I regularly livestream daily, and have given it up for Ortho Lent in the hopes that the Internet Ortho Bros remember that ‘alms for the poor’ is supposed to be one of the things they do as part of their Lent. I wear a layer of sleaze like that. It’s part of the costume.
I’ve also given up vidya games, something I don’t seem to be able to use responsibly. Most recently I’ve been deep diving in Civilization V. We did this bit on the Broken Cl0ck Tower Discord where we could compete with each other in this single player game by all starting from the same save file, Gandhi Domination Turn 0, and call whoever could do it in the least turns the winner.
Sid Meier Games seem the closest I’ve found to ‘serious play.’ In the Civilization Series (his name is also on The Sims), you play as a historical ruler/leader (i.e. Gandhi) guiding you people from pre-history (around 3000 B.C. I think) to the current year and beyond. You ‘research’ technologies, such as mining, horseback riding and the Internet in the order of your choosing, and choose social policies such as ‘tradition’ or ‘autocracy’ which modify different tradeoff costs in the game. It even has competing religions, where you buy prophets and missionaries with accumulated faith and steal religious bonuses from other players cities.
If any of you have started downloading it now, there’s someone you should meet.
Matthieu Pageau (or someone operating his account) has become active again on Twitter/X (he had me worried after going silent for months after tweeting about something he calls ‘The Rainbow Cult’). He’s apparently branching out into dream analysis:
I encourage the notion of using dreams as our common ground (as we know even dogs do it) and sometimes I try to view my personal life history as though it’s a dream I’m living through when I’m awake. It sounds weird, but really it’s just what my sister taught me. Whenever she’d tell me a personal anecdote that wouldn’t go over well if it was played in a Court of Law, she’d add ‘in a dream I had once’ to the end of it. It’s that, but as a thought exercise. It’s what I mean when I say ‘Dream Logic'.
In Our Example today:
In a dream I had once, I had gotten back into playing Civilization V after rage-quitting JumpGate (again) and they released some Wokified Movie Version of Dune while the UN was funding a flood of military age men into the Country. I saw it through the Civilization V lens as if a foreign adversary had primed the public consciousness with Jihad after sending in troops that were practitioners.
Before Matthieu’s brother outgrew This Little Corner of the internet in which I dwell, Jonathan made much of his impact by introducing us to the St. Christopher the dogheaded:
I don’t know what he’s the Patron Saint of, but his story speaks to addicts of various stripes because when he starts Following Christ he gets to not pray or meditate and still Serve the Lord (get in Good Graces).
Some of these only come out with fasting and prayer…
Fasting requires one of two things, Discipline or Grace. If you internally cringe at the word Discipline, do remember also the word Disciple and Shapers, Aren’t We All.
We know from Huberman on Williamson that forcing yourself to do little things that suck to do builds up a part of your brain (called the MTCC or something) that analogues pretty well to a ‘self-discipline’ muscle. Ah, the chasm between knowing and doing, ReMember EmBody.
In a dream I had once, for decades I would always retreat into a videogame ‘when things got bad’, particularly in interpersonal relationships. It had been that way since Pitfall Harry and the Atari 2600. I’d often also be in there when things weren’t bad, or I didn’t feel bad about them, but if I’d been away from them for a while and found myself back in them, it was usually the signs of collapse of an interpersonal relationship that sent me back.
The Beast takes what it Wants, and Gets what it Gets
What do I know about addiction, self-soothing self-destruction and comfort zones?
Were this a video game and not a substack browser window, I would be in depths of my self-soothing comfort zone. Back in the Lemon Land days I used to call it “biochemical alchemy” (since Better Living Through Chemistry was already a movie). Caffeine, Nicotine, Cannabis & a Dopamine Stream that fills your conscious attention and brings about a flow-state, from which any interference from the rest of reality is met with the grumbling beast awakening from a pleasant dream.
You can eat the Lion or the Lion eats you, but when the Lion eats you it can become sated and sleepy and you can sneak out to write a letter to the other prisoners in their cells.
God helps those that help themselves
What do I know of Grace?
I know it was that saying I was thinking when I was met with grace before. It is known Khaleesi that the physical withdrawal symptoms from nicotine last approximately 3 days (let’s not get into the psychological symptoms). Those 3 days are the confrontation with the Beast, the Lion within, that keep a fair number of smokers ‘sucking on a fag’
In a dream I had once, it was this saying going through my head as I drove past the Friendship Inn Restaurant and threw my pack of Marlboro Reds out of the window of a red 1992 GMC Sonoma on my way to work at Wal-Mart and spent the next 3 days without a single physical withdrawal symptom.
Even then, I disagreed with the saying. It’s an egotistic disagreement, but that’s what passes for what I see as myself most days. I need more out of a God than that, whether or not it’s the way the universe. A God that helps those that helps themselves isn’t good enough for ole me, even if that’s how reality in fact works.
In another dream I had, after, one of the guys representing one of the pillars of intersecting interest that binds the Virtually Not Alone community around me decided to have an event several states away, about 10 minutes from where my mom lives. That community sent me to that event, and they were basically selling Orthodox Christianity. I ended up attending a nearby English service the next day, and they were celebrating the parable of the prodigal son.
It got to Luke 15:20 before the resonance with my hearts desire flooded my eyes. That’s what I think the saying God helps those that helps themselves is pointing to. A God that comes running as soon as you start heading home.
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
Great landing.
the vidya game-dreams had been my go to for pain-numbing. I woke up a short time ago and noticed in that time all my younger, adolescent to young-adult, siblings had outgrown me. Now I'm moving to find home but a foot's still stuck in the pig's mud