ponytron

It was cloudy, so I stayed in bed till it got sunny, and while waiting for breakfast to get beyond the two hour safety limit before swimming, it has clouded over. Again. Such is living on an island in the atlantic. So, a little virtual engagement and finally a useful spark from my engagement with my brother, a rare thing since so much of it is mired, utterly mired, in past oppositional state which is resurrected like some kind of unruly zombie, b-movie variety, interminably tedious, appearing in the wrong scene, that kind of thing. So, tron.

One of the reasons why I loved armagetron advanced, fortress server, was that it was the minimal virtual team game, a nexus of open source, introduction to the deeper heritage game of GO, referred to the 1982 film we watched as kids and is now remade for the next generation, etc etc. But the play of it, is so simple, left and right, every child can understand and play. The trick, the real trick which fools adults and is challenging for kids to learn, is teamwork. Let's just focus on one thing, so simple it is almost stupid.

When you grind a wall, you accelerate. It's like entering a slipstream made by another player. By accelerating, you reach speeds that confer an advantage over opponents who are travelling slower, enabling you to cut defence and enter the enemy zone for example. Now, let's say you are grinding another player, it is critical whether they are on your team or not. Why? Because if they are opponents, as you accelerate up to ovetake them, they can throw in a kink, and you are cornered, coredumped. Whereas, if you are following a teammate, they will let you overtake them so they end up grinding against your wall, and so they accelerate; so you end up taking it in turns, accelerating past one another, building up speed.

This is like reading/writing, listening/following, and is so simple a dynamic you can find it everywhere. For example, it can be found in football, another team game, where it really does matter if you are following the opponent or a teammate. With the former, they are liable to throw in shimmies and thus wrong-foot you to their advantage. With the latter, we learn how your teammates moves so that you can play off them better, to your mutual advantage.

So, with brothers, for example. Family relationships are often downplayed in our culture. They used to be strong, but now, with subnuclear families, with childless gay couples, and single-parent childhoods, it is easier to be alone, or to surround oneself with selected friends, like selected furnature. Nevertheless, you don't rely on your friends when the shit hits the fan, and if we do not strengthen our family relationships, the only alternative is to trust "organisational" ties. And just look how we are treating old people, our parents, living so much in isolation, they are like in prison. Do we want the same fate...?

So, with my brother. Do I follow him like a teammate or as an opponent? Do I expect him to throw me a shimmy in order to trip myself up? Or should I trust him, and whatever he does, I am assuming is good for me and for him and for everyone else? Oooo, I let that one out of the bag: in terms of the global situation, there is no opponent, no enemy, we are actually all on the same team. Which begs the question how brothers could ever possibly think they are on opposite sides. But this is the strength of family ties, and the weakness. We don't choose brothers, or sisters, or parents. Even as parents, we don't choose our children, however responsible we might be in the formation of their character or personality. So, to make enough space for our family members, to acknowledge their difference, not as threat but as a benefit of species diversity, is a thing which is powerful, natural, and very very helpful, given our current global conditions.

And this goes for everyone we meet. Are they teammates? And if so, in what way? What level of game are we playing? My thinking is, start with something small, like tango or tai chi, or Go, respectful reading and writing, listening and talking. If we get those right, then we can move up to play with more players simultaneously. Teams of ten. Once we get that, we'll be fine.

Final observation which just appeared while I wrote that last paragraph: we think that writing a post or a book, it being read by ten or a million people, is a collective experience. It is not. It is simply dyadic relationships multiplied up. It still only consists of the meeting of minds through the medium of reading/writing. We still have very little social movement that is collaborative. It still follows the old marxist-social movement from one to many. The trick, and it is a trick, is to read as it is written. And to write with the freshness that invites the reader to be aware of their presence now. That is, the next word is blank. It may appear that there are words there, from the point of view of an "objective" reader, but while writing, honestly, it is blank. Reading in this way, writing in this way, makes the connection between reader and wrier more... imanent. The connection thus between readers should also have a different quality, and the gamees they are willing to play together might also have a higher collaborative quality.

Thanks, bro, for the spark. And for those wondering why "ponytron", it relates to the initial topic my brother posted, about my little pony, of all things!