winning against, vs. loving with

I have been comprehending that the hierarchical framework of those people who are "above" one, "below", and "lateral to" oneself is a way to make a functional team out of people who are inherently assaultive toward others so as to gain what they want. Since that mode is reproductively successful since it is nearly always more efficient to gang up and rip something off others than it is to grow or construct it themselves, most people are of that kind; and so the hierarchical technique is now standard, being a rule set for mutually assaultive interaction to enable some survival.

Getting the higher educational system tied into the process of "winning" and "being better than others" in their minds, is probably much of why the system has worked as well as it has so far. If "getting better grades" is equivalent to "better than others" and thus will put the person higher in the hierarchical framework, it is a goal worth striving for, by the inherently assaultive types. It is a subtle, but ultimately very different result-getting, reason for the student to learn; in contrast to learning for the purpose of the love of knowledge and the application of knowledge in the process of life for one's kind. Although the competitive rival assaultive-types are prone to use knowledge so as to more cleverly assault others, they also tend to get skills which can be hired for the purpose of some constructive use, and thus overall result in the progress of civilization, fumble and bumble as it is.

The hierarchical form of group process to get done what needs be done for the whole to survive, is not the only one that works; but it probably is the only one which works with the basically assaultive form of beings.

My own type of being has a different mode, that of everybody being aware of the common goals and reasons for those goals, and each person tends to be versatile enough to do many kinds of functions, making a "team" that has its "leadership" ever shifting as defined by the task of the moment and the person able to do and lead who happens to be closest to the task at the moment, and then only where there is some need for a "leader" to do some particular task. Normally there is no leader, the people pitch in to get the tasks done, ever busy, and ever watchful of the overall picture so as to anticipate upcoming needs for us. This form of "teamwork" requires a broad comprehension of the overall system and its interactive parts, along with a handy set of specialization skills for when they are needed for some unusual task of the moment. Most importantly, the members are quite lacking the "assaultive" part of personality that craves to compete against others instead of harmoniously interact with them, and do rivalry to determine "who is better than whom"... that kind of personality factor is totally missing in this inherently unified form of people, like I am. Of course, we get mowed down when we encounter a bunch of the assaultive hierarchical people, out to grab the goodies, easy success for them; that is why there are so few like me ... yet perhaps it is my kind that keeps the mix cooled down so the assaultive form of mankind does not exterminate itself so quickly.

Instead of the way of "winning against others," it is the way of "loving with others."

The hierarchical form of coordination works with the broader group of people, and so is the commonly used mode, even if it is a quite inefficient mode for maintaining the overall task collection. It usually bumbles along, with its membership mostly focused on each other, "crab-potted," instead of far more efficiently being guided by the overall picture. Unfortunately this tends to make them unaware that they are massively destroying the world ecosystem bit by bit, even though the ecosystem is the life resource for us all.

Our britches have gotten too big for Mother Nature to continue to clean up after us and make it all well again. Hopefully we will suddenly realize that it is our grown-up task to tend and keep it all, before so much is extinct that the remainder cannot keep the ecosystem balanced even with our best efforts.

(I won't detail the risks of abuse of mighty power in hierarchical righteous rage, that could even nuke (or etc) the planet not just of all people but of most other life too. I worry that the hierarchical mode of taming the assaultive winners, inherently is too unstable for long term survival of the whole.)

Asperger's seen as loose cannon on social deck

Asperger's people do well to share wisdoms found about their situation. The social dysfunction we share, along with a need to be socially interactive (unlike true autistics who don't want to interact with others), is a key problem for us. So the realization I now share hopefully will be helpful to other Asperger people.

This hypotheses is that "normal" (= "non-Asperger's" in this context) people are laced into a hierarchical latticework socially, ever striving to "climb the ladder" of that hierarchy, because it simplifies things for them. Their viewpoint of life that seems to involve the incessant determination of "who is better than who and therefore deserves to receive more" becomes much simpler when all they have to focus on is defending against whoever is "under" them in the hierarchy, while also struggling to overcome the one who is immediately above them in the hierarchy, while maybe competing with those lateral in the struggle to get the "higher" next rung position in the social hierarchy. So instead of struggling with a huge number of people, they just deal with just a few, much easier to keep tradk of and devise strategies for those few conflicts, all of which provides expression of their incessant need to vibrate their place in the hierarchical social latticework.

This hypothesis also fits well with the anger non-Asperger's express Asperger people. An Asperger person does not "know their place" and so becomes a maveric person who might be another contender for the non-Asperger's social position, and therfore must be fended off, a nuisance complicating life.

Since the social hierarchy latticework is an invisible thing not even discussed by non-Asperger people as a rule, they cannot express their irritation at what they perceive as Asperger's intrusion into their territory, while the Asperger is simply wandering around in life trying to cope with basics, unaware of all the cages they are rattling along the way. Since the hierarchy is not a publicised thing, complaints cannot be directly lodged against Aspergers for "not keeping their place" (at the very bottom of the hierarchy, of course) some of the non-Aspergers trick the general public's involvement in the harassing of the Asperger people by claiming the Asperger is doing something ugly, like stalking young women, abusing children, or shoplifting, for examples. These are things universally disliked; so the hue and cry of the clever non-Asperger immediately enlists the general public. And the Asperger's awkward social efforts to find a woman as their mate, be friendly to children, and search for what they need to buy in stores, is easily interpreted with the wrongdoing attributes once the public's mind has been directed to think that way.

So, this hypotheses is simply stated that people who have Asperger's and thus do not "know their place" socially, are perceived as wandering nuisances which complicate the hierarchically stratified world on non-Asper people, maybe even sometimes seem as "a loose cannon" on deck; so the general public is enlisted to help corral the Asperger people, united by false claims of ugly wrongdoings by the Asperger people. But the real complaint is actually that the Asperger person complicates their normally elegant strivings related to the few people immediately adjacent to them in their place in the hierarchical latticework.

Grump 20070922

I had recently gotten a card from an old friend, who was at one of my favorite places at the time. The card triggered some stuff in me, so I copy part of my reply, to the blog here:

Thank you very much for the cute card from the Museum. I easily recalled the place where one looks down at a nose cone in the Space Museum (unless they have rearranged it again) where you said you were writing. The appropriateness of the dino Corythosaurus on the card also in context with Space Museum recalled my worries that if we (mankind) did not quickly get with the GEO large scale access ASAP we would continue dooming our supportive environment and go the way of the dinos, extinct but by our own lack of group wisdom, not waiting for a big meteor to blast the world to do it.

We are accumulating knowledge rapidly and some see the warning signs of ongoing collapse. I still try to think of some way that a government which is built on the economic theory that profitable business is the only guideline, so as to avoid the tendency of slothful living which "socialized" government supposedly promotes, can do the job. Limited to only that which produces profit quickly cannot go for the whole picture, but only go for the little pieces that can provide them easy money quickly. Thus big holes appear in the overall picture, accumulating such as depletion of fisheries of the world and acceleration of global warming's ecosystem rapid changes, which eventually do affect the business opportunities, of course. Can't do big fishing business when fish are depleted, some species gone extinct already too, for example. Oh well the fishery corporation can just go find some other way to make money. Right, sure it can, on and on, depleting as it goes. As if big Mother Nature was able to continue cleaning up after us, and ever re-stocking provisions abundantly as before; we have grown up, gotten too big for Mother Nature to be able to do that without help, lots of help from us now.

I had always theorized that government is supposed to provide the "big picture" coordination and filling in where quick profitable business agglomeration can't get the larger needs done.

The sufficient access to nearby orbital space had the potential to provide the breakthrough that prevents civilization from continuing to exist in a "closed ecosystem" and if done quickly enough before the biodiversity of species is unable to sustain the recycling that the world of nature is built upon, had a good chance of solving the problem; the tether "space elevator" and the hoop "space escalator" concepts are the only potential ways to have that sufficient access that I know of at this point. A huge fleet of nuclear powered launch vehicle freighters no matter how many using available ores for fuel source, even with breeder reactors, could provide the access in adequate amounts, even if the nuclear contamination risks were somehow solved. In 2002 Edward's tether space elevator was claimed to be do-able using billionaire private investment. Maybe the war profits have made some new billionaires that could do that investment, although I am not sure Edward's concept is anywhere near the optimum one. And for either the linear elevator or the hoop escalator to be built, there needs to be heavy decisions re the existing satellites below GEO, where most of private investment and military satellites are located; a matter of giving up short term profit for huge later profit, something that only governments can provide the padding to pass through.

I did my part, providing integrated concepts for both space tethers and hoop escalator space access do-able with materials and technology near at hand, over the past three decades; but the academic folk and the business folk (and just the ego folk) only played games with me, as if it were rivalry and competition that were what was being done, their big-picture facility seemed to be missing, or something. I even endured playing their conference-paper-presentation sport in effort to get them to pay attention, enduring it five conferences, getting basically only the "how dare you "nobody" come barging in here!" overall reaction, no thanks whatsoever for attempting to save their future; and no offers to discuss the concepts with me.

Well, it is said that "trying" does not count unless it achieves success.

So your dino card written overlooking a nose cone stirred up some frustrations I have, besides the memories of interesting things there at the museum.

The nose cone itself sports the evidence of the problem: the ablation of the heat shield on underside of nose cone, was caused by enormous energies being thrown away as heat during re-entry, huge waste of energy. Energy given back by returning spacecraft needs to be returned to the transportation system; rocketry cannot do that. Some forms of tether elevators and the hoop-shaped space escalators can reclaim much of the energy when supported vehicles are coming back to earth, making the energy system start looking reasonable for long term profitable usage.

In a world where people are barraged constantly by ads, probably they will just think this is just another ad, too. That could explain part of the usual response, the nothingness along with a generous supply of banana peels strewn along my path in front of me.

Jim Cline

Is it one or four sets of rules of life? Same game

Imagine a game that is played, where the players play by four different sets of rules, and yet all players think that there is just one set of rules?

A rule set is built into each of the players, and a lifetime of experience with it makes it such that there is no question but that it is the rule set.

Observation of others, who, unknown to each person, are playing by a different rule set, decides that some others are dysfunctional in various degrees. At best, they concede a "double standard" that happens at times and certain circumstances.

Ah ... maybe it is the way the Creator makes the game stay spicy.

Iraq talk is in the air so here is some more

Can an Asperger's person have anything useful to say about things that are intensely social in nature?

Maybe not. And yet, a being who does not live in the water, maybe able to speak of life in the seawater from a more detached, maybe useful viewpoint. And so also an Asperger's person who has social awareness dysfunction, may have something to say from a useful viewpoint to those who are a bit overwhelmed in the sea of social stuff.

To me, one such sea of social stuff is Americans in Iraq currently. There are probably those who think things are going just fine as planned in that sea of turmoil, and others who think it is a disaster in slow motion. We cannot go back and start over; it is like the bell that cannot be un-rung.

We wake up in the morning to the situation here and now, must deal with it, while maybe also learning the right lessons to avoid such a mess in the future. At present it is not like the old story of the radio announcer saying "Good morning Vietnam, wake up and smell of roses and ... napalm?!" yet still is a major problem. Anybody aware that it is their pocket that is part of what is forking out 10 billion dollars a month for the war, with nothing possible to show for it? The numbers are too big for ordinary people to comprehend so it just goes right past, as a ship in the night. Other costs are also too terrible to think about too much, the goings on over in the country of Iraq. We took the bait, stepped in it, and here we are, glued like Uncle Remus' Br'er Rabbit stuck to the Tar Baby. No nightmare from which to awake tomorrow morning. Sky is not falling here yet, so war over there must be working to prevent it, right?

So we cannot walk away from the mess we made. Although actually, we are on somebody else's turf and were not invited there. We seem to have wrecked the place, what do we do, just walk away? Don't we have a responsibility for what we have done? What would people say?s

Why can't those people get along over there? We did it here in America, so they ought to be able to do so over there, right? Well, no; in America we strted with a dominant settler faction, and generally added in the other minorities bit by bit, a melting pot that took on only small bits for new melt. Apparently in Iraq it is like loosing a bunch of tigers, lions, wolverines, foxes, vultures, deer, rabbits, cats, dogs, all in the Colosseum confinement, and let 'er rip. Not the same at all. Ethnic groups each defined by membership in some grouping, hanging onto the identity as if to lose it would lose life's identity itself. Some have fundamentalist religion as the uniting factor, each one declaring it is to be the only survivor in an all out drag down melee someday, like bulls fighting to father all teh next generation, utterly determined and facing an imagined foe who is equally utterly determined, may the best man win, of course "we" will win.

Aargh, what a massive perversion of the great human spirit. Well, here we are, and have to make the best of it. Or, we can pretend it does not exist, just change the news channel, happy day.

The vision of the "happy day" may be different for the people most in the thick of things, over in Iraq especially. How about getting ech and every one of them to provide a detailed personal vision of their desired life? Us making guesses won't cut it. The people actually involved are the ones that need to provide the true answers.

And sure, there will big inconsistencies among them, and would be heavily laced with the weight of just getting free from the mire existing. And if things were actually beginning to weave together into a functional whole again, the priorities would become different, continuously changing. And at least at present there are likely to continue those who crave to call down Armeggedon ASAP to get the "inevitable" over with, who will still make horrid messes here and there that look like somebody else did it, got to keep the fire burning.

So here we Americans are, like neighbors who have gone over to hold fighting brothers apart, while they calm down. And realizing that the brothers might stop fighting among themselves to turn on the neighbors first, before going back to the endless game of who is better than whom, best men get best girls, and that is all-important; those who have doubted that are long extinct. We have got the tiger by the tail.

So what if the neighbors do get the bunch of brothers to stop fighting each other for a moment, and keep the brothers from turning on the neighbors for a moment too? Let's see... the tiger ... nice, pussy cat ... Sweat.
How about getting them to fight it out on the sports field? Make football teams and whoever wins gets to claim another block of baghdad as their territory, and all agree to abide by the result? But there are those who have been executing each other on and on, maybe those need to do a gladiator duel to the death in front of spectators? What if they went through that stage until they realized the utter depravity of it, but in meantime have gotten the kill-urge out in the open, a bit under control. Begin to move from the present anarchistic free-for-all toward acceptable arenas for disputes, away from the women and children and men who have ability to re-build their civilization, let them get back to work.

Right now per the news they seem to be in total freak-out, controllable only by fumigating the whole place with tranquilizer. Well, we could do that, put some of that big time war money into Big Pharma; but what a precedent ... remember the A-bomb. Do we want to loose such a thing, that surely won't stop there? Does the picture of gassing the city to change them from total freak-out-frenzy into vacant-eyed drooling things ... then what do you do with them? What do you do with a tranqualized tiger? Keep it doped forever? The female ones are as bad or worse than the males, too, same teeth and claws and reactions.

Anybody remember that those people are in their country, it is their soil, their heritage, their future. We Americans are the ones out of place there. So we went there for wrong reasons, but now the reasons have been drawn in, the game is now thus as was claimed originally, sort of.

Let's ignore for the moment, the relatively few on each side who crave Armeggedon's final glorious battle ASAP; and concern ourselves with the vast majority of ordinary folk who just want to get on with life, get a job, own a home, raise a family and go on vacation once in a while. The Armeggedon folks would no doubt continue to make spectacular messes here and there, but if they are ignored, the ruckus will have been for nothing, and so likely would fade away lacking desired results. Here in America we have some of those folks too and yet they mostly lead productive lives, productive and peaceful members, even if coveting raging glory in which they will win, someday. So also maybe their opposite number over in Iraq could be integrated into a functioning peaceful interesting life style for all. Spectacular admirable works can be in other forms besides just making sudden big attention-getting messes. The attention they crave can be supplied in lots better ways, surely. And, their coping with the remembered horrors they did in righteous glory, needs to find expiation in some way besides justifying through more mess-making in the endless "they started it."

Whatever means are used to bring "peace" there will need to be lived-with similarly, too. "The end justifying the means" is well known as to its fallacy. And "stirring things up to make it lively around here" needs to be agreed to by most of those to be involved, and the rest need to have adequate compensation for the insults.

Well, this Asperger's person has rambled on and on once again. Surely something useful was formed in places along the way. The only sure thing is that non-Asperger people will disdain the Asperger's words and efforts, just like always. Ignoring it all is like fiddling while Rome burns? Not unless one is Nero; and besides, what were his options, to play a bit of harmony music into the pandemonium, or else to go carry a few buckets of water into the inferno ... rulership's power had already evaporated for it to be happening; the wrong turns long already made. The bell could not be un-rung.

Maybe this should get the Delete Key treatment. More likely, true to Asperger's type, the naive belief that people will all behave fine given a chance, will ring the bell anyway. Ding!

Good luck Mr. Gorsky

"When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control.

Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck Mr. Gorsky."

Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs.

Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.

On July 5, 1995 in Tampa Bay FL, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong.This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.

When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in his backyard. His friend hit a fly ball, which landed in beneath his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky.

As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Sex! You want sex?! You'll get sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

True story."


[I usually don't quote others in my blog, but in this case I think the fear of this kind of thing may explain some inexplicable problems some influential others have been causing me for many years. If kids had a chance to know the real me and listen to the space transportation innovation concepts I have created, some clever business folks don't want some young engineer say he knew an old Mr Cline who had the same idea 20 years ago, which the company is now raving about their new idea making a mega-fortune. Of course this sounds paranoid; but it closely fits a huge number of strange observations that could be caused only by some influential spin-masters aka reputation assassins, serving a bunch who have dreams of wealth beyond imagination in their later years, setting things up. - Jim Cline 20070910]

Several sciences

Early influences on my life were science and technology, discovered mostly from published material. Science seemed to bring awareness of a colorful rich diversity of things, particularly nature, and science itself seemed the process of connecting all these things together so as to model the behavior of it all so as to improve guesses as to what will happen as a result of whatever. Technology seemed to me to be the tools that provided science with its instruments of observation and comparisons, as well as tools in the form of consumer usage, like kitchen appliances and the automobile.

As I grew older, school showed there were "several sciences", such as physics, chemistry, biology, and social sciences. Each of those "sciences" seemed to grasp ever larger levels of complexity, so the tools and processes for analyzing and predicting became quite different. Yet there was the appearance that each of the sciences would someday merge into detailed unified wholeness with the other sciences: physics would describe all chemical processes; chemistry would explain all biological science processes; biological science would explain all social science. And over the decades I have seen much progress of each of the sciences extending their reach toward the other sciences.

As technology continued to provide ever more complex and dedicated tools, the computer became quite a tool for grouping like things together, a basic science function. The internet enabled computers to reach out and share some kinds of data and processes with other computers and thus to their human users which sometimes included those involved with the sciences.

The urge to observe what is going on out there, and to correlate it with one's own experiences so as to optimize the relationship with what is going on inside oneself with what is going on out there. The bodymind forms functional models of that relationship based upon past experience, as seeded by instinctive hard wiring at birth. Science and technology is like the pooling of such resources among people including others of the past, all with the same function. That pooling of a common model of it all via science and technology, enables ever greater connection between the individual's activities and the potential effects even echoing far beyond the immediate space and time around the person in the moment.

As people take from the Earth's purified resources such as ore mines, then use the products made from them and then discard those products, this increases the entropy of those materials, making it harder to re-use them. Many of such discard byproducts of the processes of civilization are not utilizable by the diverse natural beings of nature, which had recycled the byproducts of the primitive peoples. Thus those byproducts accumulate in the ecosystem, often having unexpected side effects on the resources out there, such as food sources found in the sea, and in global warming from CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere becoming noticeable even in comparison with natural weather cycles. The ever widening reach of science and technology needs to reach far better than it has been doing, so that each person can predict what effects will result from potential actions, each person from the handicapped invalid in a wheelchair to the presidents of powerful countries, they each need to have at instant access, an assessment of short and longer term results of their potential actions in response to whatever. Will computer technology with its internet be able to provide this in time before some civilization-fatal thing is chosen inadvertently?

Then comes the reaching of social science toward political science and even military science, ever more complex arenas of knowledge. At the same time comes the reaching toward motivational science, not just the advertising industry and "spin masters" who add color and purposeful narrow meaning when interpreting things for others who are not there to observe for themselves, but all things that influence what the individuals and groups do; even if provided with knowledge of predicted effects of various paths of choices; the motivational sciences processes could be pushing the "point man" at each moment to diverge widely from choices that optimize the long term existence of civilization and the greater ecosystem of life and resources, even of nearby space, potentially.

However, much does not connect up even with all these tools; a few "activist" groups work to stir up attention to special issues, such as overfishing causing food depletion, trawling destruction of ocean floor habitat, and unnecessary CO2 production. Those kinds of things ought to have been already dealt with along the way by a fully informed humanity. But no, did not happen that way. Something seems very broken, or maybe never was working actually, in the big picture.

I look back to where the problem seemed to begin. Goes back to the comic books from which I learned to read before kindergarten, and continuing in the years beyond that. Clearly the artificial characters and events in the comics had little to do with reality, yet they were very attention getting, and one's ways are learned through attention. Cartoon animals tricked and bashed each other, ever springing back up to go at it again with barely a shake of the klonked head. When I myself scraped a knee, I spent a long time with the owee, taking quite awhile to spring back up, different from the cartoon characters. Some comics had people too, and the ones I enjoyed the most were individuals ever chasing after the gangs who were trying to conquer the world; the ones in spaceships were the most dazzling, the science fiction linked in with my interest in science and technology. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon took on the equivalent gangs who were attempting to grab the girl and conquer the planet. Here were people portrayed that were doing dazzling activities, quite different from the relatively drab world I saw in "real life." Movies happened, including cartoons and newsreels at intermission time along with popcorn; WWII started and newsreels were full of photos of war's destruction. I somehow managed to get my parents to take me to see "Fantasia" 6 times over the years, with its rich diversity of portrayal of ways of being, and clearly in fantasyland, unlike the brutal portrayals of the war's newsreels during intermission. So here was what people were really doing with their science and technology. The problem existed even back then. I later learned that history books were full of such capers, people using science and technology not only for making life better, but also for more effective ways to bash other people. rarely was their mention that people sometimes worked together to restore and maintain the environment up which all of them depended for well being.

In the past decade, was it that things got too dull, it was back to the comic books for pattens for interesting behavior? The head-on crashing of airliners into prominent large buildings was lots like bulls ramming the flanks of the dominant males; the country went to war against another far country chasing a character named from some Flash Gordon comic book invader from another planet. Spinmasters and events churned up the drama, it was never clear really wheteher they were in cahoots from the beginning, either. It was adrenaline-pumping drama galore from then on, and too often it was like the guy on the bus getting bumped in front by someone distracting him from noticing that someone else was simultaneously picking his wallet from the back. The dazzling war news prevents us from seeing what is going on at the daily life level in the country, things that otherwise might have incited civil war here.

One thing is different: in the early comic books, it was the one hero that chased after and just in time stopped the gangs who were attempting to take over the world or whatever; in present times, it is the gangs that chase after the lone person who was said to be the cause of it all, not noticing when that target was dead things changed little; the excitement of the hunt goes on, distracting from the pickpocket in the back, taking trillions from America already, most borrowed from the future generations. The comic book adventures somehow got twisted around, the fun is gone but the attention getting remains. Even when some introspection occurs, it is like the comic opossum Pogo who once sent word back from the front lines "we have met the enemy and he is us."

The utter enthusiasm with which we jumped into war, along with the later war opeing up a pandoras box that would be uncloseable, what a plan. It is as if the generation that came along after mine had learned behavior not just from comic books reading, but the video games that were comic book adventures they themselves could participate in, and the options to move were few: attack back utterly. Conditioned responses, unsupervised in the video comic book adventure arena. That when the video game was done, they walked back into the dining room and had nice food propared by Mom, so there was no reprocussions for the symbolic atrocities played upon each other in the video games.

Much of life's principles I learned in the comic book stories; and of romance, the Western songs of "she/he done me wrong," wrote the patterns for even lovelife, amazingly well. So it seems conceivable that the generation after mine's saga since "9/11" is merely video games' patterns conditioned in the players, is what happened.

Is there any indication we have learned from such goofs? The world continues to sag under civilization's diverse loads; we could be dealing with that kind of thing instead of living out video adventures that hurt for real. Surely lots of possible heroic adventures struggling to restore a world that not only gets sick from our stuff, but also goes on rampage once in a while. A world, by the way, that we and our progeny depend on for our existence. Milk is not made in grocery store shelves overnight. Mother Earth does not have infinite capacity to clean up after us. Yet, it is not likely the game players care about all that; dinner will be waiting at the dining room table when we tire of the game playing; the cute girls will look starry-eyed at the winners of the games, as always. Life is good.