On more than one occasion, yes.

Badass is more about character and courage, than a propensity (or capacity) for violence.

Who said anything about violence?

Noone, really. It's just that I've seen so many people equate "badass" with "tough guy" / "machismo", and not count the guy who's just quietly brave as being "badass" of a different sort.

Dad, yeah, he could be all types of badass. Only fools tried anything with him just by being who he was. And most of them needed liquid courage.

What on earth makes you think we're not badass today? I personally know more than one guy freshly home from the sandbox that's done some amazing stuff, two firefighters (who didn't leave their home town), etc, etc.

Give folks a little more credit, Ronin.

Before "The Sandbox", we were getting pretty fat and happy...

But, yes, there are folks that have had their mettle tested, and not found themselves wanting, returning to The World tempered in the flames of adversity.

And, yes, firefighters, police, paramedics... Just getting up in the morning knowing what they'll have to do and see will do that to almost anyone that sticks with it.

Military veterans and firefighters represent an overwhelmingly small percentage of the whole population.

My current feeling is that most people drift through life in an experiental bubble never understanding any real aspect of reality. Only a tiny, tiny percentage are so priveleged.

And by reality I don't mean some mystical or advanced Buddhist concept. I mean just understanding how the world works. How government agencies work. How the legal system works. Exactly what is happening in various conflict zones around the world. How the economy works! Peoples noses are jammed into entertainment and television where they seek out a self-validating feedback loop that reinforces the mental overlay they project on their self-referential, meaningless, consumerist lives.

People go to Wal Mart and reach for the cheapest item on the shelf without thinking how their action affects their fellow citizen. People go to the grocery store and gobble down the strange deliverables of the industrial farming system, but have no experiential basis to understand slaughtering a pig, or retrieving some bananas from a jungle. People go to the hospital and are shocked and want to sue when they dad dies instead of totally getting better. Everyone has an opinion about Iraq and Afghanistan, but what tiny percentage of people have any real basis for an opinion in experience, independent research, or firsthand knowledge?

Knowledge of life, death, and truth has vanished, and instead we have gibbering madmen with extremely marginal strength of character driving Western civilization into the pit of degradation and downfall guided by consumerist illusions.

It's like something from H. P. Lovercraft, except that the gibbering madness and illusions are caused not by some horrific cosmic insight that invokes the ultimate nihilsm, but rather, it is caused by the horrors of the entertainment news, marketing, and consumerism. It's from chasing the illusions of prestiege and security. The result is the same, only more dumb and somehow less dignified in its execution.


This is why I say...perhaps a return to the economic hardship conditions of the 1930s or before, and a total collapse of the abstraction-fueled financial sector will have the silver lining where perhaps more people will re-discover stoicism, courage, integrity, and good citizenship.


This is why I'm enjoying and trying to make the most of my time out here in the jungle, in a society that I feel can correctly be described as still being pre-industrial and relationship-based. I hope to strengthen my character so that no matter what happens to myself or my world I can be one who helps people to find their courage, instead of one who infantilizes and dominates. But I also feel that the only way to do this is to escape from consumerism as much as possible, escape from any illusion of security as much as possible, escape from the isolation caused by the illusion of false social relations over electronic media, escape from the illusion that you need anything not directly essential to life even including electricity and runnin water, and come to the point where you can look anyone in the eye, no matter what he threatens or offers, and be willing to let go of anything in order to uphold the most important chosen principles.

Once enough people do this, then, we will be able to save our society and economy for the long term, and face whatever ultimate fate awaits us with true dignity and honor.

Until then, as a generation and as a society, we're lost.

Moose?

Sometimes.

Hmm. Rereading that post, no wonder I like reading Robert E. Howard.

I wonder if there's a good way I can work those themes into a story, or role playing game...

Yeah, Deadlands: Noir. Play up the soup kitchen lines that go around the block. The war veteran that's shining shoes for nickles. The listless kids who just stare at you with dead eyes and no hope.

...

Considering how dark I get, I'm not surprised my group would rather the 1927 Chicago suggestion of an area to play in. Speaking of, the Deadlands: Noir Companion came out, with new cities and eras!

The Roaring Twenties (Chicago), Just Before WWII (Shan Fan), Just After WWII (Lost Angels! Pull out your LA Noire disks again for ideas!!!), and the Nuclear Fifties (The City O'Gloom, Salt Lake City, and Hellstromme's first metal body!!!).

You seem to feel really strongly about it, Ronin, and I can understand and respect that. But I don't think it requires that kind of obvious, physical, adversity and hardship for people to shine, and I certainly don't agree with the subtext -- and maybe I'm mistaken in reading into it -- that some sort of terrible economic crisis or plague would be a good thing. A return of the economic hardships of the 1930s sounds great if you imagine everyone will just toughen up, pull through it, and learn the value of the dollar...but they won't. They didn't, the first time around. Plenty of folks died, and I won't particularly wish that on us again.

More than that, though, I think there are different types of dignity and honor, and they don't all necessarily get the credit they deserve. Someone that just does a good job at work, shows up on time, works hard, and puts food on his family's table is, in my book, every bit as good for the human race as someone who engages in paramilitary heroics or what-have-you. I wouldn't be a military historian by trade and a pulp fiction writer as a side gig if I didn't dig my fair share of paramilitary heroics, mind you, but in real life? I don't hold it against people who are content to just coast through life however they want to, never dreaming of doing anything particularly badass. There's still plenty of "dignity" and "honor" to be found in just being good at whatever you do to contribute to society, being a good parent, and keeping the world turning.

ETA: All of which, at any rate, is also rather off-topic for Ray's discussion of the man who raised him. So if he wants us to drop it, consider it dropped.

Yeah, and then you got me.

Canadians?

No, me.

A Cranky Canadian?

If you want to talk about it, I'm very much okay with that.