We Didn't Make it to Alpha Centauri ~ by Ransom

 

In 1991 the first computer game in one of the best-known and longest-lasting franchises in history was released -- Sid Meier's Civilization.

Players of Civilization progress their simulated subjects from primitive tribes to advanced civilizations over the course of thousands of years of game history by exploring the unknown, expanding territory, and waging war against rivals.  Victory may be achieved through different paths such as achieving the highest score, exterminating all rivals, or landing a colony ship on the fictional planet of Alpha Centauri.  Whichever path a player takes he must achieve it before the in-game year of 2020 AD.

How Sid knew the world would end in 2020 I have no idea.

The real world will of course go on.  Unlike in games real civilizations have life cycles but not time limits.  Technology does not move in a single direction.  We can't start a new game when we feel like it and we can't save-scum to favorably navigate outcomes.  A lot of this is boring and some of it is painful.

Our culture elevates the animal side of human life to the exclusion of all else.  We seek comfort, amusement, and pleasure.  Whatever the future may bring it will certainly bring less of these.  If that is all we know and value then that is a loss.

But there is more to us than that.  Duty is part of human life.  So are courage and discipline and many other things.

The animal aspects of life are an easy avenue to control people.  They can be modified, made conditional, withheld.  If you believe you need them you can be quickly moved into a state of thoughtless panic and reflexive conformity when the strings are pulled.

The strings will be pulled.  They always are.  Comfort, amusement, and pleasure will be taken away.  That is how the game is played.

Today is an opportunity for you to take them away yourself.  Learn to go without so that your choices will be real choices and not just a drip down a manufactured path of least resistance.  By foregoing creature comforts ahead of time you will learn in a controlled manner, you will experience privation as a victory and not a crisis, and you will be in a position to provide value when others are forced to learn it themselves.

Much of discomfort is just malformed expectations or the exposure of mental or spiritual deficiencies.

So we didn't make it to Alpha Centauri this game.  That's okay.  Tomorrow is always a new turn.  In times of turmoil our decisions have outsized consequences.  That's good.  Moving forward we have the opportunity to be far more consequential than if the world were linear and safe.  So what if it hurts?  We are here for purposes far more grand than the suppression of pain.