playing games

I've come to the realisation that I am the only person I know who doesn't play games. I don't hate games; I just don't play them. Ballgames, cards, computer games, boardgames, betting, role-playing games... none of them interest me. It isn't that I've never played games. I have. At different times in my childhood I have tried all those games listed above, but they never held my interest. I have nothing against other people playing games. I figure, good for them if they derive enjoyment from them. Though I've never had much patience or understanding of the spectators. (As far as I can see, the whole idea of a game is in the doing. Watching it seems like the essence of futility.)

You might suspect that this lack of interest in games would make for a bored existence, devoid of fun. But this is the odd thing: I am never bored and I enjoy life more than anybody I know. I love the things I do, the creatures around me, all the wonderful fiction and non-fiction I read. My life is utterly brimming with fun. But no games. I wonder if there is a connection.

bring on the witchhunts

The news today, of a child pornography ring (involving a policeman, a priest, a child-care manager, among others) was followed by fear-instilling pronouncements from both the Liberal Party and the Labour Party. They just don't get it. (Did they miss the part about the policeman being part of it? Who do they think will run the witchhunt?) You can't battle this kind of thing with fear and hate. All that does is make it hard for people who love kids for the right reasons (because they are our future and our legacy as opposed to bent sex objects). Half a dozen poor twisted fools ruin everything for the millions of people who genuinely love kids for their bright minds, the sun they bring into the world, and the hope they represent for the future of our society. Now when I chat to kids or am interested in what they think I am always fearful that people will think I'm doing it for suspect motives. For me, the worst thing in the world is to damage a kid's mind, and child sex, by all accounts does irrepairable harm.

Luckily for me, I had a wonderful childhood and remained blissfully ignorant of such things till I became an adult and found that many people I know were interfered with as kids. From what I've read and heard, most child-sex offenders were assaulted as children, so that it is a self-fueling phenomenon, although only a small number of those who were interfered with go on to become offenders when they grow up.

It seems logical to me that, rather than driving it underground with witchhunts, we should be ecouraging people to seek help to get over such compulsions. There is no way anybody will seek help in the current climate. Another problem with such witchhunts is that it makes it hard for people to be genuinely affectionate to children. It is discouraged and feared. But this kind of isolation is surely what cultivates child-sex in the first place. The kids are unable to confide in adults. The adult carers are unable to be close enough to create confidence. The distance between adult and child facilitates the perception of them by some as sex objects instead of as full, feeling humans with aspirations and a future. Putting up walls between people is exactly the wrong direction to move. It will make matters worse instead of better. But one of the most insidious effects of witchhunts, and you'd think we would have learned by now, is that people can be ruined by simple accusation... no truth needed. It is a wonderful tool for those who seek to control people and dispose of troublesome individuals, but no good at all for anybody else.

It is very scary to speak out against a witchhunt though; it carries the risk of being branded as one of the witches, as those during the McCarthy anti-communist witchhunts found out.