Thanks to Sam and Julia:
Sam for bringing up the idea in the first place, Julia for dragging me into it.
I am no academic, so I won't attempt the rational style.

 

Earlier today I felt creatively frustrated— I wanted to MAKE something! I didn't get to do that, and the feeling passed.

I'm no longer dissatisfied but I'm dissatisfied about the lack of dissatisfaction or satisfaction... I'm not directly feeling any way about the lack of resolution, it was resolved quietly.

But I'm ambivalent about that lack of direct feeling.

This too is a deep feeling, one that arises from the absence of one.

The TTC subway trains used to fill the tunnel with a gust of wind as they arrived at the station. I couldn't say I loved the feeling, but I am fond of wind, and it was a pleasure to experience. The trains were replaced by more aerodynamic trains and one day without any fanfare the gust was gone, and I missed it.

I wrote a poem about this over a decade ago. It's around somewhere. It might be the best vessel that I have so far for carrying this feeling around with me, but I'm interested in the possibility of developing it further. Carving a better vessel.

I have a distinct memory of playing EverQuest and being confronted about 'ninja looting' my party's kills. I don't remember how intentionally malicious or callous I was, but the thing I do remember was my two fellow party members calling me out for it, and telling me it was not cool. I remember the guilt of that moment. A perfect deep feeling.

So. The deep feeling of 'cohabitation'. That word doesn't capture it -- the friction, the joy, the familiarity, the sloth.

The language which I used for describing Inconsiderate Climbers was very . . . mechanical, as is the way of many videogame genres. I didn't say it was about the feeling of cohabitation, no, I described it in relation to cooperative and competitive games. "You're not allies or enemies," I wrote, in effect saying 'You're not playing a cooperative or competitive game'. You're "individuals with conflicting goals."

How I described it is a reflection of how I felt about it. I thought that was the best way to describe it. Thinking about this now I'd like to look at it through the lens of feeling. How did it feel?

I did dabble with a game which was literally about cohabitation before arriving at Inconsiderate Climbers' present-day design. That is, it tried to simulate cohabitation. By the time I had moved away from the literal simulation I thought I had, also, to give up the feeling of it. I was wrong.

. . . Its original name was "Different Towers." I liked that name. I wonder if it had deeper feeling.

This is a big weird target. Thinking about SCP stories that revolve around knowledge and memory, or SOMA that resolves around identity I suppose? What if everything you know is wrong?

ah . . . that's not even true . . .

I do like authenticity. I like to see it. But I don't like it filtered through art, especially not through a fabricated medium. Expression is a dish best served fresh, raw, direct. Immediate, human.

One more thought . . . I don't know if it's ever been about authenticity, but I've always wanted other people to get the same thing out of things I make that I do. Authenticity? It's been selfishness and convenience, if anything. I want to make things I like, and would pay for. (Okay, maybe that's not selfishness but equitableness. I want to see people as equals, as fundamentally like me.) And if I can be my own playtester, that's just convenient. I don't need to have someone around to help me determine what works and what doesn't. If I make something I like to play, then I can just play it, and determine whether it is good or bad.

See "What does it mean to have a human brain?" in 'frontpage words': "you can inhabit the same space, embody the same avatar, perhaps act on the same impulses, and - if serendipity allows - behold the same beautiful outcomes."

This book contains many things. I think a lot of them are things I've thought through to varying extents already, and remind me of my own strange feelings regarding games . . . they aren't negative feelings . . . just very neutral ones. It seems easy enough to navigate 'what games are' most days, and that isn't an inspiring thing anymore as it was maybe five years ago, a decade ago certainly. Are games done inspiring me? Am I done looking for inspiration in games?

-- Actually, no. It is the lens of authenticity that I'm detached from. Now I remind myself of the diagram in The Nature of Order, Deep Feeling...


Authenticity in games belongs to the first category, "ART AS EXPRESSION," and my reaction to that can clearly be summed up in those five words that lie beneath it, for better or for worse... "THIS IS NOT VERY INTERESTING." Are there games with feeling in them, then? Games that generate feeling in me? I am sure there are. However: that is not the focus of Handmade Pixels.

~ Deep Feeling diagram post, linked above

I enjoy art that grows, that feels as though it was grown, that focuses on growth. (A piece of art does not have to do all of these.)

There are obvious parallels between growth and life so it's surprising to me that the verb does not feature more strongly in TNoO.

Decisions. Decisions are important. In any activity, where do you spend most of your time, most of your energy? Some decisions are about execution, about testing your skills. These are not interesting decisions. I am interested in decisions that provoke growth. This is what an 'interesting decision' is, to me.

It is nice to make a 'correct decision' sometimes, testing my growth, testing the validity of it, to see whether the growth was in the right direction, but even then it should be judged by my own hand. Internal conflict, growth, transformation, metamorphosis.

A constant unfolding. Neverending change, even when it is so slow as to be imperceptible. I want to look back and think, "Wow, I changed in some meaningful way as a result of this experience."

I want to grow.

Rather than the elaborate smooth unfolding and structure-preserving transformations of The Nature of Order, what if it was as simple as growth? I was on the lookout for a shorthand and growth seemed to fit exactly what these processes entail . . .

Except, I suppose, for simplification, and the void . . . these two transformations are not well captured by the verb 'to grow'. Yet neither are they particularly well captured by 'unfolding' or 'structure-preserving transformation'. What word could be better?

Off the cuff. Christopher Alexander has written about the '20th century mechanistic viewpoint' in The Nature of Order and I think this 'rational instrumentality' is very similar. My perspective on the two are the same until I find evidence that shows I'm wrong to conflate them.

I'll rewrite the questions in more comfortable language.

1. Do goals and optimization make us behave according to the mechanistic viewpoint?
2. Does the mechanistic viewpoint make us live inauthentic lives?
3. Does the mechanistic viewpoint deprive us of communities, traditions, and norms?
4. Does the mechanistic viewpoint disenchant the world?

And answer them with my current thoughts . . .

1. I'm not sure about this one. Maybe? If I take out my thoughts that it is cause-and-effect (i.e. goals and optimization cause us to ADOPT this viewpoint) and think more that it is the other way around, that my recent disenchantment with goals and optimization comes from a lack of desire to pander to the desires of an attitude I no longer have, then . . . I can comfortably say that I suspect goals and optimization satisfy some need that arises within the mechanistic viewpoint, and perhaps encourage that need and that set of values as well.

2. Juul writes immediately afterwards that "this is not the only possible conception of authenticity" (201); he is presenting a spectrum of authenticities. In a way this statement is a non-statement, or rather the question is a non-question. It should be read in reverse. "Is, or to what degree is, inauthenticity defined by adherence to the 20th century mechanistic viewpoint, and the pursuit of goals and optimization that results?" I'm not that interested in defining authenticity.

3. Communities, traditions, and norms. My idea of rational instrumentality is that it asks, "Can I think of a reason why this is good? Can I explain in precise terms why this is good?" and if the answer is "No" or "Not really" rational instrumentality says "Then it is not good." It is capable of depriving us of any sort of thing belonging to any category. Communities, good communities, and complex and non-quantifiable. Demanding rational justification deprives us of this non-quantifiable good. Traditions and norms are pretty much the same thing as one another (right?) and . . . are almost defined by their lack of explanation? If the reason that we do something is because we have a good rational reason for it, even if we have been doing it for a long time, it is not a tradition or a norm. So yes, we are also deprived of these things by a mechanism of rejecting things which we cannot dissect.

4. Yes.

For mixing:
- Start: Mixer bowl full of merengue
- Push aside the merengue, expose bottom of mixer bowl
- Pour non-merengue ingredients into bottom of mixer bowl - not on top of merengue
- Mix by hand ~5 times, enough that it's badly incorporated
- Stand mix on 2 for 30 seconds
- Scrape the walls, clean the whisk
- Stand mix on 2 for 10 seconds
- Scrape the walls, clean the whisk
- Stand mix on 2 for 10 seconds
- Fold in from the walls, go by feel, hopefully macronage is complete at this point!