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Mediocre Fiction: Why Is There so Much of It?

March 28, 2022

capitalism, fiction, literature, society, writing

Mediocrity is one of the things that occupy much of my time – on the blog and otherwise. We’re surrounded by mediocrity, and there are clear, simple reasons for this, which I’ll talk about in this post. More importantly, for the topics of the blog, what concerns me is mediocre fiction.

The whole concept is somewhat tricky. After all, I’ve claimed that:

You get the idea…

So, if literature is very hard to approach objectively, how can we speak of mediocre fiction? To put it another way, what makes mediocre fiction… mediocre?

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Forbidden Island JavaScript App: An Experiment in Creation

March 21, 2022

Programming

art, game, javascript, programming

First of all, a necessary disclaimer: If you came here expecting to find a ready video game version of the popular board game, Forbidden Island, I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you. This post does show my efforts in creating a Forbidden Island JavaScript app, but I can’t share the program with you. I can’t even share the JavaScript code with you.

You see, the game is – obviously enough – copyrighted. It would be both illegal and unethical to the creator of the game, Matt Leacock, to offer anything I’ve made (even for free).

However, worry not. Not only will I describe my thought process behind turning Forbidden Island into a JavaScript/PHP app – which might help you code one yourself, if you so wish – but, more importantly, I’ll share with you a discovery I’ve made.

This discovery is useful to all of us, gamers or not, coders or not.

I discovered that the most genuine form of creation comes when not only do you have no expectations, but when you can’t even have any expectations. In other words, the most genuine way to create something artistic is a result of knowing it will only be made for the sake of making it.

Here’s what the main screen of my Forbidden Island JavaScript app looks like. Notice that neither images nor (most) of the locations correspond to the actual game.

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What Is Anthropocentrism: Examples, Problems, Solutions

March 14, 2022

Philosophy, Society

anthropocentrism, fallacy, ignorance, philosophy, society

Many of us think they’re individually the center of the universe. The irony is, they might be right, but that’s a discussion for another day. The same concept in a wider context is called anthropocentrism. In simple terms, anthropocentrism is the assumption that humans are the most important entities in the universe.

The problem is not so much the belief itself. After all, many of us would likely consider the possibility that other life forms exist in the universe. Probably many of us would also consider the possibility that alien life forms not only exist but are as or even more intelligent than we are.

So, is anthropocentrism “a thing”? Does it really exist?

The question is yes, indirectly. And that’s what makes it insidious. In other words, the true danger of anthropocentrism arises from the fact that it’s subconscious: We’re often not aware we express anthropocentric behavior. That is, we might state we don’t think humans are the center of the universe, we might really believe it, too, yet we act and think as if we were.

So let’s take a look at what anthropocentrism really is, together with examples of anthropocentric behavior. We’ll see what kind of problems such behavior produces, and what some possible solutions could be.

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