I was against the war in Iraq.

Lest you think I am some weenie bleeding heart hippie without any concept of the dark side of our world, let me say this: I believe the CIA, and whatever other black-ops tools of our government might exist that I don't know about, should have been sitting a mile away, capping Saddam with a sniper bullet.

Let's be extra clear. I think that Saddam Hussein is an evil man, and I see no evidence that he has reformed. When the United States initially moved to create a warlike environment against his country, it seems to me that Saddam was still giving relatively public speeches, of a nature which might have been readily interrupted with a rightfully deserved bullet to his dictatorial skull. I guess that is part of my view of the sad fact fact that there are evil individuals in the world, and that realistically they need to be removed as surgically as possible.

But that is an important idea to me. I believe that evil must be removed surgically. An evil man must be cut from the body of the host with the absolute minimum of damage to the host as possible. Don't hurt anybody else. Don't kill the hostage.

People play games to have fun. Thus, anything which causes an individual player to have fun playing a game is not "wrong" provided that it does not hurt anybody nor cause other players to have less fun. Because different people prefer different aspects of gaming which cause them to have fun, there will be occasions wherein two or more people cannot simultaneously have fun playing together. The ideal thing is for all of the players involved to be able to find a compromise wherein they can all have fun together without anyone having less fun due to the compromise. Sometimes reality, or simply the oftentimes vast differences between individual human beings, cannot create the ideal, however. Sometimes two or more players have such divergent styles of gaming which they desire, in order to have fun, that they cannot both have fun within the same framework of play. Provided none of the actions taken by the players are harmful, these divergent styles of play are not wrong. They are simply incompatible. For all of the players to have fun playing the game, they need to find other players who are compatible enough that they can all play together, and have fun together. If a player cannot have fun with the game without lessening the fun of others, or without lessening his own fun to avoid doing so, then that player should search for other players who are more compatible.

Power gaming isn't "wrong" because, provided it doesn't hurt anybody, it is just the means by which some players have fun. Power gamers are very disruptive to certain other playstyles, however, and mixing incompatible styles generally does little but cause negativity. The best solution is for everyone who plays to be honest with themselves and others, evaluate their own playstyle, and decide if they can truly have fun playing within the framework of a style which is compatible with the rest of the players. If the answer is no, then that's okay, but it becomes incumbent on the individual, at that point, to keep the situation from becoming negative due to the incompatible means of having fun. Otherwise, the individual is deliberately choosing to cause negativity, which drifts into the realm of "hurting others" and therefore makes their actions wrong.

P.S. - I don't generally enjoy playing with power gamers, personally, but I was trying to write up something which indicated that I don't actually think that power gaming is an inherently unethical action.

Testing

http://www.conradhubbard.com