22 Nov 2021 - Graham
previously: fetch the bolt cutters
Cadmus : Shall we alone of all the city dance in Bacchus’ honor?
Teiresias : Yea, for we alone are wise, the rest are mad.
Hi from Florida! Anchorage is around 0F right now, and Kate D is still trying to tell me it’s cold here.
Thanks to the many of you who have shared about your experience with video games! I want to do your thoughts justice, so next issue will be entirely your words.
For more than a decade, I remained video game sober. In that time, I went to fun parties and earned good grades. I finally stopped chewing my nails. I read daily, learned to cook, practiced yoga, and biked everywhere.
Yet for all my good habits, I still had bad days. Days wallowing in bed and misery. Surprisingly, these dark days seemed to follow my brightest days.
I began to wonder: Did the good days cause the bad ones? Was I overstretching my self-control? Were my habits, perhaps, too perfect?
In 405 BCE, the playwright Euripides warned of the risks of self-control. In the Bacchae, Pentheus, the king of Thebes, arrogantly denies the divinity of his cousin Dionysus (aka Bacchus). Dionysus, as you may know, is the god of grapes and grape-by-products. So when King Pentheus forbids Thebes from worshiping Dionysus, he effectively forbids the worship of wine and fertility and pleasure.
But the Thebians cannot long deny their Bacchanalian aspect. Unable to worship openly, they flee to the woods to party wildly with Dionysus and his wolves. The wolves party hard. What starts with drink and dance ends in an orgy of cannibalism.
Even knowing the cost, more and more citizens give in to temptation. The city dwindles as the wolves multiply. Even King Pentheus wants to see what all the fuss is about. He’s tempted out and when they find him, the wolves tear him limb from limb.
The lesson: we cannot deny pleasure. Repressed pleasure will find a secret, wild way. We must honor pleasure within ritual. Ritual gives pleasure a safe, social container.
Mint needs a pot or it will overrun the bed, and so must Dionysus have his temple.
When lockdown disprupted my rituals of joy, I found myself in a similar (if self-imposed) position to the Thebians. As they must have, I asked myself with increasing urgency: Why not? Didn’t I deserve a little escape? Shouldn’t I allow myself a little fun?
So I bought a new computer. I needed one for work anyways, or so I told myself. For the next three days, I checked the shipping tracker hourly. On the day of arrival, I lodged myself in a chair by the front window pretending to read a book. Noticing my stress, I ventured out for a walk. A mere two blocks away, a brown shipping truck passed me and I self-consciously scurried back to my perch where I waited for hours more.
Aneliese arrived just before the box. As I opened it, she looked on with skepticism and amusement. The glowing PREDATOR logo and brightly colored keyboard made it clear to us both: this was no work computer. The only feature I really needed for work, the webcam, was of poorer quality than my old laptop.
As I set it up, I surrounded the PREDATOR with houseplants. This was more weak self-deception. See, I was telling myself, I was still a whole person who could care for not only himself but also other living beings. Within a few months, most of the plants had died.
My yoga practice didn’t slowly wither like the plants; it immediately evaporated. Practicing by video conference hadn’t been the same. My studio had been a community. There, I felt accountable to my teachers and challenged by my peers. Without that social context, yoga simply couldn’t compete with video games.
In yoga’s place, Warzone became my practice. It was a surprisingly close replacement. Both satisfied my need for challenge and growth. And both are absorbing. Warzone, like yoga, demands focus and calm. Success in the game requires constant attention and cool strategy under pressure.
But while yoga brought calm awareness to the rest of my life, Warzone did the opposite. After playing, I tended to be jittery and fuzzy, probably feeling the lingering effects of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. And I tended to be a bit dazed by the lack of stimulation in real life. After playing, reality underwhelmed.
Too exhausted to play, too wired to sleep, I often turned to the streamers for comfort. Now you might think that watching other people play video games sounds like it would bore you right to sleep, but in fact, it often kept me up.
Watching the streamers allowed me to vicariously consume all the game’s little dopamine hits. Thanks to their skill as players and entertainers, I’d find myself up at 3 AM glued to the screen, nails chewed, heart racing, rooting for them to win. Watching was almost as addicting as playing.
I had hoped that it would be different this time. I thought my stronger habits and relationships would protect me. Instead, the game cannibalized them. Yoga, gardening, biking, cooking, even my loves Jubilee and Aneliese, I sacrificed everything to the game.
Jay-Z’s best album, his set at MTV Unplugged backed by the Roots, is finally available on Spotify.
Last week’s Sidetracked (in somewhat abridged form because I forgot to start recording) is available here. There’s no live broadcast this week.
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