Perspective “In This Moment”

 “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Five years ago the covid-19 pandemic hit America hard. School and businesses started to close. News stories speculated about infection methods. Toilet paper and other essentials started disappearing from store shelves. People worked from home when they could. Masks. Social distancing. People dying in droves. Everything changed. Nobody quite knew where it was going...or how it might end. It was a moment in history for those of us used to reading about, studying, or even gaming with history. Suddenly we weren’t just looking back on some distant event with full knowledge of its aftermath. Our immediate perspective offered little insight how the crisis might play out. For once we occupied the position of people throughout history, experiencing history at that moment, unable to see where it was all going, with only future uncertainty ahead. Like playing a constantly changing game, we could only “estimate the situation” to the best of our knowledge and proceed with what seemed at the time as a suitable course of action

I remember parts of the pandemic well. Even so, reflecting on it now, five years later, it remains a flurry of impressions...all influenced by the uncertainty of what was happening and what might happen as events unfolded. News reports of people suffering suffocating deaths in hospitals without visiting loved ones; of dedicated healthcare workers exhausted beyond their limits; refrigerator truck morgues and a few mass graves. Virginia’s governor, a pediatrician when not a politician, making the executive decision to cancel school for two weeks, then, based on further developments, closing schools for the rest of the academic year, no doubt saving a great many young lives. On the more personal level I have memories of cleansing groceries with disinfectant wipes, even when we ordered them online for home delivery or parking lot pick up; my son attending fifth grade remotely from home on his school laptop; my wife working from home at an impromptu office set-up; hand sanitizer, masks, and social distancing. Somehow, slowly, humanity gained a better understanding of the situation and pulled through, with a great deal of sickness, death, grief, and turmoil.

Looking back on our response to the covid-19 crisis I realize some of these behaviors seem overblown given what we now know five years later. People at all levels based much of their response on incomplete information. Each of us experienced the pandemic differently. We subsequently reacted and adapted to these events differently, too, and at various levels as individuals, families, communities, schools, and even governments. Each development forced us to re-evaluate the situation and revise our plans for precautions and daily life. Having lived that uncertain and evolving moment in history, we might better appreciate how those in the past endured such events in their time.

Looking back on history from the perspective of people in that moment provides a challenge for those of us accustomed to looking back with full knowledge of subsequent events. It’s a perspective we can better appreciate by reflecting on our own experience reacting to unfolding events in the face of an uncertain future. Consider numerous past episodes that changed the world. Put yourself in the past, in the shoes of someone living in that moment, knowing only what has come before and what is immediate, but completely uncertain where all this might go in the future. The aftermath of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, when subjects in a British colony faced the decision to rebel against the crown. The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on that infamous December 17, 1941. The hours after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

That’s what I love about games, especially those exploring historical topics. They create evolving experiences, each turn a moment in which we can act only on what’s happened earlier and our impression of the current game state, without really knowing what will occur in future turns: how opponents might react, how random elements might affect the situation, how our own actions move in friction with other events. This process reflects the cycle of estimation and action. We only have information about the here-and-now, not what will happen next or in the distant future. So it’s not always clear what’s really happening or how it will play out, either in real life or games. But we must observe, assess, and decide on action based on those estimates.

A sense of empathy also helps us understand people and their perspectives in time and place...as well as other viewpoints in games. While playing games we place ourselves in other situations, in other people’s positions, in an evolving and uncertain environment. The nature of play means these experiences occur in a safe-to-fail place, where failure has no real-world ramifications and participants act without fear of making mistakes...and can reflect on them with an eye toward learning how they occurred and how to do better in the future. Games can prepare us for the uncertainties of the real-world crises we endure, teach us how to evaluate a fluid situation and make the choices to proceed with the best outcomes in mind.

“Man lives in a world of surmise, of mystery, of uncertainties.”

— John Dewey

Postscript

Here at Hobby Games Recce I wrote about the pandemic’s affect on our lives as it unfolded in the months and even years after March 2020. Most of my observations come from the perspective of one who sought comfort in the adventure gaming hobby, curtailed as it was by precautions. Some of my favorite, most telling pieces included “Gaming the Covid Crisis,” “Game Activity during the Pandemic,” “Playing to ‘Win' the Covid-19 Game,” and “Online Game Shopping during Covid”...among many others. Perhaps they’ll offer future readers my personal perspectives on this episode in history, assuming they survive the revision and memory-holing of that history.

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

— H. G. Wells