Back in college, one of my friends introduced me to GO, the Chinese strategy game. She remarked that as far as she could tell, the game was rigged: whomever went first won, end of story. I honestly don't know if that's true or not, only based on the way she described it that did seem to be the case, but how GO actually works isn't my point in writing this.

That the winner and loser were known at the beginning of the game confused the heck out of me. I couldn't see any reason to play a game where you knew without fail who was going to win and lose at the start. That was dumb, I thought, and filed it away.

I hadn't thought about it in years, then my brain happened to shove that old memory in front of my consciousness just now for mysterious reasons of its own, and I realized or thought: "Ok, so you can't win...maybe the point of the game isn't to win but to put off losing as long as possible."

Hah! I have to laugh at myself, because one of my big "messages", one of the things I believe is worthwhile and even necessary to do to attain understanding and avoid self-centered stagnation, is understanding of your own biases in comprehending information and grasping to see beyond the confines of your own mental structures.

So it happens I was finally able to do that with this case. The old confusion arose from my invisible bias about boardgames: "they are played to be won." I was confused because the game as I understood it was un-winnable by whomever went second, and so why would anyone play such a game (as I assumed winning was the point)? The notion of playing seemed ridiculous until I understood my problem was solved in the question itself: there may be other reasons to play such a game than winning.

That same tactic-of-thought used to solve the GO conundrum -- as the game being more than "stupid" -- can be applied to so much in life, particularly in disagreements we as human beings commonly have with one another.

When two girls dress up in costume at a fantasy gaming convention, one as a winged elf or angel and the other as a drow elf, and have a mock sword-fight where the drow loses, it is considered to be a lynching.

At least that's what Chris recently stated in the comments of one of his posts on racism in gaming; I quote, "...between that and the blackface elf lynching at the convention..."

When a person can't or chooses not to distinguish between a lynching and fantasy cosplay, there's something seriously wrong.

To compare a mock sword-battle between a couple of fantasy-costumed girls to a racial lynching is nothing but an insult to the memory of those who have suffered lynchings -- it mocks the serious and disturbing nature of hate crime.

What's next? A rant on the racist evils of the game of pool: "The point of the WHITE ball is to hit all the COLORED balls into holes! It's RACIST! It perpetuates acceptance of oppression and white superiority!"

...because that's about how bug-fuck crazy this shit has gotten.

For a while I thought I could or should try to patch things up with him, but now, I don't know if there's any hope of doing more than watching the on-going descent and his fierce grin the whole way down.