Wind On The Pond

Bloggish, Tid-Bits

To illustrate a point, I’d like to represent one’s inner world as a pond. For me when I think of a pond I am reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Off the topic at hand, but if you have never encountered the book you may want to give a few portions of it a read.

In any case, we started with the notion of using a pond to represent one’s inner world.

So, moving forward, I’d like to observe that more than a few folks have noticed (and mentioned) the presence of ripples, waves, and darn near tsunamis mucking about on their little pond.

The general presumption is that: “if my pond is unsettled it must be something happening with me.” That is not necessarily the case. There are a variety of potential sources of “winds” that can disturb the surface of your pond: Continue reading →

I’m Basically Agnostic

Bloggish

As usual, given enough time, people will dumb down a concept to such an extent that it will come to bear no resemblance to its original concept — and often come to mean the exact opposite of its original.

Consider “agnostic”. If you care to look the word up in the dictionary (www.dictionary.com) you’ll find definitions of the following sort: Continue reading →

What Is A Game?

Gaming

In The Study of Games, Brian Sutton-Smith writes, “Each person defines games in his own way—the anthropologists and folklorists in terms of historical origins; the military men, businessmen, and educators in terms of usages; the social scientists in terms of psychological and social functions.  There is overwhelming evidence in all this that the meaning of games is, in part, a function of the ideas of those who think about them.”

If the meaning of games is a function of the ideas of those who think about them, how then would a spiritual gamer think about games? Continue reading →

Gaming Goals

Gaming

A useful first step when looking at gaming goals is to differentiate between goals of the character and goals of the player.

In Diablo Lord of Destruction the character could have a goal such as eliminating the evil creatures currently infesting the system of tunnels called “Den of Evil.” When the character accomplishes this task a skill level is given to the character as a reward.

What would the player’s goal be during all of this? Depends upon the player, and depends upon where the player is in his (or her) ladder of gaming experience. Continue reading →