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Whose Fault Is This?

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Per the title, quite possibly the least meaningful question it is possible to ask about anything. We learn it early, we learn it from everything around us. We obsess over the answer, as if the answer had any significance whatsoever. Spoilers: it never does. In relationships, in business, in politics, in parenting, whether the event in question is good or bad, we ask this question constantly. We’re also really bad at answering it, or of doing anything useful with the answer once we have it. Perhaps we can definitively assign blame, then what? Are those to blame then exiled? Social pariahs? Sometimes. Sometimes we eliminate them in a variety of ways, removing them from “positions where they can continue to do damage”. Oftentimes we seek revenge for their wrongdoings, exacting vengeance in the name of justice as if any data anywhere suggested that was effective. What all of these things do is drive  a desire never to be caught, for even the tiniest mistake. Never be at fault, never be the one to blame. It is how small errors pile up until massive systems come crashing down. It is how those seeking to exploit the system find loopholes and get away with them. It is what makes it ever harder to answer the question “whose fault is this”, because we all know that it will be a Very Bad Time for whoever that person is. What do we gain by this? Do we correct the error by identifying its source? Can we even accurately identify the source, or is that, like many things, more complicated than a simple pointed finger? Does ferreting out those responsible change the past, or adequately ensure that errors won’t happen in the future? Not really. Instead we spin our wheels unproductively, generating acrimony and paranoia to no real end. We get very worked up over the pursuit of this unknown, as if knowing it is an end unto itself. My mother has a question that she poses whenever I or anyone else is getting worked up this way: “How would that be productive?” It’s a question that comes from a lifetime of clinical detachment, a need to separate conscious thought from emotion lest the latter overwhelm you. It can feel heartless; when I confide in her that I’m trying not to have an anxiety attack over my current stress level, she asks what having a panic attack would accomplish. Nothing, obviously, and to the wrong target that would be infuriating. For me it’s a redirection, a shift in focus and a hint at a better question. I get anxious when I ask the question “what is going to happen next?” — it’s not an answerable question and it’s possible to expend a lot of energy trying in vain to find an answer. It’s stressful to pursue unanswerable questions, but “How would that be productive?” hints at a better question: “What would be productive?” At an uncertain time, my mind works to find certainty, and I get anxious if I pursue questions that can’t be answered. Pursuing questions that CAN be answered, ones that add value and are productive, gives me something for my mind to work on and lowers my stress level. For me, it’s a stepped process. I might not be able to answer “What happens next?” and I might not be able to answer the better “What do I do next?” I’ll take that a step deeper, if I don’t know what I should do next, I’ll ask “What can I do next?” Sometimes this isn’t enough, and the next question becomes “How do I find out what I can do next?” If I can’t answer a question, I step down until I get to a question I can answer, then work my way back up. So, “Whose fault is this?” is really two questions. One is “How can we stop this bad thing from happening again?” and the other is “How do I stop feeling bad about this thing that has happened?” The unspoken thought process here is that finding the fault allows us to answer both at once, by “eliminating” the problem. Unfortunately, that’s not how problems are fixed, especially with people. At the very best, it brings up another question: “What do we do with this knowledge?” There’s a different question that I’ve come to prefer: “What do we do next?” It helps us move forward productively, and helps us focus our efforts in a way that bears fruit. It skips the assignation of blame because the followup step to finding fault is inevitably “okay, now what?” which is where we’re getting to anyway. It sacrifices vengeance for forward motion– we will go on and if you are not with us, you will be left behind. It outs your actual saboteurs while allowing those who have made honest mistakes to atone. It is not forgiveness, it is efficiency. Exacting punishment requires resources that would be better spent on forward motion. We are a social species; being left behind is often punishment enough, and exceptions tend to make themselves known. I spend a lot of time now trying to pursue only questions that have productive answers, and determining what those questions are. I want to ask actionable questions, I want to pursue trains of thought that have a tangible effect. It’s called in some circles a “bias for action”– a bias I’ll readily admit to.

Whose Fault Is This?

by

Per the title, quite possibly the least meaningful question it is possible to ask about anything. We learn it early, we learn it from everything around us. We obsess over the answer, as if the answer had any significance whatsoever. Spoilers: it never does. In relationships, in business, in politics, in parenting, whether the event in question is good or bad, we ask this question constantly.

We’re also really bad at answering it, or of doing anything useful with the answer once we have it. Perhaps we can definitively assign blame, then what? Are those to blame then exiled? Social pariahs? Sometimes. Sometimes we eliminate them in a variety of ways, removing them from “positions where they can continue to do damage”. Oftentimes we seek revenge for their wrongdoings, exacting vengeance in the name of justice as if any data anywhere suggested that was effective. What all of these things do is drive  a desire never to be caught, for even the tiniest mistake. Never be at fault, never be the one to blame. It is how small errors pile up until massive systems come crashing down. It is how those seeking to exploit the system find loopholes and get away with them. It is what makes it ever harder to answer the question “whose fault is this”, because we all know that it will be a Very Bad Time for whoever that person is.

What do we gain by this? Do we correct the error by identifying its source? Can we even accurately identify the source, or is that, like many things, more complicated than a simple pointed finger? Does ferreting out those responsible change the past, or adequately ensure that errors won’t happen in the future? Not really. Instead we spin our wheels unproductively, generating acrimony and paranoia to no real end. We get very worked up over the pursuit of this unknown, as if knowing it is an end unto itself.

My mother has a question that she poses whenever I or anyone else is getting worked up this way: “How would that be productive?” It’s a question that comes from a lifetime of clinical detachment, a need to separate conscious thought from emotion lest the latter overwhelm you. It can feel heartless; when I confide in her that I’m trying not to have an anxiety attack over my current stress level, she asks what having a panic attack would accomplish. Nothing, obviously, and to the wrong target that would be infuriating. For me it’s a redirection, a shift in focus and a hint at a better question. I get anxious when I ask the question “what is going to happen next?” — it’s not an answerable question and it’s possible to expend a lot of energy trying in vain to find an answer. It’s stressful to pursue unanswerable questions, but “How would that be productive?” hints at a better question: “What would be productive?” At an uncertain time, my mind works to find certainty, and I get anxious if I pursue questions that can’t be answered. Pursuing questions that CAN be answered, ones that add value and are productive, gives me something for my mind to work on and lowers my stress level.

For me, it’s a stepped process. I might not be able to answer “What happens next?” and I might not be able to answer the better “What do I do next?” I’ll take that a step deeper, if I don’t know what I should do next, I’ll ask “What can I do next?” Sometimes this isn’t enough, and the next question becomes “How do I find out what I can do next?” If I can’t answer a question, I step down until I get to a question I can answer, then work my way back up.

So, “Whose fault is this?” is really two questions. One is “How can we stop this bad thing from happening again?” and the other is “How do I stop feeling bad about this thing that has happened?” The unspoken thought process here is that finding the fault allows us to answer both at once, by “eliminating” the problem. Unfortunately, that’s not how problems are fixed, especially with people. At the very best, it brings up another question: “What do we do with this knowledge?”

There’s a different question that I’ve come to prefer: “What do we do next?” It helps us move forward productively, and helps us focus our efforts in a way that bears fruit. It skips the assignation of blame because the followup step to finding fault is inevitably “okay, now what?” which is where we’re getting to anyway. It sacrifices vengeance for forward motion– we will go on and if you are not with us, you will be left behind. It outs your actual saboteurs while allowing those who have made honest mistakes to atone. It is not forgiveness, it is efficiency. Exacting punishment requires resources that would be better spent on forward motion. We are a social species; being left behind is often punishment enough, and exceptions tend to make themselves known.

I spend a lot of time now trying to pursue only questions that have productive answers, and determining what those questions are. I want to ask actionable questions, I want to pursue trains of thought that have a tangible effect. It’s called in some circles a “bias for action”– a bias I’ll readily admit to.

Fragmented

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Fragmented

This topic is not necessarily going to be Destiny related, but I didn’t want it to be a huge wall of text without something pretty to look at.  This is a screenshot I took the other night while doing Iron Banner, and you are treated to a planetary screen when you travel between two areas on the same planet.  This for example is travelling from one crucible arena on Mercury to another one, something I had never seen before.  In any case, that is not what is important today, but instead a discussion that was had yesterday…  or at least as functional of a discussion as can be facilitated over twitter.  Twitter is a service that is great for drive by commentary, and less for actual deep discussion.  There were a handful of us bemoaning which social networks work well and which do not work so well for gaming circles.  Which started a thread where we talked about missing forums, which is to say that I don’t think any of us actually miss the forum construct.  Instead I think we miss the era in which forums were king.  In the time before Facebook, the only reliable means of keeping in touch with your gaming buddies were forums… and I had a string of them over the years.  For me they carried me through Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Horizons, City of Heroes… and things didn’t start to change significantly until well into World of Warcraft.  Sure we had email, or instant messenger…  in even in a few cases private IRC servers…  but gaming forums served as this cultural common ground for discussing what was going on in your game of choice or quite literally any off topic subject.  Hell it was on a gaming forum that I had my first friend come out to me, and forever changed my perspective on the gay rights movement.

The problem started when the social networks proper started springing up.  It became harder and harder to get anyone to log into that forum on a regular basis when they were already used to checking myspace or friendster, or eventually facebook and twitter.  During this era however it wasn’t just guild or personal forums that thrived, but also individual company run gaming forums.  I remember being deeply connected to the Argent Dawn forums in World of Warcraft, and there are so many people that I still count as great friends today that I met through them.  It gave me a window into the other side of the server, and the awesome Horde players that we had as well as the Alliance.  In fact this is probably the point where I started championing the cause of tearing down the faction wall because I wanted to play with all of my friends at the same time.  During late Wrath of the Lich King and early Cataclysm, Blizzard made a number of significant policy changes… or more so began to crack down on some truly silly things on the forums.  It is probably not in small part that this also represents the time in which I began to detach from the game because these forums gave us all a common ground to discuss issues at a server level, rather than just focused entirely on our own internal guild politics.  Without the forums as a anchor the game felt so much less important and more inexplicably empty.  For a period of time I even ran an unofficial server forum, but the madness of trying to monitor and moderate that became an insane struggle when the damage had already been done.

Over the years it became progressively harder to get players interested in checking the forum, so that after Elder Scrolls Online I simply gave up on trying to make them work.  Now there are simply too many locations available to try and sort out where we should check for information.  Each group of friends tends to favor a different platform, which means I simply do a bad job of keeping track of any of them.  The fragmentation of gaming communities has reached a critical mass, and each individual site hopes to be this island in itself.  What I need instead is some service that freely glues all of the information together and lets me view it in the portal of my choice.  Right now I am actively trying to keep tabs on the following…

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google Plus
  • Band
  • Over Half Dozen Slacks
  • Over Two Dozen Discords
  • Anook
  • Player.me
  • Steam
  • Reddit
  • Imzy
  • A Few Actual Forums

Then there are also services that I don’t actively use… but still have accounts on like Ello and Raptr that I never really found a good use for.  Then there are even stranger more diffuse communities on YouTube and Twitch that I still on occasion dip a toe into.  Basically just like the MMO gaming world has fragmented from a time when there were essentially two to three active games at a time…  the community itself has exploded into a million tiny niches.  I guess I simply miss the era when it felt like we were all looking at the same things, and reading the same commentary.  Forums served this key role in the development of me as a blogger, and I feel like most of us started our careers as “wall of text” posters somewhere out there.  I was known for extremely long winded discussions where I essentially worked out my own thoughts in text form much like I do on a daily basis here.  The end result of yesterdays discussion was to plant another flag in the ground, and create another place to have discussion.  I don’t mean it to sound like that is a bad thing, I just hope that it is something I can remember to check in on because there are so many other places to be checking in on as well.  I am not even going to go into the madness of the blogs I read or the fact that I am trying to keep tabs on around three dozen reddits.  I am old… and this is just a post of me saying that I miss things being simpler.

Intermission

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I have been sitting here at my desk trying to figure out how to muster the strength to make a blog post.  When I write I do so from a generally good place, and try and harness hope and a sense of wonder about the things that matter to me.  This morning I just can’t do that.  I cannot seem to fake my way into thinking that everything is okay.  Everything is not okay.  My heart is broken after last night, and I just can’t have any joy to pour into this today.  I am not going to go on at length about this, because I generally try and keep my actual blog a relatively politics and religion free zone.  Suffice to say I do not live in the country that I imagined I did.  I apologize to my readers for falling down on the job, but you really don’t want me trying to write in this current mindset.  I am hoping beyond hope that I find a silver lining in this, because right now the future seems extremely bleak.  I used to comfort myself with the belief that sanity would prevail, but I just don’t have that luxury anymore.