Subject:
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Re: Arkham Asylum - A cool set, but a bit disturbing.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 9 Jun 2007 20:39:21 GMT
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Viewed:
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8387 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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The reason it’s more sophisticated (which, in this context, implies only
complexity rather than an objectively “better” or “worse” aesthetic
sensibility) because it requires the viewer to make achieve more complicated
degree of pathos. Sympathizing with an innocent victim is sort of easy
because we’re culturally programmed to do so (“women and children first,”
etc.) In western culture, at least, it’s basically the default position.
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Hold on right there! I wonder why that is the case! And I certainly don’t
believe it is by Cawinkydink. And if it is so easy, than why would it be
restricted to our culture? I believe we worked hard for that to be our
“default position”-- it is a product of the Enlightenment.
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It is, as Dave suggested, an entirely cultural notion. Look to untamed nature
to see the natural “might makes right” position, where the strongest (whether it
be physically, or in terms of mental cunning) survive by killing, maiming, or
simply driving off the weaker. If you want a really excellent read on how the
entire world came to arrive in its current state (why Europeans conquered much
of the world but failed in central Africa, why China formed a rather sizable
empire that stopped expanding altogether, how some of the earliest adopters of
technology ended up living in one of the most primitive cultures in the world,
and why it all had to do with simple geography), read “Guns, Germs, and Steel”
by Jared Diamond. One of the things he mentions is that when he first began
exploring the mountains of New Zealand (one of the few places where you can find
indigenous peoples who have not been introduced to modern technology in any
way), he discovered that absent of any cultural stigmas to prevent this from
happening, when two people who didn’t know anything about each other would meet,
they would introduce themselves and try to find a common bond through lineage.
Failing to do that meant that one or both of them would not walk away from the
encounter. Find a familial tie, and everything was peachy-keen with them,
because you don’t kill your relatives. Just everyone else.
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