Purposes

[forsyth]

I'm starting to question gaming.

This isn't some kind of like crisis of faith things, but it is pretty big. I mean, I've identified myself as a gamer for most of my life, it's been one of the touchstones of my experiences and the way I've met well, most of the people I know. But lately I've been wondering, what's the point?

I'm not being specific here, I'm pretty much a game-slut. RPGs of most any flavor, Magic, Warhammer, board games, Munchkin, video games, etc, etc, etc, I've played a pretty hefty chunk of them. But... I don't know. Part of it is I want to be accomplishing something, I feel like I should be, and really I'm not. Which leads into a larger problem which I'll get to in a bit.

But gaming. I stopped playing Warhammer a year+ ago, because I never got around to painting the stuff, and I wasn't enjoying playing, and I just didn't have the time to paint or play much. Honestly, I think I enjoyed the painting the most, but. I was out of Magic for a long while, but I got back in recently, and I'm enjoying it, but. I have tons of RPG books, many mostly unread, and haven't played D&D or anything in like two months. I've faded out of most of the RPs I was in on the GG forums, and haven't been involved on the IRC side much either. It's been... a damn long time since I did any RPing on Furc.

Part of it's time. Other things seem to eat up my time, mostly the internet. But not even doing things, just reading stuff, and spamming here, a lot of it. I haven't been writing much, aside from here, and overall, I kinda just feel like I'm wasting my time.

Which is, I think, the real thing. I don't think I'd be angsting about the time I spend gaming if I felt like I was doing something with, well any of the rest of my life. Accomplishing anything at all. Also, the fact that my job relates to gaming, and my job got to the point where my last day is Friday probably contribute to that, too.

Which is what it comes down to, really. When most of my day involves leisure activities like games, or selling leisure activities to people, a) leisure feels like work, b) work doesn't feel like it accomplishes anything. What do I accomplish by selling people R/C cars, trains, art stuff, whatever? I'm selling people plastic crap, mostly made in China. How does that do anything? How does that justify my existence or make the world better? It doesn't. I'm not making anything, I'm not doing anything, and I'm helping contribute to things that are wrong with the world, and distract people from important things. And distract myself.

Thinking about it, though, most jobs in the US are like that. Selling crap, ringing crap up, pointless stuff. We have better lives than 99% of humanity ever dreamed of, and we mostly spend them doing pointless things. I mean, hell, I drove like a total of 80 miles the past two days, and stayed up till like 2am, none of it accomplishing anything that mattered once the console was off or the pieces were put away.

So I guess the problem isn't gaming, it's me. Gaming is like dessert, it's great, but if that's all you do, it gets old, and you don't feel very good. And people have a need to feel they have an effect on their world. Or at least I do. Which has been the most frustrating thing at work, not feeling like anything is making a difference. So I need to find a new job, where I can actually accomplish something, or at least find some way to accomplish something.

And then I won't worry when I interrupt my posting to LJ to make a deck in Apprentice.

Comments

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

It's bits of both. Part of it was me just expanding on what I'd said in the original post, and part of it was my going off your line "As a Daoist, it's my intention to have as little effect on the world as possible, in order to escape creating kharma." I don't know that much about Daoist principles, I was going more off the Hindu and Buddhist versions of Karma, which explicitly do involve reincarnation and such. Too many religions share a lot of words, when somebody says "God" do they mean the Christian, Jewish, or Muslim God? Or Zeus? So I apologize for making unwarranted assumptions, could you explain to me what Karma does mean then, under Daoist thought?

And the rest about deatchment and such wasn't aimed really at you, it was more general and me expanding on what I'd written above, and something I have issues with, which I think I've posted about before. Heh. Sorry.

[evilcarp.livejournal.com]

Not all Daoists are the same, most do believe in reincarnation, but I really can't buy in to that. But here's how I think of karma. It's like people are constantly spinning webs, whenever they try to do good or bad, they spin more webs. We might call some of it good kharma and some of it bad karma, but it's still a bunch of sticky webs that we get stuck in. You can also accumilate kharma from your relationships with other people.

Of course, it's more complicated than just that. You don't create karma constantly. It's when you try to force the world to do what you want. It doesn't mean you can't do anything. My personal quest, for example, is to help anyone who asks me for help to whatever extent is reasonable.

Karma causes distress, it's what makes you uhappy with life. With most Daoism, the point is to get rid of all your karma in order to be released from existance and become one with the Dao. It removes you from the cycle of reincarnation. Even the gods are are bound to reality by their karma. You become one with everything and fully understand that nothing is seperate, nothing's different, everything is just everything. It's perfect compassion and understanding. I can't hate myself and if I was everything, then I couldn't hate anything. Just talking about the idea makes me all giddy and exciting. But removing karma and not creating new karma is very, very difficult. There's the risk that for fear of creating karma, you won't do anything, but that fear itself will weigh you down. I don't know how you find the correct balance yet, it'll be a life time before I get close, I'm sure.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Well, we don't really disagree about the webs, except I think the webs of connections are vital and important and what help define us as people. They may cause suffering, but they cause most of the joy and wonder of life, too.

Which is ironic, because of how much I hole up and stay away from people, but that's starting to change. Doing things is important, I think.

And, really, I think it kinda points the same way, just different directions. Instead of trying to avoid karma and the bonds of life, trying to grab all the bonds there are, with the intent of ending up connected to everything. I think.

Another thing I picked up from somewhere, I don't remember if it was Zen or what, could have been millions of things. Becoming, not being. Life isn't static, neither are people, the point of life isn't to become something and stop, the point is the process. The journey. Becoming, not being.

I should develop that into a full post some time.