It wasn’t, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read the Farmer novel. I read Edward Rice’s 1991 biography with the rather glorious title of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: The Secret Agent Who Made the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Discovered the Kama Sutra, and Brought the Arabian Nights to the West. It was a pretty big hit for a doorstopper about a nearly-unknown figure (in the US at least) when it was published. I haven’t retained many details from the book, but those eleven desks are apparently permanently lodged in my memory, probably because I too would like eleven desks and the villa to put them in!
This was a really beautiful post.
I don’t have as much time to game as I used to, but probably half my time gaming now is just playing games like Sea of Thieves or Red Dead Online with real life friends who live hundreds of KMs away now. We’re all adults with mortgages and jobs and some of us have kids. But we make time.
The other half is divided between “my brain is off; let me drive around in Forza with the radio off” and “I am playing a Very Serious Game for Hardcore Players” on the PlayStation.
I’d rank it, intellectually, right below thoughtful filmmaking.
The problem is definitely the dopamine hit. I have an addictive personality type. I’m always addicted to something. Might be work, movies, video games, reading, guitar playing, or whatever. Video games are very easy to fall into thanks to the hit.
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Speaking of my experience, a couple of years ago I started playing Titanfall 2 and was even quite successful at it, I had good stats, I almost always took 1st place in matches, but soon realized that the whole process was more like to play in the casino, although I did not spend money on it, but most of my emotions were nerves due to the fact that today somehow the game is not very good and I get killed too often and stuff like that. In the end, after thinking a little, I came to the conclusion that I really get more problems and discomfort from playing competitive shooters than pleasure. And I switched to story games, which I hadn’t paid much attention to before, and this completely changed my perception of gaming. I’ve completed Red Dead Redemtion 2, The Witcher 2 and 3, several PlayStation exclusives, recently completed both Dishonored games (my favorite game series now) and I’m currently playing Bishock. So now I really have a lot more fun playing games, and not only fun from defeating the enemy, but mainly from immersing myself in interesting worlds and interesting stories.
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You touched on an interesting topic, by the way. In some cases, games can not only not interfere with social interactions, but help. On recent feedback episode of MPU David said that the best way to talk to your child about personal matters is to play computer games with them, instead of having "serious talks”.
And I also remember, when I was in school (it wasn’t very long ago, I’m 22), I played games less than now, and this rather interfered with my socialization than helped, because when my classmates discussed games that they played, I rather just sat and listened without having many topics to keep the conversation going. Not that this means that all children should definitely play games, but for most of today’s children, games are as much a part of life as films and music were for people in the middle of the last century, so if some parent forbids a child from playing games, thinking that this interferes with social connections for their child, then this will be rather counterproductive, because the society around this child will be mostly their peers, not people who grew up in a world without video games.
Of course, one can argue that alcohol also helps socialization, so this argument only works if we consider games not as analogous to alcohol/drugs, but as analogous to books/movies/music.
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No reason to be embarrassed. You might enjoy the Farmer novel.
The premise is that all the people who ever lived are resurrected simultaneously by godlike aliens on the banks of a single river that wraps its way around the surface of an entire planet. It’s a series of five novels, the first of which is “To Your Scattered Bodies Go,” of which Burton is the hero. Mark Twain is the hero of the second book, which got me started on a lifelong love of Twain. The first three books are excellent. Fourth and fifth, not so much.
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I love listening to Shahid. He is so optimistic and genuinely excited about what he does. I would like to hear him on MORE shows.
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I loved this episode and I don’t program and hardly ever play video games. I really wish the show notes had included pictures of Shahid’s setup for video calls - it was a very thoughtful discussion, but as I was multitasking at the time I heard this one I was having trouble visualizing the setup.
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Same here. I found this one of the most interesting and inspirational episodes from the last few months or so.
Just like you, I would have loved more info on Sahid’s video call setup, especially on his use of a teleprompter to make direct eye contact with the people he’ds talking to while still having his prompts in view.
Thanks for a brilliant episode guys!
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