On The American Subprime Credit Squeeze, Rome and Egypt, Asian Nerds and Computer Games.

There has been a great deal of commotion about the current economic pseudo-collapse caused by incessant borrowing and unrealistic loans over at That Country. One thing, or Moral-of-the-Story if you prefer, taught to us is the simple fact that really, you have to pay your dues one day. There was an article in The Economist which ran contrary to the general opinion that deems the blame to be on conniving loan providers and securities traders looking for a quick buck. Rather, it invites us to examine the culture of extravagant living and decadence as the root of this plague of defaulters; and that the defaulter is the plague, not the lender (nor the money, though many would conveniently like to believe).

Candidly, it brought to mind Rome and Egypt in the age of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra. Cleopatra (and Egypt) was the personification of indulgence and all sensuous pursuits, juxtaposed at the time with the pragmatic Roman creed and stoicism. When she died, so too did the ideals (or anti-ideals) she and the rest of Egypt stood for and we have been Romans since, balking at indulgence as hedonism and branding extravagance as squander. We wouldn’t be such prudes now if the Egyptians had won. Then again, the Romans wouldn’t have won had they not such prudence.

Where do Asian nerds come into the picture? Chew on this - As if it isn’t already shameful enough to be stereotyped prudes, we now face the harsh truth that said race whom fashioned this perception really originated from The-Most-Prosaic-Civilization-In-History. Even they find us boring.

But cut the Asian nerd some slack, will ya? After all, our squinty-eyed antecedents have beaten back Mongolians, Huns and mythical beasts for thousands of years – if an eldest son in medieval China must prove his worth by slaying a hundred Huns or fire-breathing Crocophant, how is a scrawny Chinese dude to live up to such grand primogenital expectations now? Much like our eyes, thus were our lives repressed. Then the advent of computer games came to emancipate the millions of pimple-plagued and bespectacled Chinese teens. Their pathological desires of dragon-slaying were never sated by such actions at the boardrooms, counterfeit goods market or takeaway hawkers (though we do see them often enough to think these their birthright) – too docile compared to the thrill of, say, dismembering, pixel by pixel, your angmoh friend’s green-skinned Hun-look-alike. It is in our blood.

I can’t imagine I just typed the previous paragraph. It must have been the screaming Chinese persona hollering from some locked-away depth in my genes, soul (no wait, I don't have one) or id. Forget the dragons ; we were better off with the Michael Jackson Syndrome. We’re living in Rome, so live as the Romans and do something constructive today that will make you a lot of money and maybe take over the world, or at least hopefully something not involving the wanton destruction of pixilated make-believe beings.

However, if you can’t even write a completely disjointed and time-wasting essay on the American subprime credit squeeze, Rome and Egypt, Asian nerds and computer games, you probably should stick with your Level 99 Barbarian.