Thursday, February 26, 2009

ARGH (or: Because there are too many causes)

Welcome to Lent everybody.

So, I just got back from a viewing of a documentary called Very Young Girls, which documents the sex trafficking of underage girls in New York and the work of an organization called GEMS to get them out of "the life." This was followed by an introduction to a few organizations here in Colorado working on the issue of human trafficking and a short talk by Professor Claude d’Estrée of D.U. who has been working in the field of human trafficking for around 10 years.

This feeds in well to the idea of Lent in general. One of the two Ash Wednesday services that I went to yesterday focused on the environment, and how that we are come from the earth (as a note, the word we translate commonly into dust is more like topsoil than the stuff gathering on my computer monitor) and will return to the earth. It was a reminder that the first thing that God asked us to do, was to care for his creation, to be co-creators, and when we fell, so did the earth. Of course, I feel like the emphasis on our own personal sin and brokenness is an important question for this season, but it also should expand to our corporate experience.

This also feeds into something that's been running through my head for the past few days and is coming to life now in this here blog.

There is a lot of the world that is really screwed up, perhaps overwhelmingly much.

I mean, I spent a year in a volunteer program in downtown Denver. I worked in an organization giving out food to people who couldn't afford it, while my roommates worked in underfunded schools, homeless shelters and other organizations, while I continued to learn about issues in my city and around the world. But we only scratched the surface.

There is homelessness, poverty, education, the sex trade, genocide, drugs, human trafficking, hunger, the environment, wars, economics, exploitation... and the list goes ever on. And each issue has smaller components, each interlocking with others.

It's so easy to get locked into one issue or another... so, we don't support Wal-Mart, but is Target or K-Mart really that much better? We want to support organic food, but are the workers being compensated fairly for harvesting it? None of us really wants to mow our lawns or clean our bathrooms or do our laundry, so we hire it out. Are the people being compensated fairly? Are they actually getting paid in the first place? What about the products they use to clean, are those environmentally friendly? It can get maddening!

Sure, you can progress in one direction, while ignoring other issues at the same time. For another example, I enjoy shopping at REI, because they have a good environmental conscience for a large corporation (and I like getting a dividend back of what I spend there). But, I don't know under what conditions their environmentally friendly clothing is being manufactured under. And there is the question of whether it would be better to support a local store like Wilderness Exchange, because REI is still a megacorp at the end of the day. Are their workers being given a living wage? What are their benefits like? Do they have fair hiring practices? How much does their CEO make? You can see how this can keep going.

I guess I wonder to myself what exactly the line is. I mean, take Apple for another example, they are doing a large part in making their products more environmentally friendly, but Greenpeace still complains about them not having done enough?

Is it right to support an organization because it is doing one area well, even if they aren't as good as another? Do we ultimately just fall into this endless game of figuring out the lesser of two evils?

Sometimes our good motives and our plans end up doing more to hurt our cause. The speaker relayed a story about the boycott of chocolate once it was discovered that many of the plantations were using slave labor. All that the boycott did was force the plantations to use even more slave labor to make up for the loss. What did that accomplish? Fortunately that isn't the end of the story as we have the fair trade movement and other such things, but again, that's not my point.

Obviously, just ignoring it all isn't the solution, because that's what too many of us end up doing and so things just continue on their course un-protested.

I get tired of trying to convince my friends not to go shop at wal-mart when I know they are poor, and buying one item that actually supports the person who produced it means giving up the 9 other things they could have bought more cheaply. Sure, it does come down to making choices about our lifestyle and making sacrifices so others can have a decent life. And don't even get me started on the 'chic' movement. I'm sorry, but a $1000 purse made out of recycled materials is still complete bullshit.

I'm going to cut myself off here, because I'm really not sure what else I can say. I'm trying to be involved and be knowledgeable, and that's more than many people I know seem to be doing, but what little I do seems so small compared to everything else going on around me. I know I have to be confident that the small things I try to do are making an impact, and that as more and more people do something, even if it seems insignificant, that the Kingdom of God will advance... but it's still hard!

Now, if you made it this far, I would definitely love to hear what you have to say.

Labels: , , ,

Friday, February 20, 2009

Something I noticed about sports movies

So my roommate was watching Drumline on the tv as I was getting ready to go workout this evening. I noticed that there seems to be a common theme in all the sports movies I've seen.

Invariably one of the best players, if not the main character, is a very talented young man or woman. They have the skills, but they don't know how to work on a teem. They either end up sparring with the coach, another star on the team, or the entire team. This is also usually a team that has no chance at winning the next game or big event, and is also likely to get cut, or have the coach fired, or something life threatening if they don't do so. At first they show their rebellion against the system, sometimes winning in spite of it, but often ending up messing up things for the rest of the team. Then there is some big change of heart, whether it be someone getting injured, or the person ends up taking the fall for or saving their rival from something. Then suddenly we have the comeback team, and they are able to win it all, or at least advance further than they were expecting to, and the cocky teenager/young adult ends up becoming a true team leader and has great success because they learned that it takes more than just raw talent to win. Oh, and we can't forget that we are often watching a dramatization of a true life story, and get a glimpse about what really happened after the events of the movie.

So, did I get that about right? I think I just covered the majority of the sports movies that I've ever seen. Gotta love it :).

Labels: ,

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Video Games

So I've been thinking lately.

Imagine that.

I've played video games for most of my life, to varying degrees of intensity. I've never been a "hardcore gamer" although I've definitely lost a lot of sleep over some games. In fact, I don't think I've ever paid full price for a game (although, I am considering doing just that with Dragon Age: Origins coming out this fall, brought to you by Bioware). But anyway, that's not the point of my rant, exactly.

I've figured out that it's the story, in most cases, that makes me enjoy a game. This is why I've never felt bad about cheating in a game, because I've never been that interested in getting down the mechanics or anything like that. It's always about advancing the story. I played through the StarCraft campaigns, and rarely played multiplayer. In fact, the computer can probably beat me pretty easily.

Even with games like the Halo series. I've played through the campaign once, so I know the story. I don't feel a drive to go through and master it on Legendary just to prove my worth as a gamer. I really only play it on multiplayer occasionally because of my friends.

This is probably why I've always enjoyed "Role Playing" games most. Because they are about the story of the characters, about their journey. In fact, games that are too open ended lose my interest. Take Morrowind and Oblivion as prime examples. The worlds that they created are so large that you can just wander around the map and completely disregard the main quest, or even the side quests. I need structure, I need narrative. I need a reason to continue forward or I lose interest.

Sometimes I can continue forward in spite of a horribly designed system because of the promise of a good storyline. Other times, it's not as easy. I've tried to play the more recent Final Fantasy games (FFVII on) and I've gotten to a certain point and then stopped and haven't picked it up again. I know the story is going to be good, but I have to spend so much time leveling up or finding equipment or this and that, and so I lose interest. I've tried to get through some of the great PC RPG's like Baldur's Gate I & II, Planescape: Torment, Fallout I & II and Deus Ex. But, for some reason I can't get very far in them. I'm not sure if the graphics or the design are just that old that I can't do it, or what. I love the classic SNES games like Chrono Trigger, FFIII, FFIV, FFV, FFVI, Earthbound, Seiken Densetsu 3 and so on. But anything more advanced I seem to have an issue with, up until things like Knights of the Old Republic I & II, Jade Empire, Fable and Mass Effect (three of those are Bioware, sense a trend anyone? :D).

It's strange. I know that the stories of titles like FFVII and FFX in particular are very compelling, but I can't do it. The story is compelling but having to actually do all the quests in a 40+ hour game, because I can't just ignore them and plow through, tires me out. But then you have some of the recent games like I mentioned. They have some pretty involved stories and are decently long games, but not as epic as those in the Final Fantasy series. I notice that I didn't mention a single J-RPG (as in RPG from Japan, or one in that style) in the list of my recent favorites. Perhaps my tastes have changed, maybe it is something else. Who knows.

To be fair, there are some games that I enjoy even if they don't have a story. I got Burnout: Revenge with my 360 and I've enjoyed playing that. Besides RPG's I've always been a fan of the Civilization series, and games similar to that (such as Rome: Total War, Caesar 3 and Lords of the Realm II). There is usually some basic plot or motivation, but after that it's pretty open ended. I enjoy that sort of open-ended game, but I can't do it in a game that is an RPG. Odd.

I apologize to any of you who aren't gamers and really have no idea about most of what I've blathered on about. But then again, if you read this far being completely confused you must either be a) a good friend, b) really bored, c) crazy, or d) all of the above.

Anyway, maybe I will actually blog more often now. We shall see.

Labels: , , , ,