An interesting follow-up to this post happened a few days ago while I was praying before bed. I asked God how it can simultaneously be that his son handed succession through Peter all the way down through the centuries, yet the Church has people in it like the current Pope and the aforementioned Bishop, who are not walking The Path?

Immediately he put this gentle laugh into my head, like a parent amusingly prodding his child: "Oh, so you know The Path now?"

Duh!

God wants us to pursue truth, so it's ok to "call out" our religious or political leaders where they go astray-- to not do so would be to ignore God's truth and reality. But on the flip side, everything has a purpose: we need to recognize that God has a road that he's leading not just us down, but everyone. People like Pope Francis or this Bishop are serving a role in all of this, which will eventually lead to greater good.

On a totally unrelated note, yesterday's "Gran Turismo 7" presentation looked amazing. That game is the reason I bought a PlayStation 5 at launch in the first place, and the title looks even better than my sky-high expectations. But what's with the "this game will not function without an internet connection" deal-- for a single player release?

There are people like John Linneman who call this stuff out, but their overall erroneous world view prevents them from seeing the big picture. CEOs of major corporations have veritably always dreamed of Klaus Schwab's "you will own nothing and be happy", "every plebe will pay us endlessly recurring subscription fees and make us gazillionaires".

They don't want us to own cars. They don't want us to own our own house. They don't want us to own copies of video games. All of it is the same line of thinking! Besides making them rich and us poor, it also gives them control over us: don't get "the jab", or say something mean on The Twatter? We're sorry, you violated our terms of server-- good luck starting that subscription car to drive to work tomorrow morning!

Back to "Gran Turismo 7" then: once I saw this whole landscape for what it was, I've become very sensitive to games where I can't preserve them. Not just for the sake of preservation itself-- although I do value that-- but to push back against this larger tide, which transcends just video games. I hope there is a lot of blowback against this specific example, and that Polyphony changes course here.