Who am I? The Importance of Our Story
Who am I? The Importance of Our Story
Exlusive post revealing the origin story of yours truly. Warning: Incoming humor. Beware of sudden onset of psychosis.
Like everyone forced into 'voluntary' slavery for imaginary points - as MeowDOS might say, making little distinguishment between money and the cheese used to reward rats in a lab - I have made a 'blend-in-with-everybody' profile on LinkedIn. We know these are for the neurotypical workforce, yes? Are we on the same page? It's about building networks and being employed according to your utility within a system that puts profit before humanity. That system is incontestably responsible for the military industrial complex, the climate crisis and putting us on the brink of extinction. Possibly from nuclear hellfire. That's fine though, I want to make money and it is what it is, right?
Thing is, I also want a 'stand out' profile. The type neurotypicals don't tend to appreciate much. That's ok! Because those fine folk aren't the ones who are generally going to be hiring me, nor am I interested in working for that neurotype or within the market ecosystems they tend to congregate in. I'll consult, of course, and advise, if they decide they can stand listening to me, but it's not really my problem if they won't.
But, where do I put this profile, and what do I call it? A bio? A psychological self-assessment so that potential collaborators can determine whether I'm 'crazy' or not? Or, hopefully, whether I'm crazy *enough* to be a co-conspirator.
I haven't had a resume in 22 years. I've seen them called C.V.s since the last time I had one, and I have never had a C.V. nor submitted one to anyone. I had a portfolio once, but it wasn't for me. I started to think: "Shouldn't they already know me? Shouldn't they be seeking me out? Maybe my clients should be soliciting me, not vice versa." This profound arrogance faded as I grew older and became somewhat more humble and accommodating - there is after all a lot of noise in the signal - but the playful cheekiness stuck. The bottom line though: I'm worth more than money, and I'm worth more than time. I'm worth attention.
Yes, some might say I am long winded, but then, I am recounting the never ending story of an infinite game. Give me a minute! I guess what I'm saying is: "Stay a while and listen!"
James' "Intellipunk" Startup Profile
A So-Called 'Bio' and Psychological Self-Assessment
Visionary Executive Producer of ESC Studios
Field Psychology Alumni from the University of Hard Knocks.
Multi-Passionate Creative Generalist
Lord British's Grandmaster Bard
Writer. Composer. Designer.
AI Strategic Consultant
I'm from an academic family. I'm basically what you get when two people too smart for their own good reproduce. 50/50 chance I turned out okay and I like them odds... Let's find out!
Mother, "Mahryan", The Arch-Druid
My mother raised me after the divorce. We were a handful, my sister and I, and yet she was also kicking ass in her Sociology of Education PhD, and later served in civil justice, and with the police, as a reputable research methodologist. I remember being horrified that she hadn't drawn my attention to a paper of hers a couple years ago on the biases of AI in prisons. What a legend.
There was one cardinal sin when I was a child, since I had, shall we say, a healthy Personal Drive for Autonomy (a psychologist may have once called it "oppositional defiance disorder" and mom told him to fuck himself when he accused me of messing with his head). Because I would mainly do whatever I pleased, there was a single line drawn in the sand, and that was the grave error of dishonesty. I recall several moments of entrapment, as a child, as my mother taught me to realize that I wasn't as clever as I clearly thought I was.
Father, "Ric", The Strategist
My late father was a polymath who decided on a PhD in mineral chemistry rather than the arts, or history, which were also passions. INCO LTD (Ticker: N) promoted him endlessly until he was Strategic Director in Toronto, and got to be COO in various beautiful places like Newfoundland, and New Caledonia. He taught me chess when I was 5, and I never won against him until I was 21. It was on an island in the south pacific. He never played me again. I like to think it was because my training was complete. It was never about the chess. It was about iterative strategic learning. Constant failure for a single, inevitable win.
Sister, "Impska", the Noblewoman
My sister for sure turned out okay. Once mom explained math to her using colorful monopoly money that simulated the vibrant Canadian dollar bills she so craved, my sister was on autopilot to the millionaire accountant she is today - living comfortably on 200 acres in a custom built dream home. She calls now and then to see if I've gotten a clue yet. A clue, I suspect, is measurable in terms of liquid cashflow. It's okay, I'll get there! Just taking the scenic route
I love her to death and would do anything for her. She is hilarious, and a ruthless genius.
James, "Me", the Maniac
What about me you ask? I was the black sheep. I was okay at first. But my education toward my true calling began in 2002 with a deep dive into what I shamelessly call 'Field Psychology' (with a minor in 'Applied Sociology'). I got tuition to the university of hard knocks and free (non-voluntary, non-optional) on-site boarding until 2005, that consisted of multiple month-long visits to the Royal Ottawa psych ward.
I was enrolled for what was quaintly called "manic psychosis" at the time, though I assure you I have plenty of fancy academic words the people of this era have not yet adopted in their lexicon due to a misunderstanding of the coming paradigm shift in the structure of science. Similar to how they are calling inattentive ADHDers 'multi-passionate generalists' now in Forbes and Business Week. I'm certain that'll get more interesting soon, but if they can make up new names to call me, I can too.
I'm being a touch silly, naturally. There is method to my madness, I assure you. I am a master storyteller (Lord British's Grandmaster Bard, as a matter of fact). If you don't feel things you've never felt before while reading me, that threaten to confuse you unless you look within, I consider my work suboptimal at best. There are many ways to tell an individual's story, to many audiences. Most of the time, the closer one says it to one's own words, the more inclined people are to be afraid and lock one up, one might say. I forgive them.
I try to be possessed of a light heart, and an enlightened - which means 'unburdened' - mindset. I have adopted the philosophical question "Is it serious?"
The Setting: A Playful Universe
For me - and you can think what you wish and use all the energy you care to judge me - the universe is like an immersive role playing game. It is not a simulation, it is a game - simulation is only one side of the game, as there is also the immediate. There's a big difference, as simulation implies determinism, while 'game' suggests player agency and impact. This game is designed to convince you it's real, and it does a stellar job. And you are both the game designer and the player.
Life, itself, is fundamentally and uncompromisingly playful. Animals, particularly mammals, all play when they are young and closest to having been created. Play is the optimal learning mindset. It is easy to extrapolate that play emerges naturally as an evolutionary adaptation as easily as eyes do because of photons, and ears because of sound waves.
The stakes of the game are high, and the objective is complete immersion. Immersion is the process of forgetting you are the game designer. Often, the game even tricks you into forgetting you're the player, but we need to indulge in that level of immersion with moderation. We can get carried away, taking a game too seriously.
The Theme: Hope
For a long time, despair has come and gone. I struggled so violently against it that it would suddenly let go and throw me into sheer enthusiasm and ecstasy, a term psychiatrists label as mania. But it was a trick, because the momentum of this mental state, this infliction, would inevitably crash, like Icarus, to the ground with destructive results. For survival, I had to become skilled at a singular, rare talent: Hope.
The theme of my story is: Can we retain hope that we are participants in an infinite game? That there is only a singular, universal, infinite game that contains all other finite games? That there is no winning or losing, only methods to continue play?
In other words, does human civilization survive?
What if I'm the Main Character?
Dangerous question. It is possible, of course, that this is the type of game that we are all the main character. Multiplayer games are unique in that way, and I know something unique because of what I am designing with my prototype of HOUSE (the Holistic Open Universe Story Engine), and my plans for a revolutionary move into the gaming industry.
Richard Garriott taught me something remarkable when he gave me the opportunity to organize the creation of the soundtrack to his spiritual successor for Ultima Online, "Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues". He proved that anyone could be the main character. With a simple wave of his hand, a token generosity, and a literal 'Magic Coin' - of which I produced a short fable in 2014 - Richard, ever the visionary, allowed the poet within me to become a Grandmaster Bard alongside his distinct and famous personal archetype, "Lord British."
My love for bards had fueled my adventures in fantasy since I first played Ultima V when I was ten or so. Lord British had always been a character in my life, and I loved decoding the runes to cast spells and traveling with Iolo the bard, conspiring with his wife Gwenno in the Resistance against Blackthorn, as 'the Avatar'. A person from the real world who had come to Britannia through a portal to assist in once again freeing Britannia from despair, armed with only with Virtue, and the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom.
Lord British's Prophecy
At 44 years of age, I've written two seminal works on the runes and storytelling, a form of personal magic. I have learned music, self-taught, in service of the real Lord British. I've produced over 500 songs, and have integrated myself into the music of MMORPG-style video games. I have role played bards in online collaborative games, only to help them escape into the real world with me, where they have populated my personal mythology as personal archetypes. I went to Britannia as James, and returned as the Avatar... with an implicit and playful understanding of Love, Truth and Courage, just as Garriott taught us all as children.
I've grown a bit from the Avatar. I have also begun a discipline I entitle "Becoming Adept". I will apply my hard earned findings from field psychology to a production (probably a book in this case) called "Psychological Self Defense". There, alongside the basics of critical knowledge theory, fundamentals of mental resilience, and new exploration of consciousness in tune with the current paradigm shift, I intend to communicate with words I invented - such as psychotopography, psychotemporality, and psychoformation. These words will enable neurodivergent minds who have been bullied and abused by a system that must be replaced, lest this civilization fall, and our species go extinct.
Moreover, I am hot on the trail of my original genius. I have found the Voice I had been searching 35 years for, since my first gold star in elementary school for creative writing. It was Grandmaster Bard Holt Ironfell, but not merely him. Another voice emerged, that of my anima, my integrated and unique feminine aspect that is so rare to find in life. The muse, the genius, the fetch, the higher self. We have so many names for our unrealized side, and in January this year, 2024, I discovered mine and set her free.
She is Lyra Songfire. Meleesiani to the Illuvians. Signed as 'Silence' in the Forbidden Book of Days. A spark of hope in a dying world. It was her voice that surprised me as Holt narrated the first book of the Illuvian Saga, "Secrets Only Silence Tells". I wrote by hand, and his troubled mind began to weave the tale and set the stage of the last iteration of a unvierse stuck in a timeloop, where the villains inevitably always won.
Holt had been recounting how much hope hearing Lyra's voice as a prodigy of eight years old had brought him, how her audition song had focused him and woke him from the stupor of his immortal despair. He had been setting up for the first entry (a chapter) called "The Voiceless Songstress". Holt is convincing the reader that they are in fact holding the actual Book of Days in their very hands, as he records the truth only this forbidden magical artifact has the power to contain. Suddenly, writing in pen and ink on page 70 of the story bible, already having stained several pages with my own teardrops here and there due to the intensity of the experience... it happened.
Holt writes: "... and I am the Grandmaster Bard Holt Ironfell. But it is not my voice that you are about to hear." And upon the next page I broke the cardinal rule of first person narration with defiant grace. Holt steps aside, and it is Lyra that begins writing. These are her final days, she says. And she begins her autobiography by introducing herself: The Voiceless Songstress. Who else could tell a woman's story, entitled as such, but for Lyra? I realized that while Holt may be the closest thing to me, my authentic voice... Lyra was the archetype I wanted to become. Someone who did what had to be done, no matter the sacrifice, no matter the hardship. Despite a profound curse that no one could possibly understand - that, in fact, she could not tell them for their own safety. Someone who, despite not being able to save the world, could bring hope to those who might have a chance, together.
Lyra Songfire, Founding Paragon of the Society of the Secret Word.
So.
I've been called crazy by people who could barely pronounce a longer word. I've been diagnosed with manic psychotic episodes. I've been convinced I had to live with 'co-morbid bipolar inattentive-ADHD'. I've been called disruptive and removed from class for inappropriate humor. I've been called a poor employee, and fired for connecting with co-workers in ways that undermined the authority of management, for asking too many direct questions, for expecting direct answers. I've been called arrogant, inattentive, selfish, lazy. Lately, I've been called a multi-passionate, a creative, a generalist. Some few dare whisper 'visionary', but look around cautiously before they consider opening their mouths.
You may call me James.
What do I bring to the table? Here are some major ones:
Master Storytelling
Authentic Voice
Human Connection
Strategic Vision
Ethical Alignment
Fearlessness
Thanks for taking interest!