Dedicated obsession

One thing I have grown to appreciate over my few years here on earth is the pure pursuit of an ideal. It can take many forms but there is almost always an obsessive quality that goes beyond just achieving a goal. The pursuit of an ideal is an endless race. The greyhounds racing after the mechanical rabbit they will never catch. Captain Ahab pursuing his whale to the grave.

At the same time, real dedication is good for the individual and society. We need people to spend their lives going beyond what we collectively know and think is possible. We need people to sacrifice a life of leisure to an ideal for the good of the world. One example I've used before is that of the Johnny Walker Blue Label Whisky. The whisky is aged 75 years before it achieves the smooth flavor the makers had in mind. 75 years. That means the people that agreed to make it said to themselves "I want to make the best whisky in the world for people to enjoy. That means I make it, seal it, and never get to taste the fruits of my labor." Their work is sacrificed toward an ideal. That's not a perfect example, but I think you understand what I'm talking about.

The final point is that there needs to be balance between what is good for the individual and for the world. Too much dedication becomes obsession which is not healthy for the individual and often leads to results that are so specific and idealized that they serve no use to the world.

To see what I'm talking about, it's time again to delve into the world of video game culture (I know, a disturbing trend these past few posts. It won't be like this all the time.). I talk now of the ideal time attack. A time attack is basically playing a game from beginning to end with the idea of the fastest completion time possible guiding your every movement. It offers a completely different challenge and opens up new aspects of a game that one might never have thought about. So, a fun concept, right? Well, yes. However, there is a group of gamers that are skating very close to the edge of obsession over at this site.

(Description on the website) "These are movies of classic console games being played extraordinarily, using an emulator as a tool to overcome human limitations of skill and reflex."

What that means is this. They use special computer programs to play a game perfectly. No accidents. No slips. No errors. Which we all know is impossible, even for a computer. But they do too. Take, for instance, Mega Man 2 (a little ways down the page).

I watched this one about a year ago and was blown away. Very interesting way of moving around, fighting, secrets and strategies, etc. It was optimized to where it took the "person" playing only about 28 minutes to finish. Most quick human games take more like 90-120 minutes. Anyway, I found my way back to the site about a week ago and they have reoptimized their run down to 25 minutes. It's even more crazy to see now. If there is a trick or a glitch, they've used it. I don't know how they could improve it, but looking at the posts around the game, they've already found at least one way to make this run obsolete by a couple of seconds. This kind of asymptotic approach to the unreachable ideal is just what I'm talking about. Is it worthwhile? I don't know, but I enjoy the results on a certain level. Kind of a triumph of the absurd.