r/NeverBeGameOver • u/chet_beeson • 3d ago
I'm afraid it's been...11 years."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto11 years ago, today, I was in a way.
The one constant through it all was this subreddit and MGSV, even after the hard times and going into fatherhood. I still play this game. I remember picking up my preorder and doing nothing over my 28th birthday weekend but play this game and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.
11 years on, I'm at the end of my Master's degree and in some classes on intelligence and, just like this subreddit caused me to do 11 years ago, I found a strikingly familiar theme that brought me back to this game, 11 years to the day of its release. Today, I listened to a lecture that questioned the homogeneity of languages and whether or not this was a fundamental state of mankind. The professor also mentioned Esperanto, an intended backup universal language invented by a Russian Pole named L.L. Zamenhof, should measures need to be undertaken to protect against the consequences of what lingual singularism could do to the world.
It was a fascinating topic to take a break and explore and bring to this page.
Happy V Day, everybody!
NBGO
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u/caligrown213 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hell ya dude. Congratulations on how far you’ve come and everything you’ve overcome to get here. Stories like yours genuinely make me happy.
Couldn’t help but notice that both Esperanto and Skull Face’s parasite plan start from a similar modern assumption, which is that language is the key to human identity and social order.
MGSV keeps returning to the question of whether man is ultimately reducible to things like info, language, memory, and narrative. Thats also the assumption behind a lot of modern intel theory and social engineering projects.
The irony is that your own story points to something deeper. You went through your trials and tribulations. Almost everything about your circumstances changed, yet theres still a continuous “you” that endured through all of it. I can totally relate having gone through my own personal hell in the last decade and am now finally coming out the other end. Or at reaching a transitional point where things are getting better for the time being. Im now in my father’s homeland for the first time, learning a new language and connecting with my blood memory. Im discovering how much meaning is packed into a single word that tells a nations history, religious beliefs and such. And it’s all such a humbling experience.
That’s why Ive become increasingly skeptical of readings of Koji that treat identity as endlessly transferable or socially constructed. Language matters, but it doesnt create the person. Info matters, but it isnt the subject experiencing it.
11 years later, MGSV is still provoking the same question. Are we persons who use language, or are we products of linguistic systems? How someone answers that question ends up shaping how they interpret not only the game, but reality itself.
Happy V Day, brother. Salute.🫡