» Mon Jun 11, 2012 3:59 pm It is become an environment mutually exclusive to honest inspiration. "Got to keep it on the surface, because everything else is dead on the other side." These people, these business "leaders," are incapable of making sensible decisions about what is best for humanity. Their motives are not compatible, and never will be.
I don't think the makers of Skyrim simply don't care, and I certainly don't mean to paint Bethesda in this light. Yet it is the environment of our time. Poverty and debt and slavery and hopelessness. So anymore, I wonder if it is even possible for a multi-million dollar company to avoid attracting these types, materialists, literalists, short-thinking apologists, with their cult of "live in the moment," "die with the most toys," "eat drink and be merry..." Sure a robot can get the job done, but there's more to being a great artist than the sheer number of pieces you produce.
Perhaps even the masters paint cautiously with broad strokes, to avoid over-committing to anything? Lest they find themselves on the "losing" side, or jeopardize their own good fortune by falling at odds with the agenda of mass complacency, lulling the people into this morass of weakness and ignorance that would deny immortality itself...
Whatever you may say, it IS all related. It is all happening now, and by the decisions of human minds that are privy to the same information. We all know the score, and what has happened to this world. I'd expect more from the wealthy but I suppose they're still waiting for the poor impoverished slaves to do all the work for them without necessary financial support or security.
It isn't so much Bethesda is part of the problem as I believe it is impossible for any company not to be svcked down by this systemic failure, this corporate "group think," this mechanical mediocrity of every man for himself just living day to day not wanting to think about things too deeply, having been burned before in fear of that overwhelming truth, content to dwell in the moment, in the short term, and in the day-to-day.
That is not the path to soul or spiritual inspiration, it is the path to BORG.
Of course another possible reason for this profound "lack of soul" is the problem the citizens of Skyrim themselves have pointed out. "Everyone is obsessed with death." Even the theme song, has the connotations of death and dying, beginning with a strong beat and ending with a slow drum tapering off into a low rumble then silence... As we age and grow weary our passion to create truly ingenious works of insight, relevant cultural commentary and artistic expression begins to wane as well, and it becomes more about what we leave behind. It is tragic as much as it is crippling to our potential.
Living obsessively in the moment is the morass of perpetual literalism. It is mutually exclusive to the head space that can tell a compelling and imaginative story. It saps imagination. It destroys the human spirit, and the SOUL of our culture and being and heritage.
We replace it with routine. The day to day grind. Immerse yourselves in work. Ignore the problems of the world that seem too much for you. Focus less on depth, and more on repetitive tasks, just keeping yourselves busy with the mundane, the mechanical, and learn to make that enough. Learn to find "happiness in slavery." But make no mistake, that is EXACTLY what our world has become. A spiritual PRISON governed by soulless materialists and cowards.
You see the effect of this even in a genre like the Elder Scrolls. Artistic expression becomes less about role play, less about immersion, and more fixated on the mechanical, the routine. What we end up with is a technically sound piece of programming. Meticulous and precise, which is good for a game engine, but less for a storytelling medium.
Even the strategy to remake Papyrus reflects this. Fixing things that aren't broken just for the sake of it, further alienating your community with needless repetition and reinvention of things that worked perfectly well, like government programs in the 30's turning over cobblestones on roads that were just built, just to give people something to do with no real benefit beyond that immediate distraction.
It is a curse born of the human fear of the unknown. The need for continuity, for business as usual, even when business as usual is no longer in this unprecedented technological environment anywhere NEAR enough to save us.
With so many old and dying, the baby boom truly becoming the baby bust, this phenomenon is only inflated to further world-shattering and heart-crushing proportions, to the point I honestly believe we would sell our souls and dissolve into the Borg if it meant not having to confront our terror of necessary better alternatives. We are losing our ability to question, to think, to delve, to be inspired.
"The world's still the same, there's just less in it." It isn't the world that is dying, it is the world's SOUL.
How truly humiliating to have to watch a space age society allowing it to happen with all these technological wonders we have to work with. As if building defensible public housing and establishing a standard for distribution of ESSENTIAL things (only) to ALL so that none go without, so that all are free to work only at what THEY choose, and have the choice, and not risk losing everything for not choosing, were the hardest thing in the universe to accomplish.
More likely, we prefer that carrot of FORCED LABOR. Because as a species, our love of slavery and fear of the unknown that keeps us slaves is stronger than our will to FREEDOM.
