The minimum wage simulator was extremely eye-opening. I spent so much time in the beginning just trying to figure out how much time I needed to get water and food… Apparently, it was a lot more than I could even imagine being possible. Once I kind of figure out some base settings, I thought that I would be able to actually do well and make it work, but I was sorely mistaken. I spent almost an hour trying to get past level 4 but I couldn’t! It was so frustrating because I wanted to get my people to live longer and it was so heartbreaking that this is real life for hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. I mean how do you even process sitting in your bed in a dorm room playing this game on your laptop after getting d-hall for dinner…? It is hard to quantify the difference in living between us and people in those conditions. I know that we are so beyond lucky to be here and live this life, but when you put it into that perspective, it makes you feel guilty for not taking as much advantage of it as you can. Like in McAskill’s Doing Good Better (in chapter 7 I think, correct me if I am wrong), we are in the best position worldwide to help. I know that we all have our own struggles but I can’t imagine anyone is so poorly off that they are even close to having to live like this and work so hard just to survive. We need to do the most that we can, whenever we can. I am grateful that there are so many organizations and resources to help us help others. After this experience, I will definitely be taking it into consideration for future giving and will take this experience with me and never forget to be grateful for what I have!
Critical Thinking
I feel like I also had that sense when I was playing the simulator- kind of like there was no way my privileged mind can fully understand the weight of the decisions I was making/ the way the situation is in real life. It felt very privileged and a bit detaching to be playing this simulation without fully understanding the ways in which real people experience these kinds of insecurities- Important note to make 🙂
This game really puts into perspective the amount of privilege we all truly have, and all that we take for granted. I hear people all the time complaining about the food at d-hall without considering that we have so many options for good, nutritious food, whereas half of the world is living in poverty where they struggle just to get enough consistent supplies of food and water. I really tried while playing the simulation to keep the perspective that this is what people go through in real life, and its so hard to realize that no matter what you do to try to help/to make their lives better, without external help (such as the bank, organizations, etc), these people keep going in a circle of poverty that is so out of their control and its really eye opening.
I really liked how you connected the c=village simulator to McAskill’s reading and the importance of doing the most good we possible can. This ‘game’ (and it feels tone-deaf to even call it a game when this depicts real like experience), outlines not only the immense privilege we have but also how we take such privilege for granted. With such privilege comes responsibility to give back and help other communities, because, like you said, we are in the best position world-wide to help.