Tuesday, May 3, 2011

50.

Osama is dead.
Good riddance.
Then again, I don't care one way or another if he's dead or alive. Not because of any moral or political convictions, but because the game is far from over. Osama or no Osama, the stage has been set for Level 2 and as usual, ordinary people with ordinary lives and ordinary concerns will die in ways that have become ordinary. Reaching Level 2 is so exciting because the first part is over-and then you realise there's still a long way to go. I speak from my limited experience with Sega games in the 1990s. I assume the principles of video games, like those of power struggles, have not fundamentally changed in the last couple of decades.
Now that we have killed Osama, on to our other demons.

Let us target dictators who sell their countries for money and power.
Let us throw out democratic presidents who do the same for oil.
Let us condemn the educated who use their intellect to cloud their humanity.
Let us take action against the well-fed feudals who let their farmers go hungry.
Let us not believe what double speaking, power-hungry politicians tell us.
Let us question everything we believe to be true.
Let us not allow semantics to muddy true dialogue.
Let us cry out against the systems that indoctrinate impressionable children.
Let us never complicate what is simple.
Let us remember there are two sides to every story and we'll probably never like one of them.
Let us spend more time getting to know people and less time assuming we know what they are like.
Let us remind people that it is possible to end world hunger.
Let us retain our compassion when the hungry commit crimes.
Let us scrutinise our own decisions and know that they are biased.
Let us remain innocent enough to be surprised.
Let us not forget that we are not as intelligent as we think we are.
Let us not wallow in our apathy.
Let us not congratulate ourselves for being better than our neighbors.
Let us invest in children's futures.
Let us educate.
Let us hope.
Let us give meaning to our hopes.

We already know that one person's choices can bring the world crashing down. By the same logic, it takes one person's choices to change the world. Or, if you're less ambitious, it takes as much to change someone else's world.

The second part of the game might be starting, but only if you believe in the game. After all, if you don't believe in it, it doesn't exist.