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That’s good to hear. I always feel an affinity for people with a mental health background, because I know what that’s like, I spent some time in the psychiatric circuit. Very glad that she’s doing better, and that you guys are spending quality time together!
1
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@Jeroen said:
But the Buddha said, all games can lead to heedless behaviour.
I think the sutra does support this statement, as far as it goes. The reason he gives for heedlessness causing a problem is that recluses are living on offered food have a duty to be heedful, but that doesn’t take away the issue of heedlessness from a simple mindfulness perspective.
I think you can also observe this with people and kids in public transport, restaurants, all kinds of public spaces. So many people are absorbed in their phones and not really paying attention to the here and now.
0
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
I’ve started learning Spanish, in an app which is rather heavily gamified. It is called Duolingo, and my father’s girlfriend uses it, also for Spanish, she is heavily into the league competitions.
Did you know that the games industry is currently three times the size of the music industry, and four times the size of the Hollywood movie industry?
0
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
“The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information - this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative.”
— Eckhart Tolle
This quote really made clear to me what it was about games that attracted me so much, it is a perfect representation of what the mind does: attack and defence, strategising, min-maxing, opportunism. I still have to be careful not to promote the strategising function of the mind into overall control, that temptation still exists for me.
1
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
This also explains a bit more what makes victory so enticing in games, it is a property of the ego to want to be victorious, winning, celebrated. It is another reason why living in surrender is so difficult for the ego, and so important for the spiritual disciple.
1
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
From what I posted in the ‘Seeking joy’ thread…
“… I have spent too much time and energy fighting darkness…”
In pretty much every major game you end up fighting the forces of darkness. It’s silly. If you had the choice in real life would you not do something more constructive, more joyful than fighting? Is not building, prayer, dance a better way to spend time?
2
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
It hit me today while I was half-sleeping, that what this thread is driving at is a kind of mental pollution which is carried by the media and by games, and that what this points to is a lack of a healthy model of storytelling and relaxation.
In more primitive societies there is an oral tradition which often concerns itself with mythology, with journeys to the underworld and spirits, with the heroes journey, with gods and goddesses. These stories were told around a campfire, not through screens.
This more healthy mode of mythological storytelling is missing today, I feel. The closest we have come is movies like Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Wonder Woman or The Lord of the Rings. Most superhero movies though undeniably popular don’t really fill this niche.
In more primitive societies there is an oral tradition which often concerns itself with mythology, with journeys to the underworld and spirits, with the heroes journey, with gods and goddesses. These stories were told around a campfire, not through screens.
In the primitive tribe I live in, we all have different stories. For example, as a bargain-basement sea critter, I am only partly reeled in. Most of me is straining at the unleashing.
Similarly, wider women and Percy the god-boy or lordy, lordy of the rings are just fake fantasy mud wrestlers.
The healthy story, you mention, is a saga of incredible depth and width. Starting before we are born again, ending long after we are ashes or in my case barbecue...
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited October 11
@Jeroen said:
From what I posted in the ‘Seeking joy’ thread…
“… I have spent too much time and energy fighting darkness…”
In pretty much every major game you end up fighting the forces of darkness. It’s silly. If you had the choice in real life would you not do something more constructive, more joyful than fighting? Is not building, prayer, dance a better way to spend time?
I have been examining this, and I found deep in myself a kind of fascination with a certain playful facet of the forces of darkness. Not the real face of it, which I find abhorrent (see also Gaza and Palestine) but the kind you find in computer games, the kind which you fight but are inevitably victorious against. A kind of stylised darkness… Certainly in Dungeons and Dragons there is a kind of motivation to make darkness ‘cool and attractive’, playing it against type.
The stylised darkness goes back to Disney and it’s treatment of the children’s world. Look at Maleficent or Jafar, the Grand Vizier in Aladdin. These smooth, urbane villains who seem to do well in the world, who are set up by the movie’s plot to either be the ‘big bad’ or some kind of whitewashed version thereof. These are not real villains, they are fairytale characters.
Part of this is the playful mechanisms of fighting in games. You just deduct a few “health points” for a successful hit, instead of seeing a wound, severed limbs, blood and bone. I think the joy would go out of it quickly if it was realistic. And death is not the last breath and the fading of life from the eyes, but rather a playful and artistic falling-to-the-ground.
In a way I find Hayao Miyazaki’s imagined worlds born of Japanese anime to be much more healthy. There, even the villains turn out to be ordinary people, and kindness triumphs over animosity. Look at the treatment of No-face in Spirited Away, going from monster to quest companion, or the way the Witch of the Wastes evolves in Howl’s Moving Castle. Miyazaki was a masterful story teller.
The Western media kinds of stories became my young adult mythology, from Star Wars on out. They were dreams that kind of outgrew their place in my mind, fuelling a sort of obsessive attention. It is a sign of an unhealthy internal mythology, compared to the early hunter-gatherer mind for example.
It is only after years of spiritual work that I bring them fully into consciousness, and I notice there was more truth in the times I was walking in the woods captivated with wonder as a wild deer or a fox would cross my path.
Comments
That’s good to hear. I always feel an affinity for people with a mental health background, because I know what that’s like, I spent some time in the psychiatric circuit. Very glad that she’s doing better, and that you guys are spending quality time together!
I think the sutra does support this statement, as far as it goes. The reason he gives for heedlessness causing a problem is that recluses are living on offered food have a duty to be heedful, but that doesn’t take away the issue of heedlessness from a simple mindfulness perspective.
I think you can also observe this with people and kids in public transport, restaurants, all kinds of public spaces. So many people are absorbed in their phones and not really paying attention to the here and now.
I’ve started learning Spanish, in an app which is rather heavily gamified. It is called Duolingo, and my father’s girlfriend uses it, also for Spanish, she is heavily into the league competitions.
Did you know that the games industry is currently three times the size of the music industry, and four times the size of the Hollywood movie industry?
“The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information - this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative.”
— Eckhart Tolle
This quote really made clear to me what it was about games that attracted me so much, it is a perfect representation of what the mind does: attack and defence, strategising, min-maxing, opportunism. I still have to be careful not to promote the strategising function of the mind into overall control, that temptation still exists for me.
This also explains a bit more what makes victory so enticing in games, it is a property of the ego to want to be victorious, winning, celebrated. It is another reason why living in surrender is so difficult for the ego, and so important for the spiritual disciple.
From what I posted in the ‘Seeking joy’ thread…
In pretty much every major game you end up fighting the forces of darkness. It’s silly. If you had the choice in real life would you not do something more constructive, more joyful than fighting? Is not building, prayer, dance a better way to spend time?
It hit me today while I was half-sleeping, that what this thread is driving at is a kind of mental pollution which is carried by the media and by games, and that what this points to is a lack of a healthy model of storytelling and relaxation.
In more primitive societies there is an oral tradition which often concerns itself with mythology, with journeys to the underworld and spirits, with the heroes journey, with gods and goddesses. These stories were told around a campfire, not through screens.
This more healthy mode of mythological storytelling is missing today, I feel. The closest we have come is movies like Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Wonder Woman or The Lord of the Rings. Most superhero movies though undeniably popular don’t really fill this niche.
In the primitive tribe I live in, we all have different stories. For example, as a bargain-basement sea critter, I am only partly reeled in. Most of me is straining at the unleashing.
Similarly, wider women and Percy the god-boy or lordy, lordy of the rings are just fake fantasy mud wrestlers.
The healthy story, you mention, is a saga of incredible depth and width. Starting before we are born again, ending long after we are ashes or in my case barbecue...
Any questions?
https://mettaray.com/questions/
I have been examining this, and I found deep in myself a kind of fascination with a certain playful facet of the forces of darkness. Not the real face of it, which I find abhorrent (see also Gaza and Palestine) but the kind you find in computer games, the kind which you fight but are inevitably victorious against. A kind of stylised darkness… Certainly in Dungeons and Dragons there is a kind of motivation to make darkness ‘cool and attractive’, playing it against type.
The stylised darkness goes back to Disney and it’s treatment of the children’s world. Look at Maleficent or Jafar, the Grand Vizier in Aladdin. These smooth, urbane villains who seem to do well in the world, who are set up by the movie’s plot to either be the ‘big bad’ or some kind of whitewashed version thereof. These are not real villains, they are fairytale characters.
Part of this is the playful mechanisms of fighting in games. You just deduct a few “health points” for a successful hit, instead of seeing a wound, severed limbs, blood and bone. I think the joy would go out of it quickly if it was realistic. And death is not the last breath and the fading of life from the eyes, but rather a playful and artistic falling-to-the-ground.
In a way I find Hayao Miyazaki’s imagined worlds born of Japanese anime to be much more healthy. There, even the villains turn out to be ordinary people, and kindness triumphs over animosity. Look at the treatment of No-face in Spirited Away, going from monster to quest companion, or the way the Witch of the Wastes evolves in Howl’s Moving Castle. Miyazaki was a masterful story teller.
The Western media kinds of stories became my young adult mythology, from Star Wars on out. They were dreams that kind of outgrew their place in my mind, fuelling a sort of obsessive attention. It is a sign of an unhealthy internal mythology, compared to the early hunter-gatherer mind for example.
It is only after years of spiritual work that I bring them fully into consciousness, and I notice there was more truth in the times I was walking in the woods captivated with wonder as a wild deer or a fox would cross my path.