When you imagine what an Australian apocalypse looks like, chances are, you’ll conjure up images of Mad Max. 

As much as I would like to witness such an event here in Australia and secure my ticket to Valhalla, COVID-19 isn’t the apocalyptic event that will usher in a new era of V8 worship.

What I want to discuss here, is the concept of prepping and survivalism. What has been bought sharply into focus, is the idea that a global crisis will envelope everyone, and suddenly you are on your own.

You can’t trust your neighbours, your friends have all disappeared and so your only option is to head out to your bug-out shelter, grab that emergency survival bag and get out of town and hunker down. You’ve got enough food and shelter for yourself, to last several months, and you’re glad you’ve prepared whilst everyone else is suffering.

To me, after watching the Warrior Poet Society’s video, there were a lot of adjusting I had to do mentally, to really understand the realistic intent behind my bag, that I’ve invested in.

I lack a lot of survival skills. I don’t have any proper military training beyond shooting a rifle, and such skills aren’t really useful if you don’t actually own a damn rifle.

I also have a girlfriend and her immediate family to be concerned about. I doubt that I will be abandoning her, my own family just to gallivant around in the woods, on my own.

What is of use to me, are my friends, who have a lot more experience than I do. That is the network that I should be focusing my energy and time on, not spending on tactical gear and filling out a Book of Eli fantasy.

If a true apocalypse arrives, you cannot survive on your own. Humanity for most of its history, has proven time and time again, that protection in a large group is what saves you, as an individual. From the time we’ve dwelled in caves, to now, we are strong together, not alone.

So the real, reality of bugging-out in an apocalypse, is that you should have a prep bag to get you to your network of friends and family. A bag that will allow you to survive until you’ve reached your group hangout. Which is where the marriage of EDC (Every Day Carry) and Bug-Out Bag comes into fruition.

If your hideaway is far and remote, then you need to pack and sort accordingly and have that bag with you handy, wherever you go, so that when shit does go down, you can survive the trip to that hideaway.

However, do we really need such extreme measures for survival?

The question I want to pose to myself and everyone else out there, is that will society ever truly collapse? COVID-19 showed that humanity has the ability to bounce back against such disruptive measures to civilisation and continue to function, barring from a few weeks of insanity.

The only real time such “prepping” may come in handy, would be an invasion by a hostile force, nuclear winters or God forbid, “zombie”-style apocalypse. A lot is riding on you to actually survive the initial onslaught and make it to your hideout.

That is the argument though, if such an instance actually occurs, you got your supplies and abilities to survive on. If you are one of the lucky few to live beyond the first initial disaster, you can thrive on your early preparedness.

Additionally, even if you were to perish early on, at least you could rest easier knowing that your network of friends and family could take advantage of the early preparation you had all invested in.

The reality of bugging out in a true pandemic, is that there is a lot of money, investment and skills you need to learn, in order to prepare properly. A lot of equipment is restricted to military use, and in fact, a lot of preparation is taught for the military, when you are more likely to face “S&E – Survival & Evasion” situations, with your squad captured and death, and you have to escape to friendly lines.

Even in that situation, the goal is not to survive endlessly in the woods, but to just survive until you reach friendly forces.

Prepping is as much paranoia as it is stress-relief, where you fear for your own life and unknown threats, but the skills, and companions you get along the way to assuage this fear, also allows you to tap into something you never really you knew you had before … the ability to excel at a lot of things.

Skills learnt in a survivalist camp, so to speak, allows you to really appreciate long-lost underappreciated skills that a lot of people lack. Getting back to the roots of humanity, with tracking skills, hunting, sleeping rough, identifying animals and edible plants and so much more, are all valuable and stress-reliving activities that acknowledge the huge information gap people aren’t aware they lack today.

It empowers you, knowing that you have such skills at your deployment and allows you to appreciate the dangers and folly of surviving on your own, if you still fantasise about the Book of Eli. 

In addition, doesn’t it just make sense to have someone around in case of injury? If you sprain your ankle, and run out of food, you might starve to death. Surviving alone too, causes a lot of mental instability and in all honesty, there are too many times in life, when you need to rely on someone.

The truth is, COVID-19’s pandemic served as a small wake-up call for me. I had to be more realistic about my prepping and about why I was doing it. This was a small crisis, in comparison to the larger fears I had about nuclear winters or zombie apocalypses.

It revealed I had to be smarter about it all, spend more time preparing my network, not my gear and invest in skills that will actually serve me well.

I also realised that in the first initial stage of any crisis, people tend to go nuts, so I better prepare myself for shortages.

Despite this, I still commend most governments for their work and response to this unprecedented crisis. I still don’t really trust them and their judgement, but there is at least a sense that we might come out of this, battered, bruised, but ultimately stronger.

There is still so much for me to work on.

~ Damocles. 

 

 

 

I like to think there are two types of infrastructures when it comes to issues like COVID-19: Individual Mental Preparedness (IMP) and Government Long Term Planning (GLP).

Out of the two, IMP is the one that slips by the most. In fact, I would say, that it is the one that most people never consider themselves.

When you live in abundance, it is easy to assume that your lifestyle is the norm, that you can take it for granted.

The idea that you should invest in some kind of “bug-out” bag (more on that in another ramble) and have stocks of tinned food is largely laughed at here in Australia.

The issue is not so much hoarding supplies, but more the mental preparedness everyone should have.

For an Australian, perhaps the most American part of me, is the rigid belief that everyone should be a responsible individual, fully aware of their rights and abilities and act accordingly.

This means taking the right steps to ensure that you are a self-reliant individual, that you have done the work to prepare yourself for disaster and you don’t rely on outside help too much. It means understanding your role in society, how you can help others with your knowledge, building a network of support within your circle and coming together when it counts.

It also means that you understand that fundamentally, the government’s role is not to directly support you, but the greater whole, and that it is your responsibility to take care of yourself in drastic situations and those around you.

This does not equate to hoarding supplies for yourself, especially in time of strife. If large purchases were meant to be shared amongst your support network, then this is more acceptable, but such a network should have already been prepared long before the crisis hit.

I think a large portion of the population lack a good amount of IMP. There is a bizarre habit of relying on the government to spoon feed us everything and miro-manage us. However when they do go to spoon-feed us, we revolt and claim that they are oppressive.

I like to believe that when a strong individual has good mental preparedness, there is a keen appreciation for what you already have and the means in which you can prepare yourself. This preparation allows you to have strong mental acuity throughout the crisis, and lessens poor behaviour like hoarding.

Blaming the government for all the problems you have, expecting them to bail you out and rounding on strangers for breaking curfew, are all signs of people who lack good mental preparedness for extraordinary situations.

This is why, in the Facsimile post, I lamented the death of curiosity. If curiosity was a greater element in today’s society, more people who be aware of the dangers that are present out there and be more proactive in learning skills for themselves.

Whether it would be being aware in the back of your mind that the world is due a pandemic, or perhaps even you learning about the great woodsmen who hid out in the forests, living off the land and inspiring you to emulate them, a greater sense of curiosity allows you to develop awareness of issues and create a drive to be prepared for them the best you can.

For those who say what if the danger never comes? Wouldn’t all your efforts be wasted?

To that, I say, if you learnt skills throughout your journey of preparedness, how can that be a waste?

If you were a “prepper” and learnt good outdoor skills like tracking, identifying edible fruits and nuts and had a great time doing so, is that a misuse of your time?

If you made good friends and received help from them during the times when you struggled, is that really an issue?

Becoming a self-reliant and resilient individual, who take personal responsibility of their own well-being, should be the norm for people everywhere. Just because we live in a time of stability, does not means that we should abandon our learning for new skills and abilities.

Having such a strong mental infrastructure to support yourself and those around you, allow you to better prepare for devastating problems and allow you to bounce back quicker.

In today’s society, we are so relaxed, so lazy and so utterly non-curious about life and the skills we need that we have lost sight of what it actually means to be “busy” and actively improving ourselves. We think, that because our society is so great, we can rest easy on our laurels and plateau for the of our lives.

How tragic is that, to know that you can trick yourself into believing you are 100% fine the way you are.

There is a philosophy to Formula 1 that I adore and adopted for myself. At the pinnacle of motorsport, there is a desire to constantly evolve.

Much like how a second is an eternity on track, the same is off-track. The car at the beginning of a season in Australia, is entirely different to the car at Abu Dhabi for the finale. It has evolved, changed, become grippier, faster, and undergone subtle changes.

The colours and overall shape is the same, but it is now several seconds faster than the car it was at the beginning of the year.

Formula 1 cars, are constantly in a “beta phase” of continuous improvement. The progress they make never fails to astonish me. Mercedes-AMG Petronas has literally decimated the sport with their technological advances. Hate them (and I do) or love them, one has to respect their abilities to truly innovate a box on wheels.

We should all adopt such similar attitudes to ourselves. How many skills can you learn? What can you learn? What should you explore?

Should we not be constantly innovating? This only makes our past selves more interesting, because we can see actual progress when it comes to our own individual evolution and makes us grateful for what we have right now.

Gratitude for the now and a sense of purpose regarding personal improvement will easily help and empower a lot of people regain something of what we’ve lost collectively and better prepare ourselves for catastrophes.

Speaking of disasters, before COVID-19 struck, Australia had a particularly bad start to 2020, with bushfires ravaging the entirety of the Eastern Coast.

The conflagration that befell us was nothing short of biblical with its intensity, speed and longevity is defeating almost all of our conventional fire tactics.

To understand just how terrible this year’s bushfire was, there are just three salient points to note:

1. The fire was so intense, the smoke created a breathing hazard in metropolitian areas and turned the skies a hellish brownish red. I could physically taste the smoke where I lived, something I never thought I would ever experience. I researched face-masks before COVID-19, wondering if I needed them, after the smoke proved that bad.
2. We have the largest, most professional bushfire volunteer corp in the world. We know fire. We backburn regularly. We do everything in our power to ensure the flames do not enter properties. We did everything right where we could, but we still lost.
3. 18.6 million hectares were burnt, a billion animals died and many species driven to extinction and as much as 300 million tones of CO2 were emitted into the atmosphere and 6 firefighters died.

It was obscene.

Much of the blame was attributed to extremely dry conditions that had developed in late 2019, and the lacklustre response by the Australian government to properly take action.

Rightly so.

Many people who live in rural areas, already tend to have excellent IMP. They are resilient, hard-working people with extensive knowledge ranging from raising cows to fixing their Holden ute’s engine. But no amount of preparation can combat one of the worst droughts ever experienced and a wall of fire that somehow lit up the areas you had just backburned.

This is where the failure of government long term planning comes into play. Climate change denial is a ridiculous policy to adopt. It is always better to err on the side of caution than to somehow think that there is nothing changing about the planet’s climate.

The government’s lack of response to the drought, the constant refusal and acknowledgement of rural Australian issues and denial to take preventative action is purely theirs for blame. They may not have started the fires, but they were the reason why it took so long to finish the fight.

It should not have taken a Black Summer to end the fires.

The focus of every government should always be the future. In an ideal world, that is their job. To help where individuals cannot. To future-proof us and set-up frameworks that benefit society as a whole.

The Black Summer of 2020 is a colossal failure of that concept. Persistent warnings from Fire Chiefs around the region, and scientific data were all ignored for a party’s policy regarding “ignorance around climate change.”

A party so far removed from the fight, that their illustrious leader tried to force handshakes with people directly affected by it.

I find myself, a relatively reasonable and cool-headed individual at most times, but every time I think about this year’s bushfires, there is this righteous anger that flares up and makes me furious.

The failure of the government’s infrastructure to everyone directly involved, in monumental and I find it despicable that such poor leadership continue to be unpunished.

Anywhere else in a workplace, such incompetence would have resulted in instant dismissal and exile.

Our Prime Minister is still here.

Being a moron.

Moving on, to COVID-19, I think, the pandemic, globally has shown just how petty a lot of our political parties are. The sheer toxicity in the political environment has slowed mankind’s progress down to a crawl.

Ideologies are exchanged without a care for proper vision and a need to guide the future, not destroy the past.

Reactionary division seems to be name of the game for contemporary politics and such stupidity will only serve to slow down our ability to react to our own issues.

Global politics has also serve as a detriment to how we handle national issues. Our leaders do not need to fix the world’s problem. They need to fix our problems first.

The over-complexity of globalism has created an impossible task for politicians. They need to present themselves for examination to the rest of the world, whilst simultaneously proving themselves to the citizens of their country.

This is impossible as well as superfluous. Your country is deemed successful by what your country does within its’ own borders. Everyone else will look on with admiration for what your country has accomplished, if it is ruled well. Foreign policy should be a lesser priority, especially considering how globalism seems to value bringing everyone down to a crappy, instead of individual progress.

For truly global players like the U.S. or China, they can play against each other, but for many countries, including my own, we need to focus less on what the U.S. or China wants and more on what we can improve here. There is this irritating need to placate the bigger powers, when really, the energy spent there, could be focused elsewhere internally.

There needs to be a culture change around manufacturing, around jobs and around how we view ourselves as a nation, if we are to properly address issues within our own borders. Self-reliance, self-sustaining and self-awareness of our limitations, our strengths and our resources are the key to tackling issues that the world throws at us.

The stronger you are internally, the better you can handle the stresses of the world.

The same principle applies to an individual, as it does for a nation.

COVID-19 displayed hundreds of flaws that have been built up around the need to focus on globalism and “anti-local” practices to make a quick buck. This is what I define as a lack of infrastructure to deal with major problems like a global pandemic.

I won’t touch on them all, but the most obvious one to me, are international students and universities.

I won’t sugar-coat it, my dyad of degrees have left me with an extreme bitterness and anger towards the education system, especially on a tertiary level.

How Australian Universities display COVID-19 Lack of Infrastructure Planning.  

There is a high atmosphere of dissatisfaction when it comes to the average Australian university student’s experience.

This isn’t coming from a decidedly bitter and frustrated individual like myself, but many on-the-ground discussions I’ve had with my friends and my limited time as a Monash University journalism student eager to expose the bullshit universities present to us.

First some facts.

In Victoria, university education is not free. HECs are a type of government loan that almost all normal students have to acquire in order to attend universities because paying those upfront fees are almost impossible for most families.

HECs are valued at approximately 10,000 AUD per year. This means that an average student will accumulate around 30,000 AUD in debts by the time they finish their undergraduate degree.

30,000 AUD. Enough to afford a decent car. But instead you receive an arbitrary piece of paper.

With well over tens of thousands of students every year applying for a degree, that is a lot of money rolling in from HECs alone.

However, in their infinite wisdom, top tiered Victorian universities decided to leverage their reputation for excellent education by opening themselves up to the international market.

So now, we get an increased flux of international students from every single country around the world, eager for the taste of juicy Australian education.

None of these students can borrow from the government. All of them have to pay upfront. This means a greater cash flow for universities and thus more money for everyone in them. Everyone should theoretically get a better education. More equipment, better facilities, fancier and better looking tutors and blah, blah, blah.

Reasonable right?

Well, no, you’d be wrong. Because the slow bastardisation from a once proud lineage of excellent education has now turned into a multi-million dollar corporation with the “Vice-Chancellor” now effectively a CEO.

If the Church of EA (a gamer reference there) has taught us anything, most corporations that get big quick, tends to engage in some pretty atrocious anti-consumer practices.

It didn’t take long for universities to do just that.

Let’s go through the long litany of sins shall we? I shall do my best to stick to a 2 sentences per sin.

First, the standard for entry got raised and dropped at the same time. Your score in VCE became more crucial than ever before to get into truly elite courses such as Biomedicine, but was also worthless when it came to other “simpler” courses like Science.

You could now get a degree by achieving the bare minimum. Personal anecdote: I got my Science degree with Passes for almost every single science subject I did. Passes are a score of 50-60. Credit were measly 60-70s, Distinction were ranged from 70-80 and a High Distinction was 80-100.

So many students have applied for universities after high school, without any proper reason to do so, other than “it’s university, you should do it, like everyone else.” This persistent intake year after year, created a situation where in the end, the shitty students like myself caused the idea of undergraduate degrees to become a formality, not an achievement.

Passing an undergraduate, became as easy as passing high school. This creates a different attitude to job-markets, where suddenly everyone has a degree and you are no longer considered special.

Universities’ facilities became worse, as more and more students crammed into inadequate laboratories, and used ancient technology. Where was all the money coming in, being spent on? There weren’t even enough study areas to fit students with their laptops.

University clubs also lacked support, with many Club Presidents having no experience, nor mentors to assist with the maintenance of club fees and be efficient with marketing during Orientation Week.

Privatisation within Universities also became a unique bureaucratic nightmare, such as my own experience in the Fencing Club, as I had to deal with a separate organisation beyond Monash University called TEAM-Monash. They represented and also didn’t represent Monash University in the same capacity, making it a nightmare to navigate the organisation structure and discuss club issues with.

Tutors and lecturers were often unhelpful and recalcitrant, many of them lacking proper education etiquette, leaving many students stranded and alone, desperate for help. Crude powerpoint lectures would lack information and answers for exams, leaving students like myself, immensely infuriated.

The teaching style was insanely lazy. Many subjects resorted to rote learning, quite potentially the dumbest, most apathetic style of teaching ever devised, and of no use in a proper workplace or in the life-skills department. You do not remember what you’ve learnt in 2 weeks of cramming for an exam versus the valuable lessons taught in a proper workplace with hands-on practical assessment.

Rote might be adequate for primary and high school, but at a tertiary level, such methodology are woefully insufficient for what is meant to be a stepping stone to a career.

Perhaps, the last and most damning sin of all, is that universities don’t give a shit about their students. The atmosphere of apathy is so strong, that it leaves many students feeling lost, aimless and depressed.

We are treated like cash cows, given a caged lifestyle of laziness, depression, loneliness and poverty.

Punctuated only by furious cramming and borderline satisfaction that you’ve survived.

Only for that sensation to be depleted by the next semester.

I’ve rarely seen any students have a good time at universities, which speak to the piss-poor infrastructure that universities have created with their management and priorities. When there is a palatable sense of despondency around campus, you know instinctively there is something wrong.

COVID-19 finally paid the huge amount of karma that these institutions have long had coming with their gross malpractice of greed and poor infrastructure. Too long have they relied on international students to keep their coffers full and continue their slide into mediocrity.

I am immensely pleased to see such “education camps” suffer, because they’ve made students and their families suffer for so long, dashed so many dreams and left so many young people broken, with their bullshit anti-consumer practices.

To see this multi-million dollar bastard that has ruined so many people’s potential, start to crumble, is easily one of my greatest pleasures out of this pandemic.

Sincerely, I hope that this is a time for them to reflect on their own failures, and how all their poor decisions has led to this moment.

Universities represent an shining example of how globalism and poor infrastructure in context of self reliance and self-sufficiency has crippled how we conduct business.

COVID-19 needs to be seen as a lesson to start focusing inwards, improving on ourselves, before we can start addressing other nations’ issues. There are still a lot of problems, beyond our shitty education sector that we need to get answers for.

Climate change, land use, natural disasters, urbanisation, population growth, declining standard of living, our own human rights treatment, and how we can actually get a Prime Minister similar to NZ’s Jacinda Ardern are easily some of the most contentious issues plaguing our society at the moment.

All of which have taken a backseat to our need to somehow appease China and the US at the same time, without ever showing how spineless we are.

At the very least, our PM has slowly stiffened his resolve against China and are now openly calling for investigations into their affairs.

I just wished he did it when we seemed stronger.

Australia has so much to offer its own denizens. We could easily be one of the most autonomous and self-governing countries in the world, with our identity forged by our own success and abilities.

But instead, we are subservient to the world, never really pushing our limits and crippled by poor leadership and infrastructure.

If we are ever to grow, we need to really focus on ourselves and our future, instead of allowing the world to dictate what they are to us.

~ Damocles

The insanity that comes from the fear of death is a potent reminder of how fragile we are. 

That hysteria is understandably contagious. No-one can “train” themselves to handle the threat of death.

Unless of course, you are one of those survivalist-types who like to prepare for the absolute worst.

But the majority of people out there, handle “death” very poorly, especially in wealthy countries.

When death is the exception, not the norm, suddenly facing your mortality is psychologically scarring. You’ve lived your life, fearing the next paycheck, what will happen on your favourite Netflix show and what you are going to wear for your next Friday night out.

To have all of that rendered “unimportant” because of a deadly disease, is bizarre to say the least. To have your livelihood taken away, access to emotional support stolen (friends and family) and your faith in uncertain leadership destroyed is catastrophic.

How do you react to such an emotional shift?

(Be warned, this is a long post)

Well, you turn to your good friend, the computer and log on.

But before I address the social media aspect, I would like to touch on common behaviour seen during “near-death” mindsets: fiscal irresponsibility, procreation and substance abuse.

Fiscal Irresponsibility 

Recently, in Australia, I’ve read that thousands of people have withdrew their superannuation. This “retirement package” that they always dedicate a part of their salary to, with each paycheck, is now being kept somewhere else, or being spent.

This is interesting for a number of reasons. It indicates that there is a strong portion of the population that is either stricken by the huge shortfall of jobs, and thus need the capital quickly to continue surviving, and maybe even a small percentage of that group who decided enough is enough, now is the time to be irresponsible.

Of course, this is all speculation, but during crisis, it is not uncommon to see people act upon desires that they’ve had for a long time.

That huge LEGO set that you’ve always wanted? Now is the time (this one I am definitely guilty of).

How about that tempting 4K TV you’ve been putting off? Quarantine is the perfect excuse for such reckless spending.

I don’t any evidence to really support this of course, but from a purely anecdotal and “supply” point of view, I can see this trend spike, and strangely keep retail businesses alive.

My retail store is close to Rebel Sport, JB Hi-Fi, and I am on friendly terms with an EB Games manager. When the first lockdown occurred, Nintendo Switches and Playstation 4s came flying out of those stores. Fathers bought them for their children, and stupid boyfriends like me, grabbed Switches for their girlfriends along with copies of Animal Crossing: New Horizon.

I couldn’t get my hand on a Switch for 2 months, and had to preorder extremely early. When mine arrived at the EB Games, the manager said my order was 1 of 10. 10 for a console that was literally flying off the shelves. Nintendo couldn’t keep up with orders.

The number of TVs and gym equipment that also sauntered casually past me was high. Things that people normally would never invest in, suddenly came high on their radar and these extravagant purchases meant that people were keen on maintaining a high standard in their new quarantine lifestyle.

This also lead to what I call reactionary buys.

My own LEGO purchase, a highly expensive UCS Lego STAR WARS Star Destroyer, was made because people were snatching these rare models up left right and centre. Orders at places that usually had heaps of stocks, disappeared within weeks.

I couldn’t really afford the model, but it was a childhood dream of mine to collect every single Original Trilogy ship model, and when I saw my chance to get one was fading quickly, I went in and got it before I could regret it.

I ended up regretting the purchase slightly anyway. The expense could have been placed better elsewhere. There is a rueful feeling I experience when I look at the giant box.

I wonder who else has felt that, over their reckless purchase?

Procreation

Procreation is the next interesting reaction.

PornHub, the legendary host site, offered free premium membership for a whole month. Sex stores reported record sales, as people bought all types of toys and items for months of lockdown. Porn films even showed with how people could remotely pleasure one another via a good bluetooth/internet connection.

Impressive to say the least, how the sex industry is truly one of the most resilient and profitable trades ever designed.

Sex is such a common method to relieve stress and also provide a basic biological function, to please the ticking clock that everyone has in their head. Total strangers have had relations in the aftermath of a traumatic event (plane crash, bombing etc). It is normal to desire intimacy, as a way to carry on your lineage, when you feel death is or was close. This is well documented and obvious from a mental and physical standpoint.

However, what is interesting, is the sheer number of couples who have broken it off during lockdown. Not just because of dull sex, but also because they can’t stand one another. Working from home has created friction in the environment that is supposed to be comforting and relaxed. Wives have found their husband’s habits grotesque. Husbands have discovered wives’ complaints annoying.

Forced cohabitation is suddenly responsible for a jump in divorce rates.

It is extremely fascinating to see how shoddy and shabby a relationship can be, but is continued because both parties work far from each other. Now when forced to confront each other for the first time in ages, they hate each other.

Splitting apart, whilst in lock-down is amazingly difficult. With jobs, rent, mortgage, and a whole host of other issues that COVID-19 has bought about, it is not uncommon to see exes still reside in the same house, their toxicity, bitterness and anger unable to escape and find an outlet.

Hate-fucking might just be more prevalent than ever.

Speaking of toxicity, now is time to discuss substance abuse, and then social media.

Substance Abuse

Australia, is known for its’ heavy drinking. A pivotal part of our culture, alcoholism is highly prevalent at all ages and social strata. It doesn’t matter if you are a tradie enjoying a stubbie after work, or a socialite living for the champagne in a club, alcohol is a universal element in Australia.

Should it shouldn’t be a surprise that alcoholism spiked during COVID-19, with more people buying their own supply to keep their habit happy or deal with increased loneliness.

Loneliness … it is a rather unique feeling that everyone has had to grapple with since the outbreak of COVID-19. The irony of drinking alone to deal with such a complex emotion, is that the sheer act of doing something so social as drinking, is that it enhances the feeling of loneliness.

Drugs use also has spiked, with more and more people, spending time at home, smoking up and recreationally passing the time with hallucinogens and other substances. After all, it’s a lot harder to be caught, and if your supplier is well established, getting some isn’t difficult.

It’s one way to pass the time …. despite being utterly pointless and a waste of a day.

But such self-destructive isn’t just restricted to substance abuse.

No, because now it is time to address the proper crazies. The one that can’t be rationalised with.

People who are reliant on social media (the real issue I want to discuss).

The real reason why I wanted to write this ramble.

Social media is often parroted as a “good” thing. Faster communication, the ability to utilise and harness your network for business and more global outreach are some pretty common benefits touted.

My question to all of that is … why do you need it?

The most apparent danger of social media, is the sheer ego driven into developing your ideal echo chamber. Every day, you scroll past things that only you agree with, find content that only you find agreeable and lack the vision to see beyond your own bubble that you’ve created.

It is this psychological bubble that has given rise to a whole host of issues, that previously were much smaller and less unified across the globe. The concept of “cherry picking” content that only suits you, and is enhanced by algorithms is highly unhealthy.

A small example in my own small world, is Formula 1. I am a die-hard Ferrari fan. I tend to make excuses for my favourite team, and feel very low when things aren’t going well, and experience euphoria when the team is triumphing.

Going through my Youtube recommendations, I came across a video that discussed the recent crash between Charles Leclerc (my favourite driver) and Sebastian Vettel. It was a painful moment for me, and I wanted to avoid any further news about this incident.

It took me 3 days, to keep seeing that recommendation pop up, until I finally clicked on it and to my surprise, it was a good video, with excellent clarification of the incident and great analysis on why it happened.

I ended up subscribing to the Youtuber, because he developed good and clear, objective videos regarding Formula 1.

But the fact remains, that I avoided his channel. All because I thought it didn’t agree with my bubble and how I wanted to view things.

How often do we engage with topics that we disagree with?

Should we explore more about the side we dislike?

The answer to both, should ideally be “More often and absolutely yes”

Whereas before, people had to actively search and truly find those who have similar viewpoints, now there are forums and groups that allow easy access, as long as you have suitable credentials.

Now it is even easier to surround yourself with equally crazed nut-jobs with the same crippling ego and desire to prove themselves against something.

Regardless of whether you believe in the 5G conspiracy, the COVID-19 hoax, or whatever else theory that has been thrown around, there has been a worrying trend to find an echo chamber in a world that has IO (Information Overload).

I, myself, am of the belief that COVID-19 was manufactured in a lab although this is with a healthy amount of skepticism and desire to see evidence against or for such a claim. The symptoms, rapidity, strange death rate and bizarre 14 day incubation just seem too bizarre in relation to other viral behaviours.

But the key point here, is that social media, globalism and hyper-connectivity has created this situation, where the news is no longer trusted (rightly so), people have more fragile egos and global issues explode, without any proper context.

So I will break this down, in relation to social media and COVID-19. Social media itself, is not inherently “bad” just like a firearm is not either. They are tools. Highly effective and efficient. But when wielded destructively, it is potent and should be handled with more care, in the hands and minds of individuals.

3 issues – globalism, information overload, and algorithms.

Globalism

Globalism is an inherently noble ideal.

But like communism, it doesn’t work very well. The idea that entire countries will work with each other, without ulterior motives, towards a common good, is naive and oddly unrealistic. Look no further than the UN, a shadow of itself. China, Russia, US, UK are all at loggerheads with one another. To get them to agree on one thing, is to threaten them with alien invasion or complete annihilation.

Progress gets stalled at every level, whenever these governments fight one another. Whilst the world languishes behind.

Meanwhile, the tech and corporate sector become ever stronger, becoming these enormous mega-corporations that have the power to sway the political and ideological landscape with their products. More powerful than governments, with more resources than many countries, these global players have such incredible outreach to change and sway lives to their cause if they want to.

It is oddly better that countries stay more isolated and confined to the context of themselves. One such issue that has bothered me, is the Black Lives Matter movement. It is too catchy to be regarded as a proper movement, and I feel, it is a distinctly American issue. There was an attempt to start this movement here in Australia, but it fizzled out quickly.

The reason being, is that Australia is inherently a highly successful multicultural country. The idea that racism is a extremely awful issue here is marginal and much quicker to be resolved than what is being seen in the U.S. I am of an Asian background, working in a Asian retail store and never had a single racist remark thrown at me, throughout the entire COVID-19 pandemic.

Our Sudanese refugee intake is high, and have integrated really well into the Melbourne populace, as has the Syrian, Lebanese, Chinese, and dozens of other ethnicities.

The idea that racism needs to be debated to the point where “black lives” are being killed everyday, here in Australia is ludicrous. We pay respect to the original owners of the land, our Aborigines at every important function. We adore all types of cuisines, and loves to fuse them together.

The vast majority of Australians I’ve met, have been the most relaxed and casual people. This is in stark contrast to the Asian populace, which I will definitely proclaim is one of the most racist in the entire world. They just hide it better.

But because of globalism, the BLM movement came here and doubtlessly contributed in some form or another to a 2nd lockdown here in Melbourne.

Globalism is not working out very well. When a country as wealthy and affluent as mine, end up on its knees because we rely too much on a foreign country for …. basic production, I find it troublesome.

We should be able to be self-sufficient and self-reliant, before exporting our resources to others. There is nothing wrong with manufacturing as a job, and it is time we’ve had a hard look at ourselves and question why should we be held hostage to a country like China, when we should be able to stand up for ourselves.

Australia-made needs to be a thing again. It will help us forge an identity for ourselves, a curious issue that is only made worse by globalism. Being a young country, it is difficult to pinpoint, what makes Australia … well Australia.

In the recent years, I’ve seen a huge influx of American values, and media come our way, at the cost of our own. While our countries are alike in many ways, I can’t help but think that Australians should consider themselves as slightly better, not Americans 2.0.

But the more we hear about American politics, and be fed their content and values, the more Americanised we become.

This isn’t good. I firmly believe that every country should have its own unique identity and cling firmly onto that. It is this diversity that makes humanity as a whole stand out and be interesting. To have a strong national identity is inherently good. It can be wielded in the name of patriotism, and nationalism, but such matters can be tempered and pushed aside when needed.

People need to have a strong conceptual idea what are the core values that your country stands for.

I myself, think that we suck up to America and China too much. We are at the moment, wasting our potential, playing coy with the world powers. We keep being minnows in a pond, when we could be a much bigger fish.

That’s our core value. Being too lazy to be better.

It is why countries that have such proud identities and cultures flourish and can export themselves successfully. To look at an American, you can instantly say that they value “freedom.” Their symbology and media content expouse that value. The Constitution is clear and revolutionary in changing mindsets around how people should behave and express themselves.

To look at an Japanese, you identify that they are a “honourable” country. Their people are unfailingly polite and clean up after themselves to not be a burden to their society. Everything has that extra effort put in, that is unmistakably Japanese. They clean up after themselves at World Cup tournaments. Their products are beautifully understated and minimalist.

It is why people love to be a part of these cultures, because they have values that people look up to and why they are so marketable.

Countries need to be embrace their identity more, in lieu of something bland and generic, like being “pan-European.” I like to see English people getting alongside French people. Germans joking with Hungarians, Austrians playing music alongside Russians.

Each country should celebrate its differences. It’s not particularly nice when you group them all together as “Europeans” when there are such marked differences in language and culture between them all.

Not to mention how each country handle their own economy.

A less global approach to things allows better context and control of issues like something as fundamentally wrong as the BLM, which is extremely important for America to face, but not the entire world. A more individualist approach will also help curtail the effect of social media, which has a terrible habit of exploding things out of proportion and providing misguided solutions to a very clear answer.

I dislike social media immensely when it comes to important social issues. It is so easy to just change your profile picture or repost a hashtag and think you’ve done something to change the world, when really it has meant nothing at all, because your mindset and actions haven’t impacted anything.

Slacktivism is such an apt term. Too many people feel the need to engage in it, and call out strangers for no apparent reason than to stroke their ego. The irony of it all to me, is that the true activists out there, are some of the most quiet and humble people I’ve ever come across, volunteering their time and effort and energy into endeavours that genuinely change lives.

They will be the last to call out strangers for racism, doing too little or for more money. Simply because they are too busy genuinely working to do something.

Social media, in times of crises serve little to no real purpose, beyond adding stress and hope to your mental health in equal doses, making you more emotional.

It is also a terrible haven for some of the worst communication I’ve ever seen. But more on that at the end.

Information Overload 

Information Overload is such a unique 21st Century issue. It arrived with the onset of the internet and like a lot of things, the issue was never really addressed on how people should deal with this onslaught of information.

Suddenly, you could hear news about a new fancy restaurant in England, a bombing in Pakistan, a new disease in China and the latest UN resolution.

Whereas before you were happy just knowing that there was another One Day International Cricket match coming soon to the MCG and that Australia would triumph over South Africa again (my childhood coming through there).

With all this information, what do you actually do with it?

How do you interact with this information? Do you tell your friends about what you’ve learnt? Do you do something with it?

Or do you simply emotionally react to it, and then move on with your day, bringing it up only in a random conversation somewhere in the future?

Then there is the obvious question of, what is factual and what isn’t?

Add on top of that question, that few people seldom ask is …. are your facts outdated?

Your social media feed is packed with information. Much of it useless to your actual lives. You don’t need to know what Harry and Meghan are up to, the minutiae of COVID-19 viral genetic code or the plight of the film industry in a pandemic.

The cruel twist of it all, is that technically you chose to have these items populated on your feed, because this is the information you want to have. You plugged in your interests, you liked this post and you shared a video. Your friends like this and that, you felt compelled to comment on it.

Suddenly, what was once a calm, clean, slate becomes a personalised informative mess. It’s horrible. you are tugged this way and that on Facebook, desiring to see that little red 1 to boost your ego or worse give you more information about something.

What happens though, when you get the inverse of this problem? You get the older generation, whose ignorance is obvious and the sense of curiosity is sadly lacking. Not much of a compromise is it? You get grown men and women who can’t seem to grasp the present and keep up.

Blame cannot be put solely at their feet however, after all, their primary source of information were newspapers and television. The news.

Which, has rapidly found its relevance in today’s information-soaked world, diminished. In order to keep up with social media’s “clickbait style” they’ve turned political.

The guard that once guarded against biases and ideologies, turned into the very thing they sworn to defend against.

You get concepts that certain media is “left wing” and “right wing.” As a journalist student in university, the fact that these terms even entered the discussion when it came to news-reporting alarmed me. I didn’t even know what those wings meant.

Subconscious bias is something I have longed fought to control. I knew that my reporting had to be factual, which was amusingly aided by my science degree earlier. People didn’t really want to hear my opinions. They just wanted the evidence and be allowed to come to their own conclusions.

At its purest, that is what good journalism is, to me. Being able to distil a complex topic, normalise and make it understandable and report it without any spin.

But that doesn’t sell apparently. Even though there are thousands of people out there who want their news like that, and millions more recognise that, when they acknowledge what good journalism is.

Journalism should be scientific and evidence-based, just without the jargon that hold scientific writing down.

But how can you tell!?

The sad truth is, you can’t, not really anyway. There will always be this slight sense of skepticism to it all. Whatever you read in the news, you have to learn to filter out the bias and seek the facts. You have to be open to disagreeing with the news you read, and agreeing with it as well.

Not all of it are lies. Most, if not everything, has a kernel of truth.

You just have to seek it out. Unless of course you are searching for something that validates your world-view. Then please stop.

This leads to the crux of dealing with “information overload” and its sibling issue “disinformation.”

I wish it was taught in schools on how to interact with information. This is a crucial skill that so many people lack. I only learned how when I began to selectively filter and remove pages and people on my Facebook page and actively cut out a lot of fluff in my Youtube subscriptions.

On top of actively purging a lot of content out, I also have to be aware of my ego and bias constantly. Allowing your mind to reset and consider what is important and what is useless is an important exercise in allowing you to distil what is good information and what isn’t.

The sheer amount of information out there, has had people thinking COVID-19 is a hoax, finding flawed evidence for it and genuinely believing in it. Dangerous and ego-driven, this hearkens back to substance abuse, when you find yourself emotionally backed in a corner and unable find an outlet for all the stress you are experiencing.

Imagine if you’ve lost your job and support network. You are stuck at home, alone and stressed. Logging on, the closest comfort you’ll find is in a Facebook group that says that you lost everything because of a conspiracy theory, that directly targeted you.

This is of greater comfort, because it assuages your ego more, telling you directly that you are of importance, because you found the “truth” and that out of everyone who got hurt, you suffered more than everyone else.

Driven by fear and validation in this new-found “knowledge” and with a few algorithms’ help, suddenly your entire feed is inundated with this type of disinformation and your belief in it, is only stronger. Anyone who says otherwise is automatically wrong, because this is your mental defence kicking in. You were scared but now you are strong. You have purpose. Your mind cannot be torn down again.

This is in stark contrast to someone who, if taught properly about the consequences of their emotions and ego, would regularly jettison such vitriol and if they did buy into such disinformation, they would be more open to discussion about it, then automatically assuming everyone was wrong from the get-go.

Social media is just a tool. It has proven, alongside globalism, that if left unchecked and uneducated on its handling, it can bring about a lot of destructive qualities in us and really halt progress that is currently being made and advances that already benefit us.

Algorithms

Out of all the pretentious, revolutionary ad consumer unfriendly advances to come out of the tech sector, the worst one are algorithms that essentially predict us, as human beings.

Not only do I find it morally reprehensible, I also feel it is what has truly bred and garnered strength for a lot of these large movements, like incels, SJWs, etc.

With the power of social media, you can now have an Australian young male connect with a Russian male about how much they hate women and their shared experiences in rejection. But it is what the algorithm provides that makes it even worse, because the algorithm takes it a step further, and provides even more of a platform to supplant evidence in these misguided fools’ heads.

Recommendations should not come from a virtual program, but an actual person. Not only does an actual person have obvious validity, it also helps you from going down a rabbit hole you never wished you did.

It is always a bad thing to develop an echo chamber. Or at least, have one so strong that not even a single criticism can enter it.

There’s a genuine need to revitalise the sense of curiosity and breadth of interests and topics in people’s lives. You should never allow algorithms to dictate what is interesting, and close the app satisfied that you have seen all the content you want to see.

Curiosity should always drive you to explore more about topics you’ve never thought you would learn about. Say what you will about older generations and how they sourced information, but an old-fashioned newspaper, read end to end, has an incredible range of topics that could pique your interest and allow you to learn more.

Algorithms have us trapped in a cycle of narrow-minded focus. Once you’ve discovered all the content creators of a certain topic, you should start seeking another topic and devouring that avenue. A personal example for myself, are Youtube film analysts.

All the common ones, from Nando v Movies, Mauler, The Critical Drinker, Filmento, Captain Midnight, if they’ve made a video on Superhero films, I’ve probably seen it and rewatched them for entertainment value. This is what is good about the algorithm, allowing me to explore more and seeing who else has made videos about Batman v Superman, or The Last Jedi.

But I also became trapped in that cycle and never really got recommended anything else, until I found a new topic of interest. I would log onto Youtube, scroll endlessly for 5 minutes, before shutting it off and refreshing it, hoping something new would turn up. But I inevitably watched something I’ve already seen.

Recommendations should be a bit more outlier, a true breath of fresh air to keep your mind active and ticking.

Falling further down the rabbit hole, when all you wanted was to scratch the surface, is not a welcome feeling. It leaves you feeling listless, like there is nothing else out there for you to enjoy. How often do you genuinely scroll through Netflix, only to turn it off or rewatch something instead of actively trying out something new?

The death of curiosity, because of globalism, algorithms and information overload is a terrible fact for humanity.

Without curiosity, without new and diverse interests, you run the risk of becoming stale and stubborn. Reverting to nihilistic thinking and defensive mental behaviours.

This is why social media may not have created these crazy COVID-19 theories, but they definitely perpetuated them.

Curiosity and Communication … Conclusion

This is probably the longest ramble, because I’ve had a lot on my mind about this whole thing, and why we’ve come to this state. I will touch on the failure of our infrastructure both from a individual mental state and government’s set ups more in the next ramble, but for now this was me exploring why I think all these crazy theories appeared and the reason why they did.

At the heart of the social media issue, is the death of curiosity.

Globalism has made the world smaller, less interesting and more “terrible” when in reality, it has been this way for generations. But you don’t find yourself wanting to find out more. You already know what is going on in Europe in regards to its’ struggling finances. So you ignore it. I can’t be bothered to visit Greece right now, because its’ economy is in shambles you say to yourself.

But don’t you wish to visit and learn more about the Pantheon? Discover how the Greeks created and guided the development of philosophy and democracy?

You can’t dismiss an entire nation, because you’ve read some news about it, that was terrible. But we find ourselves doing just that because of the effects of globalism.

And no, wanting to travel is not a result of curiosity. True curiosity is exploring the unknown, the strange and the potentially dangerous. Wanting to visit a shrine where an Instagram model took a photo, isn’t curiosity, it’s a desire to be part of a trend.

It can inspire curiosity, but it isn’t the proper definition of the word. If you avoid all the tourist traps, then yes, the travel trip can be defined as such.

Algorithms stifles your curiosity and leads you down rabbit holes that can dangerously validate disinformation and justify extremist beliefs, that information overload can guide you to.

With curiosity in such short supply, is it really out of the realm of possibility that communication has become so terrible?

When you see the interaction on social media, it is undeniably toxic. Strangers can lambast and judge each other with impunity. Horrible comments can be viewed, whether they are honest or made to incense people, is unknown.

Even in our “messenger world” it takes a huge amount of skill and emotional restraint/clairvoyance to convey extremely complex emotions via a simple line of text and to not take things personally when our message is left on “read.”

(A topic I will discuss in infrastructure)

Communication without a voice, without a face, without proper context will always inevitably become terrible. Unless you are a savant when it comes to tone, or know the person receiving your messages extremely well, poor communication will only be exacerbated by a lack of curiosity.

It is so rare to see proper debate on the internet, because curiosity is so rare itself. To be curious, is to see the other point of view, and allow it to colour your own.

To be curious is to hear out the other side, allow them to defend themselves and be respectful.

COVID-19 has displayed to me, more than anything about all the crazy theories, and people, that we have a fundamental problem in how we communicate in the 21st Century.

People aren’t curious, the crazies out there don’t want to learn more about COVID-19. They are so wrapped up in their own ego, have such a detriment of curiosity in them, that they cannot see the disease as anything but an assault on their id.

That is what saddens me the most … knowing that the world is no longer properly curious about things anymore.

Without curiosity, how can there be progress?

~ Damocles

P.S. Thanks for somehow making it to the end of this ramble. It sits at 5452 words.

Event Management was one of the very first casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic and thus my livelihood also went the way of the Dodo. 

I had very strong plans for 2020. With my limited resources and experiences, I had made a significant investment into my new business, Tofu Events.

I pulled off one event.

Then Tofu Events turned into a dream that will only have a chance at getting resurrected 2 years from now.

Even that event was a bust. It was a Lunar New Year festival.

Incredibly untimely, given the news that was coming from China at the time, and the recent bushfire catastrophe in Australia.

The number of attendees was depressingly low, but organisation, work and overall vibe was great. It probably did the best out of the myriad of LNY events in Melbourne at that time.

But my dream of using that festival to springboard forward and promote my talents in event management was to remain just that … a dream.

It’s only been recently, I’ve considered how much has gone to waste. The countless hours I spent slaving away at my website, designing everything from scratch. The networking I did to get my name known. The money that I spent on equipment, and gear, now just sitting forlornly in my garage.

All of it, squandered.

I was meant to quit my retail job around this time, mid July. To fully commit myself to marketing my company and skills. I was eager to make my first 20K in a year to prove that my dream was possible, that it had potential. That I wasn’t a fool to start my own company and branch out alone in the cold, unforgiving world.

Instead, here I stand, at a desolate shopping centre, behind a laggy computer, typing my thoughts and feelings whilst Carpenter Brut‘s Trilogy album blasts angry synth in my ears.

The world really is as cold and unforgiving as they say. I didn’t stand a damn chance.

I don’t think I’ve ever really reflected on how much wasted potential was gone in a matter of weeks, because of this virus. It was almost robotic, how I treated the destruction of Tofu Events.

I noted it, bottled up my disappointment and threw it in the Sea of Forsaken, where countless other strange emotions reside.

Sure, I invested nearly 7000 dollars into it, but none of it was perishable, none of it was a significant loss and at the end of the day, there weren’t any major costs I couldn’t control, without my salary in my retail work.

I can still pay the insurance, the costs of managing a website, and my equipment doesn’t have an expiry date.

So I suppose I can’t really get furious, when I escaped relatively unscathed.

Thousands more people in Melbourne’s event sector were devastated by COVID-19, far worse than I ever was.

I was just the little shrimp that was trying to get into the ocean, but retreated back into a comfortable little creek.

I truly feel for all of them. At any event, festival, concert or whatever I attend, I am always appreciative of the work that goes in, because I’ve been there and done that.

I may criticise, and wonder at some decisions, but I will never truly lambast an organiser who I see is out and about, fixing all the small fires that occur during an event. This shit is difficult, it is stressful, it is taxing and it is underappreciated.

Event management and production is a hugely sacrificial job. You don’t have regular hours, you pour heart and soul into everything from decorations to marketing and at the end of the day, it’s not even up to you, whether things go right or wrong.

Events are inherently risky.

Weather can literally destroy months of work in an instant. Contractors can randomly hike up prices year by year. Volunteers can be unreliable and cause undue stress on the big day. People may never hear of your event and will not turn up.

But it’s rewarding, when everything comes together. The pay-off is always huge. Smiles from happy stall-holders keep you going. Laughter from cute couples on a date at your event, encourage you. The wonder on people’s faces at your hard work, will never fade away in your heart.

Now, in 2020 … it will take years for event businesses to recover. In a town like Melbourne, where events happen almost every weekend, there are thousands of people out of a job and completely clueless, unsure of what to do, uncertain of their future. What the hell did these underappreciated souls do, to deserve this, is beyond me.

No one ever thanks the sound technician for amazing audio. No one ever acknowledges the volunteer who guided people around a confusing festival layout. No one ever sees the army of organisers who put everything together, who fixed the program, who tweaked the store layout, who spent countless hours labouring away at an competition description ….

It’s the talent behind the facade that brings an event together.

I got away amazingly lucky if I am honest. I was only just starting. I wasn’t established. So the loss incurred wasn’t great.

Better to be shot in the arm, than the head I suppose.

Cynical approach, I’m aware.

It’s difficult not to be, in these times. Positivity is a well that is fast drying up.

Another dream that failed to materialise, was the F1 2020 Australian Grand Prix, easily my favourite event of any year.

The use of money, organisation, layout, professionalism and atmosphere, rank amongst the very best in the world.

Whilst the racing may not always be exciting, it is genuinely thrilling to see Supercars, GT Supercars, Ferraris, Porsches, and F1 cars push speeds that I can only dream of achieving.

There was even the added bonus, that I was going to be a flag bearer volunteer at the Opening ceremony, so I got a ticket for Sunday race day for free.

Of course, the way how they handled the cancellation was messy. But was that any surprise? COVID-19 was unprecedented. Nearly a whole year of finances and planning was implemented for Albert Park Grand Prix.

Calling it off must have been an agonising decision for the stakeholders and organisers. The fans were disappointed. The drivers confused. The whole thing seemed like an epic mess.

I can’t fault their indecision. I would have stumbled too in such a pressure cooker environment. But at the end of the day, I thought it was handled well.

It also provided a precedent to the rest of the world.

COVID-19 is serious shit. It just canned a global event, at the beginning of its hype train season. Watch out, these disruptions are only just beginning.

Sports got wiped out the next day, bringing all event planners to our knees.

Then the lockdowns came and put us out of our misery.

So, what is next for me?

I’ve been extremely lucky to have access to a job, that is also supplemented by Jobkeeper payments, which ironically has boosted my salary by a significant margin.

So I doubt I will quit this job anytime soon. It’s keeping me afloat, and allowing me to pay off debts and bills quite easily.

I will also probably start looking for another job soon. What it will be, is definitely unknown to me at the moment, because I had planned so much of this year around the idea that I would be running events.

I don’t want to be stuck in this retail job for the foreseeable future though. It fails to scratch the defining purpose I want in my life. But with a true scarcity of jobs for the next few years, I don’t think there will be many options.

So that leaves me with trying to kick-start a career as a writer, which would be genuinely intriguing and nice for me, or seek employment with a profession that the entire world seem to hate at the moment; the police force.

Reflecting on the future, I’m reminded of this maxim I learned when I was much younger and impressionable …

You’re never too young to die. 

Edgy stuff from a YA novel about a teenage spy; Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz. But there is a kernel of truth in that.

Just because there is an average lifespan, that you are aware of, doesn’t protect you from reaching that ripe old age.

There’s a humility involved in that maxim. Youth is not an invincible shield, nor is the lack of acknowledgement that something might befall you any time.

I think being aware of how short life is and how quickly things can change, lends a certain clarity to a lot of decisions in life. It allows you to see past yourself and take terrible news like a 2nd lockdown with more ease.

Too often, we buy into a myth that we will reach an ripe old age.

I like to think that my day to day decisions, from what I eat to what I spend my time on, are conscious decisions that help me avoid the emotion of regret. I allow the future to dictate what I do now, but not to the point where I can’t enjoy the present.

Which I suppose is why I decided that instead of wasting my time constantly watching Youtube at work, I would apply my writing skills and get better, even if I don’t have an editor to sharpen things up for me.

Writing on here, is probably one of the best actions I’ve taken this whole pandemic, beyond watching my diet and taking on the B-30 challenge. I’ve really felt like my writing can be improved, that I’m taking my hobby a bit more seriously and that it give me a sense of purpose, something to work on.

Probably the most damaging thing that COVID-19 has done, is taken away people’s work.

Without work, what purpose do we have?

What occupies our idle thoughts?

What keeps us sharp?

~ Damocles. 

 

 

 

Melbourne – St Collin Lane – one of my favourite shopping strips in the CBD. Probably a ghost town now. It was already quiet before, now it’s probably desolate.  

14/07/2020

I know, I know, the date is probably already listed somewhere in this post. But adding a date to something, reminds me of an diary entry. 

It lends a certain … intimacy to reading this. Like you are peering deep into the recesses of my mind and thinking what is truly going on behind my sleep-deprived brown eyes.

I wanted to write this, because it is a novel time to do so, and it is also a unique period we are going through. Plenty of people will remember this year as being one of the worst in their lifetime and how fitting it is, that it heralded the start of a new decade.

I want to delve deeper into a lot of things revolving around the COVID-19 pandemic, so I might make this a brief series, touching on topics that have come up because of this illness.

Of the top of my head, there are a myriad of issues that I would like to discuss, from conspiracy theories, to my own personal interaction with this disease.

It will probably come full circle to the launch of this blog itself, as without COVID-19, I would not be writing as much or listening to a lot more music.

Here are the list of topics that I would like to cover:

Fallen Dreams – How COVID-19 changed the future.

Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail – COVID-19 Expose on Infrastructure.

Fantasies of Flight – The Reality of Bugging Out during the COVID-19 Apocalpyse.

Fulfilment – COVID-19 Personal Habits.

Facsimile – The Birth of COVID-19 Crazies.

Fantasia – Damocles’ Journal in context of COVID-19

I will update this post and link them all to the posts as I write them up.

There are probably a thousand more things that you can discuss about this defining pandemic, but those are the ones that come to my mind. I will do my best to summarise my thoughts at the beginning before rambling aimlessly on and on.

I haven’t written anything personal in a while, so this will help me shake off the 2 week funk that I’ve been experiencing, and get me back into a groove where words come easy and music is at the helm of it all.

Please keep in mind of course, this is all my opinion and is not a way to attack or defend anything.  All these “articles” are merely a repository of thoughts and conclusions that I have come to throughout this whole thing.

It is amazing to me how much change has happened because of this pandemic, and I merely want to record my ruminations and feelings about it all.

What is definitely clear to me, is that COVID-19 has created an endlessly interesting pause button on humanity’s proceedings. I would not use the word “progress” because to me, it sounds overly optimistic and dangerously naive.

Hence the more apt word is “proceedings.” There is a high chance, I will definitely go on some type of “old man” style rant about how the world is fucked, but I won’t let it control the discussion I want to have about COVID-19.

Keep an eye on this space!

~ Damocles. 

Insurgency Sandstorm (2018) – One of the best gun-plays for a shooter ever designed (more on this in a future post). 

I want to talk about gameplay and why it is the most important thing for a game to get right. 

There are thousands of things a game has to get right, in order to be a polished product. Graphics, sound, foreground rendering, background textures, muzzle flashes, reload animations, AI mapping and movement, the list goes on and on.

So what makes gameplay so special? What even is gameplay?

Gameplay is about as subjective as humour. It all boils down to how you “feel” and “engage” with the game. It’s the cumulative whole experience you get when you play the game.

I like to define it as, “are you frustrated playing the game or are you smooth in the game?”

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) – That godly soundtrack hits me every time I play this level. 

Frustrated vs Smooth.

Everything else is secondary. You can have the most jaw-dropping graphics, but if your actions in-game are clunky and things aren’t reacting the way you want to, you’ll hit the refund button. You’ll start blaming the game for messy encounters. The gun doesn’t seem to hit the bad guys. The jump to a platform is inconsistent. The braking in a car seems 5 milliseconds off, causing you to crash into a wall.

The game is at fault.

However, if you find yourself performing smooth reloads, crisp transitions between enemies, and then get killed by a lucky RPG, then you are at fault.

That is what defines gameplay to me. Where you are to blame for your mistakes, not the game.

If you need good examples of excellent gameplay, look at Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019), Titanfall 2, Cuphead, Gran Turismo Sport, all of them titans in their field because of extremely solid gameplay, that is backed up by incredible graphics, sound mixing and excellent level design.

Call of Duty excels at making guns feel violent, explosive and addicting. Shooting a gun in Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019) is a stimulus to the reward part of your brain.

Titanfall 2 mastered movement as a concept, an incredibly difficult venture that not even Mirror’s Edge could completely nail, and it was designed around parkour. Titanfall conquered parkour, made it easy, made it fluid and added guns.

Cuphead allowed gamers to experience old-school run and gun arcade games, simple mechanics, made challenging by bosses and level design.

Grand Tursimo Sport, isn’t a simulator like Assetto Corsa, but it isn’t arcade-y like Need for Speed. It rides the line between the two, drawing in players from both realms and does so with class, elegance and reverence for motorsports. The driving is smooth, and engaging, really allowing you to feel the power of the car beneath you.

There are dozens more examples of good game-play across a myriad of genres. You would know, because those are the games you revisit the most.

Gran Turismo Sport (2017). As a casual racing fan, this hit the spot between simulator and arcade. Couple the racing experience with the ability to unlock cars in an organic way (and create some awesome wallpapers), truly elevates it above other fun racing games. 

How you interact with a game, is what allows you to revisit classics. You don’t mind the terrible graphics, the bizarre AI behaviour and the slightly outdated controls, because the gameplay experience is so fun.

On a personal note, as a child, I grew up on Battlefield games. My very first experience was Battlefield Vietnam. I loved it, not withstanding I come from a refugee background directly impacted by that War, but because the game was so vast, so completely free, an incredible sandbox to play in.

I discovered hidden alleyways tucked away in thick jungle, how to collapse logs to destroy tanks, sniper spots atop ancient cities and how awesome it was to see my younger brother fly in with a Huey and annihilate the enemy I marked with yellow smoke.

I didn’t mind that the M16 took nearly 3 seconds to reload, the bizarre aimbots that the enemy AI had, the way how if you shot the driver in a BTR, the turret gunner would spin around and shoot and never move the vehicle. These were minor quibbles in a game-play experience worth revisiting over and over again.

Battlefield Vietnam (2004) – The game is janky, lacks the polish of BF2 (the greatest) but it still holds up as a fun, silly, authentic Battlefield experience.

There is also a formula to good gameplay that I’ve noticed. Things should feel intuitive from a control perspective, but developed enough to make you test the game’s universe. An excellent example, is Assassin Creed II (2009) which expanded the controls in the first AC game, but didn’t rework the already intuitive controls.

The platforming in AC2 was surprisingly precise and how you controlled Ezio Auditore in combat and stealth felt incredible. Parkour was natural and believable, failed jumps more an issue of the player than the game logic. His arsenal was expansive, allowing players to really explore how they approached problems in the game.

Contrast that with later Assassin Creed games, where a lot of the platforming became oddly counter-intuitive and arsenals grew so large, that players ended up using a fraction of what was available, and you can see why AC2 is still regarded as the peak assassin experience.

Assassin Creed 2 (2009) – Collecting all the feathers in this game … irked me more than it should. Lucky Renaissance Italy is just gorgeous, and Ezio’s outfit isn’t bad either.

But what about when the game breaks? Does gameplay still reign king?

Of course this is where it gets a lot more subjective. You may be entirely turned off by bugs, lag, blue screens and a whole host more issues, but if there is something in there that keeps you rebooting the game, in spite of these issues, then I would say, yes, gameplay still rules supreme.

One such personal example for me, is the PC version of Earth Defence Force 4.1 – The Shadow of New Despair (2016). My version lags like crazy whenever there are too many bugs on-screen, and I’ve had a couple of crashes.

And then there’s the issue of missions being repetitive, the animations are wonky, the graphics are sub-par, the voice acting is atrocious and your mouse gets tired from clicking at everything on-screen so much ….

But the sheer gratuitousness of the game, the insanity of the gameplay and the ridiculousness of the situation keeps me rebooting that game for some giant bug killing action. The gameplay is just so good, I keep coming back for more.

Earth Defence Force 4.1 – Shadow of New Despair (2016 – PC) – is just about the most video game that ever video-gamed. 

In essence, what this article is all about, is an appreciation for the hard work that game developers put in, to make good games. Games that don’t make you work for it, to feel like a badass or a natural at something, because the game-play is intuitive to understand, easy to learn, and hard to master.

That, at its core, is what defines good gameplay. When you play something for the first time, and it feels smooth. This allows you to appreciate all the other elements of the game, like graphics, soundscapes, AI behaviour and map design, because at its’ core, the game is good.

Gameplay is the one thing that must be nailed correctly, because everything else will follow how much care you put into it.

~ Damocles 

Battlefield 1 (2016) – An example of gameplay being good, but not good enough to overcome its’ predecessors brilliance, like Battlefield 2 or 3. Sure it’s pretty, but the customisation leaves a lot to be desired and there is something about the gun-play that is oddly dissatisfying.