A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond...
"The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
If you attended this event, post your comments below. LISTEN. Two remarkable human beings visited our campus and shared their stories of survival yesterday.
Frances Cutler Hahn was a hidden child in France. Born in 1938, she was very young when her parents hid her in a Catholic children’s home to save her life. During the Holocaust she practiced two religions, had five names and took refuge in seven homes with eight different families. Her mother was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau and her father, a member of the French resistance, died of wounds he suffered in combat.
Jack Cohen, born in 1932 in Greece, lived as quietly as possible in the Italian occupied section of Greece from 1941 until the Germans began arresting and deporting Greek Jews to the ghettos and death camps in 1943. The family fled to a monastery in the mountains for two years until it became too dangerous to remain there. Once again the family fled, this time to a small village, until the end of the war. Although most of the family survived, Jack’s grandmother was captured and, presumably, murdered. They never saw her again.
Our last CoPhi midterm report presentation, in a coincidence of serendipitous synchronicity, immediately preceded this event. The topic: "dehumanization." That's exactly the deplorable phenomenon behind the holocaust, and behind so much of the loathsome ugliness in our public political discourse today.
As Mr. Cohen said, that's humanity at its worst; but we should turn our attention and our intentions to humanity at its best. Without the kindness, altruism, and willingness to "stick their necks out" of some "righteous Gentiles," said Mrs. Hahn, countless more innocent lives (including hers and Mr. Cohen's) would have been sacrificed to irrational hatred. Most of us are not haters, but few of us want to stick our necks out. That's how the haters win.
An important reminder, on Halloween, that there's nothing scarier in the known universe than human indifference to the suffering and injustice perpetrated by our fellow humans: “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” Primo Levi
“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented... For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” Elie Wiesel
Today is All Hallows’ Eve or Halloween. The modern holiday comes from an age-old tradition honoring the supernatural blending of the world of the living and the world of the dead. Halloween is based on a Celtic holiday called Samhain. The festival marked the start of winter and the last stage of the harvest, the slaughtering of animals. It was believed that the dark of winter allowed the spirits of the dead to transgress the borders of death and haunt the living.
Eventually, Christian holidays developed at around the same time. During the Middle Ages, November 1 became known as All Saints’ Day or All Hallows’ Day. The holiday honored all of the Christian saints and martyrs. Medieval religion taught that dead saints regularly interceded in the affairs of the living. On All Saints’ Day, churches held masses for the dead and put bones of the saints on display. The night before this celebration of the holy dead became known as All Hallows’ Eve. People baked soul cakes, which they would set outside their house for the poor. They also lit bonfires and set out lanterns carved out of turnips to keep the ghosts of the dead away. WA
FL 31-32; American Philosophy: A Love Story prologue (AP)
1. What percentage of Americans don't expect the 2d coming before 2050?
2. Who is Christianity's most prominent "blame-the-victims horror story-teller"?
3. What percentage of Americans believe in the devil?
4. What percentage of Britons said they had no religion (in 2012)?
5. What is the latest scholarly consensus about America's exceptional religiosity?
6. What did William James consider the profoundest of questions?
7. Those who are doubtful about the value of their own lives are said to have what kind of soul?
8. The holding of what two irreconcilable things is the basis for life's "poisonousness" quality?
9. What was James's answer to "life's most difficult question"?
10. Who or what finally––and continually!––decides the meaningfulness of life?
Discussion Questions:
What would persuade you that a person you'd met was the Jesus? What would you say to him?
Would you worship, or even respect, a god who punished humanity indiscriminately with earthquakes, disease, and other "acts of god"?
COMMENT: "There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment." Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian
Why are Americans so much more religious than Brits, Swedes, and Danes (for example)?
Dozens of times over the past four years, I’ve made the drive from my home in Boston to a long-forgotten library in the middle of New Hampshire, accessible only by dirt road and hidden behind White Mountain pines. It once belonged to William Ernest Hocking, the last great idealist philosopher at Harvard, and though it contains irreplaceable volumes, it was known until recently only to a few of Hocking’s relatives and one very fastidious thief. And me.
I had come to Chocorua, New Hampshire, in 2009, to help plan a conference on William James. But I’m not a particularly dedicated philosopher and in general bore easily, so I soon found myself elsewhere: specifically, considering the virtues of the Schnecken at a German pastry shop. And this is where I found, browsing the scones, a man of ninety, wiry and sharp, who introduced himself as Bun Nickerson. Nickerson moved slowly, like most old philosophers do, but unlike most old philosophers his hobble wasn’t a function of longstanding inactivity. Instead, he explained, it was from farming and professional skiing.
I’m normally hesitant to say what I do for a living — “I teach philosophy” is often prelude to awkward silence — but Nickerson found my profession intriguing, because he’d grown up in a little house on a corner of a philosopher’s land. “Doctor Hocking’s land,” as he put it. Today, philosophers have arguments, office hours, books, articles, committee meetings, and the occasional student. Few of us have “land.” Nickerson made Hocking’s sound impressive and permanent, like the proper realm of a philosopher king: one stone manor house, six smaller summer cottages, two large barns, and one fishing pond with three beaver hutches, all situated on 400 acres of field and forest. Most seductively, Nickerson mentioned a library. Getting to see it struck me as a very good reason to skip out on my conference-planning responsibilities, so I climbed into Nickerson’s pickup and we bumped our way up the hill.
Contemporary academics, as a rule, don’t have personal libraries worth talking about. They leave inboxes, not archives. And so they avoid a problem that nineteenth-century intellectuals faced in the twilight of their lives: What to do with an intellectual home after it’s permanently vacated? One solution is donation to a large institution. But when this happens the books are lost among the millions in the stacks, reorganized in a homogenized Library of Congress categorization that permits the easy finding of any particular book but destroys the unique integrity of the collection. To avoid this fate, writers would often give their libraries to like-minded friends and students. Some were lucky enough to place their entire collections with universities like Harvard. But William Ernest Hocking and his son Richard, despite repeated attempts, failed to be this lucky.
Born in 1873, William Hocking spent his teenage years in Joliet, Illinois, working odd jobs as a mapmaker and illustrator before entering Iowa’s College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (now Iowa State). Like many American philosophers, he didn’t initially intend to become one. He wanted to practice engineering. And this was his plan until the late 1890s, when he read Principles of Psychology, by William James, who hadn’t wanted to be a philosopher either. By the time Hocking read the Psychology, James was well on his way to founding a school of thought known as American pragmatism. Pragmatism holds that truth is to be judged on the basis of its practical consequences and its ability to enrich human experience. James’s pragmatism was just grounded enough to convince a would-be engineer that philosophy wasn’t a complete waste of time, and Hocking began studying philosophy at Harvard in 1899. He was one of the last students to work under the “Philosophical Four”: William James, George Herbert Palmer, Josiah Royce, and George Santayana, some of whom would later leave him their books. By the end of his life, Hocking, an avid collector, had acquired more volumes than he knew what to do with. He kept them in a non-winterized library in New Hampshire. After he died, his treasures were left to the mice and porcupines of the White Mountains.
William Hocking’s former library in Chocorua, New Hampshire
William Hocking (1873-1966)
When Nickerson and I showed up, the Hocking library was abandoned. He explained that members of the family still spent time on the land, particularly in summer, but this was a brisk fall day. The library was a small stone house in the Arts and Crafts style, fronted by French doors and covered by a steeply sloping roof with two chimneys. I peered in through the glass and was immediately reminded of the opening scene of Goethe’s Faust (one of Hocking’s favorites, I later learned), in which Faust, surrounded by well-thumbed books, laments the fragility of human knowledge. In the words of a depressed William James, “All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish.”
I wanted nothing more than to go inside, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have violated Hocking’s sacred space without permission had it not been for the Century Dictionary that I could see through the window. First published in 1891, the Century Dictionarywas regarded by the critic H. W. Henshaw as “the most conspicuous literary monument of the 19th century.” It was a masterpiece of lexicography, running more than 7,000 pages. Some of the best minds in America had worked for years on this first edition, including one of the founders of American philosophy, C. S. Peirce. I’d always had a certain fascination with Peirce — the kind that makes you write a doctoral dissertation, and then, after the dissertation is finished, write a book on him. The son of a Harvard mathematician, Peirce had picked up his brother’s copy of Richard Whately’s Elements of Logic at the age of fourteen and breezed through. Despite being trained as a chemist and geodesist, Peirce would consider logic and metaphysics his lifelong calling. His papers in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in the late 1860s would set the contours for American pragmatism for the next three decades. Dewey, James, and Royce all looked to him for inspiration and guidance; James tried to get him a permanent job at Harvard, but Peirce, a master of self-sabotage, foiled his friend’s attempts. Peirce never managed to fit in. He was always meddling, often quite effectively, in other people’s research. So he found part-time employment more suited to a polymath: writing entries for the Dictionary on astronomy, logic, mathematics, mechanics, metaphysics, and weights and measures.
I’d never seen a Century Dictionary before. I looked around for Nickerson, but he’d slipped off over the hill to revisit one of his old haunts. This isn’t breaking and entering, I thought. When doors are unlocked, it’s just entering.
Such rationalizations were probably akin to the thoughts of another man, a close relation to the Hocking family. This fellow had entered the library one day in February of 2007, while high on heroin, and proceeded to steal several hundred rare books — among them the first impression of the first edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan, published 1651 — which he shipped to his home address in Berkeley, California. Apprehended a year later, he told investigators that he had stolen the books in order to demonstrate to the family the importance of taking better care of them. But as the haul was worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, and as some of the books had already appeared on eBay, the law reached a different conclusion. The man went to jail, where I was not inclined to follow him.
Trespassing was easier than I could have imagined. The Dictionary’s cover was original — tan leather that had taken on a dark patina over more than a century of use — and the front page confirmed my suspicions. 1891. First edition. The pages were surprisingly brittle for a book just over 100 years old, a fragility born of enduring many seasons of freezing temperatures followed by warmer spells. Thawing out isn’t something books do with a great deal of grace. I took a look at a few random entries — “maid-pale,” “maid-servant,” “maieutic” — just enough to remember that this was a relic of a bygone age. I wondered which entries Peirce had written, since none of them were signed.
I looked at the shelf above the dictionary, at a long set of leather-bound volumes: the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, where Peirce had made his mark. It was the first run of the complete set, from 1867 to 1893. I wanted to see Hocking’s signature, so I slipped the first volume out. But it wasn’t Hocking’s name at all. In tight, compulsive script was written, “Charles S. Peirce.” As a pragmatist, I am highly suspicious of transcendence. But on that day, surrounded by the remains of philosophy, I began to believe in the reality of the unseen, in the sorts of things that James describes in his Varieties of Religious Experience. I began to believe that it was possible to come into direct contact with a reality that was long gone.
I spent the rest of the afternoon discovering James’s copies of Berkeley, Hume, Nietzsche, and Plato, most of them signed in a sprawling hand, “Wm. James.” Edmund Husserl’s signed copy of the Cartesian Mediations was being used as a doorstop (this little gem, if sold at Christie’s, could put one of my students through a year of university). And at the end of the day I ventured into the attic and discovered a letter from Walt Whitman to one of the Hockings’ relatives, John Boyle O’Reilly. This material was priceless and irreplaceable. And then there were the merely expensive volumes: first editions of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, as well as Hegel, Kant, and Malbranche. When I returned a year later, the most valuable item in the collection turned up: a first edition of Two Treatises on Government, without a name on the title page. Locke had initially published it anonymously.
Over the course of the next three years, the granddaughters of William Ernest Hocking allowed my colleague Carol Hay and me to lend a hand in saving the books. The rarest were moved to off-site storage. Today, most of the volumes are kept in a room in the archives of the O’Leary Library, at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. It’s isolated, but at least it’s dry, warm, and rodent-free. I hope it doesn’t remain isolated for long. UML is a small but up-and-coming school, and, thanks to the Hocking family’s generosity, it has unexpectedly acquired a rather large cache of philosophical masterpieces. I visit often to see them, under fluorescent lights. It always makes me a bit sad. I still think of the books in New Hampshire, just as I first found them — priceless but vulnerable, a bit like life at its best. I no longer have to trespass to see them, but some unpragmatic part of me wishes I did. Atlantic
When German philosopher Heidegger is interviewed by a Buddhist monk, the considerable differences between Buddhist thought and his own philosophy emerge. On Aeon Video: https://t.co/gdm5eIC0HXpic.twitter.com/cxOvfdneRE
John Dewey describes art as a quality that permeates experience as opposed to the experience, itself. Art is where a collection of meanings, symbols, and matters are arranged into patterns that create an experience. In Dewey's eyes, this experience is or should be, social. The aesthetic experience is a manifestation of the life of a civilization more than any other thing. Were it not for the art of ancient Egypt, the monuments, temples and writings, we would know nothing of that civilization. Troy comes to us through poetry and art recovered from its ruins. Our knowledge of Minoa has been acquired through objects of art. Rites and religions of the past survive in the incense, costumes and holidays even today.
In fact, it is in the service of religion that art was most often harnessed historically. Sacraments, music, images, and ceremonies bound communities together. These elements were more than works of art to worshippers, they were a powerful physical manifestation of their beliefs. The Christian Church recognized the importance of the arts when the Second Council of Nicea ordered that the substance of religious scenes was to follow the teachings and traditions of the Church, not the imaginations of the artists.
This relationship lasted until well into the Renaissance when more secular concerns began to emerge and dictated new techniques in art. The inclusion of subjects pertaining to first, Greek mythology and then eventually, the life of common people saw new forms of art take hold.
It is maintained that we can not fully experience other times and cultures solely through their art. It is true that their world has passed away but one can never really recreate
any experience because each individual has a unique reaction depending
on many factors. The same person may interpret a work of art differently
at another time and place. It exists in the interaction between the
self and the experience at that moment.
Dewey believes that Science's revelations concerning man's role as a part of the natural world further reinforce art's place in civilization. In his view, the relationship between man and nature has always been the spark that motivates art.
To Dewey, art is the most universal means of communication because the differences of language and dialect fall away in its presence. More than mere instruction about life, art uses the imagination to bring us together. He maintains that the physical and moral worlds have become disconnected and that art is the only hope of bridging the chasm. Dewey writes "Civilization is uncivil because human beings are divided into non-communicating sects, races, nations, classes, and cliques." Oh, if Mr. Dewey could see us today!
Social Media
Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Social media has become the center of our lives. It influences us to be like others and not really think for ourselves. It also gives us a way to present ourselves however we want. We post on social media and most likely show/present ourselves as if our lives are happy and perfect. However, the happier our social media posts and profiles are, the more sad and insecure about are selves that we are. For example, We might be afraid that people outside would see that we had been crying and judge us, but social media offers us a platform on which we could ensure an "acceptable" appearance. There is a twitter thread that someone posted asking people to post a picture that they had put on social media when they were unhappy or going through a hard time.
Who we are is shaped by how we declare ourselves on social media and how we interpret others. Other people on social media present themselves in the same way we do. They fake their happiness and only show us what they feel like showing us. We don’t know what they are going through and we believe what we want to believe. It could be a bad breakup, parents divorcing, death in the family, etc. Their fake happiness produces envy. Being envious of others and putting on a front makes us feel insecure, not good enough, and makes us wish we had these “fake” perfect lives that everyone else has. We try to "compete" with them. This goes back to faking our own happiness. Faking our own happiness and being envious of others is rough on us psychologically. Our generation uses social media to fill emptiness inside, hoping it will fix our insecurities. Social media does not cure insecurities, in fact it puts us at war with ourselves. Like said previously, the happier our social media posts and profiles are, the more sad and insecure about are selves that we are. By creating this false version of ourselves on social media at young ages, our brains are trained to uphold 2 separate and very different personalities; one for our day-to-day life, and one for social media. This can leave us asking the complex philosophical question ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Why am I here?’ or ‘What is my purpose if I am lying about who I actually am?’. New generations are being taught their job is to put out the best image of themselves out to the world. This can be very detrimental to a developing mind and confuse their sense of worth at an extremely young age. Consciousness of the 2 separate personalities each of us have is dangerous. It takes peace away from us by constantly making us evaluate ourselves and which persona to display for each setting.
Social media is hard on our "self". It causes us to lack self confidence, have envy of others, and not think too much for ourselves. We mindlessly scroll through Instagram and like pictures of people we see with "perfect" lives, wonder why we don't look like them or have a perfect life, then we post pictures of ourselves showing how happy we are with captions that everyone uses. Philosopher René Descartes believed in introspection and self-confidence. Stand by your principles in life, and don’t get influenced by what others are saying or presenting to you. Have confidence in yourself. He also believed in methodic doubt. We should doubt what others tell us, or in this case, what they present to us on social media. Using methodic doubt Is essential to developing self-confidence and is the only way for you to develop beliefs that are truly yours and not someone else’s. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Quiz Questions 1. What is social media? 2. What causes envy of others on social media? 3. What is 1 question social media can make us ask ourselves? 4. What is social media detrimental to? 5. Who believes in introspection, self-confidence, and methodic doubt? Discussion Questions 1. Do you think you have questioned yourself because of social media? 2. Do you think social media is as important as society makes it out to be? 3. Do you get envious of others on social media? 4. Do you think methodic doubt would help develop/strengthen self confidence? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sources https://strongerrr.com/lack-self-confidence-start-thinking-like-rene-descartes/ https://revelpreview.pearson.com/epubs/pearson_chaffee/OPS/xhtml/ch03_sec_04.xhtml https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/people-are-revealing-truth-behind-their-happy-looking-social-media-posts-its-heartbreaking.html
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU for short, is a wildly popular franchise for movie goers. With so many superheroes, all unique in their own ways, it's hard not to find one a movie viewer enjoys. And with each of these characters comes their own philosophy.
The big three, Captain America (Steve Rogers), Iron Man (Tony Stark), and Thor, are arguably the most popular superheroes in the MCU with the most character development. Throughout their movies, we learn a lot about each of their philosophies.
Thor is the god of thunder and the wielder of Mjolnir, his powerful hammer that only he can wield as only those who are worthy can pick it up. This whole idea gives into Thor's philosophy of, ‘if I’m worthy, then I can fight any battle confidently.’ Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, said “Whereas everyone else, it’s some bad guy who they’ve gotta take down. It’s a different approach for me, or for Thor. He’s constantly having to battle the greater good and what he should do…” (ew.com) Thor is headstrong in knowing that he's worthy to hold his hammer, so he can fight any battle.
In Captain America Civil War, the audience is given a strong look into Captain America's and Iron Man's philosophies. The debate among the Avengers is whether they should be put in check with their powers or not. Steve's stance on the subject is the group needs to decide for themselves where they should fight and where they shouldn't. Tony's take is the group needs to be under supervision and handled by the government so they don't accidentally cause innocent casualties like they did in the beginning of the Civil War movie.
Their difference in philosophies sparks a clash among the Avengers. It's easy to see where each of them is coming from. Regardless, the Avengers take sides with Steve or Tony and fight. People get hurt and friendships are bruised. This shows that even though people's philosophies may be different, it's important to be civil when debating philosophical standpoints. Another character who didn't take kindly to people getting in the way of his philosophy was Thanos.
Thanos is the most powerful villain the MCU has seen to date. His goal is to wipe out half the universe with the snap of his fingers by using the six infinity stones. He wants to do this because the universe is finite and the population is growing to large, so he's attempting to restore a balance to the universe to keep it alive. His philosophy is to achieve this goal no matter the cost, as it's what the universe needs. He even goes as far as sacrificing his own daughter for his cause.
Another MCU villain, Mysterio, has strong philosophical ties. Plato's philosophy put an emphasis on appearance vs. reality. He argued that everything wasn't always as it seemed. Mysterio would agree with Plato, in a more literal sense. Mysterio came across as a protagonist, fighting powerful beings with his wizard-like powers. In reality, however, Mysterio was putting on a big show by using drones to display these powerful beings and even himself fighting them. Mysterio would argue that if you control appearance, then you control other's realities.
The MCU's heroes' various philosophies can teach us many things, from noble philosophies, taking violent stands on philosophy can be disastrous, and not everything is as it seems. On your next watch of the MCU movies, take note on each character's philosophy and how it could change their world.
Quiz
1. What did Thor hit himself with in the video?
2. What are Steve Roger’s and Tony Stark’s superhero names?
3. Who did Mysterio's philosophy of appearance vs. reality strongly relate to?
Discussion Questions
1. Who would you side with, Steve or Tony?
2. What do you think about Thanos’ goal? Was he truly evil?
Two Holocaust survivors will discuss their personal experiences at MTSU on Wednesday, October 30th. The event, presented by the MTSU Holocaust Studies Program Committee, is free and open to both the university and the general public.
Please consider coming to the event and bringing your classes, family, and friends as well. It is a rare opportunity to see two first generation survivors speak in public, an opportunity that gets increasingly rare with each passing year. These two speakers have especially interesting stories to tell.
Frances Cutler Hahn was a hidden child in France. Born in 1938, she was very young when her parents hid her in a Catholic children’s home to save her life. During the Holocaust she practiced two religions, had five names and took refuge in seven homes with eight different families. Her mother was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau and her father, a member of the French resistance, died of wounds he suffered in combat. She will talk about what impact these experiences have had on her life and attitudes.
Jack Cohen, born in 1932 in Greece, lived as quietly as possible in the Italian occupied section of Greece from 1941 until the Germans began arresting and deporting Greek Jews to the ghettos and death camps in 1943. The family fled to a monastery in the mountains for two years until it became too dangerous to remain there. Once again the family fled, this time to a small village, until the end of the war. Although most of the family survived, Jack’s grandmother was captured and, presumably, murdered. They never saw her again.
These presentations will take place at 2:20 p.m. in the Tennessee Room of the James Union Building this Wednesday, October 30th. For more information, email or phone Holocaust Studies Program Chair Dr. Nancy Rupprecht (nancy.rupprecht@mtsu.edu or 615-898-2546) or Liberal Arts Events Coordinator Connie Huddleston (Connie.Huddleston@mtsu.edu or 615-494-7628.)
Yes, and I have questions. Adult Halloween didn’t exist, certainly not for straight people, until the 1980s. Did any people who became adults before the 80s take it up then? And for Adult Halloweeners for whom there was no gap, i.e. people under 50, at what age do/will you stop? https://t.co/elD7WTneb4
Following up last week's report on Zelda and videogaming...
Can You Really Be Addicted to Video Games? The latest research suggests it’s not far-fetched at all — especially when you consider all the societal and cultural factors that make today’s games so attractive.
In May, the World Health Organization officially added a new disorder to the section on substance use and addictive behaviors in the latest version of the International Classification of Diseases: “gaming disorder,” which it defines as excessive and irrepressible preoccupation with video games, resulting in significant personal, social, academic or occupational impairment for at least 12 months. The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association’s clinical bible, recognizes “internet gaming disorder” — more or less the same thing — as a condition warranting more research...
A substantial body of evidence now demonstrates that although video-game addiction is by no means an epidemic, it is a real phenomenon afflicting a small percentage of gamers. This evidence has emerged from many sources: studies indicating that compulsive game play and addictive drugs alter the brain’s reward circuits in similar ways; psychiatrists visited by young adults whose lives have been profoundly disrupted by an all-consuming fixation with gaming; striking parallels between video games and online gambling; and the gaming industry’s embrace of addictive game design...
Addiction is no longer considered synonymous with physiological dependence on a substance, nor can it be reduced to the activity of neurons in a few regions of the brain. Rather, experts now define addiction as a behavioral disorder of immensely complex origins. Addiction, they say, is compulsive engagement in a rewarding experience despite serious repercussions. And it results from a confluence of biology, psychology, social environment and culture. In this new framework, addictions to certain types of modern experiences — spinning virtual slot machines or completing quests in a mythical realm — are entirely possible...
A typical gamer in the United States spends 12 hours playing each week; 34 million Americans play an average of 22 hours per week. About 60 percent of gamers have neglected sleep to keep playing, and about 40 percent have missed a meal. Somewhere around 20 percent have skipped a shower. In 2018, people around the world spent a collective nine billion hours watching other people play video games on the streaming service Twitch — three billion more hours than the year before. In South Korea, where more than 95 percent of the population has internet access and connection speeds are the fastest in the world, compulsive game play has become a public-health crisis. In 2011, the South Korean government passed the Shutdown Law, which prevents anyone under 16 from playing games online between midnight and 6 a.m.
Video games are not only far more pervasive than they were 30 years ago; they are also immensely more complex. You could easily spend hundreds of hours not only completing quests but also simply exploring the vast fantasy kingdom in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a gorgeously rendered virtual world in which every blade of grass responds to the pressure of a footstep or the rush of a passing breeze. Fortnite attracted a large and diverse audience by blending the thrill of live events with the strategic combat and outrageous weaponry of first-person shooters, airbrushing it all with a playful cartoon aesthetic. In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the choices players make change the state of the world and ultimately steer them toward one of 36 possible endings. All games — whether tabletop, field or electronic — are simulations: They create microcosms of the real world or gesture at imaginary ones. But these simulations have become so expansive, intricate and immersive that they can no longer be labeled mere entertainment, no more engrossing than an in-flight movie or a pop song. They are alternate realities...
The fact that video games are designed to be addictive is an open secret in the gaming industry. With the help of hired scientists, game developers have employed many psychological techniques to make their products as unquittable as possible. Most video games initially entice players with easy and predictable rewards. To keep players interested, many games employ a strategy called intermittent reinforcement, in which players are surprised with rewards at random intervals. Some video games punish players for leaving by refusing to suspend time: In their absence, the game goes on, and they fall behind. Perhaps the most explicit manifestation of manipulative game design is the rising popularity of loot boxes, which are essentially lotteries for coveted items: a player pays real money to buy a virtual treasure box, hoping it contains something valuable within the world of the game...
Rehab taught him that in order to stay sober, he would have to do more than avoid video games — he needed to replace them with something else. In Washington, he started reading more. He broadened his social network, making new friends through work, school and mutual acquaintances. When the weather was nice, he went hiking, took his dog on a long walk or played Frisbee golf. At home, he enjoyed the occasional board game. “I’ve tried to branch myself out into a lot of hobbies that I take shallower dives into, rather than having one that occupies everything,” he told me... nyt
The beginning segment of the book is dedicated to why we play games and why we connect to games at an emotional level. There are many reasons for why we enjoy playing video games. Some of the bigger reasons stem from gaining pleasure from accomplishment alongside becoming invested in ways a game plays or is presented. Games, especially ones like The Legend of Zelda, are extremely associated with aspects including story, music, and visuals. Because of this, the means by which we interpret such experiences is notably comparable to how we perceive other forms of art. The concept of immersion can be found in any type of art that sports a respectable level of depth. What’s interesting about immersion is how and why we perceive our fictional experiences to the extent of reality. There is no bulletproof way in explaining why we get so immersed in art, but there are multiple interpretations that attempt to do so. It is entirely possible to care about fiction because of how we relate through outside experiences. The things we do in games does in fact reflect that of which we experience in real life. It may not necessarily be in a very literal sense, but aspects relating to visuals and sounds certainly do. Our minds interpret these aspects in different ways that enable us to distinguish the difference between what we think and what we know. With those ideas in place, it can be seen that we are capable of enjoying and investing in art without believing what we are experiencing is actually happening.
Whithin the Ninth Chapter of the Book, Lee Sherlock discusses the concept of the usage of time in Zelda games. More specifically, he shows us how certain aspects within the game Majora’s Mask are affected by the new concept of a repeating three-day cycle. Sherlock will often relate his concept to that of Fredrich Nietzche’s idea of eternal recurrence, in which a person goes through an infinite repetition of time with a finite amount of event. The game will very often use these methods to not only create a sense of suspension for the player, but also as a method of placing hierarchy on specific game events and items. The sense of suspension in the game is somewhat different from Nietzche’s concept, in that Link has the ability to manipulate the flow of time, as opposed to being in full control of it. Nietzche makes eternal recurrence something that no one has power over and is merely just nature’s will. In terms of the concept of time used for different items and events, there is a hierarchy system with both. Each permanent item that the player obtains is a way to mark your progress within the game, making the restrictions to Link’s abilities fewer. However, in Majora’s Mask, the concept of time adds a new sense of investment into the player’s ability to obtain that item as well as if the item will eventually disappear at the end of the day, wasting your time. Additionally, since the game functions on concepts that are not familiar to us, the game also portrays this sense of uncanniness, giving us, both as Link and the Player, a sense of uneasiness and fear.
The sixth "level" of the book discusses the questions, "are video games art?" and "how does Zelda fit into the ideas of Plato's Republic. The book argues that games are indeed art. It also makes its case comparing the social classes of Hyrule to the proposed social classes of Plato's Republic. The classes in the Republic are: the Guardians, the Auxiliaries, and the producers. The Guardians were the ones in charge, the Auxiliaries defended the people, and the Producers produced.
In this chapter Tony Fellela explores the world Link presides and tries to tie in the point in life. As Link is a normal guy that makes himself into the hero through his actions to save the world. He finds the meaning of life through the small actions that lead up to the larger saving the world that really matter in the end. Life is what we make of it, thus the foundation of existentialism.
Questions:
What item does Link use for marking down time sensitive events in the game?
What were the social groups of Plato's Republic?
What were the three proposed theories for why we care about fictional characters?
What does Vicktor Frankl believe is needed for a successful human life?
Discussion Concept:
Additionally, if you were trapped in eternal recurrence, would you enjoy it or despise it? Why or why not?
Would you like to live in Plato's Republic?
Do you consider video games art?
What causes you to become invested/immersed in fictional art? This includes all forms of entertainment such as games, books, movies, etc.
What is the reason you get up in the morning?
Transcendentalism is
when people, of both genders, have awareness about themselves and the world
around them that goes beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch or feel. It
came to be in late 1820s and 1830s in the United States. This awareness comes from
intuition and imagination, but not through logic or the senses. People who
believe in transcendentalism are called transcendentalist. Transcendentalists
trusts themselves to know what is right and what is wrong. They agree with
these ideas not as spiritual philosophies but as a way of understanding life
contacts. Transcendentalists trust in the integral goodness of individuals and
nature. They believe that people are at their greatest when they are genuinely
separate from society and its institutions. The Transcendental Club was led by
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the club met in Boston in one of the homes of its members.
The Transcendentalist
movement is primarily associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson. He is known for his
extensive knowledge on the subject and his writings. He grew up a Unitarian and
studied as a minister. Eventually after his father and fiancé passed, he
decided he wanted to follow another path of belief. He decided to travel the
world in attempt to have an intimate experience with god. He began to lecture
on spiritual awakening and living ethically. He finally settled down in
Concord, Massachusetts’s. There he hit his stride as a writer. He worked as co-editor
of The Dial and published two volumes
of essays containing some of his most well-known works. In his later life he
continued to lecture and educate the next generation of transcendentalists. He
died in 1882 leaving a lasting impact on all those who came after him.
Quiz questions
11)Is transcendentalism logic based or intuition
based?
22)Who primarily started and wrote about
transcendentalism?
33)Name a well-known work of Emerson’s.
Discussion questions
11)Emerson writes that people are distracted by the
demands of the world. Do you agree?
22)Emerson believes that for a person to truly
experience “the sublime” they must rid themselves of material cares. Is this
necessary?
33)Socrates and Emerson believe every society has a
code of conduct that people living in it follow. Do you agree S Sources Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/biography/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson. Goodman, Russell. “Transcendentalism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 30 Aug. 2019, plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/.
