Books, games and evil genies

How can indulging in the escapist bosom of an excessive amount of fantasy series nonsense help us to overcome regrets?

Over the last three years I completely changed my life and during a pandemic, that was tough. To say it has been easy would be a complete lie, in fact, given the lockdown, I am specifically happy that I didn’t quit the journey to become a primary school teacher. I’ve struggled with the workload, my own mental resistance and feeling like a fraud. The amount of work and effort I have dedicated into this course and career forced me to take a step back from what was a great comfort to me and my mental health, essentially this blog, self help and philosophy. Instead I’ve spent my free time with Dean (I believe I once referred to him as a Luna hunk, lol.) exercising and indulging in some well deserved food, perhaps a little too much of the latter resulting in a 10kg weight loss regime before I graced the beaches of Bali – thus saving myself from being doused with water on the shores by members of save the whales.

In true escapist fashion, during the training, I opted to embark on a fantasy saga inspired by one of my favourite video games of all time, The Witcher 3. I understand the games is based on the characters of the story, but I came at the books from the game. Perhaps my obsession with stoicism led me to seek out a fictional equivalent of Epictetus himself only minus sermons in the Stoa in favour of killing monster for money. What I particularly enjoy about the fantasy genre in general is the scope it can offer philosophical discussion and posing thought experiments about life. I thoroughly, and perhaps somewhat shamelessly, dedicate this sentence to encouraging you to invest in this dark and twisted child of Lord of the Rings. While at times complicated, it is not a saga that will disappoint. I recommend you start with Blood of Elves, the first in the series, then read the short stories after, even if that is not sequentially correct, I think you appreciate it more that way as you are more attached to the characters.

One particular short story in the series is called The Last Wish. If you are not inclined to literature you can check out episode 5 of season one of Netflix’s adaptation (warning, the series deviates from the novels and not in a “the books are so much better” way but in a general – it doesn’t make too much sense way). After reading this my mind jumped into Lewis Carrol’s rabbit hole as I began to explore my thoughts about the potential it could offer to examine my own life. The premise of the story is, very simply, as follows. Geralt, our stoic mutated monster hunter, is on a fishing trip with his musically talented twink best friend, Dandelion. They come across a bottle which contains a djinn. A djinn is a supernatural entity from pre-Islamic Arabia. The anglicised name for djinn is genie, think Disney’s Aladdin, but with one crucial difference, a djinn is inherently mischievous. The djinn in this story hits Dandelion right where it hurts, in the musical testicles (his throat) robbing him of his voice and Geralt has to take him to a sorceress for help. This sorceress wants to use this djinn for her own needs, but plot twist, the djinn is granting Geralt’s wishes without him being aware of it. Short story, well, short, the djinn grants the last wish and goes away.

Now, my thoughts after this story led me to return to an old day dream of mine, nominally, what I would do with three wishes. Younger me would always just wish for one wish, which was to be a variant of redesigning my life, starting again some how. In a way, similar to the Simms character creation. I would be taller, have more hair, be in better shape, and amazing author, brilliant at singing, just all round, amazing person. It’s odd because I would just exaggerarte many aspects of my personality and become more. More confident, funny and good humoured and attractive. I wasn’t greedy, I wasn’t asking for loads of money, or lots of wishes, just this one, as if only needing one wish would make it more plausible. I could stretch to two wishes, and opt for some kind of time travel option, but only ever Terminator style, and not Back to the Future style, there is a big difference. I have discussed ideas of time travel and what it is suggesting about your subconscious world here. Despite being a minor aspect of the series this short story, it helped me to finally exorcise this day dream and see it in a new important way, especially when I add the analogy of the Witcher 3 video game to my life. How will I do this I hear you think silently to the computer screen? Read on dear reader, read on.

Knowing that a djinn is inherently mischievous and will twist any wish to something that you wish you hadn’t wished for (I wonder how that would work, for my third wish, I wish none of this had ever happened?) imagine this scenario. Here I am discovering that a djinn who has ultimate cosmic power (iddy-biddy-living-space) and who has just agreed to grant me three wishes. I excitedly demand of the djinn “For my first wish, I wish to start my life all over again!”. My wish is granted, I return to the day I was born again, ready to correct all the mistakes and bad decisions I have made in the past and become a better, more informed version of myself. Focus and exaggerate those parts of my personality I wish I had perfected earlier. Perfect wish, right?

This is where the video game comes in. I spent a lot of time during the period of my life I like to call BD1 (Break Down 1, the one is always in anticipation of the second you see), playing this computer game. What is great about this game is the plethora of choice you can make, and these choices have an impact on the world in the game. I diligently researched what decisions to make to try and ensure I lived the best moral life in game. Morality is something I have discussed before. I recently began to replay this game again, for a second time, and what is interesting to note is that I have made mostly the same decisions for a second time. I just cant bring myself to conclude the game in a morally ambiguous way which I suppose is reassuring as it is demonstrative of how want to live my life. There were a few occasions were I was unhappy with a choice so I would head to a previous save and reload sometimes losing hours of gameplay – but as I said – that was breakdown 1 – I had time to spare. Back to me reliving my life and starting over. Now imagine at some unknown point in the future I do find a Djinn, I get ready to make this perfect wish. I release the demon wish granter from its captivity and in a clear, proud voice recount my perfect wish. “Oh great and powerful Djinn” (the creature is pretty powerful in the pantheon of The Witcher universe – so it’s worth while to kiss some magical ass) “I have only one wish – and if you ask me, it is pretty perfect – I wish to start all over again so I don’t make the same mistakes as before.” Instead of seeing the Djinn rub his hands, or better yet roll up his selves a la the Genie from Aladdin, I hear its deep grumble. “I am afraid all your wishes have been granted – you have no more wishes.” I’m not one to argue, but I would ask what my previous wishes were and be horrified to hear that I had already wished the same wish three times before.

It seems I was no specific enough – in any of my play throughs and the Djinn is, after all, a mischievous wish granter. I suppose I ought to have worked in some kind of clause that allowed me some kind of consciousness about these choices, about the direction I want to take so I would have needed to be very specific, perhaps even requesting a lawyer to look over the Terms and Conditions. Without a priori knowledge of how this life panned out – I wouldn’t be able to make any different decisions or precognition over the errors nor how to avoid them. Just like in my game – the characters have no awareness of the course of action I took before reloading a previous safe point, even if it resulted in their deaths, I had no awareness of my restart. In a similar vein, this second play through – I am making the same decisions (more or less) that I did the first time I played it. I live my life in the exact same way as before, met the Djinn again who grants me the same wish. Live through that life, meet the Djinn and get sent back to the start and then live through this life only now I have lost my wishes. Was the whole exercise futile? Or would the knowledge that the mer fact of reliving my life wouldn’t result in any drastic changes be beneficial?

It may be that the life I am living now is my first attempt. It could be my second or even my third. Perhaps there is an immeasurable amount of times we can play through this Game of Life. This thought experiment, the inclusion of the Djinn can offer great insight into the philosophical concept of free will. This is something that philosophers, religious thinkers, scientists and more recently neuroscientists have poured over for centuries. Free will is the concept that we are free to determine our decisions. That we all have choices.The belief that during my second play through of my life I would have the power to make decisions – whether they be the same or different – that I have the ability to determine my own course of action. The opposite of free will is determinism. That even if we had the power to relive our lives there would be no alternative route. The first time I live my life, right up until I meet the Djinn the first time – I had freewill. I made my own choices based on what little resources I had available to me – but the second and third time – my life is already predetermined that is to say – that I would not have the chance to make any different choice, The idea that every single choice I have made in my life is the result of of an unbroken chain of events – and this bit always blows my mind – stretching back all the way to the start of time itself. Noah Yuvel Hari in his book Homo Sapiens points out that all of our ancestors, even down to the singled cell organisms during the life on earths infancy, were fit and healthy enough to procreate. When at school we look at subjects like “what were the causes of World War 2?”, it is feasible that we can track that journey back all the way to Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon nearly 2000 years before. At its core, determinism is the idea that everything is already chosen, all of your decisions have been made and you are just living through them. As a result, everything is predictable to some extent because it has already been chosen. This might seem far flung, but we live our lives with this in mind. We know that a child’s education can often determine their futures, that some quirk of genetic make up can determine our personalities or medical conditions in the future and that engaging in unhealthy habits can determine a possible outcome from that. Under these conditions then, no matter what you do, what choice you make (or struggle to make if you are as indecisive as me) the situation was always going to end up the way that it did. If the world consists of mostly cause and effect, then the dawn of time, the big bang, is the cause of everything and everything is playing out exactly as it should – regardless of your decisions within it. Although we are unable to predict the future with any certainty, the future is there, waiting to happen. I am always going to meet that mischievous Djinn irregardless of how I live my life. If I go back in my game to an earlier save – could I predict the future of the characters I encounter – yes – because I have the knowledge of that future, of how cause and effect has played out. Without that knowledge I am essentially an NPC (Non Playable Character for all those none gaming people out there) and even with my wishes I am powerless to change it.

Now to muddy the waters even further, would it be predetermined that I chose that wish in the first place? I did (or would) chose that wish, thus exercising some type of free will in my decision – at least the first time. In fact, making decisions is a universal experience. We all know what it is like to ponder, consider and boil things down to a list of pros and cons. Likewise, we all know what it is to make a decision impulsively, without much thought or consideration. Take a moment to think of an occasion in which you have made a decision in those two ways, however big or small. The first, while seemingly more considered because you thought about it, is the same as the latter because no matter how much you consider something you decisions are, at least at a biological level, impulsive. At some point in your long deliberations you make a decision. You may believe that you have had the opportunity to choose the other option even though you discarded it but if you, like in my example with the Djinn, were to live your life again you would make the exact same decision. If you were given the chance to change any decisions you have ever made, with the exact same knowledge under the exact same conditions you would make the same decision again because essentially – it is the only decision you could make. Whether it is a good or a bad decision is a different matter and one that I certainly dwell on, particularly when I am feeling in one of my darker places. There are critics of this concept and of course, it doesn’t really match up too well with societal ideas of responsibility and self choice. The amount of variables in our life, in our world, make it impossible to determined the future before it has happened.

I see myself as a good person. As I stated earlier, during my second play-through of The Witcher 3 I have stayed consistent to making the morally right choices consistently. I like to think this is how I live my life and to anyone that knows me, or if anyone was to watch hours of my interactions with others, they would assume that I handle all situations in my social interactions with kindness, particularly in public. Who then could have predicted the following situation, which in hindsight even surprised me. There I was in Lidl collecting a few bits after a particularly testing day. I had a handful of things, no more than four items, I looked at the checkout situation and on one queue there was one person and another there was a few. I went to the one with one person, because I’m not one to enjoy wasting time in what you would assume is an efficient shop, which actually rather isn’t when it comes to length of time queueing. I put my things on the conveyer belt and noticed a full basket on the floor. I ignored it – happily listening to STEPS greatest hits or something equally as disappointing. The belt juttered forward and just as I was about to get served a lady came back. She said I had pushed in and she was in front of me. You might predict, based on my aversion to conflict and the many similar situations, that I would politely apologise and move my things back. I didn’t. I said she wasn’t in the queue and turned around. She tapped me on the shoulder and said something, and I’ll be honest dear reader. I rolled my eyes and turned around. After all, it still grates me that I had four things and she had a whole basket, and hadn’t even unloaded her basket yet, and it was a Lidl basket – those things are deep. It was only when the people on the checkout opposite and the Lidl staff themselves began to complain about my actions that I felt obliged to move my things from the front, not further back, that was already full, but into my hands. Livid I was. That is not how the queuing system works. Yet, this behaviour, which I have never exhibited before, would have been hard to predict. Just for clarity sake, I did then profusely apologise, trying to offer how bad my day was but the damage was done. Alas, that I fear now I have ruined any chances of ever striking up a friendship with that stranger in Lidl. How determined was this situation? Was I always going to react that way? Was I just having a bad day? Am I terrible person? How much did I exercise free will in the situation, defying all odds at predictability and how much was that small exchange determined to happen. You can see how much it affected me by the sheer fact that this happened months ago and yet, I still hold it in my thoughts, an example of what David Sedaris in his book Calypso would call “the lowest type of me”.

It is interesting that human behaviour exists outside of predictability, however there are scientists who would suggest that everything is predictable if we could take into account every single variable. Granted, the life of one human being is full to the brim of small interactions and exchanges that will influence an out come, but say for example, a computer system was designed with enough capacity to take all of these variables into account, or some fantastical element, say perhaps a djinn, was able to factor or this in. It could be feasible that the computer could predict even the smallest of outcomes, or the djinn could save time granting wishes because it may have seen the process and therefore said it was my last wish, even on my first wish, having seen how it would all play out, in the same way that the Witcher 3 allowed me to go back to a previous save and play the game through in the same way. Imagine The last instalment in the Twilight saga, an amazing, all out word – death, twists and turns, turns out it’s only a prediction.  In Matt Haig’s book The Midnight Library he writes this exact scenario. A woman, on the cusp of death arrives at a mysterious type of purgatory which allows her to experience the many thousands of lives she could have had, had she made different decisions. Ultimately, and here be spoilers, she ends up choosing the life she was living and why? Perhaps because it felt right. I was having a conversation in the summer with a friend of mine, where we were discussing regrets and choices we wished we had made (for any school aged readers, a lot of them stemmed around not trying hard enough at school). It was in this conversation (he is also a gamer) that this idea came to me. That no matter what regrets you have, you made the best decision you could have at the time – based on all the minutia of experiences and knowledge that you had available to you. I covered something similar in my analysis of an episode of Red Dwarf called Better Than Life (which you can peruse here) and concluded that even if you could correct those regrets there would be other regrets to fill those gaps, other factors or external events. The very nature of regret is universal – but how much you feed into those feelings is a decision. You can chose to indulge them, wish to start over, to go back to an earlier save, but in many ways life would pan out in similar way. Fawning over winning the lottery or imagining better paths, and ultimately a happier you, is to some extent futile, because this life and how we have lived it has been our choice, and it is created out of the only choices we could have made at the time. To quote a wise old grey, then white, sage Gandlaf himself when discussing events and not wanting a particular course of action to pan out “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us”.