What It's Like to Be Me

The entourage are about to go grave-robbing, because one exuberant member is a heretical, blaspheming heathen, and I don't want to delve too deep into that story until it's underway, so for the nonce I'll just entertain you with a peek inside my psyche.

 

When I mentioned several posts back how exhausting it was to run the game, one of our players commented that he had had no idea. As an introvert, I draw my energy from time alone, and find it depleted by human interaction. My ideal formula, to really be at my best, is about two hours of time alone for every hour I spent with people other than my wife. (Interestingly, her personality is similar to mine, and even in each other's company we spend prolonged periods without talking. Before going to sleep, we lie beside each other and read our seperate books for an hour, and it's bliss.) Extraverts draw their energy from the 'good vibes' of other people, and usually don't know what it's like for us. Extraversion is, I think, typically interpreted to be the default position because extraverts dominate numerically and socially.

 

In MBTI terms, our current campaign consists of ESFJ, ESFJ and ENTJ. I normally test INTJ, but have tested ISTJ on a few occasions. (My wife is as likely to test ENTJ as INTJ, depending on her mental space at the time.) This might be unusual; I've read that people who enjoy RPGs and video games tend to be introverts. I don't interact with enough people to be able to draw any kind of statistical relevance from my own experience. But I'll tell you what it's like for me as a DM.

 

By way of analogy, I'm a person of average fitness going, twice a month for a several hours at a session, to work out with professional athletes. Normally, I exercise alone, and I follow my program at my own pace, following a set plan with no surprises. It's difficult but rewarding, and I feel good at the end. These bimonthly special sessions are a different matter. At the same time I'm trying to relay information as concisely as possible without missing out anything essential, bits of other conversations are flying about, I'm asked questions and expected to know the answer--after all, I'm the DM--and the answer has to be both correct and succinct. I'm trying to hold several strands of information at once while engaging everyone's attention and not making errors. It's sort of like being told,  'Okay, now bench press your own body weight ten times!' As soon as I hit the bench for the first rep, I'm told, 'Wait, before you do that, do a hundred pushups!' So I scramble off the bench and get into position, trying to remember that I have to get back on the bench press as soon as I finish, and another athlete is meanwhile asking, 'What's your body fat percentage? How many pullups can you do? What was the exact protein content of your breakfast?'

 

When I play a character in AD&D, he is always an ESTP. I always had a phantasy of being an ESTP, like Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Branson, or Jack Sparrow. I couldn't conceivably spend protracted periods in the wild with other adventurers in my real-life personality. I would self-destruct after a few days. The kind of character I play, though, would thrive on it. (I miss the days when someone else was DM and I could be that character, living vicariously in a world that doesn't exist.) Introversion, unfortunately is neither a choice nor a habit, but, as someone once put it, a nervous system setting. That part of my life which requires interacting with the world beyond my garden, fighting crowds, and meeting new people would be much easier if I had my character's personality--but then, I would probably be living a life of adventure, not playing at one from the comfort of my dining room.

 

I was, incidentally, told once, 'Well, if you don't enjoy it, just don't do it'. I don't believe I'm alone in this--although I may be in something of a minority--but I do a great many things for purposes other than pure 'enjoyment'. Perhaps most people, especially those who have jobs they don't like, go through so much on a day-to-day basis that when they're finished with work, they just want to have fun. Cyndi Lauper wouldn't have sung it if it weren't true. But for me, the chance for exposure to different ways of thinking, the intellectual benefits of types of mental gymnastics far outside my comfort zone, and a visceral immersion into another world, are very much worth the expense of mental and physical energy.

Toward a Better 2017

Happy New Year.

 

I have nothing of crucial import to relate or even much desire to say anything, but one of my promises to myself for 2017 is that I would get back into the habit of updating this thing once a week. The danger there is that a lack of material will cause me to scrape the barrel and, unable to come up with anything, might post an expose of any of the countless adventures and side quests with which I shower the party, only to say Look at what you fucks missed because you didn't follow that hook!

 

That wouldn't be nice at all.

 

One would hope, though--or least I would--that being forced to write something every week might focus energy by the very force of habit and make the writer more prolific. It couldn't hurt to spend more time on the game.

 

Or could it?

 

Most of the time, before I game, I prepare orders of magnitude more material than the party is possibly going to use. I sort of go all-out for a week, and really get into the campaign world. I see all sorts of possibilities and exploit them. Unfortunately, we rarely play. We play so rarely these days, in fact, that game time moves more slowly than real time.

 

I attribute this partly to everyone wanting to accomplish a great deal of things in the space of a few game days. It is rushed, to be sure, but I sort of understand it--lounging around enough for the PCs to recover psychically as well as physically would mean spending money on food, when they could be out there earning more, by adventuring, than they spend per day. Even though it would be the most natural thing in the world after intense action, no one wants their PC to sit around when it's usually just a question of whether leaving today with all the money versus leaving Tuesday minus twelve shillings. To the player, it's the same instant no matter what day we decide it is in the game.

 

I can tell you, though, if it were me, I wouldn't have my character do much in winter. Somewhere around mid-autumn when it became physically painful to grasp the pommel of a sword and I faced the prospect of my horse getting stuck in snow, I would say That's all for this year, mates, I'm going to batton down the hatches. See you in spring.

 

(In game time it happens to be spring at the moment, buy I'm saying this because it's ostensibly winter right now in the place in the world where I type this. We have absolutely no weather to show for it.)

 

Incidentally, one of our players, who happens to be leaving us for foreign shores in the near future, is keen on buying an inn, which I think is a capital idea. It would be a perfect place for his character to retire, while also providing a home base for the rest of the entourage--free lodging plus a little bit of extra cash to spare, if the business is successful.

 

Currently, the party is in Oxford and hoping to get some clues toward a certain mysterious book they're carrying. Our prospective inn buyer can expect some information on real estate from his sources when he returns to Ludeforde. The entourage is ten strong and all have horses.

 

We're supposed to play this weekend. Let's see if we do.

The Communication Network

Our entourage has been milling about Shropshire for quite some time now, and has developed a reputation within its borders. This seems to have come as a surprise to at least one player, though, and so I'd like to make a brief excursion into the way in which information travelled in the Middle Ages. 

It's difficult for us to imagine life without the Internet, without television or radio, without printed media, when just about the only source of information to which anyone had access was human conversation. With people spending most of their lives in only one town, village, or hamlet, how on earth could anyone learn about anything happening as far away as the next shire?

The perhaps surprising answer is: Remarkably well.

As I’ve mentioned a few times before, within any medieval man's given locality, he is known, to some degree, by just about everyone. Even in a large town, it's highly probable that nearly all of the residents would know each other by sight, as such residents comprised nearly all of one's human acquaintance for nearly all of one's life. At the very least, the guards at the city gate would be well enough acquainted with the denizens within its walls that they would know who charge entry tolls and who should and should not be going in or out. This, after all, is their job. Trying to masquerade as a resident to escape the toll simply isn't an option.

 

In turn, each person's connections would extend well beyond his place of residence. He might have relatives in several other municipalities, some of them perhaps hundreds of miles away. Aside from the letters that the literate would exchange, there is an intricate and highly-developed gossip network in place.

 

People simply spent a lot of time talking. There would be ample time to talk at the market, while getting water at the town well, when passing in the road in the midst of errands, over the merchandise bought and sold at the city stall, and over food and drink at the ale house. New information was exchanged with eager relish, just as it is today; only, with so much less of it to go around, medieval people tended to do quite a bit more with what they had.

At supper, families would have plenty of time to share all they’d learnt during the day, and this in turn would be passed on to each of their contacts the next day. If they left their village for the parish church, they would carry information there and bring news back. Likewise if they went even further, such as to town on a market day; and travellers on the roads between towns would eagerly share what they’d heard through the grapevine as well as significant announcements from the town crier. With sufficient time to talk, theories and opinions would be developed and exchanged, and lots and lots of detail would be included.

Since people encountered so many fewer strangers than they do now, they would be acutely attuned to differences in facial features, dress, and mannerisms, and would be able to describe these to the people they knew. It’s not hard to see how the party, on entering a town for the first time, might be recognised by people who had merely heard of them.It wouldn’t take long for word to spread to everyone who cares. It would be extremely hard to keep a low profile in all but the largest towns.

It’s even harder, perhaps, for people accustomed to focusing on their smartphones, and ignoring their surroundings, to place themselves in a world where paying attention is one’s only guide to knowledge. As the campaign world’s filter, the DM is the only source of that information.

I’m talking, obviously, about adventure hooks.

The entourage is about to embark on a hundred-mile journey, and perhaps go town-hopping along the way. This is splendid. They may very well end up in an adventure or more; it all depends on what they do with the information they’re given. Or perhaps I should say: The information they proactively collect.

As DM, I'm not going to be able to make too much happen to them. For one thing, now that this group is ten well-armed and, in a few cases, dangerous-looking people, who will almost certainly all be on horseback by the time they leave the shire, bands of thieves are unlikely to bother them on the road. So that pretty much omits the DM force-feeding any action of that type.

They’ll have to talk to people, whether at the inns where they stay, the churches where they mingle, or to people into whom they bump on the street. They'll have to listen, whether to the town crier, to snippets of conversation overheard or misheard, or to things told directly to them, which could be the first clue toward incredible intrigue, or could be worth nothing.

Or they could ignore everything but the road in front of them, and have a right boring trip.

The Entourage in Detail

The number of individual personalities surrounding the PCs in our campaign has increased to such an extent, including as it does henchmen, lackeys, and NPCs just a long for the ride, that it is now less precise to call this group a party than an entourage.

We’ve got a game coming up next week, so we could probably all do with a refresher on who everyone is. The picture below depicts the lot in what would be their most frequent respective postures. The description to follow outlines each character, from left to right.

Addy and Simkin (always a pair). Lackeys, 0 Level.

Role: Basically, they’re just there to carry stuff for the adventurers, and do menial tasks (gather firewood, set up and break down camp, cook, care for the horses, etc.) so that the adventurers can spend their time and energy on more important things. They have very few of their own possessions, so they can pick up a lot of the encumbrance that would otherwise slow the party down.

Goals: Having known only abject poverty their entire lives, they are content to live hand to mouth and be provided with enough to eat and a few coins here and there; thus far, they have never expressed any ambitions beyond survival from week to week.

History: The scions of peasant farmers of the lowest stock, they grew up living hand to mouth until even their own families couldn’t afford them. They formed a pair at some point, and took to roaming the countryside to eke out a living through seasonal labour, stealing chickens, and so on. When they met Dodge (see below), they attached themselves to him as lackeys, and have been following him around ever since.

Dodge. Fighter, Level 1.   

Henchman of Luna.

Role: Soldier under Luna’s command; proficient in sword, both bow types, and knife.  Supplies additional brawn for the PCs, and never complains about anything (nor, for that matter, does he talk much at all).

Goals: Live a life of adventure fighting for the cause of Good, and stay alive as long as possible. He would also like to remit wealth to his family in Posselau.

History: The third son of poor farmers in Posselau, his life was a struggle from the onset. He managed to obtain an apprenticeship to a blacksmith, but sought an opportunity to escape it soon after getting hit in the face with molten iron. Ran away once, taking refuge in a snake-infested cave, but was brought back and beaten severely for his transgression. Befriended by Hamish (see below) and learning of the existence of the PCs, he finally found a chance to leave Posselau (taking his lackeys with him).

Hamish. Cleric, Level 1.

Henchman of Luna.

Goals: Get as close to God as possible. Hopes eventually to retire to a secluded monastic life in old age and devote his life to more peaceful forms of worship than those currently necessary.

Role: Clerical knowledge of religion and healing. If necessary, can use cross-shaped staff as weapon with the shillelagh spell.

History: Was abandoned to a monastery in the far north as a child. For reasons not yet disclosed, he traveled south to Shropshire after having been swindled of all possessions. Has worked as a scribe, and taught Dodge to read and write in Latin. When rumours of the PCs and their reputation came through the church in Posselau, he persuaded Dodge and his lackeys to seek them out and petition to join them.

Waleran Thayler. Cleric, Level 3.

Role: Draw lightning down from stormy skies to annihilate opponents; fight with javelin and war hammer; heal the entourage’s wounds.

Goals: Wealth and power foremost, and fame secondarily.

History: After a sketchy and troubled youth, fell in with an underground temple of the Sami pagan deity Horagales, who blessed him with the power to call lightning. Still aligned with the temple, he adheres to the cult’s dietary and lifestyle restrictions, remaining celibate to maintain his magical powers. Mostly. Has had sex at least once, and really wants to again. His big ears and weird face tend to turn most women off, though. 

Luna. Paladin, Level 3.

Role: Ridding the world of evil; fighting; healing.

Goals: Serve the Lord; eventually acquire holy steed and holy sword to further this goal.

History: The eldest surviving daughter of the master groom at Ludeforde Castle, she had the opportunity to absorb her father’s skill with animals as well as noble decorum and connections within the Earl of March’s household. Her natural beauty and inherent religious devotion, enhanced with her charisma and prowess with weapons of war, set her on an inevitable course to travel the world on a holy quest. Somewhat unexpectedly, she has not yet expressed any desire to leave Shropshire.

Llewellyn Fjord. Bard, Level 2.

Role: Magically inspire and augment the power and prowess of the other adventurers through music, song and stories; fight with bow and sword when circumstances require. 

Goals: Fill the world with beauty and music, and have a smashing old time in the meanwhile.

History: Grew up somewhat sheltered in the remote reaches of western Shropshire, just inside the Welsh border. Was always so gifted with music that his talent seemed almost supernatural; and in pieces of history gleaned from his grandfather, suspects that there are some very bizarre facts surrounding his parentage.

Tabetha Hawthorne. Bard, Level 1.

Henchman of Llewellyn.

Role: Provide genius insight and scholarship, and music (especially harp and vocal) to augment the benefits of Llewellyn's; also a gifted archer, and will use the bow in combat when necessary.

Goals:  Ultimately, peaceful rest in Heaven when the Lord deigns to release her from the misery of mortal existence.

History: Clearly suffered something tragic, the details of which are shrouded in mystery. Travels with a horse called Richard, after the crown prince Richard of Bordeaux.

Ragnar Bjorgvinson. Barbarian, Level 2.

Former PC now under DM control.

Role: Specialist in battle axe, proficient in several other weapons, and can skipper a boat if that’s ever needed. Will generally do whatever the PCs, who are all more intelligent, tell him to do. 

Goals: Do as he pleases, take what he wants, and general satisfy his animal urges.

History: Grew up on the boats, as a mariner bringing shiploads of herring from Scandinavia. Walked away from service after a vicious quarrel with his captain when the boat docked at Bristol, met the party when they were still a small group, and joined them to a living by his axe. 

Hugh from Afar. Cleric, Level 3.

Role: Scholar. Only loosely associated with the entourage; not an official member. Sought to travel with them on hearing of Luna’s reputation for miraculous healing and other gifts of God. Currently engaged in writing a history of the region. Follows the party at a distance, learning as he goes; in a pinch, will provide clerical services such as healing and turn undead.

Goals: Gain knowledge, keep extensive notes, and keep a safe distance from actual combat. 
History: As a friar gifted with healing, helped to hold back the last outbreak of plague in the north. Parentage and upbringing unknown.  

When we left the entourage, they had just returned to the village of Clutune in the wee hours of the morning, taking refuge in a stable just as the rain began to fall. They had fled from the forest just north of the village with a monty haul of treasure with which they absconded from a desperate battle between an imprisoned demoness and her guardian spirit. Ten strong, the entourage are currently nursing their wounds while they pass the time till dawn, talking by candlelight and waiting for their adrenaline to subside. 

Don Quixote Stayed Here

During an excursion into Spanish literature with a member of our campaign, mention was made of Don Quixote, and I recalled that within that doorstop of a tome is plenty of fodder for encounter, and even adventure, ideas for our game.

 

The text in my possession is P. A. Motteux's 1712 English translation, still the best loved by many. The language is delightful, but might present an obstacle to anyone whose primary literary exposure comes from the 21st-century internet; that is to say, the majority of the general public. These days, even when I write for the university publication, the 'readability index' through which my papers are run says that they're too difficult to read, and I'm commanded to rephrase things in a 'simpler' (read: less precise) manner.

 

Don Quixote should really be read by everyone, though; all the better if they can read the original Spanish. Since I'm fairly confident that no one in our campaign is going to read it cover to cover anytime soon, however, I feel free to usurp, bastardise and cannibalise that cornucopia of ideas for all that it's worth--as soon as we start playing again, which, by the way, seems to keep getting pushed further and further back.

 

Our next session is at the beginning of November.

 

I am working on updating certain players' spreadsheets in response to the claim that two of them have ascended in level. The bare mathematics of the total XP of one of these two, however, forbids me to interpret that he has.

 

In the meantime, I'd like to revisit the subject of lodging as I offer a gem of a description of an inn, which serves to remind us how, despite the austerity, a stay at an inn is a big step up from lying in a rain-soaked mohair tent with only a bedroll between earth and weary body.

One of the servants in the inn was an Asturian wench, a broad-faced, flat-headed, saddle-nosed dowdy, blind of one eye, and the other almost out. However, the activity of her body supplied all other defects. She was not above three feet high from her heels to her head; and her shoulders, which somewhat loaded her, as having too much flesh upon them, made her look downwards oftener than she could have wished. This charming original likewise assisted the mistress and the daughter; and, with the latter, helped to make the Knight's bed, and a sorry one it was; the room where it stood was an old gambling cock-loft, which by manifold signs seems to have been, in the days of yore, a repository for chopped straw. Somewhat further, in a corner of that garret, a carrier had his lodging; and, though his bed was nothing but the panels and coverings of his mules, it was much better than that of Don Quixote, which only consisted of four rough-hewn boards laid upon two uneven tressels, a flock-bed, that, for thinness, might well have passed for a quilt, and was full of knobs and bunches, which, had they not peeped out through many a hole, and shown themselves to be of wool, might well have been taken for stones. The rest of that extraordinary bed's furniture was a pair of sheets, which rather seemed to be of leather than linen-cloth, and a coverlet whose every individual thread you might have told, and never have missed one in the tale.

It's striking that a night's repose in such environs is sufficient to regain lost HP (as, incidentally, it was for Don Quixote, whose bangs and bruises from his most recent skirmish were somewhat miraculously healed by the next morning). That should underscore the necessity of at least a roof and indoor heating after a hard day's travels; all the more if the party is recovering from combat.

 

Historian Ian Mortimer, in The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England, reminds us that the medieval traveler's place of rest depends on where he finds himself at sunset. When considering the alternatives, when he has a chance to stay at an inn, he should most certainly leap at it. Innkeepers are aware of this, and are likely to charge accordingly. Mortimer calls innkeepers 'no-nonsense men, shaped like bears' who are accustomed to handling all manner of ruffians and other obstreperous clients. They have the power to turn a customer out without his belongings, or even without his clothes, if he fails to make good on the bill.

 

Thus far, the party have run into few problems with inns or their masters. Nonetheless, they should always be aware that they're lucky to be allowed to stay, lest they get any ideas about complaining about the smoke, the fleas and bedbugs, the barking of the guard dogs, the smell of stale beer and dog urine in the rushes on the floor, or the creaking of stairs and bodily noises of fellow guests coming and going in the night. The only option remaining might be to bed down with the elements, which at the very least will provide no recovery of HP, and very well might lead to infection and other problems.

 

Or perhaps they could take their chances in a cheap bed in a hospital, on ancient unchanged sheets next to a pungent leper.

The Paladin's Dilemma

For lack of any other fodder for blogging, I'd like to respond at length to an inquiry made post-session by the player in control of the party's Sami pagan priest of lightning. He asked if his having revealed the source of his power, particularly in calling down lightning to incinerate a bear, wouldn't place any strain on relations with those members of the party whose powers come from the Christian God. My short answer was that that would be a dilemma for them to ponder. My slightly longer answer is to give them some fodder for pondering in this connection.

 

The party's paladin, who happens also to be female, is played by a male, who also happens to be an athiest. It's a challenge of a rather high to the imagination to put oneself in the character of such an opposite. It's not prohibitively difficult to put oneself into a character very unlike oneself, of course; I generally relish playing an ESTP, and I think I do it quite well, despite actually being an INTJ. I think, however, that if I had convincing and incontrovertible evidence for the existence of any deity, my view of the world would be radically different. It would be all the more so if I had a female body and brain whose thoughts were at least to some degree influenced by a greater presence of female hormones and other biochemical differences. Personally, I don't believe I could conceive of the resulting worldview sufficiently to pour myself into the portrayal of such a character.

 

It has to be done, however, in order to formulate the appropriate response to the presence of a heretic within the paladin's close acquaintance. The heathen exposed himself as a heathen in the process of squashing a threat to the lives of everyone in the party. The paladin will have to find her own answer as to whether she should continue to associate with the pagan lightning-worshipper, or perhaps flee from him and beg the Lord's forgiveness for having ever associated with him at all. Is keeping company with the likes of him actually contrary to the will of God, or merely contrary to the manner in which the majority interpret that will? Can a heretic be a temporary ally in the battle against evil, leaving the final judgement to the Lord Himself? Or is it a Christian's duty to turn the Sami pagan away from his heathen ways, even if it means losing a great source of power? These are questions with which the paladin will have to grapple. It's hardly as clear an issue as, say, breaking any of the Ten Commandments. If she cannot find the correct answer--or worse, if she willfully avoids contemplating the question--the Lord's will is likely to present itself, eventually, in ways she won't like at all.

 

One of the most powerful tools at the paladin's disposal is that bit of woowoo called detect evil. Up to now, it has been interpreted as a kind of 'detection of malicious intent', but this is an oversimplification. It also involves a sensitivity to auras that exude malevolence regardless of any specific intention. Thus, when our paladin encountered a demon in the last session, her powers of detection hit the proverbial jackpot. Demons are by definition evil. Registering the demon as malevolent, in this case, had no connection whatever to any desire to harm the party. As it happened, she had no such desire. This, however, does not necessarily mean she would have had any compunctions about destroying the party if it served her purposes--or, indeed, on a whim for reasons that would have seemed to the party absolutely arbitrary.

 

It should be evident at once that demons have a very different code of ethics from that of humans. That they inhabit a very different reality was merely touched by an exchange this demon had with the lightning priest. He asked if she was going to find a portal to get back to her own dimension. She answered, 'You're picturing something like a door or a window. But it isn't like that. It isn't like anything you know.'

 

The demon was a supernatural entity acting from her own innate nature, which registers as something closer to pure evil than anything the paladin had ever encountered before. What would her detection and interpretation be of a mere human who chooses to turn his back on the Lord and has in plain view flouted five of the Ten Commandments himself thus far?

What a Man's Got to Do

Swordfighting is not what you think!

Today I’m going to round out the last two posts on fantasy-reality mismatch and maturity with a short diatribe on responsibility and manhood. I do this in the hope that this weekend’s session will inspire me to hold forth on a completely unrelated topic next time.

 

By this I mean, in part, that everyone will show up.

 

Somewhere on The Art of Manliness I came across a reminder of traditional personal responsibility that seems to have fallen by the wayside. I believe it was already on the wane when I was growing up, because there were always certain people who failed to show up when they said they would, or who would arrive egregiously last with barely an apology. I can’t find the post at the moment, but Brett McKay states that when you tell someone you’ll be somewhere at a certain time, you have in effect made a promise to that person, and when you show up fifteen minutes late you have broken that promise. I had suspected this to be true from a young age, but I also perceived that it was a rare trait to uphold despite its truth value. The situation was exacerbated when I moved from New York to California, where the constant sunshine, or something in the water, seemed to give everyone a subjective view of time. Besides drivers who forgot to use turn signals when they should have and forgot to turn them off on the rare cases they did use them, and the expectation of every customer service drone to engage in protracted and obnoxiously friendly small-talk before any ordering could take place, it was the thing that irked me most about living in California.

 

Punctuality and other promises were all the more important when the community relied on every man to uphold its standards. This is not so much the case now, when humans, even those who consider each other nominal friends, don’t appear able to contribute anything of value to one’s life that can’t be gained through the Internet or spending some disposable income for something produced in a factory—and besides, social norms have relaxed to such an extent that we don’t hold it against people when they dispense with punctuality, or with keeping any other sort of promise. We just accept that that’s the way they are.

 

Incidentally, Brett McKay also has a list of 100 skills every man should know. I’m a bit upset that there are 24 things on this list that I can’t do. That may be one way of saying I’m only 76% of a man.

 

Testosterone, in fact, has been on the decline for decades. There are numerous environmental and lifestyle factors said to be at blame for this, including increasingly sedentary lifestyles and the ubiquitousness of chemicals that mimic estrogen in the environment. Whatever the cause, if you’re reading this, chances are you’re less of a man than your father was at your age, and he in turn was a less a man than your grandfather. The causes are subject to interpretation, depending on your political bent and which conspiracy theory you prefer, but about the existence of the phenomenon there is little speculation.

 

It cannot be denied that the invention of electric lighting has changed the way we interact with solar cycles. Before Edison, it was still fairly common to go to bed when it was dark. Nowadays we turn on the lights and stay up later. The effects of sleep deprivation are well researched. If you use an alarm clock to wake up, you are sleep-deprived.

 

Further, some evidence suggests that this constant manipulation of the cycle of day and night has interfered with our physiological responses to the changes of the seasons. When living in tune with lengths of daylight that wax and wane slowly throughout the year, our bodies may be more aligned with the seasonal availability of food and our ability to store it. In pre-industrial societies, when life was dependent on the harvest, people tended to eat more during the bounty of summer and early autumn and less in other seasons. The body stored fat during these times of longer daylight so that it could live on excess stored fat during times of shorter daylight when food was scarcer. With the advent of universal electric lighting, we may be tricking our bodies into acting as if it were summer all year round—constantly consuming excess food, and developing metabolic syndrome and all sorts of health problems related to excess fat storage. This in tandem with lifestyles in which many of us spend long hours in front of computers, barely moving throughout the day, with little chance to burn off the fat. The excess fat also provides more storage for fat-soluble xenoestrogens.

 

Extended use of computers, and other screen-based technology, probably exacerbates the problem of low testosterone. I haven’t seen any research on the subject, but my hunch is that these things are driving our T-levels through the floor, even if there turns out to be no other reason than a reduction of physical activity. (And no, the Wii and Pokemon Go don’t adequately substitute carrying mortar all day, stalking big game through the woods, or defending your life with a sword.)

 

Granted, the Internet offers tremendous advantages in the sharing of information and opportunities to educate ourselves. There is a great deal on it that it immensely beneficial. There is also a great deal that is violent, pornographic, and just simply useless, draining both our time and our manhood as it smothers our resources both for self-reliance and interpersonal communication, as we swim in an information sea of diminished expectations and vicarious pleasures.

 

(On the subject of pornography, incidentally, society seems to just now be waking up to its potential for addiction. One would think, or at least I would, that this should have been obvious: Billions of dollars in R&D had been poured into deliberately making television addictive before the Internet was even a thing. That adding orgasms and unlimited personal choice would lead to compulsion should be a no-brainer. Now we’ve got an epidemic of young men who can’t achieve erections with physical partners because their neural pathways are attuned to pixels.)

 

At one time, and in fact until very recently, life was tough and sexual outlets were rare. Adversity and the necessity of delaying gratification made us who we were. The reverse of these factors makes us what we are today. And what we are, in the WEIRD demographic, is an increasingly meaty, complacent, dependent, and physically weak population of low fecundity and declining birthrates.

 

It’s easy to object, especially living as we do in Japan, that the increasing feminization of society also makes it safer. To say so is to forget that a man is supposed to be dangerous—that the very essence of masculinity is to protect women and children, and that a man is a man to the extent that he can do this. The expression of this ability is complicated by the intricacies of industrial society, but the essential definition of manhood is unchanged. A man who cannot do this at all is simply not much of a man. We may have to tolerate a bit of danger in society in exchange for the agressive impulse that goes along with it—one that helped push history's great heroes, explorers, and inventors to accomplish all the boons to civilisation which we now enjoy.

 

Now get out there and practise those manly skills.