Poppa Guv

The main cause of all our societal angst is the clash between idealism and cold, hard reality. If you read our constitution and the laws on the books, you'll find that it's all very Utopian in its outlook. I believe that the Philippines is a frustrated socialist country that dreams it could be like one of those fancy European welfare states. 

Every country gets the government it deserves. It's a bit too easy to blame the government for all our ills but we are a democracy, are we not? It's not like these politicians came down from a U.F.O. and into office. A missing piece of the jumbled puzzle that is our popular discourse is the role of the citizenry and its relationship to the government.

It all begins with the relationship. To cite as an example, and I'm not sure if this still applies today, the Americans have a view towards government that is different from ours. To the American, rights are God-given or, if you're not a believer, rights are "natural". The rights of a human being are inherent. Therefore, the role of the government is to safeguard those rights. The rights of a person do not depend on the grace of some governing body. As you would expect, this leads to a "people first" view on government. The government serves the people and is ultimately beholden to them. Hence, the stereotype of the gun-toting cowboy/redneck yelling about freedom and giving "the man" the middle finger.

How does the Filipino view the government? Whether through a quirk of history (colonialism), or whether through some kind of innate tendency, the Filipino sees the government as something above him. Government is separate from him. Though the Spaniards are gone, we still act as if our rulers have crowns. It's a very strange thing, it's almost monarchical or feudal the way this country operates. We view our leaders as either good kings or bad kings and the country prospers or suffers accordingly. We are democratic but we clearly believe in a very vertical hierarchy. We believe nothing can get done without the say so from on high. We have a "government first" view.

The attitude of the citizenry toward the government is like a child toward a parent. People, especially the poor, see the government as provider, i.e. "loving mother" or protector, i.e. "stern father". This is why I foresee the trajectory of Philippine society as inevitably ending in authoritarianism. Filipinos want to be taken care of. Personal freedom is not so highly prized and Filipinos tend to hesitate in acting independently. This is why socialism (we'll provide all) and authoritarianism (we kill the baddies) are very appealing. It's due to our doormat nature.

I hope I'm wrong but perhaps this theory will help explain why we ended up with someone like Duterte. Duterte is stern father. He's there to make the bad people go away so we can all have good beddy-byes at night. He'll solve all our problems. See? All we needed was the right leader, a good king. It seems that given enough time, voters will get it right.

Patriotism

Lack of patriotism among the youth is one of those problems that's simply assumed to exist. Ask any Juan de la Cruz on the street if the problem exists and you'll probably get a default "yes". It's a nebulous, immeasurable problem with no clear end state where we can consider it solved.  Really, it's looking like it's just an issue Martial Law Era dinosaurs bring up to moan about because those gosh darn millenials who don't know what it was like back in "those days".

The subject of patriotism is important, especially considering what day it is today.  It is important to love one's country although the subject of patriotism is hard to discuss. It's difficult because whatever discussion is to be had on the matter inevitably devolves into the usual motherhood statements and embarrassing romanticism of an ideal Philippines that probably didn't exist or probably won't.

First thing's first, there's no need to split hairs between "patriotism" and "nationalism". The terms are different despite being commonly used interchangeably. Regardless, I doubt any Filipino sincerely believes that the Filipino is superior to every other people on earth or that our country is the greatest ever. If anything, Filipino culture has many manifestations of an inferiority complex, such as the fetishization of foreign culture and the strange obsession with breeding with foreigners to produce mixed race Filipinos, but I digress. When I say "patriotism", I mean a simple love of country.

It is difficult to fall in love with the idea of the Philippines. A country isn't just some thought. Nobody ever fought for a country for the sake of it being on a map. There is this tendency to get one's head in the clouds when talking about something as lofty as patriotism. It's easier to understand if you ground it. A country isn't just a place and it's insane to love your country on a purely physical level, as in, love for the land, sea, air, flora, and fauna. The designated tourist spots of the Philippines are wonderful but it's silly to think of fighting for your country as fighting for inanimate objects.

To ground the idea of patriotism to make it easier to grasp, we must think of our country as having an economic dimension and a social dimension. It is economic in that the country is a place where one has the opportunity to gather resources/make a living for himself. It's a place to live and prosper. It is social in that a country is always made up of people. I don't mean just the government, but the Filipino people as a whole, our culture, language, etc.

When you talk of love of country, it encompasses all these things. It's curious how when we are told to love the "Philippines", but to say nothing of loving the people within it. A country is like a franchise, a common investment that we partake in for the common good. It is inescapable that to be a patriot is to cast one's lot into this enterprise with the full trust and confidence that it will be for his own good, his children and his fellow tribe/nation.

That's why it's difficult to be a true patriot in the Philippines. I maintain that the Philippines is a fundamentally fragmented country. We were never one people before we became one country. We are divided in ethnicity, language, region, wealth, and education. I see very little love of country among my fellow man to be honest, and not just from the pesky millennials. Everyone is out for himself. Ours is a low-trust society where the naive will be taken advantage of. At best, nobody gives a damn about the greater whole. Ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? The Philippines is that writ large.

There can be no patriotism if there is no feeling of a shared fate; a shared destiny. 

Patriotism is never a solo thing. If not for your countryman, it's for your posterity. Patriotism requires community and a sense of togetherness. It's never a thing that lives for the moment, either. Patriotism reveres the past and aspires to the future.

Am I a patriot? I'll be honest, probably not. I feel no attachment to anything and I feel like nobody cares about me anyway. Sometimes I feel like an alien, like it's just a quirk of fate that I was even born here. What do I have to believe in? Everyone lives for the moment and the people in charge don't seem to have a vision for the future. In the end, I'm just one guy howling in a hurricane, writing digital words that nobody reads.

Well, happy Independence Day.

フレデリック「オドループ」Music Video | Frederic "oddloop"

Tabletop Tales: Rashomon

I've been playing a lot of tabletop role-playing games lately, mostly the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, although I've tried 7th Sea, Edge of the Empire and some Legend of the Five Rings. I run games on occasion too and I thought I'd write about my thoughts on "game-mastering" or whatever you call it. 

I'm no expert and there's plenty of guides online already but I figure it's better to write about something I actually enjoy for a change instead of government or whatever outrage du jour is on social media. Maybe other people might find these useful. Maybe not.

The Rashomon Effect

Rashomon is a 1950 Japanese thriller directed by Akira Kurosawa. The premise of the movie is simple: a murder was committed and the account of the incident is told from the perspective of four different characters. Each character's version of events vary wildly given their subjective individual experiences, bias and self-interest. Just like the movie, the same problem of competing perspectives may pop-up at the gaming table.

An important job of the game-master (GM) is to keep everyone on the same page. Everything the players know about their environment and the world depends entirely on what the GM says and how he says it. Players have different mindsets. A player may fixate on a thing you didn't expect him to and then he'll proceed to gnaw on it like a dog on a bone. Sometimes players will miss clues entirely or choose not to pursue them at all.

Then there's the matter of remembering details. Some players take notes while others rely on memory. Now, this is the tricky part because what is worth taking note of or remembering varies from player to player. You cannot rely on your players remembering things. I do not mean it as an insult but it's really impractical to expect them to. They may not know what's important or what it is you want them to consider as important. See, even the storyteller suffers from this Rashomon effect. People can't read each other's minds.

A skipped detail here or there won't hurt the game too bad but sometimes if the players' views widely diverge, you'll end up with competing narratives. Players will then propose different courses of action which may be shot down as impossible by the others, even if it isn't, or decide to make poorly thought out decisions due to misinformation or misapprehension of the given facts. At worst, there might be arguments.

The goal of the GM is to make it clear to the players what is important and what is not. Therefore, he/she must take care to communicate information to the players in an effective manner. I've found some methods to be helpful:

1. Don't say too much. The more words you use to layout the situation, the more useless filler you're cramming into your players' brains. Keep it brief and mention only the very important bits.

2. Speak clearly. You don't have to be the grand Toastmaster of the Rotary Club or anything. It's enough to just speak in a way that people can easily understand.

2. Repetition is key. If there's something you want the players to know or remember you have to mention it a couple of times from different sources. You have to be subtle though and not seem like you're bullying the players into doing something.

3. Do a recap. I find that it helps to do a recap of events at the start of every session. There, you can emphasize the important persons, places and things of the campaign.

It's easy to get caught up in the game-play bits and forget that playing tabletop RPGs is also an exercise in communication. It's been difficult, personally, but I expect people used to public speaking and speeches will have a better go at it.

Surviving Mars OST - Rockets

Fallout: New Vegas Analysis : House Ending

In Fallout: New Vegas, the player can choose to ally himself from among three different factions: New California Republic, Caesar's Legion or House. Allying with different factions will lead to different endings.

A lot of people end up choosing to side with House. It's a reasonable choice. House was the man who saved Las Vegas. He's intelligent and charismatic. He seems to have things figured out, which is more than you can say for the corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats of the NCR. House is strict but he's not outright cruel like the Legion. He has a plan to restore New Vegas and maybe even colonize space. What a visionary! He may be a ruthless and unfeeling dictator but hey, nobody is perfect.

The Question

Humanity rising from the ashes of the old world to create new societies is a constant storytelling element of Fallout. These new societies run the gamut from backwards, spear-throwing tribes to Mad Max style raiders with spikes and leather to cultures revolving around some misunderstood relic of the past. It's all good fun.

However, there is a underlying thread running through these new societies, a dreaded question haunts each and every one of them: Will they repeat the same mistakes? War never changes, after all.

That the NCR and the Legion represent certain bad things from the past is obvious but they deserve their own separate posts. With House, it's not immediately clear what he represents. He is not manifest destiny America like the NCR nor is he an old school conquering civilization like the Legion. To best understand House, one must stop trying to tie him to a historical analog and simply look at the way he operates, the way he treats those around him and the way he deals with those who stand in his way.

Don't Mess With the House

House serves no god and answers to no man. He rules New Vegas alone and rules as he sees fit. He is a force unto himself. He operates through cold logic, always calculating the odds. He's ruthless when dealing with obstacles and threats.

The Brotherhood of Steel, for example, is a serious threat to House. The BoS is dangerous to him for a couple of reasons: they have the knowledge to figure technology out quickly, they have impressive weapons technology of their own, and their philosophy is to keep dangerous technology out of people's hands. Since House's regime practically runs on robots, he'd want them nipped in the bud before they become a complication. To remove the BoS, the player must find the BoS bunker and either turn the bunker into a slaughterhouse by gunning down every last one of them or turn the bunker into a tomb by initiating the self-destruct sequence. Either way, a lot of people are going to die but at least with the second option, you can't hear the screaming.

This is the part when some players break with House. This is curious since the player has probably been doing some killing up to this point. But bandits and raiders are a different story, eh? If killing the BoS isn't genocide, it sure does seem close to it.

I mention this particular episode since we're trying to figure out House. If it isn't immediately obvious to the player now, House doesn't really much care for people.

More Machine than Man

The common argument to justify siding with House is that he's the best hope for humanity. However, House doesn't care about humanity at all but only cares about New Vegas. Consider this: sweeping aside the romantic image of Las Vegas, how does it operate?

Historically, Las Vegas is widely known for one thing. Its image isn't exactly squeaky clean and it's called "sin city" for a reason. Las Vegas is a gambler's mecca - it runs on vice. There's something both wonderful and terrible about Las Vegas. I've been to Las Vegas and I was amazed at how in the middle of this harsh and barren desert, a great gleaming city stood defiant.

New Vegas, as it is portrayed in-game, is a place where people go to get money sucked from their wallets. New Vegas has no industry to speak of and exists by profiting off of people's vices. While the Strip is a dazzling place full of entertainment and luxury the likes of which are unheard off in the wasteland, it is surrounded on all sides by slums. The dregs of humanity are kept at bay by a wall patrolled by securitrons armed with machine guns. Only those with enough caps are allowed in. New Vegas is kept in order by police bots while anarchy reigns just outside its gates.

House's lack of humanity is also well portrayed in-game through your dealings with him. He's just a face on a screen. He interacts with the outside world rarely and only through robot agents. His own casino, the Lucky 38, is empty and accepts no guests. Even before the war he was an eccentric genius who was a recluse. Hell, his girlfriend is just an A.I. personality hooked to a securitron. His dealings with the courier is purely on a professional level.

But so what? What does all of this mean? Well, it loops back to the question. Is House repeating the same mistakes of the past? One of the main themes of FONV is the problem of technology in the wrong hands. Its retro-futuristic designs are more than just aesthetics. The atom was supposed to usher in a new age of progress but only brought death and destruction instead. Science without morals was extensively covered in the DLC Old World Blues. We see humanity grow in leaps and bounds in terms of scientific discovery but fail because human morality and ethics couldn't catch up.

With house we have the promise of order and progress but lack the increase in human welfare that ought to go with it. Order and progress come only on House's terms and his terms are only for the good of New Vegas. It is tragic that New Vegas is a supposed to be this center of prosperity while just outside people live absolute squalor. If you don't have the caps, House doesn't care. If you're no use to House, he doesn't care. If you get in his way, well too bad.

Greed is Good?

I've read that House is supposed to be a critique of anarcho-capitalism or capitalism in general. While I don't wholly agree, I believe there is some merit to this. When House brought the tribes of Vegas to heel, he turned them to his "employees" to operate his casinos. House is basically a promoter of a one-of-a-kind experience. He offers services in exchange for your cold hard caps. No money? Then get your poor ass out the door.

How one views this operation is the crucial point separating players who support house and players who don't.

Supporters of House will point out that when House isn't applying violence, as he sometimes does, his interactions with the tourists of New Vegas is entirely consensual. House isn't putting a gun to people's heads and ordering them to gamble their money away. It's all "legal" in a sense. However, what is legal is not necessarily moral and it's not good to confuse the two. If a man wants to buy heroine to get high or kill himself, is it moral to sell it to him?

Look, whether or not people were going to prosper with nuclear power isn't an issue in the Fallout series. The promise was there. The issue is whether or not people could deal with the enormous responsibility. I believe House failed and that his vision is flawed in a sense that it will not bring humanity to an enlightened and prosperous age. House's modus operandi is exploitative in nature and any "prosperity" he brings about will only go to the rich few who can afford the high price tag. It's sad that House boasts that he could eventually colonize space (not for free, of course) while so many people are still suffering right outside his lawn right now. Hubris, much? The only time House cares about the slums is if it causes too much trouble for the tourists, in which case, he won't hesitate to bust some heads

So the past repeats itself in a way. Humans exploiting other humans, people eating each other. Wealth is everything and greed is good. It's a world without compassion ruled with an absolute dictator's iron fist. This time it's all coated in a veneer of  being civilized, consenting adults in a free market. FONV wouldn't be considered deep if it didn't challenge our beliefs. A lot of people support a free market economy but what if raising the standards of living was no longer the goal of the free market? What if it became soulless and oppressive? What if charity was no longer a consideration?

House could easily help mankind with the tools at his disposal but altruism isn't in his blood. Altruism has it's own problems and isn't exempt from criticism in the game. It isn't profitable, for starters - just look at the Followers. Charity is often abused and at worst, only enables bad behavior.  House, however, takes the opposite to the very extreme. 

In Conclusion

There's perfectly good reasons to support House, he's not all bad. House will bring progress if it would mean him profiting from it. His regime is peaceful and stable at least. House will ensure humanity will survive enough to be useful, like cattle.

It's really up to the player. In terms of mankind's continuation, House is a good bet. In terms of mankind living in a golden age, it's unclear. At least the wealthiest will. Nothing is free when it comes to House.

Humanity will benefit if only incidentally. It's only rational, at least, that's how House would see it.

The Matrix Revolution

One of the more amusing things El Jefe's drug wars have produced is this curious thing called a "drug matrix", a new nonsense term to go along with "drug personality", "criminality", and other purposefully tedious and vague verbiage.

Way back in 2016, the president unveiled his "drug matrix" wherein persons involved in the drug trade were revealed. It was a high profile affair as it concerned drug lords within the infamous New Bilibid Prison and Senator Leila de Lima. But what is a "drug matrix"? A drug matrix is basically a chart which shows the names (and faces if we're being fancy) of people involved in drug trafficking and also shows their links to one another. It's not unlike an organizational chart one would find in a private corporation. Here's a cleaned up, "professional" version:

The matrix makes constant references to the president's rival Senator De Lima but hey,  it could just be a coincidence.

What's amazing about the president's cheap-looking whiteboard chart is that everyone seemed to believe that the information on it was accurate, if not, the truth. How did the president arrive at his conclusions? Who knows. It's on a chart with text, lines, and scary-looking mystery silhouettes. It's like an episode of C.S.I.! It looks like serious police work so it must be true!

The police have followed in the president's footsteps and have been making matrices(?) of their own. Apparently, this is how they operate now and they have a matrix for everything. I heard a few weeks ago, on the radio, a police officer being interviewed about some dead guy or something. "He was in our matrix." he said. Well, I guess that settles that. He was in THE MATRIX and only really bad dudes are in the matrix. Who's hungry?

Maybe people believe it just because of the way it sounds. Judging by the way campaign season is going, it's obvious Filipinos are tragically very easy to impress. If it sounds official and vaguely scary, sure. Personally, I find it funny. When I hear "the matrix", I tend to imagine people in trench coats chasing each other on the roof while dodging bullets in slow motion. In reality, however, people are being shot in fast motion and there's no waking up from the simulation or anything like that.

Imagine: death via powerpoint presentation.