Star Trek and Tradition

In Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry painted a picture of humanity that was positive and forward-thinking. It was very much a humanist idea.

However, there is one thing I want to talk about in this post.

I was watching The Next Generation, when I saw an episode named "First Contact" in the fourth season. It was very negative towards ideas of tradition and exceptionalism. Very contradictory to my own perceptions of political science. 

Tradition was painted as bad, and exceptionalism was painted as foolish.

However, exceptionalism can push a people, a nation specifically, to perform better. It pushes them to exceed their own idea of how great their society is. Tradition, too, has a place in society. It is not, always, a bad thing.

(Morality is also based in such traditions. Without such morality we are setup to fail as a species.)

Anyways, the big problem I have is the "all or nothing" approach it seems to be advocating. All tradition becomes bad, and all "progress" becomes good. The problem is, how do you define those two things?

If all tradition is bad, then what of the tradition of personal property, intellectual property, and individual rights? If all progress is good, then what about eugenics, cybernetic implants, and democracy?

This is further explored in later episodes, making this one seemingly incomplete.

What I mean is that I think this episode clearly contradicts the very idea of the Borg as vying for perfection. If the Borg see themselves as perfect and individualistic organic species as imperfect, then the idea that progress is always good would seem to support them. How much better to be a collective, than an individual!

To me, this just seems out of place. I think that when such series get preachy, they lose focus on the overall truth that extremes are usually bad, even extremes towards progress.

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Hey, I made a video about Ayn Rand in BioShock, and how I think it doesn't make sense to say Andrew Ryan was Objectivist. Check it out, if you haven't! And if you still haven't, please subscribe to my YouTube channel!

Time to Read

As I get older I find I have less time to read. I used to be devoted to fiction, then in college I found nonfiction to be more interesting. Philosophy and the classics dominated my time, but then I started playing Unreal Tournament and that was that.

Video games are not a waste of time, at least, not more than reading fiction is. Why would reading words on a page make your more intelligent than delving into the political and sociological world of Bioshock?

Now, nonfiction is about as useful as documentary film. I don't know why people value books more than other mediums of information, but I do that as well. My wife often comments on the fact that I own far too many copies of books, having entire shelves for no reason but to collect.

Part of it is my children. I want them to have access to books, not just the internet. Something about it being printed makes it seem more real than a wiki.

But on the other hand, I want to have the books the websites use as references.

If only I could find time to read anymore.

Tabletop Gaming

I have found some fun in playing Pathfinder in the past. My family would come over and we'd all get together, all five of us, and play a good game. Being the GM, I had a blast making sure everything ran smoothly, and the players had fun solving mysteries and fighting with swords and sorcery.

The only problem is, life goes on. As time weathered on our lives, we gained more responsibilities and more events were scheduled. Now it is completely impossible to find time for all of us to actually get together. Children, work, school, meetings, and life in general has a way of offsetting time otherwise devoted to a couple hours of imagination and papers with numbers on them.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but a thing none the less.

I love my daughter and my son who has yet to be born. Do I blame them? No. Not at all! I blame no one, but I do find it sad for some reason, that time changes all things.

Why is there Religion in Halo?

A valid question, considering the polarizing effect religion has on many people.

A lot has been going on

My wife and I are moving, she's pregnant with our second child, and I start at a new school in a month. It's been an interesting transition period.

But, needless to say, YouTube videos have suffered as a result. Not a big deal, but whatever.

I feel the same kind of gratification from making a good YouTube video that I used to get from creating a painting or drawing. It's like I poured my soul into something I enjoy, and I love the result.

I hope to provide you guys with more content as time goes on. Check out my channel Frank Gamer.

Coming Soon from Frank Gamer

From my channel Frank Gamer, a new series of videos is coming...

Drawn to RPG's

I mentioned this on my Twitter account (@FrankGamerShow please follow me if you haven't!) but I realized the other day that of my 14 PS3 games, 9 of them are RPG's.

That's a large majority.

But why did it end up like that? What about RPG's is so attractive to us?

I was considering making this a video, delving into psychological studies and research done on the subject, but I haven't fonud much.

Maybe it just says more about me than gamers in general?