An Especially Asinine Form Of Antisemitism

Every form of racism or discrimination based on lineage is irrational because it does not logically follow from race or familial descent that someone has or lacks any intellectual, moral, or personality traits.  With every form of such discrimination, there are errors and assumptions that almost always reduce down to stereotypes.  Jews can face stereotypes and other assumed errors like anyone else, ranging from the idea that they secretly manipulate the wealth of the world for selfish ends to the idea that Jews are morally culpable for the death of Jesus, a Jew.  Antisemitism, or discrimination against Jewish people (the word implies reference to all Semitic people, yet is reserved for the Jews), can take numerous forms, yet one of the most asinine is that springing from the notion that the Jews killed Jesus or that they are responsible for his death either way.

Some Jewish individuals were involved in the plot to have Jesus killed, but the Romans killed him, and it is the renowned Roman form of crucifixion which violates Yahweh's justice that killed him.  For the handful of Jews who did participate in the general process of slandering Jesus and demanding that he be killed, they betrayed almost every obligation of justice Yahweh demands of people.  They were so driven by malice that they wanted an innocent person to die (Matthew 26:59-63; see Leviticus 19:11 and Deuteronomy 19:15-19), and much more importantly, they did not care if the means of death was one of the absolute most dehumanizing, cruel processes ever to be inflicted on humans across recorded history, if not the most dehumanizing and cruel (something condemned in much less severe punishments, as in Deuteronomy 25:1-3).

Yahweh's laws, which many Jews of Christ's days only selectively followed, forbid such punishments as crucifixion for their inherent injustice on the Biblical worldview, even down to the irrationality of reserving crucifixion for foreigners or non-citizens (Leviticus 24:22), though the most egregious injustice is the universal injustice of the physical and psychological brutality of this execution method.  The Jews who wanted this to be done to anyone deserve damnation along with the Romans who carried it out on Jesus and others, but even then, this would only pertain to certain Jews of the time, and it has nothing to do with the worldview or deeds of Jews millennia later.  Like everyone else, modern Jews and those of other historical periods between the time of Christ and the present day could only deserve anger or punishment based on their own standing, not the standing of someone else of the same general ancestry.

There is no moral responsibility on the part of other Jews even in the days of Jesus for those who did not participate in schemes to have him crucified--or anyone else; though the logically necessary falsity of this antisemitism is knowable in full apart from specific examples, it is as erroneous as thinking all Germans, including those alive today, are guilty of the offenses of 1930-1940s Nazis or that white people born after American slavery are responsible for something that had nothing to do with them.  The sins of the Romans are not the sins of the Jews, and the sins of a handful of Jews from the first century AD are not the errors of other Jews of the era or of contemporary times.  Even for the Romans, members of what was likely the worst recorded society by far (the Nazis were tame by comparison in some ways), it was not another Roman's beliefs or deeds that determined their intellectual and moral standing.  It was their own.

Game Review--Ratchet & Clank Collection (PS Vita)

"Robotic citizens of the Solana Galaxy, the hour of your liberation is at hand!  Long have we robots suffered under the bigotry, the stupidity, the squishiness and foul stench of organic life forms.  Soon, all robots will bask in the liberty and equality of my benevolent, iron-fisted rule."

--Dr. Nefarious, Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal

More than 20 years ago, the first Ratchet & Clank game came to the PlayStation 2, the next two years each seeing one sequel for the same system reach the public.  The series has since had a reboot starting with a remake of the original game in addition to entries made for the PSP and PS3.  The core PS2 trilogy was eventually brought to the PS3 and PS Vita with an HD collection that marks the only time the franchise ever appeared on the Vita.  This collection has a vast amount of content, and it fits well alongside the other HD collections of PS2 games on the Vita like that of the first two God of War games.  The limitations of the Ratchet & Clank PS2 trilogy will just be more apparent by comparison to contemporary games since they are fairly old by this point.

Production Values

The jagged, sometimes blurry graphics of this trilogy are distinctly outdated, but that does not lessen the quality of the game in light of its era and platform.  This is an HD version of a PS2 series transplanted onto the PS Vita, a handheld console from 2012.  To expect PS4 or PS5 level graphics would be to ignore the differences in the age and power of the systems.  What Ratchet & Clank Collection does accomplish is preserving the presentation of three PlayStation 2 classics and moving them to a portable system where they are more accessible to people who cannot play them on their original system.  The sound, including the voice acting and the noises of each iconic firearm of the trilogy, has indeed aged better than the graphics, as longtime gamers might expect, and now each of the three games has its own set of trophies on the Vita to distinguish then from the PS2 versions beyond just the portability and control changes (such as to account for the rear touchpad of the Vita).

Gameplay

The gameplay of the trilogy has its renowned weapons and mild platforming all intact here, but it needs to be clarified that the controls are the greatest enemy of this collection.  The rear touchpad of the Vita must be held down to strafe, but the strafing either does not always activate or will disengage randomly in one of the worst Vita-specific controls I have ever encountered.  Since there is no lock-on button and the strafing controls are absolute shit, in the first two games, one will have to dodge by making unnatural movements to the left and right while trying to take a few shots at the same time, whereas in the third game, there is an option for a strafe-locked third-person camera and a first-person camera that lets you walk around--in Ratchet & Clank and Ratchet & Clank 2, you must stand in place to use the first-person camera, although you can fire weapons while doing so.

This somewhat major issue of controls aside, the core gameplay of Ratchet & Clank and its two PS2 sequels have very similar but solid gameplay with evolutions of certain aspects introduced in each consecutive game--and there are even ways to bring all purchased/unlocked guns from the first game into the second and from the first two games into the third, although this is a one-time mechanic, so having purchased as many as possible beforehand is ideal.  The weapons range across the trilogy from a glove that releases grenades to a shotgun-like energy weapon to a plasma whip to a suction device that turns small enemies into projectiles.  In Ratchet & Clank 2, weapons can be upgraded one tier by killing enough enemies with them, and Ratchet's maximum health increases for killing enough enemies with any weapon, up until a fixed total amount, of course. In Ratchet & Clank 3, weapons can be upgraded by use past a single tier, and Ratchet can earn up to a capacity of 200 health points by leveling up enough.

There is also mild platforming, optional arena-based battles, secret bolt collectibles, and the occasional race required by the story to progress.  These races can be the hardest parts of the game until you adjust to them after at least a few rounds of practice.  Adjusting to them is partly a matter of developing skill as needed and partly overcoming the trait of the fellow racers where they go faster than you by default, an idiotic choice on the part of the game designers, as even hitting every boost pad and ring barely keeps you ahead of their natural speed in the first game.  As daunting as they might seem, even the parts of the trilogy like this can be finished, albeit after lots of practice for some people.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

The first game opens as Clank is produced by a factory that fails to make him meet the standard specifications--he is very small and much less imposing, and he escapes the factory to crash land on Ratchet's planet of residence.  Chairman Drek of the corporation Clank fled wants to build a new planet for his species using parts of other planets, without regard for how this will impact other beings.  Clank hopes to find an alleged hero called Captain Quark to save the solar system.  After eventually defeating Chairman Drek, Ratchet is tasked with recovering a stolen bioweapon because of his celebrity status in the second game, and after the adventures of the previous two games in the trilogy, Ratchet and Clank return to Ratchet's homeworld in the third installment to repel an invasion of machines led by Dr. Nefarious, a seemingly sentient robot that wants to exterminate organic life to usher in social equality for machines

Intellectual Content

Ratchet & Clank and its two numbered sequels are far from philosophically deep games while having story elements related to corporatism or the nature of artificial intelligence.  There is still a great amount of skill and sometimes forethought necessary to intentionally complete certain parts, and there is also the optional collectibles that can require far more environmental analysis than much of the main objectives.  Since entertainment can succeed in other ways even if it forfeits the higher greatness of abstract themes or profound characterization, this does not make any of these three Ratchet & Clank games bad, just lesser than plenty of other games in key ways.

Conclusion

These main Ratchet & Clank games before the reboot series started in 2016 certainly lack the thematic complexity or philosophical weight of something like Sony's other series God of War, but they are still competent in other aspects like their variety of weapons and in their demonstration of how a series can steadily improve on the mechanics of prior games with each release.  That some of the same control flaws persist well into this collection of games could make for a very frustrating experience for people who do not want to randomly jump back and forth while attempting to shoot enemies.  All the same, players seeking nostalgia, curious about the kinds of games that Sony once published for the PS2, or looking for plenty of content in a single Vita release, Ratchet & Clank Collection gets enough right to deserve at least some attention.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  There is little to no blood despite the frequent fights with enemies.

The Sea Sponge

The only reported multicellular creature with not only no brain (like a jellyfish or starfish), but also with no neurons at all distributed throughout the tubular body, sea sponges rely on inflow of water to receive nutrients as it stands rooted in place.  Still, it is said to react to stimuli like light (visual) or touch (tactile), such as by contracting at the point of impact.  Found in the epipelagic zone all the way down to the distant trenches of the hadalpelagic zone, this organism is even more unlike humans when it comes to neuroscience than other ocean animals like the aforementioned sea star.  It is thus far a unique peculiarity among catalogued organisms.

A whale has a brain, like a dolphin and a shark have a brain.  A jellyfish has no brain but still has neurons diffused throughout its body.  A starfish as a nerve ring around its mouth with a protruding radial nerve for each arm.  Sea sponges possess none of these things.  Moreover, they lack all organs, such as those for digestion or respiration, not just those participating in neurological activity.  Even coral is supposed to have more of a nervous system than none at all despite its own absence of a brain!  According to professionally popular contemporary scientific stances, it is not as if a nervous system seems to be necessary whatsoever to have mental experience, at a minimum not in all animals.

You can of course never see a consciousness by looking at a body, including the brain or extended nervous system of an applicable organism, with only the outward behaviors making it genuinely appear as if something is conscious.  Science is thus irrelevant to the core metaphysics of consciousness in this sense, for any mind is an immaterial, invisible thing no matter its integration with a body.  One's own consciousness is directly experienced.  That of other biological things can only have the epistemological appearance of existence.  All sorts of creatures still act is if they really do have some degree of perception of the kind I as a being relate to.

In the sea sponge, once again, there is something with a physical body that still acts as if it is conscious, yet there is not a trace of a nervous system.  Is it conscious?  It is impossible for a non-telepathic, non-omniscient observer to know.  It certainly would seem that the sea sponge has some sort of mind, though.  The same epistemological limitation that prevents one from knowing if plants or AI or other people are conscious is there.  As far as sensory observation suggests, the sea sponge probably does have a mind, whatever its actual experiences would actually be like.

Like so many other animals, examples being roaches with a ganglion in both the head and another in the abdomen and octopi with their focused clusters of neurons (like miniature brains) for each arm, sea sponges do not share the human style of nervous system.  If they truly do have minds, then having a consciousness without a specific kind of correlative nervous system is not only logically possible (it does not contradict any necessary truths like axioms and thus at least could have been true), but it is also already the case among some members of the animal kingdom.  There is already absolutely no logical necessity in a mind having or not having a corresponding material brain or other neurons.  With the phenomena we can observe, there seems to also be no contingent, happenstance scientific necessity with this in the particular laws of physics that apply on Earth.

Subjective Persuasion

Anyone who is persuaded by less than absolute logical certainty, only provided by logically necessary truths grasped without assumptions, and anyone who is not persuaded by logical proof are among the chief problems of the world, right next to people who would not care about necessary truths even if they knew of them.  Every single individual who does not intentionally, consistently forsake assumptions in favor of reason itself is a slave to stupidity to one extent or another.  Without exception, such a person believes that their perceptions and desires mean reality must be what they wish it to be or at least how it seems to be.  They are otherwise apathetic towards truth for the most part, knowing that they are delusional yet clinging to their asinine worldviews anyway.

They believe in whatever happens to appeal to them or appear convincing in the moment.  If they ever begin to suspect that there is or could be a difference between their perceptions and the reality beyond them, they are quick to disregard, ignore, or trivialize this doubt.  Of course, it is impossible to ever truly understand the inherent truth of logical axioms or their whole metaphysical and epistemological nature by focusing on mere sensory perceptions, emotions, hearsay, and preferences.  Since logical axioms are the only things that in themselves cannot be false or cannot have been any other way, these irrationalists are preventing themselves from knowing the heart of all things.  This kind of person will never know the true nature of reality--that it is entirely governed by the laws of logic and that nothing can be known apart from them, even when there are things besides logic in existence (their own mind, the external world, and so on).

Sheer force of emotion, societal pressures, preference, and terror at the thought of being stupid and wrong motivates them to hold to whatever contradictions (impossibilities) and assumptions (unproven or unprovable concepts) they find intoxicating or persuasive.  Which things they subjectively perceive to be persuasive, for persuasion on its own is nothing but subjective, will almost certainly change from one point in their life to another, yet they will always believe that their irrationalistic beliefs are valid or at least not abandon them upon realizing they were only assumptions.  There is nothing about their worldview that aligns with reality except by accident, and even then they cannot truly know where the overlap is present because they are enslaved by assumptions and unexamined ideas.

Subjective persuasion is meaningless and inherently arbitrary, having only to do with whatever randomly satisfies someone personally rather than what is both true by necessity and logically demonstrable.  Being convinced and being rationalistic are not at all the same thing!  A rationalist, however, is persuaded metaphysically by logical truths because they cannot have been any other way.  A rationalist is persuaded epistemologically by logical truths because a necessary truth, a truth that in itself cannot be illusory or that cannot be anything other than true, is absolutely certain.  That which cannot be false or misperceived other than intentionally is not uncertain, no matter how abstract it is or how strange it might seem.  Persuasion by logical truths is to tether one's beliefs to objective reality, while subjective persuasion is universally invalid.

Forgiving Like Yahweh

On an ultimate eschatological, soteriological level, God does not forgive everyone.  Though this mercy is accessible to all and God wishes it for all (2 Peter 3:8-9, 1 Timothy 2:3-6), preferring the repentance of the wicked to their demise (Ezekiel 18:23, 33:11), it is not only not the case that everyone necessarily turns to God, as universalist salvation would entail, but it is also the case that the Bible says most people will not (Matthew 7:13-14).  They will perish by being killed in hell (2 Peter 2:6, Matthew 10:28) because of their own unwillingness to choose truth.  Divine forgiveness is not forced upon people or withheld for only the "elect," contrary to what Calvinism entails.  It is whoever wishes to repent who obtains salvation (Revelation 22:17).

Many seem to forget or selectively ignore this when they demand or strongly push other people to forgive.  As a mercy, forgiveness is supererogatory left to itself, as since mercy can never be deserved (it is not treating sinners as they punitively deserve), it cannot be owed to anyone.  There are still multiple calls to forgive throughout the Bible, with a very crucial condition.  For instance, see Ephesians 4:32, where Paul says to forgive people as in Christ God forgave us.  The kind of forgiveness Paul is encouraging is not universal, the default, or immediate.  He says to forgive each other as God forgives us--and God does not forgive preemptively or do this to everyone because of obstacles on their own end.

Someone who has erred must repent and wish to be restored to him to receive that soteriological restoration.  They will die in hell without this and never be resurrected again to have the opportunity to seek repentance.  As already addressed, forgiveness is not extended from God to human individuals apart from willingness, or else everyone would be saved because it is God's hope that this would come about for every person.  God's nature is what grounds the existence of morality, so if this is how God forgives, then it is the forgiveness that we would be to imitate.  This is also emphasized in Colossians 3:13 and in passages like the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:21-35), where the king does not release someone from debt owed to him except when asked.

There is no such thing as a Biblical obligation to forgive people one or all unless they request it.  Otherwise, they are not repentant, and mercy is undeserved anyway, or else justice could not be righteous and mandatory, for mercy is suspending justice in a situation on the level of permitting someone to forgo merited punishment.  Justice is by nature how someone deserves to be treated, so there is no such thing as forgiveness or any other sort of mercy being the real obligation over this.  The latter is not required by God and yet he opts to forgive the repentant anyway.  With broader mercy as well as forgiveness in particular, we are to express it in the way that God does (Luke 6:36).  This necessitates that repentance precede showing forgiveness to others unless one wants to gratuitously go further than this.

A Life Of Labor

The only way to fully avoid work in this life is to be dead.  To eat, drink, or prepare food, one must expend some degree of effort, no matter how small.  To exercise or engage in hobbies, one must put forth some amount of mental or physical effort, with these being types of work although they are quite different from the more specific kind of professional work the word is often reserved for.  Work and utter inactivity are more genuine opposites than workplace labor and the pursuit of activities in free time are.  Some people who long to be free of the workplace or especially from workplace exploitation might not have yet realized the different kinds of work are not all professional, and there is no way to truly escape some of them without allowing oneself to perish.

Collecting food, hunting, cooking, setting up and maintaining shelter, migrating, or defending oneself are all forms of work, but they are kinds of labor that do not require participation in a society structured to make people's lives, at least on a scheduling level, often revolve around professional work.  Someone who is against work itself on a moral level is an irrationalist; he or she is lazy, selfish, and generally stupid enough to think that their personal preferences dictate logical truths and moral obligations.  Even if professional work was evil, it is not as if work itself would be removed from human life altogether by abolishing the social construct of employment.

Whoever thinks that a life without bondage to the workplace--and in American culture and others like it, the workplace is indeed often oppressive--would be a life without any troubles or effort is a fool.  In fact, some people would have to work harder or longer just to survive without a civilization than they would under the horrors of the American workplace.  This does not mean it is not irrationalistic for a society to be set up so that the majority of its members' (or most of its members') lives must be spent primarily on laboring for a likely exploitative organization.  A person can certainly be mentally fixated on deeper things like reason, God, or friendship even as they exert immense psychological or physical effort in professional work, but their outward life is in many ways consumed by the social construct of the workplace.

Work itself is not the issue inside or outside the context of societies.  As long as humans need food, water, and physical safety, there are activities that they will need to do in order to secure these things as individuals or as groups.  Even if all societies and thus all workplaces vanished from the planet, the need to work in order to achieve these goals would not disappear as well.  Human life is such that work is inevitable unless someone is content to suffer and die without resistance, or to pay someone else to complete their tasks, to rely on their benevolence, or to force them to be their caretakers.  Labor might be objectively intrusive into one's life or subjectively unwanted, but it is a pragmatic cost that must be paid in order to survive.  There are also luxuries that working professionally for compensation allows for which are unobtainable by just living off of nature.

Workplace oppression is contrary to truth and justice rather than work itself.  That laboring outside of the professional workplace for survival, comfort, pleasure, or for the sake of a pastime is undesired by some does not make workplaces either benevolent or cruel by default.  Professional or not, the kind of work and the extent to which it occupies people's time are the major factors that would determine whether it is morally legitimate. There is no valid philosophical objection, not one that can be proven in light of human epistemological limitations, to work itself in all of its possible manifestations; only assumptions, contradictions, or emotionalism would have certain people believe otherwise.  Similarly, that work is on some level almost completely unavoidable does not make it the central part of reality as a whole or human existence in particular.

The Celebration Of Holidays

There are a great many reasons why someone might celebrate holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as multiple reasons why people might oppose these holidays--and many of them are erroneous.  Objections are less commonly voiced, but they could include the idea that, say, celebrating Christmas is immoral because of its extreme consumeristic associations, but this would be to oppose a thing based on how it is approached by a society of tradition and emotion-driven irrationalists instead of for its own core nature.  Inversely, the more culturally visible ideology here is that holidays matter because they are longstanding customs or because they make some people emotionally excited.

Though tradition is an idiotic reason to do anything (unless the tradition is not irrational or immoral and one recognizes this, participating without believing in fallacies on the subject), even the motivations behind this kind of celebration are often incomplete or asinine.  Some people might use Thanksgiving to celebrate things that, if they are deserving of gratitude, would be worthy of it on each day of the year, yet they make little to no effort to embrace gratitude year-round.  Some people might celebrate Thanksgiving out of a genuinely emotionalistic love of family member, no matter how irrationalistic or morally pathetic they are.  Some people might participate in Thanksgiving gatherings and meals for no reason other than because it is a tradition, and I do not mean that someone recognizes it as an arbitrary holiday, refuses to make any assumptions about it, and happens to subjectively enjoy the holiday without any sort of philosophical idiocy involved.

There is nothing in the Bible that directly addresses anything about the date of the birth of Jesus within any calendar system, and it is very unlikely that December 25th out of all 365 days in the Gregorian calendar is the right day of the year.  Celebrating Christmas is idiotic when it is motivated by the unverifiable belief (not that anything more than possibility can be known about historical events like a birth), just as it is idiotic when it is motivated by secular consumerism or emotionalistic love of tradition.  If a person does not make assumptions but wants to celebrate something like family or the advent of Jesus in a rationalistic manner, then of course there is no issue with the mere celebration of Christmas.

There is certainly nothing inherently special or morally significant about gathering with family, especially to only have superficial, artificially positive conversations with them, whatever the cultural norm for a given holiday usually entails.  Anyone who does this emotionalistically is a fool, but that does not mean there is no way to celebrate holidays and even navigate asinine or random traditions (all traditions, as opposed to logical truths, are random) without betraying reason.  A rationalist can even celebrate holidays because of emotional investment without slipping into emotionalism, for the beliefs and intentions behind the simple participation in holiday festivities make all the difference here.

Movie Review--Violent Night

"This whole planet runs on greed."

--Santa Claus, Violent Night

Violent Night puts David Harbour in another action comedy with a horror bent not unlike his Hellboy, which was a much better film than its financial and critical reaction would have suggested.  This Christmas action comedy comes from the director of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, and thankfully Violent Night is in every way a better movie.  The comedy and tone are not unnatural or gratuitous this time, there is plenty of rather personal characterization for key cast members, and there is even a recurring focus on how Christmas has become so heavily associated with materialism (not the invalid metaphysical philosophy, but the irrationalistic, amoral emphasis on material possessions).  This latter part is tackled in far more than occasional dialogue; it is a foundational aspect of the general film.

Production Values

Standing more on its core characters than on special effects, Violent Night still has its moments of great camera work or effects--of which blood is one of the most common.  An early shot that continuously tracks character after character is at least more prolonged than usual, and the camera has some great angles to witness the carnage from as the brutality ramps up.  The mixture of comedy, violence, and focus on selfishness is even better than even the bursts of great cinematography.  David Harbour is excellent as a disgruntled, complicated Santa Claus deliberating on whether he will even perform his Christmas roles next year who reveals enough about his past to somewhat touch upon his own moral failings and relationship troubles.  Novel additions to this version's backstory for Santa very much work on its favor.  Leah Brady also contributes often as a young girl named Trudy who convinces Santa to help her family as they are being held at gunpoint and threatened with torture, eventually getting the chance to have Santa open up about himself.  Her parents are played well by Alexis Louder and Alex Hassel though Leah is the more central character.  Delivering the humor and torment of his character splendidly, John Leguizamo plays the leader of the villains and has one of the strongest presences after Harbour and Brady.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

On Christmas Eve, Santa Claus prepares to deliver gifts, but first he complains about increasingly rampant greed, selfishness, and ungratefulness of children around the world.  The next day, the adult children of the wealthy Lightstone family gather for Christmas, but some of their hired helpers take the family hostage.  Santa is in a vibrating chair upstairs when gunfire erupts, having sat down to enjoy cookies and alcohol.  The leader of the robbers, it turns out, wants to rob the Lightstones of 300 million dollars given by the American government to distribute in the Middle East, which were secreted away in a personal vault.  Santa ends up staying at the estate to fight off the attackers, but not without some reluctance.

Intellectual Content

Not everything is about money, contrary to what some characters seem to believe in Violent Night: money is only a social construct that is fixated on by many at the expense of reason, morality, and many other pivotal philosophical issues, but it does have both pragmatic usefulness and attention that is practically cultural worship.  The nature of things like the laws of logic are of course not about money, and just because one person is driven by greed does not mean another is, something seen in Violent Night, as well as how someone can renounce their former glorification of greed.  Yes, Santa Claus in this story was once a Viking warrior named Nikomund the Red who was obsessed with taking riches for himself to the point ot slaughtering people for them.  Showing deep regret for his past, this Santa despises how petty living for money is even as he delivers gifts to a world he is troubled by.  This greed is reflected in the villains who attack the very rich with the same avarice they seem to condemn in other contexts, as John Leguizamo's character complains about the Lightstone family leader not giving her employees livable compensation while trying to torture people in pursuit of money.  To an extent one might not expect, Violent Night offers a fairly somber acknowledgement of how destructive greed is.

Conclusion

Violent Night is about as good as a movie of this very specific kind could be.  It does not fail to thoroughly address the capacity for greed (which many, many characters deal with in different ways), it does not let comedy stomp out the more serious moments, and it is very well acted, particularly by David Harbour and Leah Brady.  This film could have been far worse than it is, and given its themes and plot, there are not many areas it needed to improve.  Should a sequel be released, the hints at a broader metaphysical lore for this rendition of Santa Claus and the complex approach to the character could be expanded upon enough to provide new elements to what is already a very clever story.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  The more graphic images involve the likes of someone falling onto an ice decoration that protrudes out from their torso or a Christmas tree star getting inserted into someone's left eye.  Other kinds of violent brawls or traps are shown, including traps imitating those in Home Alone.

 2.  Profanity:  "Fuck," "shit," and "bitch" are used.

The Immense Number Of Cultural Assumptions About The Bible

Almost the entirety of what is commonly believed about Biblical teachings inside or outside of the church has nothing to do with its real doctrines.  From core metaphysics to sexuality to Yahweh's justice to the Biblical afterlife before the resurrection and far more, literally almost nothing of what is associated with Christianity is actually taught by the Bible.  Yes, the Bible states that there is a deity, and yes, it teaches that Jesus came to save sinners by his death and resurrection; these are among the only things popularly believed that the Bible teaches which it actually does.  In fact, concerning the creation story, there are many assumptions and errors that are so common many people might not even recognize them.  With this issue alone, and I will not go into all of the sub-issues here, there is an immense number of cultural assumptions.

The Bible never says God created Adam and Eve as the only humans in Eden, but it does say that he created Adam and Eve there.  Whether they were the sole first humans is completely unaddressed in the Genesis creation story.  Similarly, it never says that there was or was not thousands or billions of years that elapsed between the events of Genesis 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3.  These things of no core significance in a sense, as logical axioms, absolute certainty (where it can be found), the existence of God as the uncaused cause, and the nature of morality are by necessity unaffected.  Still, the actual words of Genesis never touch upon them at all.

For a Christological example of such assumptions, the virgin birth of Isaiah 7:14 is not immediately referencing Jesus in context.  The child in question is the son of Isaiah's wife, who was a virgin before having sex with him and producing a son.  Though this is a virgin giving birth to a child, it is not the same thing as the virgin birth of Matthew 1, even if there are certain parallels that make the latter quote the former.  Jesus is a parallel in some ways to the child of Isaiah 7:14-16, but he is not at all the same person.  This is another example of a very popular but blatantly wrong assumption about the text; even if it was taught by the Bible in Isaiah 7 itself, it would still be irrational for anyone to assume it is mentioned this way.

Another miscellaneous example is the details about Satan's history.  In Ezekiel 28, the guardian cherub who turned away from God to arrogance and unjust violence is never said to be Satan, also called the devil in the New Testament.  Perhaps this fallen cherub that walked in Eden is Satan, and perhaps not.  Nowhere does the Bible affirm one way or the other.  Certainly, it is likely that Ezekiel 28's demon is the same as the devil of the New Testament because there is no mention of another specific, prominent demon alongside Satan.  The New Testament still never details Satan's backstory and the Old Testament never confirms the fallen cherub of Ezekiel 28 as Satan.

There are far greater errors--both in that they are more philosophically foundational and and that they impact how we live far more than something like Adam and Eve being the first people--believed about the Bible in spite of what it plainly does or does not say.  Theistic irrationalism, the inherently false concept that God could be outside of or able to alter the necessary truths of logic, is the worst Biblical/theological error of all, as it not only misrepresents the Bible, but it also pretends like logical axioms and other necessary truths could ever be anything other than intrinsically true.  Eternal torment in hell, gender complementarianism, and anti-theonomy are much more irrational and deep errors than thinking the Bible excludes the creation of other people around Adam and Eve, but all of them are false or merely assumed.

The Scientific Method

Simply having passive sensory experiences is not the same as specifically implementing the scientific method, which entails at least some level of intentionality and openness to repeat observation that are not present behind mere sensory perceptions.  Any material environments in existence, any objects within those environments, and the ways in which various physical things interact nonetheless have a scientific nature, though scientific and sensory are not identical concepts; not everything pertaining to the senses is scientific, and, of course, the senses are far more phenomenological than related to physical existence, though there is no scientific perception apart from them.  Across everyday life, however, even someone who does not care for scientific investigation or phenomena will still perceive these matters frequently, from the most familiar to the most exotic correlations they encounter.

Scientific correlations are ultimately a matter of sheer happenstance, practical factors, in one sense.  Despite being subject to repeated observation through the senses, they are not necessary truths like logical axioms and other logical truths; they are also not the uncaused cause without which causally contingent things like the cosmos could never have come into existence.  They remain important for human life on one level due to how they relate to human convenience, safety, and general physiological flourishing.  Despite how to varying extents, people have to rely on some of these correlations--such as how drinking water can satisfy thirst, how pressing a switch can activate lightbulbs, and how refrigeration can preserve food for longer periods of time than free exposure to bacteria--many people are not especially observant in this regard or do not necessarily care to contemplate beyond the bare minimum needed to survive.

Everyone with functioning senses is still in experiential proximity to scientific phenomena, as one does not have to be a scientist by profession to perceive or be intrigued by or understand (as far as limited, subjective perceptions of correlations goes) things and events in the physical world.  In truth, not only is the material world utterly trivial compared to the necessary truths of logic that transcend and govern it, as well as to the uncaused cause, but it is also not knowable as far as science goes beyond subjective perceptions, correlations being among these.  Correlations are found constantly in sensory life: exposure to sunlight are correlated with sunburns, scratching skin with the alleviation of itching, and turning a key in a car's ignition with activating the engine are just some of them.  They do not prove anything more than that one is perceiving correlations, and even the most consistent correlation that falls short of a logically provable causal relationship could be an illusion where the true cause of a thing is unseen or seemingly unrelated.

Now, someone who foolishly obsesses over science to the exclusion of rationalism will probably not realize all of this, or they will at a minimum not care that science at most hints at certain logically possible activities within the universe, never actually confirming them beyond the level of potentially illusory evidences, while reason is really at the heart of this truth more foundationally than science.  There is nothing rational about fixating on or even excelling at navigating the sensory correlations of science without first understanding the superior nature of reason, epistemologically and metaphysically, including how science is mostly practical in its application while reason is inherently abstract and practical in all things.  

The scientific method is usually either trivialized to the point of ignoring its still-significant relevance to human life, perhaps even hated by some of the many modern people who benefit from the technological and medicinal advances it leads to, or glorified as if the material world could possibly be what constitutes the necessary truths and absolute certainties of logic, or as if it has some grand moral value apart from God's nature.  Relied on every day, and still not to the same omnipresent, all-encompassing extent that everything constantly relies on the laws of logic, the scientific method has its place in the nature of reality, and that place is routinely exaggerated or rejected by irrationalists of different kinds.

Pursuing Carbon Neutrality

There are two ways a corporation or general society could reach "net zero" with current emissions like carbon: either the emissions are reduced or they are counteracted.  According to present paradigm, nature's carbon sponges include plants, trees in particular because of their longevity and size, and phytoplankton.  Both land-based vegetation and phytoplankton, for the latter are microscopic plants that are adrift in the ocean, engage in photosynthesis, through which the carbon is removed from carbon dioxide to be stored in the organism.  To better neutralize the warming consequences of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel usage, both of these kinds of absorbers would need to be utilized.  One likely hears more about how trees can help with climate change of human origin.

As far as scientific evidence points to, yes, they are useful for this end.  The role of phytoplankton is still larger.  With more oceanic water than land, phytoplankton in the sunlight zone (the top 200 meters of the sea) uses the same process as trees over a broader area.  Perhaps this emphasis on trees is because there is more a random person can likely do to preserve or plant trees than to directly protect phytoplankton.  Minimizing or collecting marine pollution is one way to safeguard phytoplankton, rather than release plastics that interfere with photosynthesis and simply remain in the water for extended periods (and get infested by the creatures therein).  Diminishing carbon dioxide or absorbing it also helps phytoplankton since increased heat can set in motion a chain that kills them.  Even so, trees are visible for many in everyday life, unlike phytoplankton.

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind power are another way to improve the carbon dioxide levels of the atmosphere, since they do not release carbon--though we cannot safely, securely rely on renewable energy exclusively [1].  Burning fewer fossil fuels spews less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which in turn gives plants on land and in the tropic zone of the sea fewer emissions to counteract, and renewable sources do not contribute further to the issue; they are sources of clean energy.  In conjunction, promoting healthy trees and phytoplankton, curtailing general pollution, and using more renewable energy sources when possible is the best way to undo damaging buildup of excess greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

Net zero for carbon emissions does not mean that there is no carbon being emitted, but that there are balancing measures that can be taken simultaneously, even as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere can be lessened.  Beyond natural carbon sinks like phytoplankton, there is also the possibility of genetically modifying plants to store more of this substance, such as by living longer or growing larger (for trees).  There are indeed accessible ways to achieve carbon neutrality in spite of apathy from some and active exploitation of the natural world by others.  The correlations between plants of various kinds and carbon absorption provide a great avenue to (in part) fight any global warming perpetuated by modern civilization.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/10/renewable-energy.html

Elon Musk's Irrational Stance On Remote Work

If a phone or laptop is the only equipment someone needs for their job, apart from a charger or router for the device, that is, then it is always less safe, less convenient, and perhaps less productive to make people squander their time in daily commutes.  Driving to work always brings the possibility of loss of life or health, as even without traffic collisions, there are many potential mechanical failures or health conditions that could strike and lead to a crash of some kind.  That does not even touch on the lesser environmental emissions and the additional free time for employees before and after a working period that remote work allows for--not that business leaders tend to care about either of those things under American-style capitalism!

Some jobs cannot be done except in person, at least safely or effectively.  If artificial intelligence and automation were to become more refined and introduced into more functions in the workplace, human presence could be diminished, which would increase human safety and convenience; with the current social framework in place in countries like America, however, this would likely not be used to give humans remote jobs or remote participation in formerly in-person roles, but to exclude them from the workforce altogether.  Some employers are more direct about not permitting workers to labor remotely even when the job is not hindered by it and in spite of the many objective benefits for employees.

Elon Musk has reportedly said that the "laptop classes" are living in delusion, that it is immoral for them to get to work from home (or elsewhere outside of a company office) while other people who make their cars or their food have to labor in person [1].  Ignoring the clear distinctions between different industries and roles, and how some of them are better or perfectly suited for remote work using a laptop and the internet, he condemns remote workers for not wanting to trade time with friends or family for traffic-filled commutes, for wanting to do what is most convenient for them as they work for their companies, and for not wanting to partake in a convention that is no longer technologically necessary.

Except for the specific cases where work is necessary in a particular physical location for the likes of worker safety or actual productivity (not to enforce arbitrary productivity demands), there is absolutely no reason why any workers should not at least be offered the option of remote labor if they would prefer it.  Communication between employees can still occur by phone, by email, or by workplace-specific messaging applications.  Deadlines can still be met.  Information can still be logged, shared, or analyzed.  For all applicable jobs, remote work is plainly the ideal option for those who do not want to surrender more time than is absolutely necessary to work, who want to pursue health or enjoy their relationships.

To exert power, to engage in more direct micromanaging, and/or to force compliance with meaningless traditions are the sole reasons why those with the most illusionary authority in the workplace hierarchy might want to abolish or scale back remote work.  How else would middle managers whose only real role is to micromanage or gratuitously observe the workers who are actually accomplishing the important tasks hide in their flimsy obscurity?  How else would a certain kind of egoistic leader feel like they are in charge to interfere when it is not required?  How else would the often pointless tradition of seeing one's coworkers in person be continued?  It is not always for productivity or alleged moral reasons why remote work is opposed.  Imposing subjective whims as if they were obligations, as Elon Musk wants to, is the real irrationality or injustice here.

[1].  https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-remote-work-morally-wrong-get-off-high-horse-2023-5?amp

Game Review--Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow 2 (Xbox 360)

"If your heart is pierced by this weapon, you will fall into a deep sleep... This is... not the true death you desire... but Satan will think you dead."

--Alucard, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2

Lords of Shadow 2 is a vastly underrated game, having a very negative or mixed reputation on almost all fronts, as far as the gameplay itself goes.  The combat is smooth, the controllable camera system provides more freedom than the previous game, and the brutality reaches Mortal Kombat levels at times.  The open world is a divergence from the numerous, often brief and on-rails levels of the first Lords of Shadow.  As unrealized as some of the story's potential is, the juxtaposition of having Dracula switch between a medieval castle centuries ago and a futuristic modern city is unique.  Plot execution and dialogue-wise, Lords of Shadow 2 is not as strong as its gameplay and specific scenes of quality stand out all the more amidst the missed opportunities for this reason.  The way demons and corporate activities are related is underdeveloped, for example.

Production Values

Severe motion blur (it was difficult to get adequate screenshots for this review because of this) and sometimes very obvious pixelation at the outlines of character models mar the aesthetic, which is otherwise a successful continuation of the art style from the first game.  Like the original Lords of Shadow, there are again varied environments to play through, and new ones at that, such as a garden overlook, a puppet theater, and a near-future city with modern technology like cars.  Frequent voice acting also makes a comeback.  The voice acting for characters like Raisa Valkova is less natural than that of Robert Carlyle's Gabriel/Dracula, Patrick Stewart's Zobek, and Richard Madden's (Robb Stark in Game of Thrones) Alucard, but this sequel tries to reach for cinematic flair throughout.

Gameplay

The change from short, jokingly different levels to a set of two connected, open worlds does a lot to give Lords of Shadow 2 a smoothness lacking from before.  You use a medallion at fixed locations to travel from the past castle of Dracula to the modern world of 2057, where demonic beings are wreaking devastation upon the same land where the castle once stood.  Map rooms that allow faster access to certain points in whichever world one is in are eventually discoverable that make travel less of a burden upon revisits.  New abilities gradually permit Dracula to reach more life of magic extension items that are scattered throughout both the past and present landscapes.

In each time period, there are new stealth sections that cannot be completed by attacking enemies.  In fact, sometimes you are unable to draw weapons at all.  Multiple boss characters first hunt you as you weave through pathways in an attempt to reach an objective without drawing their attention.  Once you fight bosses directly, the full arsenal of Dracula is again available, from the Void Sword to a whip of shadow energy that replaces Gabriel's combat cross this time.  Each of the weapons can be enhanced by buying more attacks and then using those moves enough to add a capped amount of experience to the overall weapon.  Despite all of this, bosses and some normal enemies can be brutal, so consumable items can make an enormous difference against bosses like Raisa, Abaddon, or Satan.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Dracula, formerly called Gabriel Belmont, awakens from an incredibly long sleep and lethargically walks around the modern world, encountering his old enemy Zobek.  The sorcerer hopes to thwart the impending return of Satan, as the devil was so frightened by Gabriel Belmont and his descent into the Dracula persona that he held back from attacking Earth again.  Together, they kidnap a demon child of Satan from her corporation, one of several organizations run by Satan's acolytes.  Dracula is pulled from the present day into the physical structure of his past castle populated by mental constructs of enemies from time to time.  Conversing with the likeness of his son Trevor, his antagonism against God and apathy towards humanity waver.

Intellectual Content

Once again, the combination of elements of Christianity and Greek mythology is present.  The three Gordon sisters and Agreus, the brother of Pan, make appearances as beings that recognize a metaphysical hierarchy different than that of direct Greek mythology.  For instance, Agreus mentions God, the same God Dracula acknowledges and has acknowledged from the first game onward.  Dracula now simply thinks God has failed or is not worth following due to suffering and heartbreak.  As for the Christian elements, they are often far removed from their real philosophical context, such as how hell is a place where sinners are killed in the Bible (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, and Revelation 20:15) and a place of eternal torment here.  Either the church of this story totally misunderstood Yahweh's nature, as is the case in real life, or this version of God is an amoral being that allows or inflicts endless torture.  There are no other possibilities since eternal torment is unjust in itself if there is such a thing as morality at all.

However, the way that even something like hell relates to the rest of the theology in Lords of Shadow 2's metaphysics is bizarre at best in a way that cannot reflect actual Christianity.  Satan was told by Gabriel about the possibility for even him to receive forgiveness at the end of the first game, and yet he retreats to rule hell and launch an attack on Earth yet again (incorporating the unbiblical idea that hell is a kingdom for Satan or other demons).  The devil is actually killed by Dracula at the finale of the sequel, which is in one sense closer to what the Bible says also awaits Satan in hell (see Ezekiel 28, if Satan is the demon in reference).  Who or what goes to hell in this game and for how long is ultimately presented in incredibly vague or conflicting ways.

Dracula wants to die to be free from immortality, yet all the talk of souls going to heaven or hell and him being the Prince of Darkness would imply that he would go to hell, far from the eternal rest and peace of the "true death" he pursues.  Alucard even rightly distinguishes between a long sleep and this true death, yet no one mentions how true death is not the same as torture in hell for eternity.  Is Dracula supposed to cease to exist when he dies unlike ordinary people in this universe?  Adding to the bizarreness, his wife Marie, who ascended to heaven in the first game, says to drink her blood as a remedy for a poison inside him in one section, a violation of Yahweh's laws in itself (Leviticus 17:10-14).  This would be a sin that makes someone worthy of damnation, not a permissible way to escape it!  The moral obligations, supposed afterlife, and more of this series are all over the place even when they are mentioned as if they reflect genuine Christianity.

Conclusion

With a story more focused than the first game's and no isolated, repayable levels, some aspects of Lords of Shadow 2 are much smoother than they were before.  Thanks to the gameplay evolutions like a new magic system, the combat and platforming are strengthened.  There are even bursts of thematic and dramatic depth.  What really holds Lords of Shadow 2 back from thorough greatness is the sometimes unelaborated nature of the plot--which is more streamlined and in no way utterly disjointed like its predecessor's.  Dracula being suddenly familiar with electricity, corporations, and antidotes after awakening with no revelation as to why he knows words or norms from hundreds of years later is one example.  Another is whether Dracula and all conscious beings go to heaven or hell right when they die (very differently from true Christian doctrine) and why Dracula would seek death if he is probably hellbound, especially when this universe's distortion of hell involves eternal torture.  Overall, this is a game that manages to have some very high points anyway.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Explosions of blood are not uncommon in this violent game, where Dracula sometimes rips enemies into a red mist in slow motion.  Certain cutscenes show very graphic things like Satan pulling the skin of someone's face off of their head.

 2.  Profanity:  "Shit," "damn," "bitch," and "bastard" are used.