Author Archives: Peter

Why Everyone Is Wrong About ‘Deus Ex: The Fall’

The other day, in preparation for the eventual release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divide, I completed my fifth playthrough of Human Revolution. Once I was finished, I noticed that, amidst various other unplayed games in my Steam library, there sat my copy of Deus Ex: The Fall which I realized I had not played. I quickly Googled the title and on the Wikipedia page, found a few choice comments from reviewers:

Don’t be fooled by the black-andgold screenshots and the familiar interface: this is not the Deus Ex you know and love. It’s a bad cover version, and truly one of the worst PC ports I’ve played in some time, and I’ve played Deadly Premonition. I definitely didn’t ask for this. -Andy Kelly (PC Gamer)

The controls are another culprit here; they are clunky and unresponsive in ways that a keyboard and mouse never should be. Menu buttons routinely fail to respond to repeated mouse clicks. -Daniel Hindes (Gamespot)

After reading the comments, I decided to play it. After completing the game (yes, I did search every nook and crany) I’m here to tell you one thing: all those negative reviews are wrong. While not Human Revolution quality, Deus Ex: The Fall was, for a game ported from mobile devices in a short time-span, very solid.

Before continuing, however, it must be added that this post obviously deviates from my typical genre and if you are not a fan of video game reviews, you ought to skip this post. For all else: my reasoning and concluding thoughts will be after the jump!

(There will obviously be spoilers)

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The Phenomenology of Depression

Preface: This is a post I’ve been writing in chunks because I only have the ability to write it at various times. The overlap between motivation and level of depressiveness has to be just right in order for me to function in the proper state of mind to think this way while still being able to write. Some parts may sound as if they are stream-of-consciousness and that is because I opted not to change what I originally wrote during the editing process because I felt as if it captures the experience as best as words can. Finally, the tone may vary from section to section as my mood is the controlling factor in when I write certain parts of this post and seeing as that changes constantly, the tone likely will as well.

If you’ve ever talked to me personally or know me with some intimacy, it’s easy to see that I’m a restless and unsettled individual. I fidget, flip pens, tap my feet, or look at the floor. When I’m alone, my mind takes over and runs where it may…typically to dark places. All of this is because I have generalized anxiety disorder and depression. The former manifests itself as over-thinking or blowing things out of proportion, the latter as totalizing numbness and lack of motivation, and it is the depressive side that I wish to explore. Where other depressives write in a journal or keep a diary, I thought that the best way to confront the issue of depression and the change in mental attitude that it brings would be to analyze it. Specifically, in what follows I will attempt to provide a phenomenological account of how depression affects my interactions with the everyday life-world1)The everyday life-world being a term of art used by the sociologist Alfred Schütz to mean “…that province of reality which the wide-awake and normal adult simply takes for granted…”: Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-World: Volume 1 (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 3. and how that change might be a radically new mode of interaction with the world that is often glossed over, if not ignored entirely, in the major phenomenological works of everyday life.

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References

References
↑1 The everyday life-world being a term of art used by the sociologist Alfred Schütz to mean “…that province of reality which the wide-awake and normal adult simply takes for granted…”: Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-World: Volume 1 (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 3.

The Virtue of Armed Pacifism

It is common nowadays to hear proponents of change and modern liberalism claim that non-violence is the only legitimate means of resistance to oppression. While that claim may have some merit (that question can be bracketed and returned to in the future if the need arises), it is the claim which inevitably follows that I want to address. With almost eerie regularity, almost every single modern pacifist will inevitably tack on, or implicitly hold to be true, the following claim: since non-violence is the only legitimate means of resistance to oppression, there is no use in having weapons for they [insert anti-weapon logic here]. The issue with this train of thought is that it implies that pacifism is synonymous with disarmament when that it simply not the case.

In what follows, I shall argue that pacifism is not synonymous with disarmament, something the great pacifist idol Gandhi recognized (albeit in a convoluted and culture specific way), and that armed pacifism is preferable to disarmed pacifism both for ensuring the safety of marginalized groups as well as enacting change.

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On Iran – A Brief Update

On Tuesday March 3rd, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before congress on the need to halt Iran’s nuclear program. Opinions on the program (those will be later) and absurd and slightly hypocritical comparisons aside, one of Netanyahu’s major talking points was the following Tweet from Ayatollah Khomeini:

Taken at face value this Tweet looks pretty menacing; it seems like the Supreme Leader of Iran is making a threat against the Jewish people! That, however, is not what is happening. Iranian officials and Khomeini have previously drawn distinctions between “the regime of Israel” and the Jewish people and these distinctions are crucial in understanding what is going on. The Tweet is specific to the regime that currently in place, namely Netanyahu’s administration, and is calling for the destruction of that regime, that’s it. When the US said that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was in the “Axis of Evil” and must be stopped, the US didn’t mean that the Iraqi people needed to be liquidated; rather the regime needed to change. When the US condemns the North Korean regime, it is not making a normative statement about the ethnic group making up the country, rather it is making a statement on the government that is in place. Similarly, when Khomeini makes a statement about “the regime of Israel” (especially in the context of Israels failure to protect Al-Aqsa, the third holiest Islamic site), he is NOT making a statement about the Jewish people or the ethnic groups that make up Israel; all he is saying is that there must be a regime change and while the word “annihilated” might sound spooky, that is pure rhetoric and doesn’t imply an outside force attacking Israel. Quite literally, Khomeini is doing what all governments do, denounce States they see as evil. That is it.

It’s time to stop giving Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt and critically examine what’s going on between the two nations. For a further, and more indepth, discussion on whether Iran has a nuclear program, whether they want to “wipe Israel off the map”, and whether a nuclear Iran is a good thing, please read the post “Arm Iran – The Case for the Nuclear State”.

No Afterlife? No Problem!

I’m aware I haven’t written anything major in a while and I apologize for that, although I am working on a few big posts that will be finished soon — I promise, but I’ve had this thought on my mind for a few months now and wanted to get it written down and then presented to some fellow Atheist-Humanists.

Below the jump will be a brief discussion on why I find the idea of an afterlife, either Hell or Heaven, terrifying and why the “just being gone” view of death is more comforting than anything else.

 

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