Play eRepublik With Me

A person needs a daily ritual to give rhythm to their lives, (and those of us with ADHD might need rituals more than others). On the other hand, I abrogate the meaningless routines stemming from the habituation of fruitless beliefs.

One should only perform a ritual that has inherent meaning, whereas the ritualization of any activity that has artificial meaning will surely spread insanity and unhappiness. Every morning, my wife and I share breakfast. We derive from that time together an intrinsic pleasure. Sometimes, we go to church where the rituals can seem stale and inorganic (but we go because we enjoy the community of our peers).

One's online life seems separate from one's offline life, so it might seem appropriate that one should adopt online rituals. For better or worse, all that draws breath on the Net is definitively artificial, but I do not advocate WWW abstention. Instead, I suggest finding ways to connect with others online and offline. One of the best ways to approach social participation is through online gamesmanship, and I particularly believe in cooperative games.

Recently, I discovered eRepublik, an alternate reality game that pits whole nations against each other rather than individual fraggers. Similar to a hybrid of Twitter and Sid Meier's Civilization, eRepublik is a free online browser game that one can play without buying downloading extra software. Also, I like the game because it does not demand too much of my time. I jump into the game; I check in at a few different locations in the game (including my messages); and I log off after 5 or 10 minutes.

If you'd like to see what this game is all about for yourself, you can check it by joining my little group of friends here.