Movie Review--Halloween (2007) [Unrated Director's Cut]

"Michael was created by a perfect alignment of interior and exterior factors gone violently wrong.  A perfect storm, if you will."

--Dr. Samuel Loomis, Halloween

Rob Zombie's Halloween remake is by far one of the higher quality horror remakes of the last 20 years.  A strong directorial vision and a refusal to just imitate the often superficial John Carpenter film breathe new life into a franchise that has otherwise relied on sequels.  The utter cheesiness of the original is replaced by genuine darkness and brutality necessary to let the basic Halloween lore both get presented in an original way and get treated as legitimately deep.  Never before has Michael Myers had such a philosophically significant backstory, which is used to sidestep copying how the original just had Michael literally kill without any deep personal or philosophical motive.  This elevates the remake far above the thematically shallow 1978 film on its own, but the entire cast also does a great job of making the performances much better than those of the very first movie in the very convoluted franchise.


Production Values

The 2007 Halloween is not a CGI-heavy film, but its practical blood effects are very realistic (and much better than the strange blood effects of Saw: The Final Chapter, which was released only three years later).  The acting is excellent from all parties, from the young Michael to minor characters that only have one or two scenes.  Not every ensemble film has acting this consistently strong across such a large cast.  Danny Trejo is among the actors and actresses who have smaller roles, as is Sheri Moon Zombie, the director's wife, who have roles as a sanitarium worker and Michael's mother respectively.  They are just two examples of the superb supporting cast even though they are confined to the first half of the story.  In the second half of the movie, a grown Michael Myers and Laurie Strode take the spotlight, played with great talent.  As a child, Michael speaks; as an adult, he is a massive, silent presence that conveys emotion, or lack of emotion, through his silence.  Scout Taylor-Compton brings more energy and personality to Laurie Strode than Jamie Lee Curties does in the original.  Also deserving of mention is Malcolm McDowell, whose Samuel Loomis is beautifully realized as a desperate but sometimes helpless observer as Michael lets his psychopathy control his life.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

This time, at least around a third of the film is devoted to portraying Michael's family life as a young boy.  A very dysfunctional family and the idiotic cruelty of school bullies make life miserable for Michael Meyers, who soon kills a tormentor from school before killing all of his family members other than his baby sister and his mother.  A prolonged trial leads to Michael being placed in a sanitarium under the eye of Dr. Samuel Loomis.  Loomis sincerely tries to bond with and help Michael, but the boy becomes progressively more detached from others until he kills a staff member.  Years later, he escapes (there are two different versions of the escape in the theatrical and unrated cuts) and Loomis fears he has come back to Haddonfield, Illinois to find the baby he spared on the night he slaughtered his family.

Intellectual Content

With murder, just like with rape or theft or some other such action, victim blaming is a philosophically false stance to hold.  Even being unjust to someone does not mean that a person could deserve to be murder or be responsible for being murdered, as murder is illicit killing that only takes place because of murderers themselves.  Parents, siblings, and peers cannot be responsible for a person's beliefs or actions, including murder or rape, short of actual mind control.  It remains true that some factors can wear down on a person's mind and exacerbate mental health problems that might already be present, or just spark new ones.  As Dr. Loomis says, Michael's descent into a killer was not just a matter of outward circumstance--though perhaps he means that Michael is partly blameless for his own actions despite being the one who carried them out.

As a supposed psychopath, this Michael Myers would lack a conscience from birth, instead of eventually acquiring sociopath and losing a conscience he once had.  Not once do any character acknowledge that conscience does not mean moral obligations exist or that one can just "know" right and wrong by introspection, but no one also even hints at how sociopaths and psychopaths alike can still be rationalistic and realize, just as those with a conscience can, that their perceptions or preferences do not reveal what is morally true or false.  Being born without a conscience or losing one does not damn someone to practice unjust violence, embrace egoism, or believe in any kond of irrationalism (as if having moral feelings is the same as being rational).  Even this version of Michael Myers can reason out that his lack of conscience does not mean he should do whatever he wants.

Conclusion

You can make an explicitly villainous character sympathetic and monstrous--more monstrous than most filmmakers tend to depict them as.  This is the twofold goal of Rob Zombie's Halloween, and it not only makes his film stand out from other recent or somewhat recent movies that try to make villains sympathetic to the point of diminishing their villainy, but it also succeeds as a film that modernizes and enhances the basic plot of the original.  Gone are the overacting, the thematic shallowness, and the short runtime that precludes fuller characterization in a story like this.  It might not be popular because it did not imitate the blandness of the original, with the original generally receiving far more praise than it deserves, but this is a remake with uniqueness, vision, and depth.


Content:

 1.  Violence:  This is a far more graphic movie than the original.  Michael slits throats bloodily, repeatedly slams people into things to the point of changing their shapes, and stabs people, again, rather bloodily.  In the unrated version, Michael's escape scene involves two sanitarium employees using his room to rape a patient.

 2.  Profanity:  "Bitch," "shit," and variants of "fuck" are used, many times in the case of the last one.

 3.  Nudity:  Full female nudity is shown in at least one scene from behind and in front, while others show female breasts (once again, though this is not true nudity on its own, many people and even the rating system erroneously regard it this way).

 4.  Sexuality:  Multiple scenes of teenagers having sex while at least one of them is partly clothed are shown.  There are lots of sexual comments made by characters outside of these scenes, ranging from degrading statements towards men or women for their supposed sexual undesirability to jokes.

A False Dilemma In American Politics

I have been asked if I am a communist by someone right after saying I am not a conservative.  I have been asked if I am an anarchist by someone else after saying that neither conservatism nor liberalism is rational or even Biblical aside from rationalistic accuracy.  Still others have responded to my dismissal of both mainstream American political ideologies by acting as if I must likely therefore agree with conspiracy theories about an unverifiable deep state or a billionaire plot to slaughter millions through vaccines.  Even though it is incredibly easy to prove that these things do not logically follow from me not being a conservative or liberal, some people are so inept at looking to reason instead of social conditioning that they fail to see that there are not only two possibilities for which political philosophy is true.  Ignorance, desperation, and hypocrisy keep them entrenched in this false dilemma.

I likely sound like a liberal as far as conservatives perceive when I tell them that sexism and racism are inherently illogical worldviews because they reduce down to assumptions and stereotypes, with stereotypes being demonstrably false both through pure rationalistic proof and through social experiences.  According to the misguided and fully avoidable perceptions of the person who asked me if I am a communist, it seems probable that I "must" be a liberal if I do not erroneously hold that tradition is epistemologically supreme, that capitalism is not applied in inefficient or predatory ways in America, or that there are gender-specific personality traits.  According to the misguided and fully avoidable perceptions of liberals, I likely sound like a conservative, denouncing emotionalism and scoffing at those who oppose all forms of capital punishment or support gender and racial egalitarianism because of social pressures, to name just some examples.

So many people have not thought thoroughly enough to even realize that there are not just two political ideologies, as if one must choose between believing one of two inherently flawed sets of political ideas (the problems with conservatism and liberalism are not just about how people live them out, but the ideas themselves).  Anarchy is just one of the other options, which also include libertarianism, both of which could take different forms and have wildly different philosophical ideas and motivations behind them.  American bipartisan politics have actually led many people to think that only the two popular and inversely erroneous political ideologies are even options unless one wants total chaos!  This is far from true.  Most of them are rooted in false ideas or unprovable assumptions, but there are many more than just two broad political approaches.

In turn, such people desperately cling to false or fallacious ideas despite their flaws, which leads them to change or ignore the rest of their worldview to fit their political preferences, with the rest of their worldview becoming a justification for their political stances instead of the other way around.  Coming to verifiable ideas, starting with the self-verifying truth of logical axioms, and letting reason reveal what actually follows and does not follow from truths and probabilities is how a rational person sets up their political worldview: their political ideologies do not contradict more foundational, important truths or reflect nothing but subjective whims.  The false dilemma that only conservatism or liberalism are the options is exposed by reason.  The only way to permanently, consistently, rationalistically avoid false or unproven political stances is to not start with politics, which inevitably hinges on assumptions, starting with the core of reality (logical axioms and consciousness) instead.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

A Shared Epistemological Barrier In Science And Divine Revelation

Scientific ideas and religious ideas are often treated as if there are two completely different epistemological standards, with all religious systems dismissed as claims to truth based on lack of absolute certainty and scientific ideas popular at a given time accepted in spite of the lack of absolute certainty for whether scientific observations even amount to more than purely subjective perceptions.  The existence of God [1] aside, as there is an uncaused cause and this can be proven no matter the truth or falsity of any religion, and the existence of the external world aside, as there is a way to prove that some sort of matter exists [2], scientific paradigms and specific religions fall into perfectly parallel epistemological categories.

Any scientific idea--not any epistemological idea about science, as that would be conceptual or pertaining to logic and thus ultimately not empirical--and any religion that goes beyond the provable metaphysics of basic theism are not true by logical necessity, as scientific laws and certain aspects of God's nature could have all been different than they are.  If something could not have been any other way, it can only be known if it necessarily follows from something that could not have been any other way: logical axioms like the inherent truth of sound deductive reasoning and the inherent nature of various things.  However, they can still be true because it is logically possible for them to match reality.

Both certain scientific paradigms and Christianity have evidence that suggests they are true, but evidence is not logical proof.  It does not follow from repeatedly seeing rain fall from clouds that weather is anything more than a hallucination, just as it does not follow from reading first century historians as they speak about Jesus that the universe and all its inhabitants have even around for more than a moment, much less the thousands of years of history Christianity seems to fit into.  All historical documentation, like all scientific observations, are incapable of proving anything more than that there is evidence that is fallible, incomplete, and philosophically inferior to the absolute certainty of logical truth and introspective states.

Either way, regardless of whether any specific religion or scientific paradigm is true, there are intrinsic epistemological limitations humans have that prevent people from proving and therefore from knowing things in certain categories.  The exact appearance of the external world and the moral nature of the uncaused cause, if it has one in the first place, cannot be known.  Only logical possibilities (as opposed to self-refuting impossibilities) and evidences (as opposed to whether things in these categories are actually true) can be known with absolute certainty, in that one can know with absolute certainty that some scientific ideas contradict themselves or that some religions could be true, as well as whether or not it truly seems like one of these things is true thanks to evidence.

There is nothing about a scientific theory that has an epistemological advantage over an evidence-fortified religion like Christianity.  Both of them cannot be proven.  Both of them can be supported with evidences accumulated from perceptions, and both can be proven to be logically possible even apart from analyzing the actual evidence for them.  Their shared epistemological barrier is that it does not logically follow from anything about the core concepts themselves (other than certain facts like the existence of an uncaused cause and an external world) or even the evidences themselves that they must be true.  A truly rational person does not think that the epistemological standard is different for different ideologies: absolute logical certainty through self-verification or airtight deduction.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html

Objecting To Power Except When One Holds It

Total gender and racial egalitarianism is an inherent aspect of true rationalistic philosophy and Christian theology.  Nothing I am about to say contradicts this, as the point is to call attention to a hypocrisy surrounding the way Western culture views power depending on irrelevant factors about the person holding it.  Perhaps the most popular idea about power in the present day West is that it is something that inherently calls for suspicion and fear of abuse, with many public figures and everyday people echoing this stance at least in part.  The bipartisan political landscape is consumed by hypocrisy thanks to how people support and ignore this fallacious idea as benefits them.

Power is evil, or at least corrupting and inherently dangerous, say these fools, who might object to power when held by whites or by men, only to welcome power when it is held by a woman or someone of a different skin color.  Objecting to power except when one holds it--or when one whom one subjectively identifies with holds it or someone of a certain economic class, skin color, or gender--is a sign of irrationality that reveals thoughtless, insincerity, or both.  Either power is evil or power is neutral, but which category a use of power or even power itself falls into has nothing to do with unrelated things like someone's skin color, yet it is factors like this that so many political talks focus on.

This transcends mere inconsistencies in how conservatives and liberals regard power based on the racial identity or gender of the person holding it; it exemplifies how the false idea that holding power is inherently tyrannical or borderline oppressive is mostly just something people verbally support when someone they do not want in power for fallacious or subjective reasons holds it.  The typical non-rationalist just wants to make sure that if someone has great political, financial, or military power, it is not someone other than them.  They are too stupid to look past petty fears that ignore the nature of power itself in favor of some fallacy-riddled ideology that they think will help them get what they want.

Both liberals and conservatives are guilty of such things.  Sometimes the details of how they live this out differ, such as how a modern liberal would probably be more comfortable with woman of color having power and a modern conservative would probably be more comfortable with a white man in power.  For all of their talk, racism and sexism are often lurking just beneath the surface of their philosophies, rhetoric, and behaviors.  It is just that their stances on power are usually little more than slippery slope fallacies held and dismissed as is most pragmatic for them to avoid opposition.

Power is an excellent topic to use in order probe someone's true consistency and concern for truth.  More than is the case with some other moral and political issues, irrationalists are likely to betray their assumptions and hypocrisies especially quickly.  The futile, desperate belief that power is abusive by default is only shelved, unless they are consistent in their stupidity, when they or someone they identify with is the one who can exert their will over others or stand in authority over them.  Without ever thinking that power is a mark of intellectual or moral legitimacy, a rational person will reject this selective objection to power by recognizing the objectively neutral nature of power.

Rationalistic Sensory Skepticism: There Is No Need For Specific Examples Like The Matrix

Almost every mainstream discussion or reflection on the fact that perceiving something with the senses alone does not automatically make that perception accurate is presented with specific examples of ways sensory perceptions might not reflect the physical world.  After all, there is a reason The Matrix remains a prominent part of popular culture despite the dominance of irrationalistic epistemology and priorities.  The situation depicted in The Matrix is one that can neither be proven nor disproven (although it can be proven that there is no evidence whatsoever that it is anything more than a mere logical possibility) and has actually helped make the epistemological disconnect between looking at something and proving to oneself that it is really there outside one's mind.

The truth is that no one needs to specifically think of or share hypothetical examples like a technology-based scenario like that of The Matrix or a theological entity like a deceiving deity in order to understand that there is no logical connection between having a visual or auditory perception and that perception corresponding to the actual external world.  While the examples are especially useful for conversations with people who have little to no philosophical initiative and are too unintelligent or apathetic to reflect on or at least try to seek out fundamental logical facts themselves, the logical truth that perception does not always prove something is as it is perceived is not often talked about in a broader sense without these examples.

None of this means examples should be actively avoided or that they are not helpful even for personal contemplation.  There are indeed multiple distinct reasons why a being with inaccurate sensory perceptions might experience such a thing.  For starters, the two examples already mentioned are possibilities.  I cannot prove that there is not an external technological or supernatural force actively keeping me from visually perceiving the external world as it is--not that I could know that I was seeing the external world as it is even if this hypothetical barrier was lifted.  Even the possibility of visual and auditory hallucinations is another example of how the epistemological divide between general sensory perceptions and the exact nature of the external world could reflect a hypothetical metaphysical reality.

Sometimes examples do lead a person to core logical truths and sometimes the core logical truths, knowable in the absence of all specific examples of their applications, lead a person to particular examples.  Some people might continue to focus back and forth as they dwell on things.  There is nothing irrational about happening to use examples as a springboard, to be clear.  What is irrational is thinking that it is examples like a technological matrix or a god who actively distorts the senses that are necessary to either come to realize that sensory perceptions are not necessarily accurate or to truly understand the ramifications thoroughly after having discovered this epistemological issue.

Examples have their place of usefulness.  They can help clarify various truths or concepts and can provide specific possibilities to analyze or offer to others.  When examples are falsely elevated beyond this, they are distortions of concepts or are focused on more than the truth or possibility they illustrate.  If more people truly cannot understand that examples are largely just a means to an end rather than the heart of concepts, perhaps we would see more conversations use examples without having entire positions reduce down to mere examples instead of the logical truths behind those examples.  In a society comprised of people who understand this, there would be more rationalistic awareness and likely more communication without red herring emphases.

The Most Artificial Part Of Modern Economics

Even though concepts of economic systems could always be objectively discovered by a hypothetical group without any ties to a previous culture, it remains true that actual currencies, "markets," and products for sale are social constructs.  There is nothing about economic practice that is present without a society in place to carry it out.  A single person is not enough to do anything more than think of certain economic concepts, as there is no such thing as a need for something like currency outside of a cultural setting.  When people do mutually contribute to an economic system, they have usually just decided to act as if the social construct is something more than it is whether or not they are aware of this fact.

A stock market is even more artificial than a standard economy based on exchanges of items or currency for belongings or services: it is literally just an add-on to the economy where people are willing to pay money to be associated with companies that are popular or that they hope or expect to be popular.  In fact, this is as artificial as economics gets!  Paying money and receiving financial rewards for merely be associated with a successful industry or firm, even if the investor is relatively poor or inexperienced, is as utterly artificial--while still being potentially helpful--as economic systems can get.

The stock market is a particularly arbitrary invention within a category that is already full of arbitrary constructs.  This does not mean it is not a useful way to develop wealth, as it can be maneuvered skillfully.  However, even then, it is impossible for someone who is not free of human epistemological limitations to truly know how exactly prices and popularity will rise and fall; investing in companies is always a shot in the dark no matter how likely it seems that a given firm or industry will financially perform without issue.  Only a philosophically incompetent person would believe that they know the future of any economy.

Uncertainty might motivate some people to engage in even more artificial practices by manipulating or tampering with the stock market in hopes of forcing a more personally favorable outcome, at which point they would have dived into the most artificial way of handling something that is already a random construct that only remains in operation because people keep participating.  Of course, all economic transactions involving an actual currency are already examples of social constructs in action, so artificiality is a key feature of economics with or without the stock market.  People who do not believe that money or an economy has some higher nature than this can avoid plenty of fallacies and existential grief rooted in them.

Movie Review--Halloween Kills

"Michael Myers has haunted this town for 40 years.  Tonight we hunt him down."

--Allyson Nelson, Halloween Kills

"Michael Myers will be executed tonight and it will not go without witness."

--Tommy Doyle, Halloween Kills

The mostly excellent 2018 reboot-sequel to the original Halloween made the most of its slasher premise, but it did not have any prominent philosophical themes that the deepest works of horror like the Saw series or The Witch have.  What it did have was a very fitting portrayal of Michael Myers and a great performance by Jamie Lee Curtis.  Halloween Kills flips the emphasis by sidelining Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode to focus on the town of Haddonfield as its citizens desperately try to stop Michael--and there is far greater effort put making the film tackle issues that are both of high moral significance and universal relevance.  It also starts to hint at this incarnation of Michael having a superhuman nature similar to the version of him seen in some of the original sequels to the initial 1978 movie.

Production Values

A handful of shots, like one where Michael stabs a man with different knives as his wife watches, evoke a higher level of cinematography than the rest of the movie showcases.  Thankfully, the camerawork is capable enough to help carry the film from scene to scene, and the very large cast helps with that.  Jamie Lee Curtis is not even a primary cast member of this film in the sense that she gets the same amount of screentime or less than some other characters because of where the plot takes her.  There is more of a main cast than a main character, with various townspeople serving as the "primary" characters, some of them dying and others living until the finale.  The wide range of actors and actresses do perform their roles very competently, particularly Andi Matichak and Anthony Michael Hall, albeit without having extended character development because the plot is more event-based than character-based--except for Michael.  In his case, Halloween Kills spends the sufficient amount of time to expand the lore of the reboot series in order to set up the third movie and to provide several revelations about the events of the two canonical movies before it.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Before Laurie Strode can even be taken to a hospital after her fight with Michael in the 2018 film, firefighters arrive to the blazing house where Michael is trapped in the basement.  Michael survives the fire and kills the nearby first responders, and resumes his rampage in Haddonfield.  The people of the town, frightened and enraged, form groups to hunt him down, but lack of coordination and irrationality lead them to do things they might otherwise never think are permissible.  "The Shape" terrorizes Laurie's neighbors until many citizens are ready to accuse innocent, unrelated people of being Michael just to bring a sense of peace.

Intellectual Content

Humans can be far more terrifying than fictional creatures or even entities that are logically possible but whose existences are unverifiable or falsifiable.  Halloween Kills embraces this truth more than the original and the 2018 reboot.  Even in trying to stop or punish monsters, people can become monsters themselves in the process if they lapse into the stupidity of assumptions or hypocrisy.  The desperate people of Haddonfield succumb to this tendency, allowing sheer panic to override whatever likely minimal alignment with reason they already had (almost no one is truly rationalistic no matter how gently or forcefully they are pressured by others, and most people do not think deeply or soundly on their own).  The mad craze of the townspeople to kill a mental patient who is mistaken for Michael because of their own pathetic assumptions highlights how far they are willing to go to simply make themselves feel better instead of actually fulfilling their goal of killing Michael.

Conclusion

Halloween Kills is definitely executed as the middle step towards the end of the reboot trilogy.  As such, it is a sort of "filler" movie that, while not bad, is more of a necessity to get the story to its eventual conclusion.  This makes it very different from both the 1978 and 2018 entries in the series.  A different style of storytelling does not always amount to a lack of quality, though there is never likely to be a shortage of people who will think otherwise.  Yes, there are some drawbacks to the way Halloween Kills unfolds, with its minimal chances for character development or exploration thanks to its enormous cast.  Halloween Ends will be the movie to reveal if Halloween Kills is a necessary or even thoroughly relevant part of the trilogy.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Michael slaughters firefighters, police officers, and ordinary citizens by impaling them in the face or torso onscreen.  Heads are twisted backwards or stabbed in the eye socket with blades.

 2.  Profanity:  "Shit" and "fuck" are used regularly.

Blessed Apathy

Apathy terrifies some people, some more deeply than others.  For others, it is seen as an intrinsic evil or obstacle to be overcome.  Almost never is it tackled in words as the more philosophically complex issue that it is.  What about apathy that is more selective and tailored to exclude concern for distractions from knowing and loving truth?  Just because a person experiences apathy towards making other people feel satisfied with themselves gratuitously, whether this attitude is natural or was induced over time, does not mean they are apathetic about everything and uninterested in absolute certainty, benevolence, justice, or deep relationships with other people.  The rationalistic usefulness of partial indifference like this does not even mean a person who experiences relentless concern to be kind to others in non-obligatory ways is irrational!

However, coldness and hostility are entirely valid attitudes to have towards people who are either too stupid to understand the difference between objective truths and personal preferences or too selfish to care more about their preferences than the former.  Regarding coldness, this is the kind of blessed apathy that frees one from desiring any sort of non-obligatory treatment that benefits the irrational out of an irrelevant, futile sense of kindness.  It is the kind of indifference that would make someone never even need to war within themselves in order to seek alignment with reason and to want to treat others as they deserve, not as either party wishes.  For those who never had to fight to reach this point, they have reason to celebrate.

The person who can naturally live without caring for the random, subjective desires of people who do not care about understanding reality has the ideal situation.  It is not that people with a natural desire to just appease people cannot be perfectly rationalistic and have a stronger desire to be rational and just instead of submitting to societal norms.  On the contrary, anyone, regardless of personality, can be perfectly consistent in true rationalism.  It is just that this kind of apathy is an objectively liberating and potentially exciting thing that frees people from the shackles of concern for the arbitrary beliefs, social customs, emotionalistic assumptions, and philosophical aimlessness that so clearly define all non-rationalists to some extent.

Apathy is not always a sign of philosophical indifference or an unwillingness to carry out Biblical obligations.  As with hatred, apathy is philosophically helpful or a hindrance depending on the motives, beliefs, and actions of a person.  It is truly ideal to be purely apathetic or outright hostile towards everyone who does not bow to reality as it is, from the most foundational logical truths to the most nuanced probabilistic likelihoods to the most esoteric facts rationalism can unveil.  A person too simplistic to understand the nuance of truths is just likely to deny this or hate it even if someone else refutes the contrary idea to their face.  If they were to realize this purely on their own or with someone else's help, it might have ramifications that demand thorough changes to their worldview, and that is something many try hard to avoid.

The Philosophical Legitimacy Of Pleasure

Delusions and misunderstandings are plentiful.  Positive and negative misrepresentations of concepts, beliefs, and motives can be found rather easily.  When it comes to the issue of pleasure, there are two popular stances: either live for pleasure above all else or shun pleasure.  Yes, some people reside in between these two erroneous approaches, but even they mostly just have arbitrary, emotion-based beliefs about which pleasures are permissible or deep.  Very few would affirm pleasure without hedonism or emotionalism and without trivializing the issue of pleasure altogether.

Pleasure is not always a distraction from a very serious and sincere pursuit of truth.  No, hedonism is the distraction from a focus on truth and what logical facts and the possibility of moral obligations mean for how we should live.  Pleasure--like pain, boredom, curiosity, and love (of truth and the knowledge of it)--can be a completely legitimate motivator to reflect on key aspects of reality.  For example, it could help drive someone to seek rationalistic awareness of what pleasure is and what its role in life should be if there is one, which can always spill over into other matters and lead to more philosophical discoveries.

The belief that a love of pleasure is antithetical to rationalism, Christianity, or general moralism (not that moralism has a basis outside of an explicitly theistic context, and a very specific kind of theistic context at that) is just another misrepresentation of another thing that is inescapably governed by the necessary laws of logic.  Pleasure can be understood and savored without even the temptation to fall into hedonism.  In fact, some rationalists might find this temptation entirely unrelatable naturally or after realizing that love of pleasure does not threaten a concern for truth or desire to uphold moral obligations.

Mistaking hedonism and love of pleasure is the philosophically illegitimate position, not the idea that a deep embrace of pleasure is to be expected if a rationalist or Christian truly understands their own worldview and the concept of pleasure itself.  Pursuing pleasure does not make someone an irrationalist who does not care about looking to reason instead of emotionalism and does not make them a selfish being without concern for harming others if they are an obstacle to pleasure.  Only fools who care more about personal satisfaction than they do about reality will go further than this in their pursuit of pleasure.

Pleasure itself is a very legitimate thing for a rationalistic thinker to dwell on and enjoy.  After all, it provides another side of personal experience to be understood alongside other aspects of reality.  It is by nature not irrational to savor pleasure when one has no fallacious or erroneous beliefs about it, and it is by nature not immoral to seek pleasure as long as one has not violated any moral obligations in the process.  The only philosophically invalid way of approaching pleasure is one that involves petty assumptions about its nature or the intent to do as one pleases no matter what is or is not morally wrong.

The Myth Of Self-Objectifying Clothing

Certain types of clothing are sometimes said to not only invite sexual objectification from other people--as if clothing is itself sexual--but also to make the wearers objectify themselves.  As one might expect, the threshold past which clothing is considered by some to be "self-objectifying" is purely arbitrary, but an idea is not false because its adherents cite arbitrary lines; this only means the arguments are fallacious.  An idea is false when it contradicts reality, as does the notion of self-objectifying clothing.  Self-objectifying clothing doesn't exist because clothing can't objectify anyone: people objectify other people or, hypothetically, themselves.

The only way that a person could actually objectify himself or herself is by literally thinking that they have no significance beyond their sex appeal or by thinking there is nothing to their existence beyond their sex appeal or sexuality.  To acknowledge the other dimensions of oneself is to not reduce oneself to a sexual object.  Since nothing short of this is objectification, people do not objectify themselves by wearing highly revealing or sensual clothing, by appearing without clothing, or by displaying themselves for the sexual pleasure of the opposite gender.

Men and women who show off their bodies for the sake of modeling, such as at beauty competitions, are not disrespecting themselves in any way merely by doing so even when they have almost no clothing on.  Rather, they may actually derive a sense of empowerment from allowing others to see and admire their perceived physical beauty.  Unfortunately, not only is exposure of one's body considered inherently sexual or objectifying even in utterly nonsexual contexts, but this is especially true of women's bodies.

The male body is unjustly treated as if it has a lesser beauty by many in Western culture, whereas the female body is unjustly treated as if it is particularly offensive and desirable all at once.  Both errors are thoroughly irrational, sexist, and hurtful to men and women alike.  However, charges of "self-objectification" are thrown at women more overtly or frequently than they are thrown at men.  A woman has nonetheless done nothing to objectify herself by wearing any kind of sensual clothing--no matter how much that clothing exposes.

Baring one's body is not an act of degradation.  Because this is the nature of bodily exposure, a rational person refuses to assume anything about someone's motives or moral character based on what they are wearing or not wearing.  A voluntary lack of clothing itself has no objectifying aspects whatsoever.  When a person has not bared their body with illicit intent (perhaps the intention is to display themselves out of arrogance, for example), there is nothing to object to.

Different Forms Of Hatred

Not all hatred has to do with dislike of someone for an aspect of their identity they have no direct control over, like their gender or skin color.  One of the grand lies about hatred that is popular on almost all sides of the political spectrum is that hatred is automatically evil because it entails illicit discrimination, abusive behavior or desires, or selfishness.  Even if they do not equate hatred with things like sexism and racism--as if sexism and racism always even emerge from sheer hatred as opposed to stupidity, arrogance, and cultural conditioning--many people oppose hatred on the basis of the slippery slope fallacy: they fear what some people might do if they thought hatred is sometimes a valid attitude and motivator.

The truth is that hatred does not involve any of these things by default.  Of course, someone could hate another person just because of their gender; the exact terms for this are misogyny and misandry, and these attitudes are possible manifestations of sexism.  Likewise, someone could hate another person for their skin color; this is just a more intense kind of racism than others.  Someone could also hate others for their age or nationality.  The similarity between all of these different forms of hatred, beyond them all being legitimate examples of hatred, is that they involve hating someone for a characteristic they cannot change by willpower, reflection, or going about their daily lives.  This kind of hatred is either baseless and therefore irrational or based on stereotypes and therefore still irrational.

However, it is quite stupid to think that there are no other forms of hatred with very different motivations, conceptual natures, and moral aspects.  One person could hate another because the latter has refused to be consistent with their own moral and intellectual demands or even failed to ensure that these demands are in line with reality itself.  One person could hate another because the latter hates people without basis other than arbitrary personal preference, which means the former person actually does have a basis of substance for their hatred.  These forms of hatred are objectively distinct from the kinds involving irrational discrimination or other assumptions.

For whatever reason, people who seem to ironically, hypocritically hate those who are driven by even philosophically legitimate hatred not only are inconsistent enough to hate hatred, but also are shallow enough to think all hatred is ultimately invalid for the same reasons.  Nevertheless, one can hate certain people very deeply without sacrificing rationality to the slightest extent and without hating anyone on baseless grounds.  It does not follow logically that worldviews and actions featuring hatred are always emotionalistic, selfish, or unjust.  Popular but erroneous and superficial misunderstandings of hatred simply obscure these facts for some people.

Hatred is not identical to cruelty.  It is not impossible to love and hate someone simultaneously.  Hatred is even something the Bible repeatedly describes as something God harbors for people like sadists (such as in Psalm 11:5).  It is outright asinine for people to make even the smallest conceptual error in understanding what the experience and idea of hatred are and are not, but the errors most people at least verbally make go beyond misunderstanding the basic concept of hatred.  It is assumed to be a horrendous evil by many regardless of context and how a person acts or thinks because of it.  Despite this, there is no logical or Biblical proof that hatred itself is evil or even psychologically destructive.  Like many other things, hatred can be felt for many different reasons and acted upon in many different ways.

The Socratic Method

The Socratic method has a high reputation in many academic circles, but a sound epistemologist knows that reason, as opposed to social exchanges, grounds true knowledge of the specific things that can be known.  As an approach to education, the Socratic method is popularly associated with the style in which Socrates interrogates others in Platonic dialogues.  This method entails at least one person questioning another about some philosophical issue to secure an admission of their stances, which, if they contradict each other, are now out in the open to be targeted for more questioning and possible refutation.  Unfortunately, even though questioning others is indeed a easy way to expose the stupidity of non-rationalists, the popularity of the Socratic method is not owed to any sort of rationalism.  

The method is sometimes regarded as an ideal way to modify ideas by intentionally relying on conversation to regularly provoke unplanned thoughts.  It might appear otherwise to some, but the Socratic method can actually condition people who are not already independently consulting reason themselves to go to others first and to reason later, when reason is accessible no matter who is around them or where they are.  Language and communication are about sharing thoughts, and pretending like people who are not rationalists are even in a position to understand concepts as they are and reason out what follows from them accomplishes nothing but the protection of stupidity.  The Socratic method has been used to perpetuate slavery to fallacies and prioritize a backwards epistemological emphasis on conversation over reason.  Many times, it does not even help irrational people truly come closer to truth.

Of course, rationalists do not need social stimulation to recognize at least things like the inherent truth of sound deductive reasoning and the impossibility of their own existence being a mere illusion.  This is the paradoxical nature of the Socratic method when it is not being used by irrationalists or imbeciles: those who would be the best at it do not need it and are the most likely ones to realize this, while those who might never contemplate their alignment with reason and broader reality on their own are the least self-equipped people for conversations of this kind.  Thinking the process will somehow bestow intelligence and enlightenment upon them, non-rationalists in classrooms and beyond might be eager to discuss topics without thinking about them beforehand.

Reason stands and fallacies deviate from reality with or without conversations or group involvement.  The Socratic method, when used by non-rationalists, is at best a haphazard way for inept thinkers to feel more connected to reality while potentially making minimal advances towards truth, but mostly because of direct, constant promoting from another inept thinker.  When used by rationalists, the contexts in which it would even be useful become far more limited.  Two thorough rationalists would not even have a need to erroneously treat conversation as the instrumental pathway to knowledge in the way, for each one could simply discuss their rationalistic discoveries authentically and without any assumptions or irrational priorities of social stimulation over direct access to reason.

Ironically, the only rationalistically valid use of the Socratic method occurs when a genuine rationalist questions people to prompt them to realize contradictions in their own professed beliefs that the latter could have already identified and eliminated on their own if they themselves embraced rationalism.  This is not to say that rationalists are irrational if they ask questions to other rationalists or realize that some information cannot be obtained by privately reasoning out purely logical facts; this is not the case at all.  I even specifically hope that all rationalists in my life feel invited to ask me questions in person or online as they would like to!  It is just that the only true foundation of reality and knowledge is reason itself, which individuals are free to understand and wield on their own.

The Distinctiveness Of Theism, Religion, And Spirituality

All religions are inherently theistic.  That is, to even be a religion, the tenets of a worldview must feature some kind of deity--which rules out things like atheism and any kind of non-theistic ideology from the possibility of being a religion despite the idiotic statements to the contrary one might find.  Basic theism, however, just posits that an uncaused cause exists, which means that theism is not religious by default even if all religions are theistic.  Theism is the afirmative stance that a divine being, which ultimately is nothing other than an entity that has always existed and can bring other logically possible things into existence, exists, while religious theologies go further than entailing the basic conceptual nature of an uncaused cause.

Spirituality, in contrast to both theism and any religion, is the broadest of the three, having to do with an emphasis on human consciousness as the immaterial seat of experience and thought that it is.  Even an atheist could be explicitly spiritual because the issue of one's consciousness existing and being immaterial is separate from the issue of whether there is an uncaused cause or whether any specific religion is true in part or whole (or probably true).  Only someone as stupid as a naturalist lapses into hypocrisy in practicing or favoring any kind of spirituality because there is no such thing as a mind that animates the body if matter is all that exists.

The distinction between theism, religion, and spirituality is actually rather clear when a person looks to reason and the concepts of each rather than conflating them or listening to what other people say without thinking on one's own.  Fools who think that all theistic ideas are religious, that spirituality is inherently tied to religion, or that they must all have equal significance if one is valid have shaped the public awareness of each of the three when none of this is true.  Yes, there is a clear philosophical relationship between the three in that they naturally connect in some worldviews and are not contradictory among themselves whatsoever, but one does not automatically entail the others except in the way that religion hinges on theism.

For Christians, recognizing the distinctiveness of these three happens to give them what it would give amyone else: clarity about the true nature of key concepts as illuminated by reason.  Still, this distinction has the added benefit of not only bringing personal knowledge of philosophical categories, but also refuting certain popular misconceptions about theism, religion, and spirituality both inside and outside of the church.  It is thus useful in everything from personal reflection to apologetics, even if distinctions of this type are almost completely unaddressed by most visible Christian apologists (who are unsurprisingly nothing more than irrationalists who aim to persuade rather than prove and who do not acknowledge the utter epistemological and metaphysical supremacy of reason in all things).

Unfortunately, if more people, including professional apologists, understood these distinctions, plenty of asinine nonsense would be completely avoided.  One example is how the partial overlap between religion and spirituality would not be mistaken for a total one when conversing with others.  Someone who calls himself or herself "spiritual but not religious" might be honest in claiming this and any rational person, much less rational Christian, can know that this is at least possible.  Moreover, the pathetic belief that any ideology that is held to with zeal is "religious" would disappear entirely if more people were intelligent enough to not think a concept like religion encompasses more than it actually does.  Distinguishing these things is far more important than the typical Christian--who reflects the general stupidity of most people but happens to be a Christian--cares to admit.

Game Review--Metroid Dread (Switch)

"Treat our lost assets with care, Lady."

--Adam, Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread, in its original form, is one of gaming history's most infamous cancelled projects, having been in development for the original DS before getting scrapped--and surprisingly resurrected as a project aimed at the Switch more than a decade later.  The wait has not been wasted on the developer's side.  Metroid Dread builds upon the melee actions developed in Samus Returns for the 3DS, expands on the franchise lore in ways that no previous Metroid game did before, and through its E.M.M.I. machines introduces a worthy successor to the renowned SA-X that would relentlessly hunt players in certain sequences of Metroid Fusion.  On the level of gameplay, Samus has never before been so mobile, so smooth in her movements and transitions, and so capable of escaping or countering enemy attacks.  Metroid Dread is yet another example of Nintendo making the most of their own system and IPs.

Production Values

It might not rival the graphics of the latest home consoles that cannot be played in handheld mode, but the visual side of Metroid Dread is right at home on the Switch, free of jagged edges, consistently muted colors, and slowdown.  The colors are diverse, with lots of blues, reds, and greens, among other colors, having prominence.  Just like in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Metroid: Other M, there is voice acting, but Samus returns to her normally quiet self for this game.  You get to finally hear what Adam's AI voice sounds like, as the AI bearing his name only spoke in onscreen text in Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance.  Samus herself even speaks, but I will refrain from detailing what she says to avoid major plot spoilers!  In other areas, the sound excels, especially with Samus's weapons and the music.  The music just lacks the same level of intensity and distinctiveness the series has enjoyed in the past.

Gameplay

Throughout the middle of the game, Samus travels through the different regions of ZDR via train-like vehicles and teleporters, and she often revisits familiar areas to find or use items that open up new pathways.  In a masterful balance of open-ended exploration and subtle environmental hints, there is actually little more than occasional words from Adam and one or two places to use new abilities right after getting them that tell you where exactly to go.  Unless one is paying attention or simply has an excellent memory, it could be very easy to get lost by accident and wander around in a vain attempt to find the next mandatory item or boss.  Each new ability required to actually open doors or navigate through a region, though, is always placed very close to something that it can be used on.

The one class of abilities that are not strictly necessary to progress are the Aeion abilities, such as the phantom cloak and pulse radar, but these are very useful, especially the first one attained when it is used to prevent E.M.M.I.s from noticing Samus.  E.M.M.I.s are extremely difficult to consistently counter once they grab her--other enemies can be far more easily countered by an uppercut.  The only way to actually defeat them permanently is to obtain the "omega blaster" in each E.M.M.I. section and strategically use it to destroy their facial plating, after which the beam resets to whatever variation of the power beam has been acquired thus far.  In the meantime, players are likely to die again and again while navigating the maze of rooms in E.M.M.I. territories--but there is a cloaking ability that is gained, which, although it can drain health, might let the E.M.M.I. not detect you.  It can still collide with Samus by walking into her, so it is not as if she is phasing out of the physical plane or into another dimension.

Other enemy types that are less commonly encountered than the E.M.M.I. can still be a pain in the ass, taking so much damage that they can reduce five to seven energy tanks down to nothing in only a few successful attacks.  Even just physically contacting them when they are not attacking might deplete the health of one or two energy tanks.  There are enough of these tanks that by the end of the game, players can amass at least around seven of them without going so far out of their way that they become lost.  Energy parts even return from Other M.  Like pieces of heart in some Legend of Zelda games, energy parts must be collected, in this case four of them, to form a new energy tank.  This is a first for the side-scrolling games.  Also unique is that ordinary missile expansions now grant the capacity for only two additional missiles instead of five, while special missile expansions give the capacity for 10.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Samus visits the planet ZDR when video showing an X parasite prompts the Galactic Federation to send seven E.M.M.I.s, powerful robotic humanoids, there, only to lose all contact with the machines.  She is almost immediately confronted with a living, hostile Chozo--a member of the same species that raised her following the deaths of her parents.  Defeated in their initial encounter and stranded deep underground, Samus searches for a way to the surface of ZDR, guided by Adam's AI, which she can interact with at scattered terminals.  As she meets the E.M.M.I.s one by one, it becomes clear that they have glitched or are being controlled so that they hunt her.  Destroying them one by one with a rare energy type, Samus faces the history of the Chozo during the ordeal.

Intellectual Content

The normal environmental exploration and collectible hunting of Metroid games is here in great form, but the more abstract side of Metroid lore is actually left out.  In Metroid Prime, messages left by the Chozo elaborate on the gravitation of the species towards spiritual, abstract, and scientific discoveries, with many members of the species eventually either dying off after the Metroid Prime brought phazon to the planet or shedding their physical bodies for spiritual forms.  Different classes or castes of Chozo were mentioned.  In Dread, one sees firsthand how Chozo warriors might fight and what ideologies they might hold.  Of the two Chozo encountered in Dread, the distinction between the kind of Chozo spoken of in Metroid Prime for their pursuit of truth and the kind that might crave power above all else is made clear.  An entire species, after all, is highly unlikely to share the same goals, worldviews, and behaviors.  It is just that Dread does not elaborate upon the philosophical heights of the Chozo or do much with this distinction, which in one sense does withhold a level of thematic depth from the game.

Conclusion

The end of the core Metroid storyline in the side-scrolling titles, at least for now, Dread is a finale that unites classic but evolved Metroid gameplay with more prominent lore than many other games in the side-scrolling series could reveal.  It also ends up accomplishing all of this with a fairly minimalistic story that still never shortchanges the history or competence of Samus and yet is secondary to the environmental progression that marks the other games in the series.  The gameplay is the biggest success, and Nintendo and Mercury Steam did an excellent job of revisiting older franchise items, norms, and creatures while bringing plenty of new ones.  It is clear that Dread takes the best of Samus Returns and only improves upon it.  Perhaps Dread's development and popularity will even lead Nintendo to authorize more classic-style Metroid games for the Switch or beyond.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Mostly bloodless shooting and physical attacks are used by both Samus and some of the creatures or entities she faces.

Christian Introspection

Believing in anything at all about theology or ethics because of having a specific introspective experience other than that one is having that mental experience is irrational, but this does not mean there is nothing to gain from engaging in intentional introspection in light of one's commitment to Christianity.  This is especially important due to the extensive changes a sincere Christian might have to make regarding various aspects of their lives.  After all, it is pointless and stupid to commit to a worldview (and commitment is not the same as belief) without sincerity, and sincerity often comes with a desire to know oneself and reflect carefully on one's priorities and worldview.

There are two general reasons why a Christian would dwell inwardly when it comes to their spiritual status.  In most cases, either they want to bask in gratefulness for their worldview and savor it or they want to remember how self-destructive they might be if it was not for Christianity.  The first is triumphant and celebratory, and the second is far more sobering, but both can be deep, comforting ways of evaluating oneself in light of reason and Christian theology.  Given enough time, almost any Christian with more than minor sincerity will experience both of these kinds of spiritual introspection.

It takes great rationality, clarity, intentionality, and sometimes bravery to be entirely transparent to oneself about one's own motivations and ideological stances.  For new or established Christians, any of these things might be heavily involved in reflecting on what the personal stakes of Christianity are.  There is no such thing as a broad worldview held out of genuine interest or concern for truth that will not impact how a person lives, and Christianity is no different than any other philosophy in this regard.  People who have been Christians for varying lengths of time will always have this truth to explore, understand, and revisit.

Christian introspection is not the kind of mysticism that is sometimes associated with the concept of spiritual self-awareness.  It is instead a philosophically and personally deep task of gazing inward and grasping the ways that a person's life has been affected by commitment to Christianity--not necessarily the ways other people have reacted to that commitment, but how someone is directly impacted with or without the social relationships that are inevitably experienced differently, privately or outwardly, due to embracing Christianity.  Far from pointless thinking or belief in any idea at all based on emotional experiences with God's presence that cannot be epistemologically confirmed as legitimate, Christian introspection is about understanding one's psychological life as a Christian.

A Clarification About Bodily Autonomy

Appealing to bodily autonomy, the moral principle that someone is free to do with their body what they wish without objections from others, is rather popular.  While it is associated with very specific moral and political issues of today like abortion, it has broader ramifications and more inherent limitations than many people admit, likely in part because they have not even thought of them despite how their own words make this side of the issue somewhat obvious.  It is actually impossible for everyone to have a right to do truly anything they want with their body.  In fact, the most staunch proponents of moral systems rooted in a positive approach to bodily autonomy must contradict themselves to object to acts like rape or physical abuse.

If no one has the right to tell someone else what they should or should not do with their body, then it would ironically be wrong to tell people not to physically assault, murder, or rape others, among other things.  Each of these acts involves one person using their body to harm another person's body--in an unjust way on a moral framework like that of Christianity--and thus a universal right to never be criticized or condemned for how a person uses their body is incompatible with condemning these practices.  This is almost completely ignored by people who continuously cry out that bodily autonomy means they can do whatever they want.

Bodily autonomy simply does not mean that people are morally free to do whatever they want with their bodies, as even a single moral obligation pertaining to how one should treat others means that there is no right to use one's body in an immoral way.  Such a thing cannot be true due to the contradiction at its heart!  At most, every individual can have a right to do with their body anything that is not immoral, not anything it is possible for them to subjectively wish to do.  Anyone who does not believe this but believes that bodily autonomy means that some specific act is automatically valid by default just selectively believes whatever is convenient for their assumptions and preferences.

No one can have a right to do anything evil, and there are no rights to anything if morality does not exist.  Either way, whether or not there are moral obligations, the idea that anyone at all should never be told not to do something with their body is utterly untrue.  However, if there are moral obligations, it is every individual's right to do anything at all that does not violate them if they merely wish to do so.  It is the people who try to selectively defend something like abortion while condemning something like assault (physical or sexual) that do not understand this.  Ideological and behavioral inconsistencies give this away.  If they genuinely cared about truth and were intentional about reflecting carefully, this contradiction would never be a part of anyone's worldview.

The Need For Power

Reason, truth, and justice are not concerns of anyone at all other than the world's few genuine rationalists and perhaps a handful of others who care about these things without having given themselves over to the sheer rationality necessary to understand them.  Almost everyone likes to be called rational, but almost no one cares enough to even understand what reason is and what it is not.  Almost everyone actually believes that their subjective conscience reveals real obligations (an epistemological impossibility), but almost no one is even consistent with their own moral preferences when left to himself or herself.  Even these people often do care about one thing, though: having less power than someone of a different ideology.

Power is the grand way to get the attention of those apathetic towards reason, truth, and morality--yes, the last of these three things may not ultimately exist since the best a person could hope for is disproving incoherent moral frameworks and showing that there is evidence that the uncaused cause has a moral nature, but only a selfish imbecile thinks their preferences have anything to do with the matter.  Someone who would never carry out any moral obligations that could be proven to exist is merely an egoist or a slave to cultural norms that would fall short of these obligations.  However, they would still be likely to panic and object if someone with more power than them was to interfere with their life of moral apathy.

Within a Christian theist context, this is one of the benefits of God having more power as the uncaused cause than humans do is that unrepentant people will have annihilation forced upon them as their deeds deserve.  If Christianity is true, this divine power will ensure that scores of people are literally reduced to nonexistence (Matthew 10:28, Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 6:23) for irrationality and sin they were too selfish and hypocritical to avoid.  It is power exercised on behalf of truth and justice, not affection or mercy, that triumphs in the end according Christian theology.  Those who are apathetic to the obligations they are bound to are destroyed like the lesser beings they are.

Power is the best pragmatic way to force fools and the indifferent to actually care about logical truths, such as the fact that if a moral obligation exists, people who avoid fulfilling it are inferior to those who care about doing what they should.  This is why there is always a need for power among rationalists.  On one hand, a rationalist is more concerned with understanding provable truths than they are about other people one way or another, but on the other hand, a rationalist who builds financial and social power in addition to the intellectual power all rationalists have by default is in the best position to snare the attention of their irrationalistic society.

Some people object to power based upon perceived or actual misuses of that power, but this objection has nothing to do with the actual nature of power itself; it is a fear-based, emotionalistic reaction to what some people do with their power.  There is literally nothing to object to if there is no morally obligatory way to use or not use power, which is another thing often overlooked in an era where individuals want to feel validated in beliefs based on personal preferences.  Power is not automatically evil whether or not morality exists.  If there is no such thing as any moral obligations, there is no such thing as a misuse of power.  If morality does exist, it does not logically follow that power is immoral.  Some people just like to pretend it must be to have an illusory basis for objecting to uses of power they do not subjectively like.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Writing Essential Characters

No matter the technology available for practical and digital effects in films or video games, no matter how abstract or how undeveloped the philosophical themes of a story might be, and no matter the medium, the characters of a story can always stand out for the essential roles they play in events.  There are many ways to make characters objectively deep or subjectively interesting, but an integral part of the foundation of a fictional character is whether or not they are truly needed in the story.  Without making characters essential, the objective quality and subjective impact of their role is lessened to some extent.  Making them vital to the story is therefore a key part of storytelling.

The two ways to accomplish this are simple: either make the cast smaller or make characters who are not needed in the story necessary inclusions.  There are plenty of examples of films in particular from the last 10 years that have large main casts, but not always for any reason beyond fitting in as many popular actors and actresses into one movie as they can.  This surplus of characters often results in entire main characters getting reduced to humorous roles if they are not included for one specific but very limited part of the story they are essential for.  In this case, their essential action could very easily be given to another character who is more necessary to the plot, which is a great way to make existing characters essential without changing certain major plot points.

Whether plans for multiple characters are better off consolidated into a smaller number of characters at least in part hinges on the length of the runtime for a show or film (or the length of the story for a video game or book).  In the current culture where even pointless ensemble casts are popular, it is just less likely that every cast of characters across different projects truly is essential in its present form.  Combined with how movie runtimes that often do not match the true potential of a story because they are longer or shorter than what is needed, problems with casting too many characters, which by necessity means that not all of them are vital, can become even more obvious to people looking for them.

Not all characters have to be immensely deep or complex because not all people are deep.  Everyone has the capacity for depth, but few actually embrace this capacity by living for things of depth like knowledge of reason, self-awareness, and justice.  Thus, it would both be unrealistic and less philosophically helpful for every character in every story to be deep, even if that depth is more often rooted in emotional sincerity than in concern for truth.  Despite this, every character can be essential to a story in some way--no matter how deep of a character they are.

If more storytellers took these facts into direct consideration when making fiction, the quality of characterization and general plots would increase.  Needless characters would literally be removed from stories or changed to have a reason for their inclusion.  In turn, characters that better reflect personalities and philosophical ideas could be crafted without the random missing components that hinder their usefulness.  The consequences would span everything from superior dialogue to less money spent on casting to more critical approval from people who actually understand the objectivity of art and are not just interested in having a subjectively good time.  Essential characters are an intrinsic asset to a story artistically and even on a business level.

The Undeserved Deification Of Historical Philosophers

Literally anyone who simply tries sincerely and without making assumptions could discover a host of philosophical facts or at least think of several issues or concepts just by using reason.  In other words, there is hardly anything conceptually inaccessible to the masses about logical facts like the self-evidence of axioms, the impossibility of consciousness itself being illusory, or the impossibility of knowing if an object one visually perceives truly exists or not.  These are actually rather basic facts despite being abstract and of extreme epistemological and metaphysical significance.  It is just that most people neither care about truth in a thorough sense nor try very hard to think about reality without constantly looking for validation or prompting from others.

Ironically, I have yet to find a single historical philosopher who specifically addresses to a slight extent logical axioms as self-evident foundational truths that are absolutely certain, as most, if not all, such philosophers focused on other things even if some of those issues naturally overlap with the topic of logical axioms.  Not all of the examples I gave are even recognized by most popular philosophers in history or academia except vaguely, or they are not given the prominence in worldviews and conversations their nature calls for.  Still, they are fitting examples of logical facts and philosophical issues that are utterly foundational and accessible to any being at all that has the power to reflect, which is only possible if that being grasps the laws of logic even if they do not think about them directly or rationally.

Only a true fool would either deny that logical axioms and one's own existence are objective truths--or deny that anyone can understand them by simply attempting to, no matter how many people may or may not have done the same or talked about doing so.  As an analogy, the first person to specifically think about gravity in an abstract or empirical way (which would emphasize different aspects of gravity), something that is nowhere near as important as the absolute certainty of foundational things like the truth of logical axioms and one's own existence, would have been the first to explicitly ponder such a thing, but it is not as if no one could have easily contemplated gravity with or without that other person having done so.  Even the very existence of that person is unnecessary!  Anyone at all who wants and tries to think about gravity could think of at least some specific conceptual and empirical aspects of the matter.

Coming to truths because they are true, looking to nothing outside of reason except where certain experiences are necessary to give ammunition for looking to reason, is always more important than needlessly praising other people who have already discovered things that every single person needs to realize if they are to have dedicated almost any sincere thought to understanding reality.  Those who do not care about understanding reality are indifferent towards the one thing that would legitimize their pursuits and beliefs: being on the right side of the truth.  If every person would genuinely try, it would be impossible for them to forever fail to grasp the self-verifying nature of at least deductive reasoning and the fact that they are having conscious experiences.  Anyone who believes that only a handful of elite thinkers could or would discover such basic (but immensely important) truths is delusional.

The Potentially Non-Existent Theory Of Everything In Physics

A grand theory of everything is sought by some contemporary scientists and philosophers of science: a single scientific law or corresponding concept that encompasses all of physics.  However, searching for empirical evidence to favor such an endeavor and searching for a logical proof of such a thing are either epistemologically futile or conceptually flawed things to strive towards.  Moreover, the very concept of a physics-based theory of everything is too limited to truly pertain to every philosophical truth, but not everyone eager to find a theory of everything in physics truly thinks this would entail every aspect of reality, just every aspect of physics.  This is not necessary to show just how assumption-laden this idea can be when it is truly believed to be true even when it comes to how various scientific laws or forces relate to each other.

If electromagnetism, gravity, the strong force, the weak force (together called the four fundamental forces), and any other scientific phenomena truly are a part of the external world irrespective of human perception, then all of them are simply true at once.  It does not logically follow that they are therefore all different facets of the same underlying natural force or that they are governed by the necessary truths of reason and that they all pertain to how the natural world functions.  There is not necessarily some single law of nature from which all of these other scientific laws emerge, and if there is no single law of nature all other aspects of science reduce down to, even trying to find one with the assumption or expectation that it must be there is a mark of stupidity.

Not even quantum physics, the physical and energy-based events at a level so small it is below the size of atoms, makes a so-called theory of everything in physics necessary philosophically.  Just like every other scientific law and event, any quantum behaviors of matter would just be another aspect of the physical world.  There would simply be some behaviors and laws present at the subatomic scale and others present at the macroscopic scale.  None of them would conceptually or empirically be in conflict or logically necessitate a single underlying law of nature that gives rise to every single other one on its own.  Since it is popular to mention the phrase "theory of everything," this is just overlooked, as it would deflate excitement.

Then, of course, there is the fact that there are provable aspects of reality outside of or more foundational than any part of science.  Thoughts, concepts, the laws of logic, and any moral obligations that may exist, for example, have no immediate connection to science in that one can contemplate necessary truths and introspection without ever involving or relying on sensory experiences--and even then, just experiencing sensory perceptions is not the same as either engaging in scientific observations or seriously reflecting on them.  In actuality, the laws of logic are necessarily true no matter what scientific laws are there and are what make the latter metaphysically possible and one's consciousness and its thoughts are necessary for scientific perception and thinking to even exist at all.

Could there be some scientific law that more familiar ones like gravity reduce down to?  Of course, if only in the sense that one law enables the other behaviors and patterns in nature.  There is neither logical proof of such a thing nor any scientific evidence that one is lurking just outside of current observations.  There is also the fact that a single scientific law at the heart of all the others--without which a "theory of everything" has no basis--would be impossible to perceive with ordinary sensory experiences.  In turn, since such a foundational law of nature would not be true by logical and conceptual necessity, not to mention the inability to prove that general sensory perceptions show physical matter as it truly is, there would be absolutely no reason for anyone to automatically believe it is even likely in any way.

Game Review--Assassin's Creed III Remastered (Switch)

"The Apple.  One of several artifacts we call Pieces of Eden.  Bits of ancient technology scattered across the globe.  Some hidden.  Some found.  All of them dangerous.  Most are held by a single group - the same group that now had Desmond.  You know them as Abstergo Industries.  We know them as the Templars - as the enemy."

--William Miles, Assassin's Creed III Remastered

"Yours is a special lineage.  Past.  Present.  Future.  Many are connected to you.  Many who have changed the world.  Who will change the world.  So too, will you.  I have called you here that you may know your duty."

--Juno, Assassin's Creed III Remastered

With the First Civilization behind and an apocalypse ahead, Assassin's Creed III has one of the more urgent stories outside of the Animus, its main story taking place in the era of the Revolutionary War.  Ratonhnhake:ton:, a half-Mohawk sometimes called Connor later in his life, is the main protagonist after the first few sequences of the game have you play as another character that later showed up in sequels (which ironically were set before Assassin's Creed III).  He participates in the Boston Tea Party and battles of Lexington and Concord, among other notable events like identifying Benedict Arnold as a traitor to the Continental Army.  The fact that a classic game like Assassin's Creed III can be played with all of its DLC on a handheld is a victory in its own right.  This remaster even comes with a remastered version of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, a game that debuted on the PlayStation Vita (I do have it for this system and would love to revisit and review it at some point), as a bonus.  In spite of these technical merits, the game itself often fails to do more than showcase potential for better mechanics and stories down the road.

Production Values

For a remaster of an older generation console game that was never originally made for the Switch, this version of Assassin's Creed III Remastered looks fine--its looks are far from being as developed as those of recent Assassin's Creed games on either the PS4 or PS5 era consoles, but they very much appear outdated by both series high points and Switch potential alike.  Even the Rebel Collection looks better on the Switch.  Older facial models and more limited texture details aside, the voice acting survives well.  The characters might not be collectively developed very thoroughly (Connor himself is a fairly static character, but he is a great protagonist because of his unwavering care for honesty, consistency, and justice), yet their voice actors and actresses are not at fault in the slightest way.

Gameplay

All of the standard mechanics of the initial and middle Assassin's Creed games are here: eavesdropping, climbing, stealth kills, manning a ship, and catching floating documents on the side are all part of the gameplay.  The iconic control and climbing issues of the series are also on prominent display.  Piloting a ship is less smooth than ever, it is far more difficult than it is in later games like Rogue to visually tell where to climb on the rock faces of cliffs, and Connor might jump off of a surface and even land on people when that was not the intent of the player at all.  I have not played the most recent Assassin's Creed games, but I hope such an obvious set of obstacles to normal player actions has been taken care of by now.  As big as the world of Assassin's Creed III can be, you never go beyond the reach of these issues.

The open world is also almost barren of any items to discover and tasks to do besides main missions until hours have passed.  The chests and other collectibles found in Black Flag and Rogue were literally nowhere to be seen for up to several hours.  Also unlike in Black Flag and Rogue, the naval missions of Assassin's Creed III are very limited, relatively short bursts of combat, navigation, or exploration that never allow you to sail very freely around a vast map as is the case in the later games.  In spite of these flaws and limitations, Assassin's Creed III does have some elements that are either unique to this game in the series or that are better handled here.  One key example of the latter is the hunting mechanics, which are actually better than ever, with options like snares and bait incorporated into the process of trying to attract or sneak up on animals.

A section where the First Civilization member Juno appears to Ratonhnhake:ton: lets you fly around as an eagle in a spiritual vision where she mentions his ancestral relevance to the Templar-Assassin conflict, which is one of the only sequences of its type I have seen in the series.  Another part of the game, and a much longer one, is a series of loosely connected side missions about developing a homestead away from New York and Boston.  These missions see Connor do everything from saving men and women from injustices and offering them a safe place to pushing potential romantic relationships along.  Separate side missions involve liberating areas of British-held cities like Boston and completing tasks to impress child thieves.  Assassin's Creed III has definite shortcomings as a game, but at least it has plenty of content once you get past the story missions where Haytham Kenway is playable.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Desmond Miles and several companions venture underground to a remnant of the First Civilization, and Desmond quickly faints and enters the Animus.  His ancestor Haytham Kenway takes the stage, first appearing just before he kills a target in an opera house.  When Haytham travels to the New World on a mission, he meets a Native American woman whom he has a child with.  That child grows up to become the first Native American Assassin, named Ratonhnhake:ton:.  Going by the less conspicuous name Connor, he later seeks out Achilles, a formerly active Assassin, for training in an effort to save his tribe from extermination or forceful relocation all as the British enter into war with the American colonies.

In the Tyranny of King Washington DLC, Connor begins experiencing an alternate timeline where George Washington has become an abusive king with Benedict Arnold (the irony here is very strong) and Israel Putnam at his side.  Washington has become powerful by use of a First Civilization artifact he uses to strike down his opponents, and Connor helps his tribe and Samuel Adams fight against the new tyrant whose artifact can even exert a sort of mind control over other figures the confused Assassin recognizes from his memories of the main storyline.  Connor decides to consult spirits and acquire supernatural animal powers to give him an advantage.  In the end, this alternate fictional history actually does not conflict with the story of the base game--but I will refrain from sharing details about how this is the case!

Intellectual Content

The pseudo-historical storylines of the Assassin's Creed games gives plenty of alternate possibilities for players to see unfold, like a secondary DLC timeline that deviates from the main game and has George Washington become a tyrannical king instead of the non-monarch he wanted to be.  Both history (at least as according to various documents) and franchise lore are defied in order to show an artifact from the First Civilization corrupt Washington as he rules--an indirect admission that power itself does not and cannot drive people to tyranny even if this was not an intended theme.  The irony of almost all ideological themes in the series, nevertheless, is that there is inherent conflict between any idea and the titular creed.  Sometimes a character might even unwittingly point out just how stupid the creed is.  Assassin Achilles says that truth and "what is" are not always the same, but truth is nothing other than the way things are.  This statement is just another expression of the Assassin's idiotic, self-refuting belief that "nothing is true," a phrase followed by "everything is permitted."  In spite of the logically incorrect claim at the heart of the creed Assassins pledge themselves to, Connor is consistently concerned with truth even when it would be more convenient for his overall goals to lie, standing up to figures on both sides of the Revolutionary War for their apathy or willingness to deceive others as long as they can achieve what they wish.

Conclusion

Assassin's Creed III Remastered on the Switch is not in any way the best visual experience on the platform or in the series.  Likewise, Assassin's Creed III Remastered is not the most developed gameplay experience the series has to offer--the other franchise offering on the Switch benefits from the superior and expanded mechanics of Black Flag and Rogue.  What it does offer is a story set in a pivotal historical period and grander stakes outside of the Animus than many other individual Assassin's Creed games have.  The elements of Native American culture help distinguish this entry from those before and after it and the setting of the Revolutionary War period is a great narrative choice.  If only the gameplay itself was deeper outside of combat and the iconic series control errors were removed!

 1.  Violence:  Bloodless fistfighting and slightly bloody assassinations and sword kills are what the violence entails.

 2.  Profanity:  "Bastard" and variations of "damn" and "fuck" are occasionally used.

 3.  Sexuality:  A man amorously puts his face to a woman's breast in front of Haytham in an early mission.