There are always a few topics I try and avoid, but why do I do that?  This is my space, so I get to choose what I want to talk about.

I’ve been playing the Detroit Become Human.  It’s good… really good.  Not only is it graphically beautiful, but it just so happens to also be very thought provoking and hits home quite a bit with what has been happening in the good ole U.S. of A. lately.  Some people are criticizing the game saying it’s too political, but the game only recently came out and it takes years for these kinds of games to be made.  Plus, even if certain events weren’t occurring right now, we could just say the game is reflective of history and man’s inability to be accepting, and ultimately man’s fear, I think.

There’s also the fact that so often we criticize in others what we dislike about ourselves.  Which in some ways is hopeful.  Granted, I hate reminding myself of that because then it means I have to look at myself and check myself to make sure I’m not doing the same.  This isn’t about me or my faults today, though. Ha!  Instead, I view it is a positive thing that so many people are criticizing this game for being too political, it means that on some level they recognize that maybe they could be wrong.  I’ll just get down to it. Last night in the game, an adult android and a child android who were very much like mother/daughter were torn apart and put in concentration camps.  This has happened many times throughout history and it just so happens it has been occurring again.  I get that there are laws and that that everyone has very strong opinions right now about what is happening, but above all, I encourage everyone to try and find some empathy for your fellow man regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation… none of that matters.  We are all human and have emotions and feelings and should be cognizant of that.

I’m certainly not perfect by any means, but I’ve been really trying to put myself in everyone’s shoes before I make a judgment.  Sure, I may end up still not changing my mind about how I feel about someone and may be unable to find much empathy for someone, but I do try to imagine myself in the same situation and think about what I would do.  While there are still times that my mind isn’t much changed, there are plenty of times when I have to admit that maybe I’ve been wrong and haven’t really put myself in their shoes and… Okay, I get it now.

I posted this on my Facebook wall the other day after seeing someone else post it, and I think it’s worth sharing here as well…

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

Quotation: Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials.