It's Friday and I Haven't Old Man Ranted In A While...

...I figure it's time to do what this blog advertises itself to do in order to give everyone a break from the numbers crunching I've been doing lately.

Old Man Rant!

Before the rant though, I do want to say that all the math and gear posts that I've been making lately are leading to the debut of something I've started working on. I'm unsure when it will debut, but it will be something that will make lives a lot easier when it comes to picking out gear sets for Dragoon.

Onto the rant.

If you read this blog post, you've got a pretty good idea where I stand on a number of leadership issues and how I go about preparing for an event. This should translate into how I tend to judge others. In dealing with people, I look at level of committment, selfishness and consideration of others. All t hree of these things go hand in hand.

Selfish Acts vs. Selfish People

Selfishness Defined

This word gets tossed around a lot and the vast majority of the time, it doesn't apply to the person as a whole. There are selfish acts and there are selfish people. Before I go further, here's what dictionary.com has to say about the definition of selfish:

1. devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others.
2. characterized by or manifesting concern or care only for oneself: selfish motives.

These things happen every day. Everyone has them on a daily basis. In the world of FFXI, everyone has SOME reason why they do something and the majority of the time, these are selfish reasons. There are good and bad reasons for them. A team member that's been burned by a selfish act has to have the ability to look outside the the act itself and determine if it's a pattern.

What I see happen a lot is one person will get burned and label someone as selfish. Did the person who got burned stop to think perhaps they feel burned because they didn't get what they wanted? What was their reason for teaming up with said person? To gain something, right? Most people usually aren't teaming up with someone else unless it's to further themselves. Hell, even writing this blog has selfish motivations behind it. It's something I want to do, right?

Understanding that everyone has selfish motivations will weed out the people from the acts. Everyone is allowed to be selfish about things as it's just simply human nature. Maintaining a balance by performing unselfish acts will help separate the people from the acts as well. How do you go about this?

In FFXI terms, go do something with a buddy without qualifying it with phrases like:

"My DRK needs a buffer anyway..."
"Oh I can skill up my great sword!"
"I'd like a shot at a macha's coat, so I'll help."

A truly selfish person is incapable of thinking along these lines. Any offer that comes their way is immediately followed with the thought of "How does this benefit me?" If no answer comes to mind, they'll go do something that does benefit them or give some lame excuse like all of a sudden having some homework for school just mysteriously appear despite the fact they were wasting a bunch of time in game to begin with.

Commitments: Making Them and Breaking Them

Commitments are the cornerstones of friendship and relationships. Making a commitment to someone means you're the one they're going to rely on for help. When I make a commitment to someone in game, I'm there unless something like work or family emergencies prevent me from keeping it.

All too often nowadays, people fail to understand this most basic concept. It isn't hard to follow a simple thought process before saying "Yes" and commiting yourself. Ask...

Do I have any other commitments I've made? If Yes, say No. Double and Triple check your schedule if you have to. Don't commit yourself to too many things at once. This is easily the biggest reason people break commitments. They forget about ones they've already made and they also don't take into consideration the standard commitments that are built into their daily routines like...when they go to bed.

If I don't, is this something I want to do? Honesty is the best policy here. If you don't want to do something, then just say so. Don't commit yourself to something you don't want to do, then conveniently not be logged in...

Not so hard to figure out is it?

Breaking a commitment will usually lead to selfish accusations. Some of them are completely true and some are spoken purely out of anger because the accuser didn't get something they wanted. A good in game example that I run into more often times than not is...

Someone breaking a commitment to an event I'm organizing to do it with someone else. This will piss me off to no end. Does that make me selfish? Depends on why you think I'm pissed.

• Am I pissed because I didn't get a chance at an item?
• Am I pissed because I have to find a replacement for you?
• Am I pissed because I have a team of people with their eyes on me waiting for me to fix a mess you made?
• Am I pissed because I'm the one that has to answer to this team's disappointment if I'm unable to get the event off the ground due to your selfish behavior?
• Am I pissed because the rest of the team doesn't get a chance at stuff they want?
• Am I pissed because I trusted you would be there and you broke my trust?
• Am I pissed because you thought more of your own chances to get what you wanted instead of honoring your previous commitment?
• Am I pissed because I spent lots of time preparing and organizing only to have to do most of it all over again?

The list goes on and on. I can tell you the answer pretty quickly. Items are something that come along in the natural course of gameplay. Obviously those chances can be few and far between and it's only natural for that to play into the anger towards a broken commitment, but don't fool yourself into thinking it's the only reason. The ramifications of that poor decision on your part will manifest themselves at a later time and you will have bridges to rebuild.

Consideration of Others: It Takes Two to Tango and Six or More for Everything Else in FFXI.

And here we find ourselves at the crown jewel of my rant today.

By it's very definition, "selfishness" is lack of consideration for others.

By it's very definition, "commitment" is consideration for others.

The world revolves around this concept. There are a million different ways you can take your teammates into consideration, but I'm going to focus only on a few as it pertains to FFXI.

• Prepared. This means lots of things like going to get maps. Researching what you're about to fight. Bringing appropriate items. Coming to an event completely unprepared causes a strain on the rest of your teammates.
• Honoring commitments. You do your teammates no favors by overbooking yourself or by leading them to believe you'll be there and not be.
• Working until your team has earned the same share of loot as you. Too often we end up seeing people organize something, get the first drop, then don't bother to help the guys that helped them. To me, asking someone to help you with something commits me to help them get something they want.
• Cowardice serves no purpose to your teammates in any capacity. Voicing your opinions through someone else, manipulating rules to skew them in favor of yourself or a loved one/significant other, or imposing your beliefs/morals, likes/dislikes on everyone, just tears the fabric of a team apart. Being human about things goes a long way towards building and maintaining chemistry. The vast majority of people have the capacity to talk about things rationally, but if you approach a situation in a completely non-compromising fashion, you can't be shocked to learn that a compromise won't happen. This, again, leads to a sheer lack of consideration towards your teammates.

It's not easy to take everything into consideration when it comes to planning an event. I'm the first one to admit I can't do it and I rely heavily on my teammates to tell me what I'm not taking into consideration.

Conclusion

These three things tell more about you as a person than any thing else you can possibly do. We can go into a little more detail by rating how good a cause is for something you're commited to or we could list various other things that show just how considerate you are of others. Too often, I see members of the linkshells I've run put themselves above the linkshell and cost people a lot of time and energy. Too often, I see leaders I've been associated with through various means become drunk with power and be unable to to tell the difference between expressing their opinions just so they can satisfy their own ego by reading over their own creations and expressing their opinions to actually try to work towards a better group. Too often, I've seen people, leaders and members, alike become so obsessed with one item, one person, or one grudge that any form of rationale escapes them.

If people would take one second to think of the other people a decision they make will effect, things become a lot happier in the end.