Simulating Public Opinion

            Understanding the nuances of public opinion is a challenge for me, as it is so hard to pin down what it actually is. Yet, for someone like me – who writes books and runs games where I need to know what entire societies are thinking – it’s important for me to continue striving to understand what they are, where they come from, and how they can be portrayed.

            Through my explorations, I have discovered two key points to understanding the currents of public opinion: the source of information, and how much the person receiving said information trusts the source. For example, one day I read two articles on the same political gathering – one from a right-wing source, and the other from a left-wing source. Due to my own leanings, I instinctively distrusted what was said in one of them, and wanted to believe what was in the other. However, being the type of person I am, the opinion I ended up with was that the truth was partway between the two – though I still favored the one I wanted to believe.

            Another factor that needs to be considered is how readily people will change their opinions. We see a lot of it these days, where one piece of information that goes viral on the internet can take people from thinking someone is amazing to hating them – or vise versa, though this seems to be less common. In many cases, it’s remarkable how easily people will flip their opinions – and they won’t even bother checking into the information before changing their opinions, which is remarkable in this age of satirical news sites and deliberately misleading article titles.

            It appears from this that people are quite fickle, but this isn’t entirely true. While there are some people who will change their opinions at the drop of a hat, there are others who will dig in their heels and refuse to change, and still others who will carefully consider before keeping or altering their opinion. However, the important thing to note about public opinion is that it isn’t really made up of all the opinions of the people who make up the public, and it isn’t even made up of the majority. It is defined by those who speak the loudest, and those who are heard the most. Since the people who refuse to change say the same thing all the time, they tend to blend into the background, and the people who take time to formulate their opinions aren’t there to be vocal at the beginning, this means the bulk of public opinion is formed by those who are fickle. And since having more people supporting an idea puts pressure on others to agree with them, the fickle masses drive and shift the overall perception of the world.

            So, as it turns out, public opinion is simply the opinions of the loudest, most easily swayed individuals in a society. People’s actual opinions can be pushed and swayed by public opinion – because it is within human nature to try to fit in – whereas other people can’t be swayed at all. From a governing perspective, this is a very useful tool – because if you can control the perceived public opinion, you can quiet the people with opposing views – but it isn’t so helpful for my purposes. Yes, it gives me an overall view to present, but it doesn’t help with narrowing down what an individual character thinks.

            For that, it’s important to go back to those two points I mentioned before: where did the person get the information from, and how much do they trust that source? Public opinion can sway them of, of course, but how much of the information has reached them? How diluted has the information become trough the telephone-game? What are their own opinions before receiving the new information? People are more likely to believe something if they want it to be true or if they’re afraid it is true, so how does that impact them?

            That’s all very complicated, though, and while it’s sometimes necessary to go that deep, often it can be simplified into 3 basic views: in favor, neutral, or opposed to any given concept. Sometimes a few more complicated options need to be added, but even with a few more added, it’s fairly simple to define those basic perspectives. From there, one can be designated as the public opinion, and then the others can be assigned to characters as it seems appropriate, and they can even be tweaked from there to personalize them to the character.

            And that is how it becomes possible to realistically simulate the currents of public opinion, based off of my own observations and experience. All opinions are my own.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Necessary Compromises

            The latest event in preparation of the upcoming game Chronicles of Elyria (now that we’ve overcome the plague) is map voting. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for the future players of this game to vote on, and determine, what the map of the world (well, the starting continent) will look like. And each server will have its own unique map – making for a very different game depending on which server you play on. Of course, to me, the most interesting part is how the community reacted.

            I can’t speak for the whole community – only the small piece I interact with – but I suspect it’s a fairly accurate representation of what happened elsewhere as well. It all started with the releasing of the maps...

            I promptly looked through all the maps. Taking into consideration the needs of my kingdom, duchy, and county, I promptly narrowed what I felt would be the best maps for us down to 3 or 4. Within an hour, I had chosen a favorite, which matched one of the favorites of the count of my county.

            At the duchy level, we had a discussion on each of the maps. I was happy to see that the map I’d chosen was also popular at this level of our organization, and I believe it even made it into the top three.

            After a few days, there was a meeting of all the duchy leaders at kingdom level. Each of them had brought their favorite maps – and then they selected the map that they felt suited everyone’s needs, and announced it to the community at large – saying they were free to vote however they wished, but this was the map the leadership felt would be best for our kingdom’s needs.

            I was surprised, and disappointed, that the map was one that hadn’t even been seriously considered in my duchy. I wasn’t fond of it at all, and I wasn’t the only one. A fair number of people were expressing their disappointment in the choice, and demanded answers from the leadership.

            Our king then answered the questions, expressing that this map wasn’t the best pick for anyone, however it was the map that best suited the combined needs of all the groups in our kingdom. He went into further detail about the process that was used, and it was more than enough to make me (and others) accept this map. I promptly switched my train of thought to figuring out how to adapt to this new map, and I was satisfied that, while it was far from the best map, it was quite adequate.

            And, as usual, it got me thinking about the whole scenario, and applying it to the world at large. No matter what decision is made, at any level of an organization or a government, there are always people who speak up and are unhappy about it. It always seems the most remarkable when the leaders, who made the decision in the first place, are unhappy with it – why would they make the decision if they knew it wasn’t great?

            Often (not always!) it comes down to being a compromise. The more people you add to a group, the harder it becomes to make everyone happy about any one thing – and it’s outright impossible to make everyone happy about multiple things. So, in comes the compromise – the decision that nobody particularly likes, but is the best that can be done to make everyone happy.

            Yet, so many people insist on raging and being angry about these decisions. They will shout their anger to the world at large. Strangely, I don’t blame them – because the only thing that is usually presented is the decision, not the means of reaching it. Once a decision is made, it tends to be presented as the best option available, even if it clearly isn’t the case – the goal being to show confidence in the decision. I can’t help but wonder, would it work better if the leadership expressed that it was a compromise? It seems like people are more willing to accept a decision that’s a compromise if they know that’s what it is (provided they actually care about trying to make as many people happy as possible). At least, that’s how it worked out in the case of my little Elyrian microcosm.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

In-Between Moments

            In this thing we call life, we’ve come to have an expectation of ourselves that we must use our time as efficiently as possible. The motivation for this varies from person to person – some feel they don’t have enough time to do everything they want or need to do, others don’t want to risk being bored – but regardless of their reasons, society backs up this idea that we should always be doing something. So we keep ourselves constantly in “go” mode, forgetting that some of the best or most productive moments are the in-between ones.

            This idea that we have to constantly be accomplishing something is drilled into us from the moment we’re introduced into the school system. Throughout the years of training, our time for ourselves gradually gets shorter, while the work hours get longer – not to mention an increased workload of homework. It’s all about productivity and efficiency. Then we hit the workforce, and it’s the same thing – productivity, efficiency, and hardly a moment for ourselves.

            Yet, looking back, aren’t the most memorable moments the ones that happened in between classes or work tasks?

            This hyper-efficiency has overflowed into our entertainment world as well. There are formulas for every form of entertainment designed to give the consumer the most enthralling experience – to the point where even our enjoyable activities have become exhausting. And in that entertainment, what parts do we enjoy the most? It isn’t the plot twist we knew was in there, revealed at the most dramatic moment – if it was, we’d have long since become bored of the same stories being told over and over. It’s the in-between bits; the interactions between the characters; the parts that make this story unique.

            I think our society has gotten hold of an idea that people who aren’t fully occupied will cause trouble – an old idea that has some truth to it, if only because people who are bored are looking for something – anything – to do. Yet, at the same time, at least an equal number of people cause trouble because they feel trapped in their own lives and are trying to break free, making the solution of keeping people occupied very flawed. Instead of keeping people out of trouble, we’ve developed a system that people to the limits of their endurance. And since not all people are the same, some are able to rise above the system and laude it, while others are broken by it.

            As if that system wasn’t enough, we’ve taken each of those pieces of our lives and made them as efficient as possible – at work, because time is money, and at home, because we have so little time left over for ourselves. We’ve gotten really good at being efficient, to the point where those gaps in the middle get smaller and smaller... Those gaps where we used to have little quality moments with friends or family. Or, perhaps, when we could catch up on something we’d fallen behind on – now, if we fall behind, we often have to stay behind.

            The worst part is that by becoming so efficient, by shutting out those in-between moments, we’re actually losing productivity. For people working intellectual projects, they’re losing the ability to let their minds work on problems in the background. How often have you figured something out only after you stopped working on it? Again, I can only speak for myself, but I find that happens several times a week. As for people with more physical jobs, being exhausted all the time makes them work slower and more prone to mistakes.

            We try to blame these problems on sleep and to fix them with caffeine, but it never seems to work – because, what we really need is to allow ourselves more time to ourselves where we aren’t constantly pushing to get things done. We need to allow ourselves those moments where our bodies and minds can regroup between tasks.

            Those little in-between moments aren’t just enjoyable; they’re healthy and, contrary to common beliefs, they increase productivity and efficiency by making us more capable. They’re what make the difference between a perpetual cycle for working so that we can work some more, and working to fund a life worth living.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

It's All The Same

            You would think that, given the opportunity, the majority of people would try to improve life – at least to the best of their ability. However, for some reason this doesn’t appear to be the case. There is an element to this related to the fact that those with the ability to bring about change don’t see the need for it, while those who want change the most lack the means. But, if this is the case, why do we see the same thing reflected in our fiction?

            With few (at least, comparatively few) exceptions, our fictional worlds tend to function remarkably similarly to ours. Oh, the names of everything changes, but there’s almost always some form of monetary system and a hierarchy of who is in charge – be it a democracy, meritocracy, theocracy, monarchy, or one of any number of other types, there is the familiar leadership structure.

            Now, there are reasons for doing this. Familiarity is important to help people be engaged with the content. If it isn’t an integral part of the story, having a consumer learn and figure out a whole new structure for a society is tedious and unnecessary. So, what people already know is what gets the most representation, which is fair – but I’ve noticed something else, as well: if people are given the option in a factional setting to make things different, they still choose to go with the familiar.

            The first example I have of this is the Dungeons & Dragons campaign I’m running. It’s set in a world I created with the specific intention of allowing the players to have a lot of control over how their society would develop. They were put in a situation where they were building up a civilization, where they were some of the most influential people around, and where there was no monetary system because everyone was struggling to survive. Did they try to influence their government into taking a new, potentially better structure? No. Did they try to create a new system of bartering? No – in fact, they specifically wanted the familiar monetary system and, through actions based on assuming it would resurface, accidentally caused it to re-emerge.

            Now I’m seeing the same thing again in Chronicles of Elyria. This is a game designed to be almost entirely within the control of the players – they run the governments and control the economies, laws, and the research. It is perfectly set up for people to test new ways of doing things, and yet... All these people who are setting up governments are setting up the familiar governing systems (to be fair, these are partially built into the game’s feudal system), planning for the same familiar capitalistic monetary systems, and planning on law systems that reflect our own.

            I don’t fault them for any of this – it’s all very practical – but I can’t help seeing these scenarios and thinking, why are we just doing the same things over again? Why are we reusing material that, while it works, we know it doesn’t work well? In the real world, I understand – change takes a lot of time, investment, and risk in the real world. On the other hand, in a game, when given this much ability to build and design how the world will function, there is far less risk. Why do we fall back on the same old dysfunctional systems?

            Familiarity is the key, I believe. It’s familiar, comfortable, and easy, so that’s how we choose to do things. We know it isn’t perfect, but at least we know what to expect. It’s all very sensible, of course, but we’re missing out on trying to find a better way of doing things. If we can’t be bothered to find a better way in our fiction, how can we expect to find a better way in our reality?

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Honestly

Why is it that we encourage so much dishonesty in our society? We hypocritically spout that honesty is always the best course of action, but we turn around and punish honesty – and reward dishonesty.

Let’s take the familiar story of the child breaking a vase. If the child admits to breaking the vase, they are most likely going to get into trouble. If the child lies about breaking the vase, and get found out, they are most likely going to get into trouble. So, the best solution available is to learn to lie really well to stay out of trouble, because, from the child’s perspective, that is the only possible way of avoiding getting in trouble.

But it’s not as simple as just truths and lies. We then get trained to hide things about ourselves that we think others will judge us for. This behaviour is encouraged by the teasing that occurs when we reveal our interests. You like what team? You play what game? You like what? So we learn to hide and be dishonest about what we like – and maybe even join in with teasing others for what they like.

Going in even deeper, we discover that being honest in any social situation is, in fact, rude. Are you ready to go home before the party is over? Wait until you have an appropriate opening. Did you hate the food you were fed? It would be rude to tell the person who made it, so lie. Did something upset or hurt you? Hide it. How are you feeling? It doesn’t matter; be cheerful and happy.

Everywhere you turn, you’re expected to lie. Unless everything in your life fits into a specific box, you have to lie. But, don’t do that! Be honest. Honesty is the best way.

Why do we do this? Why do we train people to be dishonest about everything, yet expect them to be honest? Most of us don’t have that much to hide, at least not that’s actually worth hiding. Sure, it would be a dramatic shift, but wouldn’t it be nice to see a world where honesty is actually valued?

The biggest concern with a world like that is that people would constantly be getting offended by the truth – as if the whole world is going around secretly hating everyone they interact with. There may be an element of truth in that, but if there is, I think it’s inherent in this society built on dishonesty. We put so much faith in this judging of others that our entire outlook on the world is inherently negative. And, can we trust it when other people say they like us? Of course not, because if we didn’t like someone, we wouldn’t tell them to their face.

If we were to strip away the dishonesty, and really practice what we preach, there would likely be a massive shift in our entire world views. Our outlooks could turn from inherently negative to inherently positive.

It would take a lot of work over several generations, but if we taught acceptance and encouragement rather than teasing, and if we taught honesty – both delivering it and expecting it – we could, perhaps, finally practice what we preach.

Honesty is the best policy. Honestly.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Lights Out

            This week’s blog is brought to you courtesy of a massive ice storm, although it may be coming late for the same reason. It’s really quite remarkable how, when the power goes out, everything in life just seems to... stop. There’re no lights, no heat, only battery-powered electronics which must be conserved, and no internet (unless there’s data around). However, there’s something else that vanishes, too: pressure.

            Our lives have become so reliant on technology that as soon as it’s no longer there, all those important things we have to constantly be doing no longer matter. Yes, there’s an element of anxiety about not being able to complete required tasks, but the power is gone – it’s out our hands; there’s nothing we can do about it, so it’s easy to push aside.

            We’re then left with our biggest problem: what do we do with ourselves? To me, it’s astonishing that it’s so hard to figure out what to do with myself when the power is gone, because I’m right in that age group that transitioned from very limited technology use to constantly being plugged in. I remember a time when I had far more free time, and yet I still managed to keep myself occupied, but somehow I now have no idea what to do when technology ceases to function.

            I think a big part of it is shock, because looking around I can find things I do fairly regularly that don’t require technology. Reading. Conversing. Board games. Drawing. The activities exist, but it’s a so much smaller pool of tasks that the brain is easily tricked into thinking there’s nothing to do.

            Yet, at the same time, there’s that element of reaction. Not only is there less we what to do, there’s less we’re able to do. Our technology has given us the ability to do lots of things very fast, sometimes many things at once. As we became used to this, it became an expectation not only that we could accomplish so much, but that we should.

            Then the power goes out, and everything slows down. Our attention is drawn to all the things in life that we take for granted. We have to remind ourselves of other ways of getting things done, and of other things we have to do.

            I’d be the last person to claim we need less technology in our lives, but at the same time I think it’s important to pause and remember that we don’t have to constantly be going so fast; that, in fact, without all our technology we wouldn’t be able to. What better time to reflect upon this than when the power vanishes and all the lights go out.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Basic Income

            There’s this concept being experimented with right now called Basic Income. Some countries already have it and some others are testing it, but I don’t think there is nearly enough information about it given out. The essential concept is that the government gives everyone of the age of majority enough money to live off of – and, after that, all you get told are the details about how the system works – not why it is being done.

            Based on that surface information, there are a number of different responses that jump straight into people’s heads. The ones that really get to me are the people who complain about the government giving money to people who aren’t working for it – a response that shows they have no idea either how an economy works, or how people think.

            The latter isn’t really their fault – we’ve been trained to think that work is unpleasant and that, given the opportunity, no one would work. This has fostered the belief that anyone on any kind of government support is simply lazy and feeding off the rest of society, which is completely untrue. Sure, there are some people who abuse the system, but the majority of people getting money from the government A. need it for one reason or another and B. would much rather be working for their money.

            The truth is that we humans need work. It’s not merely a way to make money; it’s a method for passing the time. Without it, we’d go stir-crazy. Sure, the idea of playing video games all day every day may appeal to some people, but after about three months of that our brains long for something different (yes, I’m speaking from experience) – and that’s where work comes in. We need a variety of things to do, and work helps break up the time, making enjoyable activities more enjoyable.

            Apart from that, no one wants to just be handed money. Oh, we think we do, but it’s just as unrewarding as spending the entire day on the social media website of your choice. It feels horrible to be living off the charity of others, so, given the option, most people avoid it. So why does anyone accept these ‘government handouts’ then? Because money is needed to survive – and our strongest instinct is to survive.

            So, how does this Basic Income thing help? First, it makes it for everyone, meaning that the stigma associated with accepting government money are lessened, making it seem like a less horrible option. Next, it makes it easy to get on to – being automatic for everyone. Finally, it encourages everyone to get off of it: it’s only enough money to cover basic expenses, so if people want cars, houses, the latest books or videogames, TV channels, or any of that, they still have to get a job. However, it doesn’t just vanish as soon as someone gets a job, it simply fades out as the person makes more money – but at a rate where the person is still earning on top of their basic living expenses. In essence, you get given, say, $20,000 per year – if you start working, your income goes up by half your earnings until you’re making about $40,000 per year, at which point the Basic Income drops out.

This means that people with disabilities are able to work fewer hours and get a better income, while still having the security that, if worst comes to worst, they won’t end up living on the streets. In fact, it means that no one need ever end up on the streets again! Just like that, a bulk of the homeless problems are solved.

            But wait, there’s more! Think of all the drastic changes a system like this makes to the whole society. Students won’t need as much debt to go through school, people who lose jobs won’t have to panic about finding new jobs, and people can work fewer hours to get the money they need to survive – which will improve mental health across the board.

            Then there’s the work environments – remember that horrible boss you had once? Or that dangerous work environment? The co-workers who made you dread going to work? You couldn’t quit, because you needed the money to survive. But with a Basic Income, you could safely take the risk of quitting and finding a new job, knowing your base expenses can be paid. That may seem a small thing at first, but think – how many bad bosses will there be if their employee’s aren’t trapped working for them? How many unsafe environments if the employees feel safe walking out? The system would actually force work environments to improve. Employers would be forced to earn their employees’ respect and loyalty.

            Then there are all the would-be entrepreneurs out there. Starting a business takes a lot of money and risks. How many more brilliant businesses might start if there is a guaranteed safety net?

            Hang on a moment, though. This is still money being given out by the government. That means it comes from our taxes! Well, yes, but that’s the most brilliant part of it. You see, there are people out there who would have you believe that the best thing for the economy is to give more money to rich people, so they can spend that money on more extravagant things, which generates more jobs and pays more people. Yet, however hard they try to prove trickle-down economy, people are always able to find holes in the arguments and math.

            The truth is that the opposite is true. The economy functions through the movement of money, and the poorer someone is, the more likely they are to spend their money. People with a lot of money have a stockpile of it. If you give $20 to a corporation, they don’t turn around and spend it – they put it in a holding tank, where it may take ages for it to get passed on to someone else. That’s where the economy goes to die. On the other hand, if you give $20 to someone who barely survives from paycheck-to-paycheck, they’ll spend every penny of it and fuel the economy.

            So, yes, the money comes out of taxes, but even though it looks like it’s being given away for free, it’s actually improving the economy. But, in truth, it shouldn’t be thought of as the government giving away the taxes you worked so hard to pay – it should be thought of as a country investing in its people. Once the system is up and running, taxes will be more like paying off the money that was invested in you while you were building your life. And, once you start thinking about it like that, you’ll be happy to pay your taxes, secure in the knowledge that they’ll be going to someone else who is still building their life. Perhaps even your own kids.

            Imagine if a Basic Income could be implemented around the world – converting poverty into unlocking everyone’s full potential.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Built in Obsolescence

            Today I shall say a few word on built in obsolescence. This is something in our current world that is both very important, and extremely horrendous. It is the idea of making products with the express intent that they will only last for a certain amount of time before needing to be replaced.

            A first look at this process (which is used in a great many industries) at first glance looks like a money grab – and it is, to a certain extent. If you build something that lasts forever and sell it to them, you sell one item. On the other hand, if you build something that lasts for 5 years and sell it to someone, they keep coming back every 5 years for a new one.

            It’s a type of job security, for everyone from retail to manufacturing to design. It fuels the economy by ensuring that within our materialistic society people just keep buying more and more things. It sounds horrible – and it is – but there’s a flip side to it: progress.

            Putting an expiry date on items that otherwise need not expire allows for constant work towards improving products. If there wasn’t such a constant turnover of people buying more smart phones, how fast would improvements to them be developed? Not very fast, because there would be far less demand and there wouldn’t be money to pay the researchers.

            So, it’s not all bad, from a certain point of view. In fact, it’s necessary for how our society functions. It makes more jobs, and keeps people with the latest technology. On the other hand, it is extremely inefficient and wasteful. It’s a bit of a conundrum, and not one that’s easy to fix.

            Where is the balance between continuing to improve products and keeping people in jobs, and less waste accompanied by people not needing to spend so much money? There must be a way, but whatever it is will be hard for us to find. The way things work right now are so ingrained in our society that it’s hard to imagine another way.

            We need to view the problem from the outside – and probably completely restructure our society.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Laughing at the Pain

            It has occurred to me that in our culture there is a distinct link between humor and bullying. Or, rather, a lot of out humor comes from one form of bullying or another – and it just might be that this leads to bullying for the sake of humor.

            Let’s start with the most obvious one: slapstick. This is a type of humor based entirely around pain being caused to other people in humorous ways – such as accidentally getting struck from behind by someone carrying a long plank and getting pushed headfirst into a bucket of whitewash. Although a more modern version would be the videos of people accidentally hurting themselves that make up a large portion of the viral photos on the internet. We watch these things, and we laugh, believing it is harmless – either it was staged, and no one was really hurt, or it was some hurt to someone in the past and it wouldn’t have been posted on the internet if it wasn’t okay to laugh at them.

            Is it so harmless, though? We are witnessing pain, and laughing. More than that, we go on to share it with others – family, friends, children – and encourage them to laugh as well. It seems to me that this could very well desensitize people to the pain of others, and even encourage violence – because it’s funny. Especially when it happens to someone we think deserves it.

            Teasing is another one – it’s very common for people to playfully tease those they are close with. Again, it’s often harmless – or at least meant to be. But sometimes it goes too far. Sometimes the person being teased doesn’t even mention they’ve been hurt, so no one knows that it’s gone too far. Other times, the person says something and proceeds to get teased for having been hurt. We cause pain or embarrassment, then we laugh. It might not be so bad if we kept it to ourselves, but we then pass it on to the most impressionable people around us, who carry it on and spread it. Causing pain in certain ways then becomes synonymous with amusement, and leads to bullying.

            We can see more examples in the comedies we watch. We have shows that normalize making fun of certain cultures. How often do you see nerds being made fun of for being weird? How often do you see jocks being made fun of for being stupid? How often do you see mental illnesses being used for comic relief? And we take all of that back out into the world and spread it around – because it’s funny, and if it’s funny, it can’t really be bullying, can it? Meanwhile mental illness is stigmatized and people find themselves ostracised because of their interests.

            I think we all need to take a very good look at the things we find funny and consider, why are we laughing? More than that, we need to consider the harm that might be caused by passing this specific sense of humor on to younger generations – keeping in mind that they won’t necessarily understand the subtleties of the joke.

            Above all, we need to ask, is this humor, or is it bullying?

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Mob Mentality

            It always boggles my mind how easily people’s opinions are swayed, particularly in this age where information is so accessible. Discovering the truth of a situation is a bit of quick research away, and only requires a little bit of critical thinking to figure out the truth.

            For example, word reached my ears this week that J.K. Rowling is homophobic. I laughed, because anyone who knows anything about that woman knows this to be untrue. However, a lot of people – even professionals in the literary world – were buying into this rumor. So I did my research – and I still can’t believe that people are believing this rumor when all they have to do is read.

            The evidence for J.K. Rowling being homophobic is that someone involved with the latest Harry Potter movie said that Dumbledore (known to be a gay character) will not be openly gay in the movie. So people immediately assumed that, since Rowling wrote the screenplay, she was chickening out from presenting the character as gay. The mob mentality roused and people began haranguing the Rowling about it.

            Her response was quite simple and to the point. She muted people on social media, saying that she wasn’t going to accept abuse from people who read an interview that she wasn’t involved with about a screenplay they hadn’t read – incidentally, a screenplay that was the first in a five part series.

            Somehow, people took this as proof that Rowling is homophobic, when it is quite literally staying the opposite. It’s almost explicitly stating that Dumbledore, while perhaps not portrayed as openly gay in the first movie, will become so over the course of the series.

            Yet, the rumor has been started – and people are believing it. Why? It’s so easy to find the truth, but people are so eager (as with political situations) to believe the first thing they read that they don’t go digging. They would rather believe a falsehood and flip their opinion about a person or a subject than do a bit of research.

            Why? Is it simply not worth the effort to fact check? Is it mob mentality – everyone else is saying it, so let’s not go against the crowd? Is it pure emotion – has the internet given us such a safe place to lash out at the smallest provocation that we no longer show any restraint? Is it simply that people care so little about their opinions that they don’t care if they change their mind about it, so they go with the clickbait headlines rather than the facts?

            To me, it speaks to something rotten at the core of our society. What it comes down to is that news is viewed as a form of entertainment – not by those who consume it, but by those who create it. This has come to be because, given a choice between news that is boring and news that is entertaining, people will always choose the one that’s entertaining – so the news has become more entertaining, more dramatic, to compete. The result is that facts and truth get lost amid a swirl of opinions and misdirections intended to draw people in.

            And, slowly, the truth has stopped mattering to us. It’s the entertainment that matters. People believe what they read, because they trust the source – or, conversely, distrust what they read from sources they don’t like, regardless of accuracy. Many even believe satirical articles that they didn’t realize was satirical.

            So, is that all it is? Do people no longer care what’s real? Is it too difficult for us to figure out what’s real?

            Or is it just easier to follow the crowd? After all, when has a mob ever been wrong?

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

To see the chainmaille my wife and I make, click here.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Predispositions

            They say that first impressions are important. This is very true, but have you ever stopped to consider why? Why is it that the first thing you say to someone, when you don’t even know them, is so much more important than what comes after?

            The answer is predisposition. As humans, we like to make up our minds about things before we actually know about them. It sounds like a silly thing to do, I know, but we do it anyway. When we meet a person for the first time, we’re already deciding who we think they are before they even speak – before we know anything about them. And then, from our very first interactions with them, we react to them and choose how to treat them based off that predisposition.

            However, the predisposition goes on to do much more, unless something happens to change it (and it often takes a lot to shift those initial impressions). It shapes the entire relationship with that person, because they are viewed through a lens of that predisposition. For example, if you believe someone to be rude, you are more likely to interpret things they say as rude, regardless of their intent. If you believe that someone talks too much, you’ll notice every time they are talking and automatically assume they’re talking more than someone else. If you believe someone is intelligent, you’re more likely to pay attention to what they are saying than if you believe they are stupid – and you might entirely miss the brilliant ideas of the person you considered stupid because you disregarded them without even considering.

            As you may have noticed, I’m somewhat predisposed to believe that predispositions are bad. Are they, though? I think they can be, and often are, because we just let them do their thing and go along with our lives. We don’t give some people the chances they deserve – contrariwise, we give some people far more chances than they deserve.

            So, then, why do we do this? I think it is a survival instinct. In the natural world, it is important to make a decision quickly when determining if something is a threat. If something is approaching us, we have to decide how we’re going to handle it before it is close enough to slash at us or rear our throats out. The instinct helped us survive, and therefore it has lasted into the modern world, where it functions in a similar manner – deciding if there is a threat or not. Once again, it works to a degree, and it is important to us.

            So, is predisposition good or bad? I think it all depends on the person and their awareness of it. Predispositions are good so long as we know they are there and we know to question them – to allow ourselves to re-evaluate our first impressions. That way, we have the protection provided by the instinct, without allowing ourselves to treat people as what we think they are, rather than what they are.

            Of course, some predispositions are so strong that we don’t even give some people a chance to reveal who they actually are. That is the sort of predisposition that is the hardest to fight – but it is also the most important to fight. Otherwise they could grow to control our lives.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Did You Hear?

            Last Saturday at the Royal Medieval Faire, we reconnected with the friend we made there last year. At one point throughout our many conversations (he spent much of the day at our tent) he mentioned that, having read last year’s blog in which he featured, he had been impressed with how I had actually listened to what he’d said.

            He went on to explain how he finds that people are frequently misunderstanding, misrepresenting, and misquoting things he’s said (that’s a lot of missing). Yet, he felt that my recollection of what he’d said, and the meaning of it, to be quite accurate.

            Now, there’s every possibility that I could have brushed this off as a unique occurrence, except that this wasn’t the first time I’d had something like this said to me. Within the last few months, Colleen has expressed something very similar to me. She has informed me that she has gotten frustrated conversing with other people because of how often she needs to explain herself several times before she is understood. She feels like people don’t actually listen.

            Having heard this, I could recall experiencing the same thing on occasion, and it brought to mind a quote I’d come across some time ago. “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” (Stephen R. Covey, I believe) It is a most insightful quote and, I fear, very accurate.

            Why is this, though? Why do people put more of an emphasis on replying to what is said than they do on understanding what is said? I suspect that a big part is that there is an assumption that they have understood. When we hear something said, we immediately form an impression of the speaker’s meaning, and we assume that first impression is correct. And, if we are assuming we are correct, why would we bother putting in the extra thought process to examine what we heard for additional meanings? It is much easier to simply stick with the assumption.

            To that we must add that nasty piece of human existence called ‘social expectation’. Silence is often considered awkward, and as such it must be avoided. Therefore, while conversing, it is important to avoid silences by filling them. This means replying as fast as possible, thus relying upon that initial assumption. On top of that, it is assumed in our society that people who think faster are more intelligent, meaning that people who respond faster must be more intelligent.

            If you have any doubts about our social expectations, just imagine a public speaker. When they present what they have prepared, they come across well, but what happens when they are asked questions they aren’t prepared for? They respond right away – and sometimes they answer the question incorrectly and get called out on it later, but all that matters in that moment is that they have an answer. How would your opinion of that public speaker change if, when put on the spot, they fell silent? Or pulled out their phone for a quick Google search to make sure their facts were correct?

            So, the speed at which we reply is of utmost importance to us. However, there is one other key factor in people not listening properly: the imprecision of language. Language is a way of expressing thought, but thoughts are often too complicated to be encompassed by language. Speaking (or writing) is like trying to draw a three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional piece of paper. You can give an impression of what you’re trying to draw, but it does not actually re-create what it is you’re seeing. Likewise, two-dimensional words can only hint at the extra dimensions contained within the thought process behind them. Even worse, everyone has their own personal interpretation of the meaning of words – slight differences in interpreted meaning can completely alter understanding what someone is trying to communicate.

            So, my trick to actually listening? Stop to consider what was said before replying. Allow those silences to exist while you replay the sentences in your head. But don’t just try to understand the words, try to understand the intent behind them. The better you know a person, the easier it is to understand how they think – use that decipher the true meaning of what they said.

            Accurate communication is incredibly important. Misunderstanding is what leads to a majority of conflicts – pausing to make sure you understand correctly is worth it in the long run.

            Plus, it feels awesome when people come along and tell you how great you are at listening.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Failure to Win

            We live in a very competitive world. Or, rather, the world is competitive because we’re brought up to be competitive. Win! we’re told. Get out there, do your best, become your best, and win!

            It’s a mentality we either pick up through osmosis, or is outright given to us. When we play a game, our goal is to win. When we play a sport, our goal is to win. When we go to war, our goal is to win.

            Yes, you may say, winning is good. Winning is how you get ahead in life, how you show you’re the best. However, says I, when the focus is on winning, the more valuable part of any conflict is lost.

            Have you ever been playing a game or sport and found yourself despairing because you had no chance to win? Have you ever given up on a puzzle or a problem because it was so frustrating, and you just couldn’t figure it out? Have you ever found yourself in the middle of an argument where you’ve realized you’re wrong, but you keep arguing your point because you have to win?

            Have you ever paused to consider why it is we challenge ourselves to puzzles, why we compete in games?

            ....

            Back when I started highschool, before I fell in with the group of friends I came to spend all my time with, I spent my lunches playing chess. Not as part of the chess club, mind you – I actually stopped playing when that formed. No, I played chess with a specific friend that I met outside French class on my first day of school.

            Now, this friend, to the best of my knowledge, was a genuine genius. I was no match for him at all – he knew all kinds of famous chess plays and I can’t even begin to guess how many moves he planned ahead. I lost every single game. Yet, every lunch hour, there I was – playing a new game. And, slowly but surely, I got better at chess. Much better, because every time I lost, I learned something. Then, one day, I came thiiiiis close to winning...! And the bell rang for end of lunch. But we both agreed that I probably would have one this time, something that delighted us both. I had become quite the strategist.

            Years later, at my grandparents’ house, my brother and I were playing an old strategy game from my dad’s childhood. I quickly analyzed the game and, after a couple rounds, developed a strategy I believed to be unbeatable (I even figured out the one way to counter it, and how to prepare for and counter that counter). I defeated my brother in every round of the game, but at the end, he still wanted to play again. He kept trying different strategies, and I kept winning. Finally, I asked him why he kept wanting to play when he couldn’t beat me. I’ll never forget what he said:

            “You’ve learned only one way to win. I’ve learned twenty ways how not to win.”

            Even more years later, around the end of highschool, I got a strategy game called Khet – basically chess with lasers and mirrors. Once again, I soon came up with a strategy that was nearly unbeatable. I took challenger after challenger, and only rarely lost. But, when I did lose, I discovered that I enjoyed it! In fact, I enjoyed losing more than winning. And I couldn’t even allow myself to lose to get that enjoyment – because the fun came from trying my hardest and learning where I went wrong. The joy came from facing a challenge and growing from it.

            Now, my examples are all from strategy games, but the same applies across everything in life – from a Sudoku puzzle to searching for a job to running a business. Puzzles and games challenge us for the purpose of helping us grow, and we learn far more form losing than from winning. Life will always throw challenges at us, and when we fail we have the opportunity to learn what we did wrong and fix it for the next time.

            Our competitive society puts the emphasis on winning, rather than overcoming the challenge. But have you ever played a game where you were guaranteed to win? Was it fun? The fun doesn’t come from winning, the fun comes from the challenge.

            As a society, we need to shift our focus away from winning. Yes, winning should still be the goal – what’s the point if you don’t try your best? – but the reward should be the challenge.

            Think of how great the world would be if everyone stopped caring about winning, and started caring about the process of overcoming the challenge.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Hierarchical Flaws

            While pondering about society, as I am wont to do, I came across something I view as a critical flaw. The hierarchy of many of our systems works backwards.

            We’ll start by looking at the workforce. In order for society to function, people need to perform various jobs. To encourage people to do these jobs, they are paid money – which they require so they can go on eating and paying bills and such. This isn’t entirely bad, but the desperate need for money does.

            In ancient times, it was possible for people without a source of money to live off the land and, if they needed to, go out into the wilderness and build themselves a home. Now, at least in first world countries, they can’t do that. Not only have we lost the basic skill sets, but even if we wanted to go homesteading we’d still have to buy the land and pay taxes on it. We’d need a job.

            Having a job to make money has become such a desperate need that people destroy themselves and their mental health just to get and keep one. This is made worse by the shortage of jobs – employers have been given the leverage that if you don’t do the job exactly how they want you to, they can easily replace you. This adds to the pressure of a job and has the employees working under threat (rather than positive motivation) and creates a harmful relationship between employers and employees.

            In short, people are desperate for money, so they will do work they hate in harmful environments to keep their employers happy. But, what if that were reversed? What if, instead of people pushing themselves further and further to get and keep jobs, employers had to entice the best employees to come work for them? What if it became the employer’s responsibility to make people want to work or them?

            Some companies with enough money to throw around already do this, but in many of the biggest companies it has become just a gesture. There are “Benefits” given to the employees, but where is the effort to make the employees enjoy the work environment? Any given employer shouldn’t be driving their employees with a whip, but a member of the team working to make everything run smoothly. They should be as accountable to their employees as the employees are to them.

            The same theory can be applied to governments. There is a great divide between governments and their people, because we have this idea the government members are in charge of the rest of us. They wield the power, after all. People talk about the government as if they are an alien race.

            Yet, if everything functioned as it should, people could bring problems to the government to get them resolved. Yes, that is partially available through the court system, but that doesn’t work for everything. How much faster would potholes get fixed if the government was more approachable?

            Our world is divided into hierarchies, with the idea that the person below has to do whatever the person above says. This structure is needed because there needs to be someone observing what is happening – someone who is not directly involved who can see the whole picture and direct the flow to ensure productivity and efficiency. However, if that person is “better than” their underlings, they become more of a problem than a help. It’s all very well telling people something has to be done, but if you don’t know if it’s possible or if the manpower exists for it, you’re just causing problems. When there is a view of equality, the underlings can express their concerns and the problems with instructions and, together, the team can find a solution.

            Being at the top of a hierarchy is a responsibility, but it has become a goal and a perk – which is the inherent problem with a hierarchical structure. Once someone has been given the power, why should they bother with more than they have to? Why should they listen to the people below them?

            It keep things running smoothly and properly, that’s why.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Individual Experiences

            When you look at the world, sometimes it’s hard to believe that society is as functional as it is. Yes, it could be much better, but it could be far worse as well. It all comes down to one thing: the perspective of each individual person in the world.

            When it comes right down to it, everyone has their own unique experience – and, therefore, perspective – of life, the universe and everything. That doesn’t mean there aren’t similarities. In fact, there are so many similarities that we fool ourselves into thinking that everyone knows certain things that are intrinsic to our lives.

            Each of us builds up our own little world around ourselves and core values. When someone doesn’t understand something that is a major part of our lives, we’re often shocked. Not with things we know are aberrant – for example, I never expect people to know what LARP is, and several years of my life centred around that. On the other hand, when people don’t know what chainmaille is (and I’ve encountered a large number of them), I’m truly shocked. It’s not only something that’s historical, but it’s present in a large number of books and movies. Plus, it’s even used for modern day purposes by butchers and loggers (and some police forces, I’m given to understand).

            Now, for me, chainmaille is obviously a normal thing – since I make it for a living. Before that it was a hobby, but even prior to then I knew what it was. I’ve been obsessed with fantasy since The Hobbit was read to me when I was five – you can’t get very far in that genre without knowing what chainmaille is. So when someone doesn’t know, I suddenly have to adjust my perspective to accommodate someone who hasn’t read any of my favorite books, seen my favorite movies, or been exposed to any of the things I’m most passionate about. And it’s not because the opportunity hasn’t been available to them, but because their interests are so vastly different than mine that they’ve never investigated them.

            That’s simply from my own experience – everyone has interests that others don’t understand. Everyone has their own perspective and their own ways of looking at the world. Everyone has a great many things that they don’t know about and can’t even begin to understand.

            Yet, somehow, society holds together. In spite of vastly different views on everything from... well, just on everything (the list is too long and I’m tired), the world functions. I think that’s incredible. I mean, yes, as a totally accepting person, I think that’s how it should be, but the world in general isn’t an accepting place.

            So, how is it that, in a world where there are so many people less accepting than me who, were they in my place, would say to kill everyone who doesn’t know what chainmaille is (to be fair, there are far worse ideas), how is it that the human race has survived everyone’s individual experiences? How has society not collapsed?

            It’s hard to believe.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Faraway Friends

            One of the great opportunities we have in our modern society is the simplicity of communicating through the internet. We take it for granted now, but just a couple generations ago, it didn’t even exist. If you wanted to talk to someone on the other side of the world, you either wrote a letter (and waited forever for the response to return) or made an expensive phone call (although, if you go back just a little further, even that wasn’t available).

            Now we just pop open the internet and within moments we’re having conversations with people all over the world. Marginalized groups, who previously felt alone in the world, have a way to discover they aren’t as alone as they thought.  People who otherwise would never have met become fast friends.

            Having spent much of my younger life playing online games, I’ve been lucky to have many such friends. More recently, though, my online friends have come in the form of my writing support group, the Alliance of Worldbuilders. We started out as a group focused on giving constructive criticism on each others’ writing, but grew into something much more – a group of good friends from around the world. We even published an anthology of short stories together.

            This week I had the great opportunity to meet one of those friends in person – she was on vacation nearby and she suggested we could get together (last month she had met up with a number of the others in the group who, like her, live in England and previously had met a number of others around the world as well). Opportunities like this rarely arise, so even though it meant leaving my house (blech!) and driving to and in one of the largest cities in the country (blargleblech!!!), Colleen and I decided to go meet her.

            After arriving late because I’d only planned for half the bad traffic we encountered, we the three of us hit it off fantastically. I think we actually got along better in person than online. I had expected that we’d visit for maybe an hour, but we ended up chatting for over three hours an everything from writing to social issues to plotting global domination (forget I said that last one). My first meeting with an online friend was a huge success.

            For me, it highlighted the wonderful opportunities afforded to us through the internet. It had the marvellous capability of bringing together people who, in a past age, could never have met. What’s so great about this? The discovery that all the people across the world aren’t all that different from ourselves. Previously, all we could go on for picturing people of other nations was derived from meeting a few here and there, maybe travelling, and hearing from other peoples’ descriptions of then. This, of course, all gets simplified down into the stereotypes that still survive today.

            Yet, now, those stereotypes are tempered by the ability to go online and talk to almost anyone. We can really meet and find out about each other; discover how similar we are. In spite of the people clinging to the past – insisting it’s us against them – cultures from around the world are being brought closer and closer together.

            What a wonderful potential this has for changing how we view the world.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.