Too much complication in the world

See, this from the New York Times is what I've been trying to talk about.

Too much complication in the world. I can't do anything about it. I can just live day by day, go to work, try to be nice, try to have people be nice to me, have a lifestyle I can pay for, and try to have it work out that I can afford to live after I'm not able to work and earn money anymore.

Last weekend I bought a copy of "The Sims" -- the Deluxe edition, so it's got the extra doodads to give to your Sims that the "Livin' Large" expansion pack provided. It's a pretty engrossing game, at least so far. Though, it occurs to me that it's a version of playing Barbies (i.e., a potentially solitary activity where you control everything) and of playing whatever games we played as kids with our friends -- house, cowboys & indians, other invented scenarios we played out in the backyards and open spaces in our neighborhoods.

Like in real human life, life as a Sim can be hard, unless "God" (or whatever you want to call it) mysteriously blesses you with a lot of money (i.e., the human player uses the money cheat to finance Sims families). And like in real life, when fate seems to do something good (i.e., the human player decides paying bills is a drag and deletes the mailbox), there can be unforeseen consequences (without a mailbox, you can't interact with people who come to visit so you eventually die of loneliness, and the visitors can't leave the lot so they eventually die of whatever they're in need of -- if this goes on long enough, the whole neighborhood will die).

But even God can get help to make things better again (i.e., the human player can get a nifty little program somebody made that will put the mailboxes back on the lots), if God is so inclined. Of course, that means God is willing to intervene, that God actually is interested in the well-being of his/her/its Sims, that God is actually watching the game, that God is actually there.

Ok ... no theological stuff right now ....