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June 16, 2020 - Davis Aurini
31:37
Side Meier's Civilization, Personality, and the Shadow Self

Originally uploaded January, 2017

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Civilization is a series of video games by Sidmeyer.
In them, you start a civilization in 4000 BC and lead it all the way up to the near future, to 2050 AD, where you launch the space program.
They are very in-depth strategy games, and they're some of my favorites.
And the reason I'm talking about them today is because they are an excellent metaphor for personality, for the nature of human development.
They're very complex, in-depth games with a lot of character to them.
You start with this basic rule set, and you wind up with something very much approximating a human personality.
Now, if you've played the games, this is quite obvious with the artificial intelligence.
The different AIs of the different players, because of course you have all these different civilizations.
You've got the Romans, you've got the Greeks, you've got the Egyptians.
Every single civilization with every single leader will have a very unique personality.
So first you have the AI that just handles the basics.
It handles the combat, it handles the buildings, all of that.
But then you've got the personality of the robot, the person, the artificial intelligence controlling that empire.
How trustworthy they are, what they value, whether or not you can make alliances with them, whether they like you or not.
And it's really, with Civilization 4, the personality traits of the AIs were boiled down to less than a dozen factors.
With Civ 5, they've moved up to 30, but there's really only a few of them that are that important.
But what is really amazing is that the more times you play through the game, the more you get used to the different personalities of the artificial intelligences.
It really is striking just how unique each one of them is.
But that's not the sort of personality I'm going to be talking about in this video.
If you play the game a little bit, you'll quickly grasp the fact that each of the different AIs has its own personality.
What I want to talk about is the personalities present in each empire that you play.
Because when you play Civilization, you pick out one of the empires to play as.
And that empire, its innate traits, because every one of them is a little bit different.
Every empire is going to have a special combat unit.
So for the Greeks, it's the hoplites.
For the Celts, it's the Pictish warrior.
And they're going to be based upon a regular unit, but a little bit different.
They're going to have some different bonuses, some different effects.
And you're also going to have unique buildings based upon the regular buildings, but a little bit unique, and some trait to your empire.
Now, all of these differences that you get, they create a lot of flavor to the game, because every game that you play is going to be different based upon who you are playing as and who you're playing against.
And these innate qualities of the civilization.
These always lead me.
When I play the game, I'm trying to play the perfect game.
I'm trying to tell a story.
I'm trying to build this civilization so that everything comes together in an aesthetic whole.
So I've recently been playing a game with the Celts, and I'm going with a strong religious focus.
So I build Stonehenge because that seems appropriate with the Celts.
And, you know, the Pictish warrior gets some bonuses from faith.
I'm trying to play the perfect game by having a unique story, the best story that I can play with the Celts.
And I'm trying to set up my cities to build an empire that's got a personality to it, that has a meaning to it.
And, you know, it strikes me this is really what we do with our own lives.
Because every single one of us is born with certain personality traits, certain things.
Maybe they are just from our childhood that affected us.
Maybe we grew up in a small town.
Maybe we grew up in a big city.
You know, in the small town, maybe you're really naive.
In the big city, maybe you're really cynical.
And this is going to influence you throughout your life.
In the same way, in civilization, the buildings you choose to build right at the beginning, or just the innate traits of the civilization that you're playing as, are going to affect you right from the very beginning, all the way forward.
And now in the game, the game developers try and balance all of this stuff out, of course.
But the thing with the game, what really makes it interesting, is that every single choice you make is a sacrifice.
You know, at the beginning stage is, are you going to build a granary, which will help your city grow faster, thus making you able to build things faster?
Or will you build a library which allows you to increase science so you can develop technologies faster?
Everything is a trade-off.
Every decision is crucial, especially at the beginning of the game.
And it really shows how things are going to turn out further down the road.
And so I like to find the most interesting, the most characteristic, the aesthetically pleasing, the things that fit a narrative.
Those are the strategic choices I make.
For instance, building Stonehenge with the Celts, because, you know, who else should build Stonehenge?
Now, there's a different type of perfect game.
That's the perfect game where you do everything perfectly.
That's where you put the game on easy mode.
And the world wonders.
Stonehenge is one of the world wonders.
Only one civilization can build it, whoever gets there first.
And it gives you special bonuses.
But if you're going to build Stonehenge, you don't get to build the great library.
The other type of perfect game that you could feasibly play is to put the difficulty on easy mode and build all of the world wonders and have a civilization that is number one in culture, number one in technology, number one in land mass, you name it.
But you know, that's not much of a game, is it?
And in fact, the only way you can do that is effectively by cheating.
When you drop the difficulty level, it's not that the AI gets stupider.
It's actually that they just give you more bonuses.
So you're living in an artificial environment, creating an artificial story with no trade-offs whatsoever, just so you can be number one all over all of these computer competitors.
Now let's step back from the video game for a moment and introduce a second topic.
Insults.
Because, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this recently.
Insults are a very, they're a very interesting phenomenon, if you think about it.
Now, I'm not talking like the sort of insult where, you know, it's like, hey, hey, buddy, you're skinny, you need to work out.
Or, you know, you stink, you need to have a shower.
Okay, that's not what I'm talking about.
Sometimes you get, if you're violating social standards, you'll get a negative reaction saying, hey, you know, brush your teeth.
That sort of a thing.
You know, that's not an insult.
That's not bullying.
Okay, that's you're violating social standards and people are trying to tell you, hey, shape up or ship out, because we're not going to put up with that behavior around here.
No, insults.
Well, insults usually start out.
They start off with the shotgun approach.
If you've ever had anybody, probably a family member, that is angry at you.
You know, they're really angry at you.
And with families, families tend to often be very, very nasty because you can't get rid of your family.
You're stuck with them.
So what they'll do is they will shotgun you with insults because they don't know what's going to insult you.
Or sometimes they do because they know you really well, but they'll say, you know, you're a loser, you're stupid, you're ugly, you're whatever.
And they'll keep throwing those at you until they find one that sticks.
You know, if you call a rich guy a loser, it's not going to hurt his feelings.
But if you say, you know, it's like, you're a virgin, you say that to a guy that's dated a lot of women, it's not going to hurt his feelings.
They're going to keep throwing them until they find that spot that you react.
And then they hone in on it.
Now, these civilizations, in civilization, every one of them has their strengths and weaknesses.
Okay, now the way it's played in the game is that you have all these bonuses.
Right?
But a bonus somebody else has, that's foundationally, that's no different from a weakness that you have.
Psychologically, it's a little bit different because everybody wants a bonus.
So here you get a bonus for culture.
Oh, that sounds really good.
Here you get a bonus with religion.
Oh, that sounds really good.
You know, you could just as well say that you've got a negative in religion and military, but you've got normal culture.
Oh, that sounds really bad.
But it's these contrasts in strengths and weaknesses that make civilization so interesting.
It's what makes the game worth playing, that you're not just playing Joe civilization.
Because Joe civilization, you quickly figure out what the best way to win the game is, and it's all over.
It's boring.
You're just playing a bunch of computer AIs, and you're smarter than them.
You hack the system.
Because all the civilizations are a little bit, they each have their own style, their own flair, that's what makes it interesting.
That's what makes the contrast.
Now, there's one place where the game civilization breaks down.
And that's the win state or the fail state.
The ultimate goal of civilization is to achieve a victory.
And there's several different types of victory.
You can have the space race victory by being the first one to colonize a planet.
You can have the cultural victory by making everybody else buy your Levi's jeans and drink Coca-Cola.
You can have a military victory by just annihilating all your opponents, etc.
That's the one place where the game breaks down because civilization is not actually about achieving the victory.
Particularly with Civ V, which is the one I'm most experienced with.
Started on Civ 3, but Civ V is the one I know the best.
I'll usually stop playing late in the game, not just because I've already ensured my victory, but because I've lost interest.
Because civilization, like the victory has to be there because it's a video game, and because eventually you run out of technologies to discover.
You know, once you discover the mech robots of this future technology, there's not much point in playing anymore.
But I always come back to it, and I play a new game because it's so interesting to watch this development and the networking.
Because you're trading with these other civilizations.
You're competing and you're cooperating.
Jordan B. Peterson pointed this out.
Like when you watch a hockey game, are the two teams, are they competing or are they cooperating?
What about the individual players on the team?
Are they competing with one another or are they cooperating with one another?
And it's a little bit of both.
And so the best part of civilization is where you're cooperating.
You're competitively cooperating with all the other civilizations.
And being number one, being the best at everything, that's not fun.
That's not interesting.
It's not engaging.
So let's go back to the insult.
Let's talk about what an insult is.
So they're peppering you, and then they figure out that one thing that you're sensitive about.
And you say, well, you know, you know, it's not really my fault.
And then they double down.
They attack you even harder.
Now, what are they doing here?
They're trying to define, to delineate your existence through their words.
You know, spiel, spell.
They are casting a spell on you.
And so let's say you have a bunch of bullies.
And let's, for sake of argument, let's say they're smart.
Okay, a bunch of geeks, let's say they're bullying a jock.
Because, you know, why not?
Let's invert some tropes.
And they'll say, oh, you're just a lunkhead.
You're just a meathead.
You're just violent.
You know, you don't, you don't have any, you're just a Greek creature.
Think of Montezuma in Civilization.
Now, again, this analogy kind of breaks down.
Because warfare in civilization, it's often slightly profitable for both sides in the military, in the conflict.
It's not equivalent.
It's not fully equivalent to real-life fights.
It's not a zero-sum game the way that it can be in real life.
Both sides get something out of it.
you improve the quality of your military by putting them through the battle.
And again, if you think of Montezuma, who's a very militaristic character in the game, alright, so Montezuma takes over the entire world, he wins...
Now what?
That's not interesting.
Yeah, as soon as you win the game, it's not interesting anymore.
And so what these geeks are trying to do to the bully is they're trying to put their standards upon him.
They've got the bonuses.
They're intelligent.
They're geeky, whatever.
And they're going to say, this is the standard for living your life.
And the bully is a failure at that standard.
Or sorry, that bully, the jock, the meathead, the buff dude.
He's a failure at being smart.
And so you say that to him, and well, and here's the Freudian slip that you just caught, by the way.
What does he become when you say he's stupid?
That he's good for nothing but violence?
Well, he becomes a bully.
He becomes nothing but violence.
You have turned him into a monster.
From the Greek Warning, the monster, something unnatural, something that doesn't belong.
You've told him, you're not smart, so you're a monster.
And he becomes a monster.
This is the shadow self.
See, when they're peppering you with these insults, they don't know what your shadow self is.
And again, in civilization, the enemy AI doesn't know where your armies are located.
It doesn't know the exact state of your culture.
It doesn't know all the details.
It's got an idea, but it doesn't know all the details.
And so sometimes it will poke and prod at you and test to see if you're weak.
And if it discovers you're weak, then it will go after you.
And yet, it's this weakness that you have that makes it so interesting.
Okay, where you're saying, I just need to, I just need another three turns to finish building that monument.
You know, just hold off.
I just don't want a war for a few more turns.
That's what makes it interesting.
and that's what gives you anticipation.
When we target people with bullying, we are targeting their shadow self.
Because again, in civilization, you need to present a coherent front, a strong front.
Even if you're going for the scientific victory or the diplomatic victory, you still need to maintain a large army.
You know, you need to be competent at everything and pick one area to excel in.
And the insult is trying to look at that one area where you're weak, or sometimes even that area where you're strong, and define that as a negative.
Define you as negative.
And so either you become a slave, you submit to them, or you become the monster that they want you to become.
And usually when people are insulting you, either you've done something or somebody else has done something to them.
Somebody has insulted them.
And they've turned them into the monster.
They've said, oh, you're strong, you're a jock, you're nothing but a violent bully.
And so they become the violent bully and they go and bully somebody else.
But the strange thing is that when you are that monster, the monster is in complete denial about it.
The person insulting, the bully, has embraced that dynamic of being a monster.
But they have asserted that it's the only way to be.
You know, so the smart kids, the geeks, said to the jock, you're stupid.
You can never be smart.
You're not a real person.
The jock says, well, they're just eggheads, and I'm going to go pick on them because they're a bunch of losers.
And all of it is about running away from the weakness.
It's, it's, it's.
Again, it's like trying to play that game of civilization perfectly where you build everything and you're the best at everything.
These people that go out and do that are denying that they have any weaknesses.
And they're saying, I have nothing but strength.
I am strong.
I am good at everything.
And there's no contrast in that.
And that right there is narcissism.
And you know, this is something you're seeing.
Well, I've talked about it in cinema.
You're seeing it in video games now as well.
Because I'm talking about the contrast of the civilizations in civilization.
There also used to be a lot of contrast in RPGs.
You know, the reason when you're doing the pen and paper tabletop RPG, you want a fighter and a rogue and a magic user.
You wanted all these different specializations, all of them with slightly different personalities, all of them with their own goals and objectives and messing with one another.
You know, DD is not so much about killing the orcs that the DM throws up in front of you.
It's about interacting with the other people in the party who all have slightly different objectives.
But RPGs nowadays, look at the transition from the original Fallouts to Fallout Through and Fallout New Vegas.
In these Bethesda games, by end game, you are the best at everything.
You've maxed out your skills at everything.
And so it's not interesting anymore.
It's not fun.
You're this demigod walking around upon the earth.
And what's the interest in that?
Except that seems to be what so many people are trying to do.
You know, we've seen some.
This is what we're seeing everywhere.
Okay, in the alt-right, in mainstream politics, in mainstream culture.
Everybody is trying to be perfect at everything and denying that they have any shadow self, denying that they have a weakness, and yet then the shadow self takes over.
You know, we feel so much guilt and shame, not at...
Not at things we've done wrong, but at who we are, about the quirks of our personality.
And we try and run from those, but we only double down.
We only become exactly what we're running from.
We allow these empty words to create our lives.
When if we were perfect, if we were the best at everything, if we didn't have, you know, flaws, life wouldn't be interesting.
The new Star Wars movie, Star Wars episodes seven or whatever it was.
Red Letter Media commented, they said something along the lines of like, listen, I'm not going to complain about there being a female protagonist or anything.
Yeah, that's cool, that's interesting.
We've got diversity, but where's the romance?
How can you have romance without disparity?
When the princess is rescuing herself, there's nobody needed to rescue the princess.
You need flaws.
You need weaknesses for life to be interesting.
These are not things that you should be feeling terrible about.
You know, like we're all a little bit weird, okay?
And you know what?
You need to get whatever your weirdness is, you need to get that weirdness into check, right?
Like even if you're playing a diplomatic game in civilization, you still need to build an army.
Yet you need to figure out how to get along with people.
But that shadow self, those weaknesses within you, that's not a problem with you, that's just you.
And the game sure as hell wouldn't be interesting if we didn't have all these differences and disparities.
So what I'm saying with all of this is, you know, the disparities, the darkness, that's what makes life interesting.
That's what makes it worth living.
And you can't beat yourself up.
You can't hate yourself and you can't run from yourself because you're a little bit X. Whether it's introverted or, you know, too extroverted, you lack attention spin, or if it's whatever it is, whatever makes you weird is also what makes you you.
And if you and if you don't run with that, if you don't embrace your shadow self, acknowledge it, and compensate for it because, you know, you shouldn't be walking around being a victim all the time.
Shouldn't be nothing but your shadow self.
You need the balance, the light and the dark.
Otherwise, you just fall into this pit of nihilism, of pride, and ultimately of self-destruction.
At the end of the day, you've got to live with yourself, and that really ain't so bad.
I'm not saying don't self-improve, but I am saying don't pretend to be something you're not.
Just try and be the best version.
Tell the best story that you can possibly tell.
Thanks for listening, folks.
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