Preparing for Summer

Hi all --

I'm playing The Sims 4. I realize I have to explain what that is. It may be the most played video game on the planet, but it isn't like Call of Duty or Super Mario Bros. You could say its a collection of virtual playsets with semi-autonomous dolls (Sims) which you tell to do things. If you leave them alone, they'll act on their preprogrammed needs and desires, leading them to do things like push-ups in front of customers while working a retail job. So I guess The Sims is not terribly different from real life.

Well, some things are different. In the game, you can own a home and don't have to put in a thousand applications for a decent job. And that opens the question of how effective a send-up of American life it is. In a short paper written for a student journal, Miriam Scuderi argues "The Sims 4 is one of the purest conceptualisations of the American Dream." I do recommend looking at their "The Doll House Dream: Simulation, Ideology, and the Good Life in The Sims 4." It has led me to wonder if the mechanics of gameplay reinforce the worst assumptions of neoliberalism too starkly, drowning any attempt at parody of "the pursuit of happiness." Hard work will always get your Sim money, love, and better homes and gardens. The game will internalize that message one way or another.

Our techbro overlords might find even this proposition repugnant because Sims can have good careers which they want to eliminate irl entirely. Case in point: my richest Sim is a writer, pulling 10k in Simoleons a day. A fully furnished house can be as low as 15k; I have another Sim near the top of their career ladder, and they're only making 1600 Simoleons daily. In true Sims fashion, this writer is completely ridiculous, producing two to three books every 24 game hours, maybe more if I have them 1) take a "thoughtful" shower 2) view art on the Internet 3) have stimulating decor around. The Sim writer gets the "Inspired" mood bonus, allowing them to churn out bestsellers.

So on the one hand, you're looking at an over the top parody of our consumerist culture. (E.g. Want to be a writer? Spend the money on the distraction-free word processor and you'll have your self-published book in no time.) And this should be laughed with, except 1) the world's richest man and many like him style themselves gamers in part to attack fantasies like these 2) our culture is so gamified that many of us may believe our Sim who produces books has a point. The little virtual doll you control gets things done, after all (from past blogging: more on gamification).

For now, I'm focused on when The Sims gets the vibe exactly right. The game is a perfect distillation of the world through daytime TV and supermarket tabloids. The endless spinoffs of Jerry Springer and Maury Povich meet soap operas and the aesthetics of HGTV and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Aliens want to kidnap you and make you pregnant but all you want is a new gadget for the kitchen you've just remodeled. It's ludicrous and also the endgame of the richest society the Earth has ever produced.

Once again, if you're helping out with Marfa Public Radio, or you have any causes you'd like attention for, please let me know

Just a reminder I'd like to get a group together to help identify and donate to causes which are important to us. A friend wants to do more to defend Marfa Public Radio, and while some entities in public broadcasting have been far from perfect these last few months, MPR is essential to this part of West Texas having reliable information. I'm donating monthly and encourage anyone who likes to do the same or spread the word. Two things they keep in the spotlight as people try to trick themselves into thinking everything will be fine: 1) the environmental harm caused by all our activity here, harm which invariably results in shortened lifespans 2) the incoherent economic policy of many in charge. Every loudmouth in the Permian Basin says everything will be fine if we drill more. Thanks to MPR, we have the word of actual oil companies on this. How is selling going to happen if there's no demand?

We should talk about what probably will be a summer of hell for young people

Kat Abughazaleh launched a program in Illinois' 9th Congressional district for high schoolers to get funding for projects centered around mutual aid. Her worry about this summer has been echoed by many organizers and activists, including Mariame Kaba. I think Abughazaleh does an amazing job of briefly communicating why this summer may not just be boring and unproductive for young people, but a lot worse:

Not only are the feds eliminating programs communities have relied on, but jobs will more than likely be in short supply. What are you going to do if you're in high school? College? This is happening while plenty do want to hurt the young. Think about the emotions underlying the whole "education is woke and hates America" proposition. You can't underestimate just how radicalized many in our lives have become because of the combination of cable news and their Facebook feed. They genuinely believe others want to indoctrinate, steal, and invite murderers to kill us all. The news which sticks with me most on this count is the woman who got in an Uber in El Paso, saw a sign for Juarez, and thought she was being kidnapped. So she shot the Uber driver. In a smaller but similar manner, you've got those who truly believe they're going broke because their local high school gets work done on a leaky roof. What's paramount is that fear and anger are not to be questioned. Knowing things and serving others are merely cosmetic, not habits we should aim at strengthening.

So yeah. It is vital to give young people options over the summer. I confess that I have not been as attentive to this as I should have been in previous years. I think it's because the rhetoric of teachers I trusted mingled with those of adults who didn't care to provide any hint of structure. In both cases, they were saying "enjoy your freedom," as if some exercises of freedom weren't better than others. I'm not saying young people shouldn't play. On the contrary: if a few friends get together for a few hours daily to try and rank up at a competitive game, I think that can be positive, especially if they're building each other up instead of worrying about wins and losses. If you get in the habit of sincerely building people up, you've won at life. I realize some will still tell you that generosity can't be eaten, but I can safely say that in my experience, people fight for other people who do good things. The people I know who don't do anything for anyone else are the ones I worry about. They constantly scream about who and what is "employable" because they themselves are barely employable.

I think I've given an idea as to how to approach the summer. I think it is important to give but it is just as important to create community which gives. Donations and nice words don't exist in a vacuum. We can't be sure what helps, so we build around making ourselves the helpers. Sometimes that might mean getting friends to pool money together to help another in need. But it more generally means creating serious communities in the first place. This is no less than Aristotle's idea that friendships can center on virtue. What kind of legacy do I – do we – want to leave?

If I had to do high school again, I'd want to have a few days a week where we get together to do the summer reading. Can we get a few ideas about what we're supposed to learn from that reading down? Can we publish some notes for peers who can't meet with us? Is it possible to use this as a way to check in on everyone and see who might need help? The grid might fail because of the air conditioning needed to survive higher temperatures. Food prices are rising. Families are not going to be honest about the help they need until it is too late.

I think another thing that's just as essential for young people is making sure that others in their lives are informed. As a professor, my jaw drops hearing adults speak. I don't expect them to know First Amendment jurisprudence or what Congress is. But to hear grown men say, for example, that no oil is being pumped because Biden when they're literally ordering thirty dollar glasses of scotch day after day during Biden's administration is something else. Young people explaining what they know about basic issues to their community is vital. What pollutants exactly are pumped from refineries? What is the consequence of shredded tires on the roads? What federal dollars support healthcare? What is the state of education, i.e. what have you seen in your schools? Creating flyers and websites to inform your community is essential work. Creating networks of knowledge is invaluable.

Obviously, if you can do service or create a project around doing service, please do so. But I'm thinking back to a summer in college I accidentally wasted. I felt like I knew nothing between sophomore and junior year of college, so I read too much. I read all three of Rousseau's Discourses, J.S. Mill's On Liberty and Utilitarianism, a book Theories of Rights, reread some books on legal philosophy and natural law, tried my hand at reading Nietzsche. I didn't bother writing anything down or engaging any secondary literature. I didn't talk to anyone I knew about this stuff. It wasn't a total waste, but I assumed I could get smarter just by reading the words. The truth is that you have to share, especially in a world looking to punch the vulnerable every chance it gets. The funny thing, going back to that summer, was that I loved developing webpages. It would have been so easy for me to be one of the first bloggers, writing out notes on what I was learning as I was reading. But again, I would have had to know to share.