalypse and guided through them by the Spectre.

As a result of the growing dissatisfaction with the Dark Age concept of the hero, and Waid's humanization of previously-cliched heroes like Superman, the superhero evolved into its current form: individuals with wondrous abilities attempting to make the world a better place, but who are human first, struggling and feeling and able to connect with readers who reach out for some reassurance of stability in an increasingly unstable world.