Sustainable Cities (Skylines)

Some games are thought provoking, while others are thought luxuriating.

Begone, liberal.

More and more as I grow older and watch the world turn, I come more and more to appreciate my instincts and what they tell me about people. One of the things that I feel I honed in quickly was suspicion around people that seek responsibility, rather than take it up when given it. Responsibility seekers are the ones that dress immaculate and put their best foot forward. They want to be seen as the pick of the litter, the one that ticks all the boxes and is oh so perfect for the very head position, the person that excels in school for the purpose of getting that Honor Roll entry or even Valedictorian, certifiably Important Things they can put on their wall and resume. They aren't there like most of us, who come to realize school was really for, at least in principle- schools fail too many of us in practice -which is to turn on young minds and start the thinking processes, including socialization and collaboration among peers. The High School Busybody turns to the Scholarshipped Latin Fruit Salad College Graduate with Very Prestigious Activities, which in turn becomes the Careerist of tomorrow.

Careerists are the ones that make today's world burn and twitch and scream. Or at the very least, they're the middle managers that don't need to be there and seem to exist merely just to make your work have an extra asshole somewhere in the flow. Shun them, and speed their withering so that better people can grow in their place.

Oh good, look, there's one now.

Careerists look to keep that framework for growth that is school, specifically High School, that shared ordeal of learning everything except how to react when the world fails you, as they saw it going into their adult lives. They run elections as though campaign promises are things that are researched like essays, to be finely printed in neat paragraphs with an attractive serif font on nice paper, which are quickly forgotten and discarded when top scores are achieved and the next chance for advancement presents itself.  Which as it turns out, is the phase where promises turn to fulfillment on those promises, which is most often legislation, things fall in favor of those with the most money. Because their goal was not an earnest pursuit of anything other than career advancement. Because they're Careerists, they're good at hiding their label, because otherwise, it's just written right on there, with really no shame about it at the end of the day.

It's fucked up that the word 'promise' is seen to be as something more emotional, even childish. Meanwhile capital-R, capital-A Responsible Adults have contracts and agreements, which are much more professional things. You know, contractual agreements to keep silent the sex worker you had to shell out of pocket a small fortune for her to even consider touching you. Things Responsible Adults do, like unwittingly propping up patriarchal systems that allow limpdick on that level to be seen as somehow sexually superior to literally anyone that can strike up a conversation, all the while fucking it up and spilling piping hot scandal all over your goddamned presidency.

Imagine the degree of stumblefuck you have to sink to where a cementskulled goon like Scooter Libby seems like an operator by comparison.

Then imagine being the sort of nonentity that can lose to that pack of assholes. That's where Careerists are at right now. Well, "right now," it's been a year and a half now, and some of them are still acting like there's going to be a do-over at some point where they get to win, like they should have, for realsies.

In my ideal neighborhood, the lawns are on the roof, so the people can look down on the status quo while they enjoy the fresh air.

We can just halt with any pretenses of niceties here, because the Careerist as a very concept is a real piece of shit. They have to be, it's a feature of their biology that allows them to persist in an environment. Every person that has need for a duplicitous and immaculate fucklurk has a need for a Careerist, whose eyes are never not on the prize, and so only need a self interested individual to light their current parade float on fire and leap clear to the next one. They don't care. They can't care, because caring? That's the sucker's bet. Caring about anything other than personal advancement is stuff you reduce to messages in media for children that's designed to sell products. You make it make-believe, like promises. Responsible Adults have to make Responsible Decisions, and being tied to an ethical complex is a stumbling block.

Systema, a Russian martial art that has roots in traditional jumpstyle dancing, is deeply spiritual, and incorporates motions designed to disrupt both the body, mind and even soul of an opponent. That non sequitur was deeply interesting to a Careerist. They're very mad at Russians right now, primarily because Russia as a gestalt entity caused their Queen to fail her next phase of Achievement, and so the collective Muscovite horde of interlopers must thus face their screeching hive wrath regardless of... basically everything, really, I was going to say history, but now Russians have recently been accused of attacking the very concept of linear time and causality, with regards of how it works in relation to the Internet Archive. They are nothing but false floors, an unending shaft of false floors that keep getting kicked through. There's some other stuff they're mad about too, but it's not as important. Also, because Careerists are also very boring by and large, I made that sound a lot more exciting than it actually is. Whatever, I paint pictures and I build virtual cities.

-A Careerist, riding an ethical diet as a trend to be marketed and sold, feckless, without morals, an imbecile:  Excuse me, but meat is murder.

-Me, practicing my own heady and volatile mixture of Marxism and the rules of nature, bold, a determined living prototype: MURDER EFFICIENTLY REDISTRIBUTES CERTAIN RESOURCES, LOOK AT THIS EFFICIENT LUNCH.

The Careerist is the sort of person that really hates losing, and even points out that they hate to lose. They hate it because they see no value in it. They don't learn anything from loss, because they know everything about winning. Those ideas are incongruent, but fuck it, cognitive dissonance effects a liberal as much as it does a damn crocodile. Loss isn't a suite of teachable moments and experiences, it's wasted effort with no tangible fruit borne. It's a lack of or denial of the holy Advancement and it makes bad feelings happen. The bad feelings don't make sense, as does the act of losing, because losing is not winning, and winning is what Careerists do, it's literally all they have in life, their next win that can make them Advance up their given chain. They prepared for this, they did the work, that means they get to win, why are they not winning, they can't be wrong, because they're right, they are always right, always the most possible right for the situation to win.

"IT WASN'T ON US TO BUILD THE CEMETERY, IT WAS ON ALL OF YOU TO LIVE AND WORK FOREVER. PAY FOR YOUR FAILURE, INGRATES."

Careerists really love to think everything's a huge goddamned federal case. The smallest effort made to something that isn't one of their immediate or long-term is treated like manna from heaven that they themselves had to toil in the desert for, while those lazy Israelites sat back on their lawnchairs, which are too fancy for them to be able to afford, they would just happen to point out, and not racistly. Oh, you want to own what you make? How's that fair to me, I run you, because I did the best in class, which means I'm superior to you. What do I get out of this new deal, nothing? That's no good. That doesn't work for me, I think you need a manager. One that leaves before the rush.

Clean up before you leave, by the way, it's like animals live here.

This is what management is to a Careerist, a platform that travels with them beneath their feet, that elevates them above peers into the Special Snowflakes they like to claim everyone else is whenever someone Other asks for some common decency. They need to be there, because if they weren't, how would anyone else know what was aspirational and correct, how would anyone know what it was to be normal? Their job is important, regardless if they actually know how to do what the people underneath them do. They need to set the example. 

Trust me, if you've ever felt this pain, you know what I'm talking about, the phenomenon of the very loud but ultimately empty uniform, the guy who's got a lot of words for how things need to work, but is only good for wiping up when something spills occasionally. If even that. If you haven't felt this pain, and are in a management position, well, give yourself a good vetting to make sure you aren't a total fucking asshole.

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The greatest fear of a Careerist is something that most of us fear to some level, because it's a very human fear, the fear of being found out as a fraud. We fear this because so much of our existence is performance, both to ourselves in audience to our own emotions, and to our peers as expression of those emotions in a way that allows them to understand both who we are and what we are. Thinking you're a fraud is a part of having doubt, the doubt that you yourself even have any idea who they are. That sort of doubt is profound and existential to a person who wonders where their place is in this world. To a Careerist, that fear is less internal and more practical, because the Careerist full well knows what their place is in the world- as high as they can manage, thank you. Now please leave them, they are very busy and you are a rude and distracting presence.

Careerists fear being found out as frauds, because if they are, then their condition has been changed by observing them, and suddenly nothing they have does anything, they're powerless. They're on the level of the average liberal-leaning teenager who has queer friends because it pisses off their hard-right parents, but who would never have those friends over, because then they wouldn't get the car on the weekend and that would suck for them. The Careerist needs that car, they have important shit to get done. In other words, for a lot of them, they're not only back where they started from, they're actually back further from that point, off in headspace where nobody actually alive should naturally exist in, that of the outspoken ignorant jackass, who desperately needs to shut the fuck up, because they are in the Adult Place, which is the same place that lets you both vote and die in a war. It's always go-time in the Adult Place, and ideas that would sound better coming out of an outspoken but completely sheltered teen should not be going up in place of your opinion piece.

And then after getting after getting split from ass to shoulder blades over that opinion piece on social media immediately after hitting post, you do not come back a day later and ask to restart a dialogue now that people have calmed down. This is not how the world works in my city, Ross, and really not in any city. Leave, Ross, your head looks like a smug peanut and I hate it and, also, you.

*extremely went to business school and is passionate about Macklemore voice* "I find myself asking, 'where's the branding??'"

Because at the end of the day that's what this is all about. The term liberal is pretty indistinct, because it can mean a lot of stuff, and all equally shit-on. It can be the right-wing mockingbirds that have learned how to imitate the calls of progressivism enough to attract moneyed backers, who like all people with money, have significant blind spots that can be easily exploited through political savvy- I know you feel strongly about human rights, how do you feel about human rights... about these particularly marginalized brown people? It can also mean the average unthinking pop culture zombie who want politics out of art (whatever the fuck that's supposed to entail) and think Trump sucks, and is also totally gay with Putin. The Careerist is neither so savvy a predator, nor so mindless a fungus. The Careerist is a scavenger, frantic, skittish and with the sort of attitude you only see in a particularly pissy feral cat when cornered. Their goal is building Them out of you and your community, and will take the parts as they can have them, how they can have them, to whatever scale. A Careerist probably won't have read this far, but if any have and they have a platform, they're probably going to try and call me a racist or a sexist or whatever for writing this about the sort of person they are, because that is the sort of person they are: privilege and prejudice are just two out of many tools they have for putting people beneath them, to further climb to the next Achievement.

Even when things run smoothly in a game of Cities: Skylines, even when things are happy, and prosperous, when the budget is solvent and the quality of life is high for everyone, with leisure and education and sanitation and tourism all charting high, you'll hear the ding of a Chirper notification, the in-game social media that keeps you updated on things in your city. This is a common thing, and while sometimes just fluff, it's often the game telling you important things, like that people are having trouble with their power or water. And sometimes, despite a minuscule crime rate and an incarcerated population that's easily held by the single obliging police station you threw down, it's some chode wanting a prison because you don't have one yet. Hashtag Prison. Or it's some other assorted bag of styrofoam telling you there should be a bylaw about having chickens in city limits, because apparently one person's quiet is more important than a city's sustainable food production.

In game, as in life, I give these people all they're worth: I read what they've written until my developing sneer forces a breath out of my mouth that sounds like "ttshhhh," and I hit the X adjacent to their dumb words. Then I work to ensure the people who take charge of where we're all going next in this world are actually in it for me and mine, and everyone that wants to live free without an oppressor over them. Because Careerists aren't, and they're not welcome in any place I make. Even if it is a little city I build in a computer. Because I can just press B and click the one house that's complaining about my honest socialist tax rate, and perform the only righteous form of eviction: casting out an asshole that's too important to have neighbors, and would rather have employees or constituents. Bulldozed, motherfucker. Try not to get stuck on the baroque nightmare that is my highway system on the way out.

At Doc Destructo Elementary, the wrestling teams have pyro.