Tuples and Attributes

A number of things during this last month have caused me to ponder “being good”. And, no, being on Santa’s naughty or nice list was not one of them. Well, not the main one!

I first started thinking about it while I was playing Fallout 4. This is a role-playing game for the computer where you find yourself in the Boston area 200 years after a nuclear war. You have to figure out how to survive and complete various quests. As in all this type of game, you start off by choosing the characteristics you want for your avatar and then exploring your new world.

These types of games are very open-ended. What happens in them and how people interact with you and what quests you are given very much depend on the decisions you make. As a player, you can be anyone from a saint to a devil. This ability to play any sort of role is what lots of gamers love about this genre.

Except I can’t do it. I absolutely cannot bring myself to play the game as an ‘evil’ character. I have been playing this kind of game for over a decade. I have never been able to play as an evil or selfish character.

Over this same time period, I’ve also noticed that I have less and less interest in most TV series or movies. I’ve never watched any of the Godfather movies, for instance. I just searched for “great tv series” and the top two listed were ‘The Wire’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. They’re not on my watch list.

In thinking about why this is, I realized that I don’t need to watch things or play games that show me how to be bad; I know how to be bad without any outside help or input. The trick in my life is learning how to be good. I want to be a good person and I need my entertainment choices to help me to do that.

Leo Tolstoy wrote in “Ana Karenina” that “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” As I’ve grown older I find myself thinking that all bad people are alike, but good people are unique in how they achieve that goodness. And in how they pass that goodness on to others.

For example, Louise Penny writes mysteries. They are wonderful mysteries with fabulous characters. And, somehow, at the end of every book, I come away with the longing to be a better person. I don’t know how she manages that, but what a wonderful achievement it is.

This is not to say that I don’t enjoy movies or books purely for their entertainment value; I don’t want to be hit over the head with moralistic themes. But I just can’t see spending time with characters I would never want to be around in real life.

Another example: I took mom to see Frozen II. Very enjoyable movie with a theme I wish more people would take to heart: ‘just do the next right thing.’ Not the easiest or most expedient thing, the right thing. If every politician sat through a dozen showings of Frozen II, maybe Washington, DC would be a different place!

A third example: I was reading a new (to me) science fiction writer this month and ran across the following:

From The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, pp. 231 – 232

And this is where our species are very much alike. The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us. . . .

All you can do, Rosemary – all any of us can do – is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play. And what I see in you is a woman who has a clear idea of what she wants to be.”

Rosemary gave a short laugh. “Most days I wake up and have no idea what the hell I’m doing.”

He puffed his cheeks. “I don’t mean the practical details. Nobody ever figures those out. I mean the important thing. The thing I had to do, too.” He made a clucking sound. He knew she would not understand it, but it came naturally. The sort of sound a mother made over a child learning to stand. “You’re trying to be someone good.”

I’m basically a lazy person. Actually being evil would take too much energy, but it is very easy for me to slide into passivity and feel it really doesn’t matter much what I do. Perhaps that’s why I don’t spend my game time being the evil character: I don’t need to practice selfish choices; those come easily. My game character tries to make the good, right choices; I’m hoping that’s training me to do so in real life as well.