Choice: the Heart of Narrative.

The Heart of every Narrative is Choice. Choice makes or breaks a Hero; it distinguishes the Hero from the Villain and conflicting Villains from each other. Choice is truest to the heart of Life, since nothing is more intimate and precious to the Soul than its free will to make itself that which it wills.

 

Choice is refusal to assimilate. The most intimidating villains are not people but collectives, from the Borg to SEELE. Their drive is to reduce us to one form: amorphous, undistinguished, and egalitarian. Equality is just another form this villain takes, in actuality. Equality is yet another evil that purports itself to serve the Good by offering escape from conflict, insecurity, depression, loneliness, inferiority, and shame. 

 

Equality, however, is a lie. It tries to make us tolerate those things we do not wish to tolerate as individuals. It wants us to embrace all difference regardless of the value of that difference, a value which results in difference of value. When it cannot manage to assimilate the affect into tolerance, since difference cannot be tolerated absolutely, it denies a difference at all. When by one’s choices one establishes the difference, it goes so far as to deny Free Will itself. 

 

Such is the evil that is leveling: the subjugation of the freedom to be Good instead of Evil. In its final acts of desperation, it denies that Good and Evil are realities within the World. All Evil is dismissed as a projection. Moral law becomes a personal neurosis; what had once been freedom to decide the proper path becomes an individual delusion. Leveling thus takes the individual, created by the act of moral choice, and turns him into nothing but a mental patient, isolated to his fantasies of Goodness, but divorced from its regime of “objectivity”. It says, “You only hate the villain since you are the villain.” Is this true of some? Yes, but not all.

 

We are not all the same. The human being is not something of a scientific constant which, immersed in “circumstances”, will react according to those circumstances like a solute in a solvent. We are not a solute; we are resolute. We are not part of a solution; we *are* the solution to the problem that is us. I am that which I choose to be; if science will deny my will, then I reject all science.

 

Ultimately, I determine what the facts will be; those who insist that I am just a plaything of some other forces are appropriating my decisions to their ends. They can’t control me; they can’t even diagnose me properly. I choose whether to be “bipolar”, “schizophrenic”, “narcissistic”, or whatever they assign. It’s only when I’m in denial of myself and mine own choices that an Other can decide for me.

 

That possibility, of self-denial, always does exist. Against the backdrop of that vice we find the possibility of virtue. No one can define and label me so long as I am self-aware. Yet I cannot be self-aware, by choice, without the possibility of my self-ignorance. In recognizing someone who is ignorant of his own choices, I acquire the ability to judge of him, to hate him, to revile and condemn him, not because of what I am, but rather what I’m *not*, because I chose it to be so. This choice dissolves equality between us and all claims that I’m an item to be analyzed. If my behaviour cannot be contained within a label, science has no explanation for it except “freedom”. Only those who live in the denial of their freedom can be labeled properly, and I am not afraid to see them for the villains that they are. I choose to be the Hero of my story. Those who doubt me cannot take that choice away from me without providing proof.

 

This is the reason why the future of the storytelling medium must lie in Gaming. Gaming is the interactive narrative. That is its proper function. All considerations for mechanics, audio and visual design, and marketing are secondary. Gaming is an exercise in choosing, whether instantly, when there’s no time to think, or over the long term. In either case, the virtues of design depend upon the weight it gives to choice. Split-second action helps eliminate the realm of the abstract, because it gives no time to sympathize with the aggressor. Long-term strategy allows for planning and the testing of a plan, to reap that which one sows. These principles, in tandem, work in Games because they work in Life. Games are not merely an “escape”; they are an exercise in Living, at its purest.

 

**[({R.G.)}]**

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