Post by FJ on Oct 9, 2015 21:21:09 GMT -5
As title implies, spoilers for the game get discussed. Also I get lost in thought.
I find the entire premise of that game enthralling, even if it's not a game so much a story about self revelations taken in the form of talking about another person. There are a lot of interpretations--Coda can be taken as being another person, or he can be taken as being the username of the narrator. I'm not going to discuss what happened--it's far better to watch the hour and a half playthrough or buy it versus a base explanation about how the narrator makes the player dissect, introspect, watch as the world crumbles and the mind of the one whose games they're exploring unravels, only to see something of themselves. It's like an emotional little roller-coaster and caters to the more philosophically inclined without being terribly heavy--its clean, subjective nature appealed a lot to me. A guide, therefore, to how we really come to understand a piece of our nature.
How our work incorporates pieces of ourselves. Our necessity to feel validated. How doing 'good' seems to need that validation, where we question whether we really achieved anything good at all if nobody cared, or benefited. Coupled with my morality and ethics class at college, it really intrigues me, the fact that we, as human beings, are autonomous and don't need to understand why we do things, to do them. And yet some of us have trouble leading fulfilling lives, and we dig deep inside ourselves to figure out why.
The most interesting idea is that in this quest to figure out why, we might make the mistake of saying 'just do better' and simplifying the issue, or we might withdraw from society. We might even make the mistake of crafting a theory as to why we feel the way we do, and thereby label it--and conform to the label. The power of suggestion. "Why am I depressed?" "The only thing that could be it is ___." "I'll stay away from that or avoid it, then." "Why am I even more depressed? That should have fixed it!" We focus on a piece of the puzzle without appreciating the picture, or we look for meaning when there isn't any.
Some of us are depressed simply because we are lacking something achievable.
Some of us are depressed because we simply are. No direct cause. Nothing cut and dry.
We will live in this world and still feel the weight of our heart, but the manic attempt to fix ourselves, to mend the pain, leads to more mistakes. A vicious cycle. We forget we're human and strive to be the perfect human beings we admire or enjoy. We stripped their humanity in our perception, and then we crave the weightlessness of it, when we forget that gravity is not escapable.
As I said in the Cyndago chat, some people have a voice that tells them they're in pain or alone--it generally reminds us of the negative factors in our life that depreciate our mood. Even if we're entirely fulfilled, we still have that voice--it isn't on the [happiness|--------------|sadness] spectrum at all. It's an intrinsic part of us, it just gets quieter sometimes and louder other times. It drives some people to suicide in their happiest moments just the same as it does for those who are having a rough spot in their life. It's like a little void never meant to be filled, only understood.
It's the understanding part that takes the most of us.
I've had times where I yelled internally for it to shut up--the voice, that is--and it did. And yet to say it really is a voice is incorrect--it's my voice, talking to me. My own thoughts, and I refuse to cast them off into a pseudo-personality unless I use it for a concept for a character. It isn't correct to say it really is a voice, either--it isn't consisted of a lacking, or a hole. It's like a corrupted part of my psyche, a glitch in the system, a cancer I was born with that resides in the soul. I could romanticize it more, but it comes down to a deep sense of discomfort that attempts to simply be negative with any situation, and if you achieve something happy, it tries to claim you aren't being yourself. What is 'yourself', then?
The thing is, even if it says you aren't being yourself, you are. If you achieve something positive and it says you don't deserve it because you aren't that person, ignore it. It's false, a lie meant to keep you down where it seems to think you need to be. They say life is a struggle and all beings strive to keep that struggle going until their last breath--yet why do I, and others, have this... thing, inside us telling us to work against ourselves? Why does it think we're being untrue?
This I can't answer. I don't know if there is an answer at all, and I don't feel good sticking something in there. The closest I can come up with is that we feel detached socially. I tend to detach myself from my emotions--I laugh even when I cry, I claim I don't know why I'm crying, because I don't feel it. My body just... reacts to what I bury down deep. If I'm entirely by myself, then and only then do I really sense my emotions. I suppose this is why I hate being alone despite the whole detachment thing--people keep me centered to a more functional state where the whole emotion thing doesn't overwhelm me. And yet this proliferates the detachment issue, reaffirming it, but it is absolutely necessary for me to do to live.
I can't erase the negative emotions.
And I can't give into them, either.
The struggle we of the voice have to endure is knowing that we'll face this our whole lives, and we have to achieve peace with it. In the past year, I actually managed that. This is just... me. No blame to anything or anyone. The best thing for me to do is find things to really enjoy myself and my place.
...I apologize if this is all nonsense to anybody, I'm a bit impractical in how my mind wanders down these routes.
I find the entire premise of that game enthralling, even if it's not a game so much a story about self revelations taken in the form of talking about another person. There are a lot of interpretations--Coda can be taken as being another person, or he can be taken as being the username of the narrator. I'm not going to discuss what happened--it's far better to watch the hour and a half playthrough or buy it versus a base explanation about how the narrator makes the player dissect, introspect, watch as the world crumbles and the mind of the one whose games they're exploring unravels, only to see something of themselves. It's like an emotional little roller-coaster and caters to the more philosophically inclined without being terribly heavy--its clean, subjective nature appealed a lot to me. A guide, therefore, to how we really come to understand a piece of our nature.
How our work incorporates pieces of ourselves. Our necessity to feel validated. How doing 'good' seems to need that validation, where we question whether we really achieved anything good at all if nobody cared, or benefited. Coupled with my morality and ethics class at college, it really intrigues me, the fact that we, as human beings, are autonomous and don't need to understand why we do things, to do them. And yet some of us have trouble leading fulfilling lives, and we dig deep inside ourselves to figure out why.
The most interesting idea is that in this quest to figure out why, we might make the mistake of saying 'just do better' and simplifying the issue, or we might withdraw from society. We might even make the mistake of crafting a theory as to why we feel the way we do, and thereby label it--and conform to the label. The power of suggestion. "Why am I depressed?" "The only thing that could be it is ___." "I'll stay away from that or avoid it, then." "Why am I even more depressed? That should have fixed it!" We focus on a piece of the puzzle without appreciating the picture, or we look for meaning when there isn't any.
Some of us are depressed simply because we are lacking something achievable.
Some of us are depressed because we simply are. No direct cause. Nothing cut and dry.
We will live in this world and still feel the weight of our heart, but the manic attempt to fix ourselves, to mend the pain, leads to more mistakes. A vicious cycle. We forget we're human and strive to be the perfect human beings we admire or enjoy. We stripped their humanity in our perception, and then we crave the weightlessness of it, when we forget that gravity is not escapable.
As I said in the Cyndago chat, some people have a voice that tells them they're in pain or alone--it generally reminds us of the negative factors in our life that depreciate our mood. Even if we're entirely fulfilled, we still have that voice--it isn't on the [happiness|--------------|sadness] spectrum at all. It's an intrinsic part of us, it just gets quieter sometimes and louder other times. It drives some people to suicide in their happiest moments just the same as it does for those who are having a rough spot in their life. It's like a little void never meant to be filled, only understood.
It's the understanding part that takes the most of us.
I've had times where I yelled internally for it to shut up--the voice, that is--and it did. And yet to say it really is a voice is incorrect--it's my voice, talking to me. My own thoughts, and I refuse to cast them off into a pseudo-personality unless I use it for a concept for a character. It isn't correct to say it really is a voice, either--it isn't consisted of a lacking, or a hole. It's like a corrupted part of my psyche, a glitch in the system, a cancer I was born with that resides in the soul. I could romanticize it more, but it comes down to a deep sense of discomfort that attempts to simply be negative with any situation, and if you achieve something happy, it tries to claim you aren't being yourself. What is 'yourself', then?
The thing is, even if it says you aren't being yourself, you are. If you achieve something positive and it says you don't deserve it because you aren't that person, ignore it. It's false, a lie meant to keep you down where it seems to think you need to be. They say life is a struggle and all beings strive to keep that struggle going until their last breath--yet why do I, and others, have this... thing, inside us telling us to work against ourselves? Why does it think we're being untrue?
This I can't answer. I don't know if there is an answer at all, and I don't feel good sticking something in there. The closest I can come up with is that we feel detached socially. I tend to detach myself from my emotions--I laugh even when I cry, I claim I don't know why I'm crying, because I don't feel it. My body just... reacts to what I bury down deep. If I'm entirely by myself, then and only then do I really sense my emotions. I suppose this is why I hate being alone despite the whole detachment thing--people keep me centered to a more functional state where the whole emotion thing doesn't overwhelm me. And yet this proliferates the detachment issue, reaffirming it, but it is absolutely necessary for me to do to live.
I can't erase the negative emotions.
And I can't give into them, either.
The struggle we of the voice have to endure is knowing that we'll face this our whole lives, and we have to achieve peace with it. In the past year, I actually managed that. This is just... me. No blame to anything or anyone. The best thing for me to do is find things to really enjoy myself and my place.
...I apologize if this is all nonsense to anybody, I'm a bit impractical in how my mind wanders down these routes.