Monthy Archive: April 2006
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April 12, 2006

Observations : Stages of Empathy

The recent comment thread on my "Steve's Law #1, reprise" got me thinking about the whole concept of maturity. Now I accept that maturity is a complex concept with many dimensions; but I'd like for focus for a moment on one aspect of maturity – empathy, the ability to stand in someone else's shoes and look out their eyes at a situation.

My observation is that are four stages through which people progress in the development of empathy.

Psychologists tell us that when we are born, our understanding of the universe that there is the person "me", and there is "everything else" where everything else exists only to meet our needs. All of the people, objects, etc. in the world are just props for our little drama and exist for us to command. I call this the "command stage". Our communications at this stage (whether by sounds, words, or actions) are all commands to make our environment do what we want. The vast majority of people seem to get past this stage, although I occasionally run into someone who just doesn't seem to realize that other people are not props for them to position and use however they want.

The next stage of empathy comes when we realize (sometimes painfully) that not only are some of those other things in the world people like us (and therefore not ours to command); but that we also must contend in some way with those other people for control of our environment. I call this the "conflict stage". You can tell when a child has entered this phase because the word "mine" suddenly becomes a key part of their vocabulary (it would not occur to someone in the command stage to say "mine" since everything is theirs).

Here is where you start to see gender differences in American culture (I can not speak to how things evolve in other cultures, or if these differences are genetic in origin). Boys tend to resolve these conflicts by competition – proving who deserves to be in control; while young girls (I am told, having no personal experience) tend to resolve these conflicts by negotiation – discussing who should control what. Both methods are used to determine what in the world is "mine", what is "yours" and what is "ours", although the approach used by boys tends to produce much smaller set of things which are "ours" than the approach used by girls in American culture.

The third stage of empathy comes when you realize other people are not just things with which you have to establish boundaries; but are worthy of value and respect in their own right. Here is where true empathy begins because you begin to put value on how things affect other people and therefore start to look at situations from other people's of view. I call this the "respect stage". At this stage people start talking about how they feel as opposed to just what they do.

It is here that the gender differences in how people approach the conflict stage begin to bear fruit. One can not become successful at negotiation without at least starting to consider how someone else might value things. Given that, women tend to transition into this phase much faster than men do since they have already begun to develop the tools they need. Men in American culture just don't have many situations at a young age where they are asked to consider how something affects someone else until they start dating, at which point they discover they don't have much in the way of experience to draw on. Dating and women are a mystery because they have never had to consider anything from someone else's point of view. Many men do not make the transition into this stage until they have been part of the workspace for several years and have had to negotiate with bosses, co-workers, and customers. Some people (of both genders) don't make this transition at all.

Finally, my observation is that there is a fourth stage in the development of empathy. This is when you realize that other people are not like you. Individuals who manage to enter the third stage tend to look at how situations affect other people assuming that other people have the same desires, values, and interests as they do. In small homogeneous environments, this can be a valid assumption; but it is not true in the general case. The final stage then is when you not only value how a situation affects other people; but when you realize it might affect them differently than it might affect you. I call this the "diversity phase".

My observation is that American culture values homogeneity – cultural "differences" are only respected after they have already been assimilated. As a simplistic example, lots of Americans like "Mexican" food; but the kind of food they like is rarely actually served in Mexico. Americans then (of both genders) are given few opportunities to see the world from fundamentally different perspectives, which makes seeing the smaller, subtler differences that may exists with their neighbors much harder to see. Given that, I have met relatively few Americans who have matured into this fourth stage.

Posted by Steven at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 15, 2006

Faith : Azusa

As I have commented before, the history of the Christian Church is a topic I have a great interest in. It is easy to be led stray by the latest doctrinal fad unless you understand the long road that has led where we are now. As a side note, it is sad how many people are influenced by things like "The Da Vinci Code" because they don't know enough church history to realize how preposterous it is; but that's perhaps a topic for some future blog.

Today's topic is the Azusa Street Revival, which (depending on exactly what event you use to mark its beginning) started 100 years ago today. This is worth noting because it would be hard to identify any other single event in the 20th century which had a greater effect on the church world-wide. The Roman/Catholic church's 2nd Vatican council and the start of the Billy Graham Crusades are the only event which I can think of which are even in contention. Hundreds of millions of Christians world wide attend churches which are either a direct consequence of Azusa Street, or whose mode of worship has been influenced by what occurred there.

So what was Azusa Street?

William Seymour, the half-blind, African-American son of freed slaves, attended Charles Fox Parham's church in Kansas City (and later Huston) where Parham was teaching the doctrines which would become the foundation of the Pentecostal movement. I don't want to dwell on the specifics of the doctrines as only some groups still maintain adherence to the pure form of what Parham taught (and I personally do not). The core principle was that if a Christian was willing to yield their life to God's Spirit within them, then God can and would work through them in power – manifesting "gifts of the Spirit".

Parham's church was segregated, and so Seymour was forced to attend classes there by sitting in hallway outside of meetings; but eventually the church "consecrated him for ministry" (their version of ordination). I'll note that Parham's racism (which grew more vocal in later years) as well as several personal scandals are why his role is omitted from many accounts – he is viewed as a rather embarrassing figure by the church today.

Seymour was then invited to a church in Los Angeles by some people who had heard him teach in Topeka. He spoke at that church once, but the pastor rejected his teachings and he was not invited back. However several members of that congregation were interested in hearing more, so they started a series of meetings at one of their homes. That small meeting quickly grew and it became necessary to find a larger, more permanent location. What they found was an old church building which had suffered a fire many years back and had been rebuilt as a stable. The pews were planks laid across apple crates, and the pulpit was 2 boxes stacked end to end. The address was 312 Azusa Street.

Within weeks, Azusa Street Mission was holding services nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Within months, Azusa Street was the largest congregation of any kind in the city of Los Angeles. On a typical weekday, there was a "morning service", which typically lasted 6 hours, followed (after a short break) by an "evening service", which lasted 8-10 hours. In between (even in the wee hours of the morning) the church was full of people praying. The church attracted people of all races and all economic backgrounds. It promoted women and people of all races into positions of ministry (a fact which drew the ire of many other "Christians" as well as local politicians and the press). Many of those diverse leader eventually left Azusa Street to start ministries in other cities, some founding new denominations in the process (Seymour was never interested in creating an organization).

Now I am enough of a skeptic that I recognize at least some of the stories which have grown up around Azusa Street are likely to be exaggerations; but enough are documented by disinterested parties (or better yet, antagonistic parties) that it is hard to discount them all. It is interesting to read coverage of Azusa in the press. The local papers were generally hostile to the mission (the paper's owners opposed the "disgraceful intermingling of the races"); but as the movement grew papers from around the world began to send people to cover the emerging story. Many of these reporters were skeptical; but came to the conclusion that the miracles reported there were for real.

But the real legacy of what happened at Azusa Street in 1906 is not the revival itself; but the people it sent out to the world with the belief that Christianity was not just a moral philosophy, or an eventual defense against going to hell; but something which was active, dynamic, powerful, and current. People who believed that God still worked today the way He is described as working in the New Testament. The growth of "Pentecostal" churches of various forms eventually drew the interest of people in more traditional denominations who wanted to see the power of God without having to change churches. Thus the Charismatic Renewal was born. Pentecostals and Charismatics have since given birth to yet more movements and denominations, all of which owe a debt to those who began meeting on Azusa Street 100 years ago.

Posted by Steven at 07:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 18, 2006

Life : Quake Day

Today (as I suspect a great deal of US media will pick up on) is the 100th anniversary of the "Great" San Francisco Earthquake. Those who live in the SF Bay area have been inundated with coverage of this event for the last week – I suspect most are, like me, already getting a bit tired of it.

I moved to this area just 4 months after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake (the one the broke the Bay bridge, caused those fires in the marina district in SF, and resulted in the collapse of the highway in Oakland where so many lost their lives). As we arrived, the damage was still quite evident as one went driving around. Houses toppled, roads closed because of cracks, etc.

But the bay area has always been resilient – rebuilding and moving on. The media periodically reminds people to have their emergency kits ready, out-of-state contacts coordinated, etc. The next big one is, after all, inevitable (the next little on has already happened – we get a dozen or so small quakes a week – most too small to notice).

Some friend questioned the wisdom of our moving to California; but the way I see it, every area has its "faults". The Southeast gets hurricanes. The Northwest gets blizzards. The Midwest gets tornadoes. We get Earthquakes. So it goes.

Posted by Steven at 05:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

April 19, 2006

Games : DDO

I've been playing "Dungeons and Dragons Online" (DDO) of late. This is the 4th Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) I have played, and it is by far the best. For those not familiar with the genre, you essentially create a character which you then control in a game world populated by all the characters created by all the other players who have the game (actually, they tend to be divided between a small number of servers, but you get the idea). You log in and get to meet and interact with characters run by 1000's of other players. While details vary, the game then provides a series of challenges which you can overcome either alone or together with other players who are logged into the game at the same time. As you complete challenges, you get to make decisions about how your character improves based the experience gained in the challenge, allowing you evolve characters that specialize in certain skills and activities. While you are only able to log in as one character at a time, these games allow you to create multiple characters so you can explore different options and career paths which the game provides.

Beyond those rather generic details, these games tend to vary a great deal.

Before DDO I played Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), City of Heroes (CoH) and The Matrix Online (TMO). Each had certain virtues which were worthy of praise and certain limitations.

The original SWG provided a wide variety of options in how to evolve your character, including many which were non-violent in nature. I had a great time playing as a doctor/pharmacist, healing those wounded in combat and only adventuring into the wilds (and fighting off creatures) to collect plants I needed to make medicines. On the other hand, all of the challenges were essentially unstructured and randomly generated (there were a few more structured encounters at high level, but the gaming experience was dominated by random content).

CoH (where you played a comic-book style super-hero) had a mix of structured/scripted and random challenges. The scripted challenges were good, but the variety was limited. On the down side, while the manual made it look like you had a lot of character options, most were not sensible, so it didn't take long before you started seeing other heroes who were very similar to yourself.

TMO also had a mix of structured/scripted and random challenges; but to be honest, the scripted challenges were downright boring to me. It did however have the nifty feature that skills were all "downloaded" into your character's brain (if you have seem the Matrix movies, think "I know Karate"); but depending on your level of experience, there was a limit to how many skills would fit at a time. So, you could eventually buy a whole lot of skills, and then download the subset you needed to complete a specific mission. The result was that you could explore all options with just a single character.

One feature which all of these games had in common was that you were able to do pretty well playing them solo. People did form groups; but it was just as common to encounter 1000's of other people all working on their own missions alone. In CoH, the difficulty of missions did increase slightly faster than your character's abilities, so you eventually needed to start to find help; but I found that proved to be difficult because people just got used to playing alone through the lower levels. There was no "culture of teamwork" to draw on. I'm told TMO was like that too, although I didn’t play it long enough to find out. I have to admit, the whole idea of going on missions alone within a "massively multiplayer" game always struck me as odd.

Which brings me to DDO.

There are two big differences between DDO and all of the other MMORPGs I have played. The first is that all of the content is structured/scripted, and quite well written at that. It is clear that an effort has been made to create a collection of adventures which are both interesting and different from each other. Some are straightforward combat scenarios – go into the sewers and kill all of the spiders. Others are more subtle and require more finesse to complete the mission, often requiring different combinations of skills to make it all the way through.

Which brings me to the other big difference - DDO is very much a team game. After the first five "training" missions, pretty much everything requires that you form a group with other players if you are going to be successful. Missions are designed to require many different skills, and no one player can be successful doing many missions alone. There are some missions designed to allow specific skills to shine (for instance a heavily trapped the headquarters of a group of thieves which requires someone good with locks & traps), while most tend to require some kind of balance in the group.

So, a typical session playing the game is you log on and turn on the "LFG" (Looking for Group) signal to let everyone else know you are available, setting your "LFG Comment" to describe any specific missions you are interested in. You then either wait to be invited into a group or start looking at the list of other characters that are online and try to form a group of your own. Once you have 3-5 other players, you start doing missions until folks need to log off or the group breaks up for other reasons. I have generally had quite good success with these kinds of pick-up-groups, with only a few bad experiences with other players. A good team has a balance of skills, stays together, communicates with each other, and gives time for the specialists to do their thing. The few bad teams I have been a part of become obvious at the first intersection where everyone heads off in a different direction and dies quickly, complaining about how no one else helped them.

Anyway, I've started to reach the "been there, done that" point with the current DDO content. I'm going to keep my account open for a bit to see how fast they add new content (the first content update went in about a month after the initial release with 15 new missions). I'm now looking at "Auto Assault" (MMORPG set in your classic post-apocalyptic wasteland) and debating if I want to try it.

Posted by Steven at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 21, 2006

Thoughts : The beginning of happiness

All the time I hear people making statements like "I'd be happy if only she would...", or "I'd be happy if only he wouldn’t...", or "If my employer would only...", or "If the government would only..." Of course, few of these people end up achieving the happiness they seek – the world never quite gets around to changing in the ways they want. Which leads me to the point of this essay – my observation is that the road to happiness starts the day a person begins to assume that no one else is ever going to change in ways they want.

Note, I am not saying that people don't change. We are all in the process of transformation from who we were to who we will become; but those occasions when we change in ways that meet someone else's desires are unpredictable. It happens; but betting your happiness on it is a long shot that is far more likely to leave you frustrated.

Nor am I saying that we should not communicate to others how we would like them to change. Whatever the odds are of them changing, at least for those who care about us those odds can be improved by better communication. However, asking someone to do something is very different from assuming they will do it, and my admonition is to plan your life as if they won't.

So what does that leave?

As soon as you discard the hope that other people will change to make you happy, what is left is the question of what can you do to be happy given that everyone else will stay the same (or at least will not change in the ways you want). For those who really "get it", this can be a very liberating realization because it means that we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness.

A very simplistic application of this idea says that if you are in a relationship where you will never be happy unless the other person changes, then perhaps it is time to get out of that relationship and find a new one. There is no doubt in my mind that there are occasions where this is exactly the correct response. However, real life is often more complicated than that. You can in fact view ending one relationship and starting a new one as the ultimate form of getting your partner to change how they behave - by replacing them with someone else with different behaviors. But this has all the same problems as trying to change your old partner – a person's ability to find and attract a partner whose behavior is exactly what you want is as uncertain as trying to change someone. If your happiness depends on that, it is at great risk.

Put another way, replacing your partner only works if the new partner does in fact provide a context in which you can be happy; but what if they don't? What if in fact there is no one you can change your partner to be with whom you can be happy? What if the issue is not with your partner, but with your expectations of them? This principle does not just apply to personal relationships; but to all aspects of life that affect our happiness. Changing jobs, churches, friend, homes, cars, even what lane you are driving in can only make you happier if there exists real-world situations with which you can be happy.

Which bring me to the second step to being happy. While we cannot rely on other people changing to please us, we can in fact work to change ourselves. We should all then be diligent in our self-improvement to strive towards the goal of maximizing the volume and variety of situations within which we can be happy.

The key then is to look closely at why we are unhappy in various situations. It is easy to look at a situation and say, "I'm unhappy because they are being rude"; but why does their rudeness affect our happiness? What real harm is the tone of their voice and their choice of words doing? "But they are putting me down!" Yes, but what does it matter what they say about you? Or even what they think of you? What value do you place on their opinions? If your happiness depends on someone else changing their opinion of you, then you are back at step one.

The reality is that we all carry with us a lifetime’s worth of personal "baggage" and most of our unhappiness comes from when other people trip over our baggage, not from real harm to our person. Children may chant, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"; but most people are in fact sufficiently insecure in their own identity that words do in fact hurt. When we understand better who we are and are secure in that identity, then the ability for situations and other people to make us unhappy is reduced.

Having done that, what remains are situations that are truly harmful to us, or where we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to someone who is not disserving of our trust. In both cases, finding alternatives is much easier than finding situations where our copious baggage will not get in the way. Once you have dealt with your baggage and are still unhappy, that is the time to consider changing your environment.

Now I am not saying that someone who does these two steps will be happy. Happiness is far more complicated than that. I only claim that these steps are the beginning of happiness – that they are necessary to the process, not sufficient to complete it.

Posted by Steven at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 25, 2006

Games : One game to rule them all: Spore

There's been a lot of buzz about the presentation Will Wright gave at this year's Game Developers Conference. If the name doesn't ring a bell, Will Wright is the inventor of SimCity and TheSims (two of the most successful computer game franchises in history). Will is not just one of the greatest game designers in ever, but he belongs in that rarefied pantheon of people who have managed to reinvent what it means to be a computer game.

Will's presentation this year was essentially a technology demo for his current project a game called "Spore". Now I have to say up front that I have been fooled by Will's technology demo's before (the final game didn't quite live up to the promise of the demo); but if he even comes close, Spore is going to be a very impressive game.

A few years back, there was a game that came out which was marketed as allowing you to control the evolution of your civilization from 4000BC through 3000AD. The idea was that this was a game which had "scope". Well, it will be hard to compete on that basis after Spore comes out. You start as a single-celled organism in a drop of water and play until you are master of the galaxy. Now that's a game with scope.

You start with your single-cell creature and earn points that allow you to evolve the creature into a more advanced one. The editor which you use to modify your creature was very flexible in the demo – much more than a mix-and-match body part system I have seen in other evolution games. Eventually you evolve legs and move out of the water onto the land where you continue to fight for survival. After you have done that for a while, you gain enough points to evolve intelligence and the game transitions to controlling a tribe of your creatures, spending points on tools as opposed to changing their bodies. You now fight for the survival of your species, building cities, empires, etc. – constantly increasing the scope at which you can look at things (without loosing the ability to zoom in) and improving the complexity of the tools they use. Eventually you develop space flight and can zoom out to look at the solar system, and the whole galaxy, purchasing technologies which allow you to modify and colonize planets.

All of this seems to be done with a relatively smooth transition between levels. As Will Wright explains in his talk, its like you start off playing Pac-Man (controlling your protozoa, eating food and avoiding things that eat you), transitioning into a first-person combat game, then into something like a real-time strategy game, then into SimCity, then into Civilization and finally into a interstellar explore/expand game. The title of this blog entry came from the sense that this one game might well replace a whole lot of other games I play.

The other cool thing (and in fact the central idea of the talk part of his presentation) is that while this is a single-player game, you play it on-line where the system is constantly downloading the new creatures and tools you develop to a central server. Then when you need new content in your game, the system picks things which other players have developed to download into your game to play. So, at the lower levels, the game tries to maintain a balanced ecology for you to play in by downloading creatures designed by other players to fill in ecological niches which you have left open. When you go to the stars, you will find whole planets which are copies of planets developed by other players. The point is that Will & Co. are focused on creating a really cool game engine; but are looking to the players to create all of the actual content for the game.

Now how much of this vision actually makes it onto the store shelf remains to be seen; but there is no doubt that in a market dominated by clones of clones of games from a decade ago, at least one person is still trying to push the edge of the envelope.

Just the demo parts of the talk can be found here

And the whole talk can be found here

Posted by Steven at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

April 26, 2006

Faith : A Complete Christianity

I've been contemplating the vast cultural divide which is growing in America (red states vs. blue states if you like, although the divisions are more complex than that). An interesting thing to note is that there are people on both sides who consider themselves to be good Christians and that Christianity supports their point of view.

The problem in my opinion is that most people find it too hard to get their minds wrapped around the complete gospel, and as such only focus on the small parts of the faith they can understand. Depending on what parts you focus on, you can end up with quite different views of the world. The reason this is true is that there are some great dichotomies embedded in Christianity which temp we mortals to look at things as either/or when God views them as both.

The clearest example to me is the concept that God loves people but God hates what they do (sin). That is not a distinction that most people are able to make in practice (even if they know how to say the words). Human love is far too often conditional – we love someone as long as they don't do anything that offends us too much. Simultaneously grasping how much God loves us and how much he despises sin is not something we are able to do naturally.

The result is that faced with this conflict, most people subconsciously soften one side of the equation. They may say they believe both to be true; but their actions prove otherwise.

Some approach this and act on the assumption that God really doesn't love people who sin that much (after all – they wouldn't love someone who had offended them in that way). They focus on how much God hates sin and act accordingly – taking every opportunity to condemn those who do not obey God's laws, showing not the slightest hint of compassion to anyone who does not meet their standards.

Some approach this and act on the assumption that God loves everyone, and therefore sin must not be that big of an issue to Him (after all – they are still able to love people who only annoy them in small ways, so sin much only be a small thing to God). They focus on God's love and act accordingly – taking every opportunity to be kind and compassionate, not showing the least bit of concern for issues of holiness and sin.

I however believe real Christianity is both. God demands holiness. Sin, ALL sin (not just the "big stuff"; but also things like pride, anger, fear) is an abomination to God. God also loves people – completely, passionately, unconditionally. God longed to be intimate with us; but was not able to because we are contaminated with sin. Christianity then was God's plan to reconcile the two side of the conflict – to provide a means to express His love without compromising on sin. Christianity did two things – it provided a means by which God could be intimate with us even though we were still sinful, while at the same and (in fact by the means of that same intimacy) provide a means to transform us over time into His (holy, sinless) image. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, too few Christians get that and therefore they express only half the faith. They show God's love, but never expect people to allow God to transform them, or they insist people be transformed without expecting them to establish the intimate relationship with God which makes that transformation possible. No wonder non-Christians get confused by our behavior.

Posted by Steven at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 28, 2006

Introspection : I'm just a subtext kind of guy

I had a small bit of self-revelation this week. Actually, it was something I always understood – I just wasn't able to articulate it well until this week. When I look at things, I tend to focus on their subtext rather than their text. I am aware of the text – the obvious, visible statement of what is presented; but I tend to look through that most of the time and focus on the subtext.

It's like an antique car collector who, while visiting a junk yard for parts to restore some car he owns spots a wreck in the yard and realizes that, despite the dents and rust and missing parts, it is the remains of a rare and valuable antique. He see's past the damage and understands the underlying worth.

This explains some of my choices in books, TV and movies. On face value (the text), the first season of Desperate Housewives was a rather base soap opera; but underneath that there was a subtext which told some very important truths about human nature. I loved the show because I focused on the subtext and largely ignored the more salacious parts of the show. There is a lot of media which I not only watch but enjoy that other people have questioned "how can you watch that?" My answer is almost always, "Yeah, it has X, Y and Z; but underneath all that it is really saying A, B, and C!" I have no problem with the text of a show or movie as long as the underlying message is one I can support.

It goes the other way as well. Anne and I used to watch "The Donna Reed Show" together on Nick-at-night. For those unfamiliar with it, "The Donna Reed Show" was one of those classic TV sitcoms from the 50's like "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best". I never enjoyed the show as much as Anne and one day finally I realized why. Behind its "cooking while wearing pearls" wholesomeness, the message of the show was that husbands don't know what they are doing but need to be allowed to think they are in change, so wives need to trick them into doing the right thing. Watch a few episodes with that in mind if you don't agree, I think you'll be surprised.

The principle applies to people as well. I have always tended to focus on what other people can be – what their underlying potential is – and not what they are now. That has often allowed me to look past someone's current issues and see the gemstone behind the muck. I am aware of the issues; but I naturally focus on their potential.

In all this, what really fascinates me are those rare instances where someone manages to produce something whose text and subtext are completely at odds – where the story says one thing but means another. As you might imagine, this is very hard to do, and few have managed to succeed. The first example I ever ran across that came close was Saberhagen's "The Dracula Tape". The novel is written as a transcript of a recording left by Count Dracula in modern day telling his side of the classic Bram Stoker novel. In it Dracula is constantly trying to make himself out as the hero of the story and Van Helsing as the villain. What's interesting is that if you read past Dracula's self-promotion, he admits to a great many vicious acts. The whole book is an exercise in "just ignore that pile of bodies in the corner and see how I helped this one person over here." The dissonance between text and subtext always brought me great pleasure. There are other even better examples, but most have text which is so offensive that I would rather not publicly recommend them even if the subtext is in fact quite positive.

Posted by Steven at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 30, 2006

Movies : United 93

Good, respectful, honest movie. No sermons.

I find it hard to imagine how you could make a better movie about 9/11 than this. A documentary, perhaps, with a narrator filling in all of the details; but as a narrative, it would be difficult to improve on this. I certainly have no expectation that Oliver Stone's movie, due later this summer, will have half this virtue.

Despite the name, the story of United flight 93 is only one of the threads followed by the movie. It is far more about the chaos of those few hours that morning where everyone (the people on the plane, the people at the various air traffic control centers, the people at the Strategic Air Command, etc.) were trying to piece together the details and understands what was happening.

In fact, the movie to me was far more about the nature of crisis – any crisis – than about 9/11 itself. How people respond in the face of conflicting and incomplete information and how they finally reach a point of action where something must be done, even though the complete picture remains unclear.

While a few of the mistakes of that day are apparent in the movie, I found it interesting to note that most of the problems people had were of the kind which would have been hard to avoid (short of knowing the attack was going to occur in advance). If "United 93" has any "message" (and I think the film maker steered away from such), I think it is about the heroism of all of the people (in the air and on the ground) who did the best that they could under an extraordinary situation.

Thumbs up from me.

Posted by Steven at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)