On Eating That Marshmallow
In the constitution of the rational being I can see no virtue that counters justice: but I do see the counter to pleasure – self-control.
BOOK 8 – 39
Sometimes when I’m reading stuff, I’ll come across a little nugget that I find fascinating, something that I’ve never heard about before; like The Standford Marshmellow experiment. I’ll get mad-excited, then want to go and tell everyone about it, as if I’d discovered it myself. One of the little draw-backs of this, which I’ve found-out, many times, is that when you tell people about your major-findings, who are themselves a bit educated, or a bit cultured, they go, ‘yea, everyone knows about that’ and I end up feeling and looking like a bellend; even if the thing itself, like the Standford Marshemellow experiment, is worth getting mad-excited about.
I first heard about the marshmellow experiment a few years ago. For those of you that don’t know about this, it tests which kids are able to defer their gratification, by placing a marshellow on a plate in front of them, which they’re told not to eat; I think there’s some sort of reward promised to them if they don’t eat the marshmellow.
The study goes on to show that kids that are able to resist temptation, and not eat the marshmellow, tend to go on to become more successful in life, and the kids that don’t, typically struggle. Something like that anyway. I’m sure there’s smarter bods than me out there who will point out the floors in the study, or provide examples of kids that buck the trend, but in the case of this; they’re irrelevant, and I’m not an academic.
I feel pretty confident, had I been one of those kids that were tested, I would’ve wolloped-down that marshmellow in a matter of mili-seconds; and I don’t even like marshemellows. Had it been some sour-Fizzy-chewits, I probably would’ve turned the place over, smashing up a few testubes, lobbing some lab chairs through those windows with the wire squares inside, and taken some of the staff hostage, until my demand for more sour flavoured Fizzy Chewits had been met. That’s an exaggeration, obviously, but you get the point.
My family sometimes retell this anecdote of when we had this little holiday in Scotland, on the remote and very windy island of Barra. I was pretty young then, five or six maybe, but I vaguely remember it. There was a disco or something, and a couple of my older siblings had taken me along. I, for some reason, really wanted a can of Sprite; but there was no Sprite and I cried all the way home, to the point where everyone back at the house, could hear me coming; balling my eyes out about not getting a can of Sprite. It’s a strange one, because growing up, I didn’t really like fizzy drinks and still don’t. What probably happened, is that I was fully fixated on getting a can of Sprite, and when I didn’t get it, well you know, I cried. But this pattern has repeated itself, over and over, just without the tears.
If you’ve checked out any stuff I’ve written previously, you might know that: in a very small, low-stakes, suburban-satellite town, came from a loving home in a safe area, lower-middle-class, 1st world way; my life’s been a little bit chaotic. School, loads of jobs, often skint, debts, bouncing from place to place, not much of a plan at all. The best things in my life, are all the things that aren’t me; ie my family, my wife, my mates and my dogs. Going back to that experiment, I really do think there is something in it; because I’ve always struggled to delay gratification.
There’s a number of examples I could talk about here, situations where I’ve struggled to get a grip on my own temptations. Some of them are innocuous and some of them are a bit shame inducing, but I’ll spare you on those and talk about computer games. It’s a damning indictment, though, they I have so many options to elaborate on here. What I can say, a lot of them, particularly the more embarrassing ones, I’ve managed either to stop doing or stick a lid on; just about, northing that bad, though, fear not. But I am still occasionally partial to going in to a newsagent, then to the kids section of the sweetie-shelf, and buying a pack of Sour Fizzy Chewits and smashing the lot in short succession; only to be reminded about it when I get home, put my key in the door and a load of little green wrappers come flying out my pockets.
The first games console I owned was a NES. Probably the best Christmas ever. It was 1994, I think. My brother Will and I got a NES, to share, with one game, Mario Bros, the first one. Nintendo were fazing-out the NES’s, so they were going cheap, and they’d pretty much stopped making games for it, as the Super Nintendo (the next generation model) was already out there kicking arse. I would’ve been aware of all this, and probably wanted a SNEZ like most of the other kids, but I still remember being super happy getting the NES, and we had hours of fun on that thing. I never completed Mario, though. Course I didn’t.
We managed to get a few games for the NES, between us, via second-hand shops and car-boot-sales; the buzz of bringing home a new game would get me so excited, but I never completed a single one; not one, despite being almost permanently fixated on getting new games. The games would get hard, too hard and I’d get angry, then deflated, then stop, then I’d be onto the next one and I’d be excited all over again. Perhaps I preferred the packaging to the games, they often had these cool illustrations on them; like Double Dragon.
For my thirteenth birthday, my mum took me to Trade and Exchange in West Croydon and I got a Sega Mega Drive. By this point, Sega were already onto to their next generation console, the Saturn, but like the Nes, I was still very happy to have the Mega-Drive. With my Paper-Round money, I’d go to this second-hand games shop in Crawley, after-school, where they had stocks of old games going cheap that people had traded in. Again, the buzz and excitement of choosing a game and getting it home was the best; I’d be sat there at school, all day, just thinking about it, often not even knowing what I was going to buy. It was that fixation of going to do it.
I did manage to complete a couple of games on the Mega-Drive, Altered-beast, and Sonic; but both on easy mode. I remember telling myself that once I’d completed Sonic on the easy-setting, I’d do it on the harder mode. Did I? Course I didn’t. The vast majority of the games I had, were uncompleted. There’s a pattern emerging here.
One of the more interesting moments in computer games history, was when Sega launched the Mega-CD. We even did a case-study on it for GCSE Business Studies. This was an add-on that plugged into the Mega-Drive and enabled you to play games with much higher BIT rates, as well as CD’s. They were bought out as the Sega Saturn, which was the 32bit console, in-line with the Sony Playstation was delayed or something; all of this being the pre-cursor to Sega’s downfall as a console maker. As far as I know, the Mega-CD flopped and then they bought the Saturn out, which also flopped, but what this all meant for nerdy kids with no not much money, but who liked buying games and never completing them, was that if you looked in the right places, there was a load of the Mega CD consoles and games going cheap.
There was one game on the Mega CD that I’d come to own, that I actually put a considerable of time into; probably the only one bar Championship Manager on the PC, and that was Dune. But Dune broke me. It was a role-playing-game that featured footage from the 80’s film with Sting in it; the further you went along, mining spice, fighting wars and all that, the more footage you unlocked. I remember really enjoying the story aspect to it and having a few break-through moments where I figured out how to do things that I couldn’t previously do, where before, I would’ve quit, very quickly. Something about this game compelled me to stick with it. I was really enjoying it, looking-forward everyday after-school to get home and play it. I actually felt like I was finally seeing the benefit of persevering with something. It took me weeks, probably months, but I got right to the end of the game.
The Mega CD had some inbuilt memory, which the Mega Drive never had, which meant you could save games, which at the time, was revolutionary; but it was temperamental. It was whilst playing one day, that the CD thing seemed to get stuck, making a disturbing noise, whilst the image on the screen froze. My Fremen guide leading to me the final battle in a the Onri-Thoptor. I can still see that boxy-poloyon image now; it’s soldered onto my brain. I did what any what any desperate person, who doesn’t know what they are doing does, and powered it off at the wall. I turned it back on again, only to reveal that all my saved data had been wiped. Gone. I was gutted, mate. Hours and hours of gaming. The one game that I’d tried really hard with and seemed to be getting somewhere with, and BOSH, deleted, all gone. The kid that didn’t eat the marshmellow probably would’ve started again. Did I go back and start again? Course I didn’t.
I carried on playing games for a few more years in a similar pattern. I remember enjoying Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation 1 and completing that (on easy mode, of course) but gradually I moved away from games, and once I’d started rapping, music pretty much took-over.
Though I’d largely stopped playing games, the patterns continued to play-out in other areas of my life. I couldn’t stick things out; whether it was exercise, doing college work, getting up on time for work, playing with football teams, being unable to resist buying loads of trainers on my credit-card, even when I started going to open mics; they’d be weeks and weeks where I wouldn’t go.
Thinking about that marshmallow experiment, the friends I had who were good at computer games and would see them through, mostly went on to do well in life. Did they all go on to become widely successful, though? Not necessarily, but certainly displayed some general life competencies they older they got; I’m sure they know how to change a car tyre or do a bit of basic plastering; or avoid the kiddie section of the sweetie shelf in their local Londis.
I suppose the question is, for me, is what do you do with all the kids that can’t control their temptations, or even adults for that matter? I’m not sure what the answer is, but from what I’ve learned on this little journey I’ve been on, is that there is probably some deeper reasons as to why that kid has to have that marshmellow right there and then; and it’s about working-out with them what that is, then working with them to build up the resilience to resist it. Only then might they realise that Marmellows aren’t very nice anyway and computer games are over-rated.
If you’re able to, these are ways you can support my work
Romeo & Julliet@ Polka Theatre
https://polkatheatre.com/event/romeo-and-juliet/
THE SUBURBAN BOOK
My 1st book collection of stories and poems
Beats & Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy
2 plays I co-wrote plus Denmarked by Conrad Murray
https://paulcree.co.uk/shop/beats-and-elements-a-hip-hop-theatre-trilogy
BUY-ME-A-LAGER
On Eating That Marshmallow