Saturday 7 July 2007

Pic of the day: In The Sims 2, there are "lifetime wants" and reaching them changes your life forever. But is this so in real life?

Perma-plat revisited

"Perma-plat" is shorthand for permanent platinum mood, a concept in the popular life simulator The Sims 2. In this game, a character's mood does not simply depend on fulfilling basic needs. In order to maintain sanity in the long run, they must also fulfill wants. A "sim" can only hold a limited number of wants and fears in mind at the same time, and some of them will change from day to day. However, starting with the University expansion pack, they also have lifetime wants. These require working toward them for much of life, but confers lifelong immunity to insanity and the ability to ignore inconveniences that don't threaten your life.

For ordinary wants, their value generally depends on how hard they are to achieve. For instance, a family sim will garner a measly 500 points from talking to a relative, but a whopping 8000 from having a baby. Reaching such a goal is sure to put your sim in platinum mood, where he or she can function at peak efficiency despite hunger, loneliness or tiredness. But after a while the effect wears off. After some more days without fulfilling wants, negative effects start to crop up, and eventually insanity may occur. On the bright side, the lower your aspiration level, the more realistic wants you will come up with. (Though teenagers tend to stubbornly cling to unrealistic goals.)

I am sure most of you will agree that this is so in real life too. We have all experienced the euphoria of reaching something we have reached out for, I am sure, and noticed that it wears off. The days become mundane again. This is especially well known in romantic relationship, where many people expected the high of getting their dream girl (or boy) would last forever. But it doesn't, not without careful work to maintain it at least, and even then circumstances can conspire against you. The same is shown to be true with winning the lottery, advancing your career, and divorcing an unreasonable spouse.

Lifetime wants, on the other hand, have a permanent effect in the game. What kind of events are these, and do we see something similar in real life?

Many of the Sims 2 lifetime wants simply consist of reaching the top of a certain career vaguely related to your main aspiration in life. A "knowledge sim" for instance may want to reach the top of the education career. A "popularity sim" may want to become a celebrity chef or a top football player. But there are also other wants, all of which require years of steering toward that particular goal. Graduating 3 children from college, for instance, or having 6 grandchildren, are popular lifetime wants for the family-oriented character.

I don't think any of these would work in the real world, I'm sorry to say. For one thing, few careers really have a top. There is always someone over you. Often the system loops around, like in business and politics: Top politicians answer to the voters, CEOs answer to the board of directors which answer to the owners. But even if not, there is always someone more famous, more wealthy or prettier than you. And even if not, there probably has been or will be. And all things have a cost: Fame causes stalkers, power causes envy, riches causes fear of blackmail, kidnapping and theft.

A more likely candidate is the unique accomplishment. I remember reading about a well known composer from a few centuries ago. He is rumored to have said something like this: "When I stand before God and he asks what I did with my life, I will show him my Ave Maria" (or whatever it was). I think this makes a certain sense, although it may sound a bit arrogant. But a great work of art or a scientific discovery is in a manner of speaking a spiritual thing. It makes the world a richer and more meaningful place, quite possibly for as long as mankind endures. In a way, it bridges time and eternity. If anything could cause a permanent change in our lives, you would think that would be it.

But there is another path, which is attested by many, but which is far less impressive and dramatic. This is the gradual building of a spiritual core inside ourselves. This is something that cannot be seen, and most people will never know. But once in a while such a person is put to the test, placed in conditions that would break an ordinary person. And they not only endure, they thrive. They even radiate some of that strength to those around them.

Is this a sign of divine intervention? Or is it within the possible for an ordinary human? Is there even a conflict between the two? Much as I'd like to claim that these events only happen within my own religion, I think evidence is against it. Some branches of Buddhism, which is essentially an atheist spirituality, seems to have the same effect. On the other hand, it only seems to happen to very few people. This is perhaps not so strange. Not only does it take time, it also requires a dedication that mos cannot even imagine, much less practice. And it does so in ways that does not impress the people around you, most likely the opposite. It may seem to them a fate only marginally better than death, or at least only marginally less boring.

I have no illusion that I will ever achieve a lifetime want, this way or another. But if I can keep an aspiration level that is safely away from insanity, that may be enough for me. For I do deal with things that could easily cause madness in a human being. But I am sure you can read about that many other days in the Chaos Node.