What many of us are probably struggling with is a frustration with the sloppiness of this subject; when we say 'play', all of a sudden we are having to include and address all these different (and massive) realms. There's play as a child plays, with/without other children (a vast discourse that bleeds into developmental/social theories), video gaming (we don't even know what we don't know), narratives, ritual (every culture, for every generation, in every part of the world for every aspect of life...no big deal, right?), board games, and probably ten other things that I don't even know to discern between. Zimmerman is quoted, hitting the nail on the head, 'the study of video games in relationship to other genres like storytelling is fraught with controversy as "terms and concepts run amok like naughty schoolchildren"' (p55). It is so hard to avoid talking about all of these other pieces when I just want to talk about something like Apples to Apples -they are all so connected- yet it is impossible to coherently reference any of them without spending days defining myself to avoid misinterpretation. What have we really stepped into here? I'm becoming more and more aware of how inextricable these things all are from each other... and how there's just more and more roads ending in a fogbank.
What I enjoyed: distinction between ritual and games. The concepts 'aren't mutually exclusive', but are distinguished by where the emphasis is: either process or product. And I just love how this person, Bell, is more than happy to leave the subject with its inherent, 'mystical' mystery, "I do not wish to imply or designate some independently existing object, namely ritual, with a set of defining features that characterize all instances of ritual...[it would] suffer distortion in the process". Seriously though, there is no way to avoid your lens through which you see the world. There is no such thing as a totally clear lens, or a totally spherical one that can see from every angle. Even then, a lens is still a lens and therefore is between the object and the observer. Anyone who believes they can create a comprehensive system for interpreting ritual, its aspects, its histories, its occurances, or even encapsulate things as 'ritual' or 'not ritual' is doomed to fail, and quickly.
Go watch Baraka, I mean holy cow. I can't even remember what it is I thought I knew about...anything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraka_(film)
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ReplyDeleteMy friend and I were JUST talking about this last night (via FB even). People are a product of their environment. Most likely, the way you think and even EXPERIENCE life will be different (if not radically so) from someone in, say, Algeria. We don't even have to go that far: most likely, your ideals and "moral standards" (whatever that means) are fundamentally different from the average Joe from someone in middle US. People in Israel will worship differently than people in India. We're a product if our parents and the people in our lives and allowed in our media, that's true, but they're all as much slaves to their environment as we are.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of this image I saw a while ago. I think it's interesting how much a role in your life your even just geography plays. (sorry about the crazy url, I don't know what's wrong with me) http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pbGqbBLrvCM/ULr3wqxMY-I/AAAAAAAAPU8/46RwT642nJ8/s1600/If+you+were+born+in+Israel+you'd+probably+be+jewish+if+you+were+born+in+saudi+arabia+you'd+probably+be+muslin+if+you+were+born+in+india+you'd+probably+be+hindu.jpg
Interesting thought, but the last line of that picture is laughable. Is the soil of the earth giving ff a 'religion vapor'? No? So the idea came from somewhere else. The drive for deeper meaning isn't physically necessary, isn't present in any other species, and was worldwide before people could communicate even cross-tribally. The same TYPES of things show up in every religion, and this happened before many civilizations had written languages. So, logically, that leaves us with an idea that is somehow inherent to only humans for an unknown reason.
ReplyDeleteTheologically, I can read that and simply ascribe it to universalism, something that is less a religion than it is a perspective on religion. Even the person who wrote that ascribes to an ultimate meaning, and it could be nihilism, humanism, or a vacuous atheism (vacuous not here being derogatory, but rather anti-Nietzschian, in that it is not mourning the death of God but ascribing zero worth to the idea).
Also, Christianity is such a wide spectrum in itself, not even remotely limited to the category of North American Christianity (also varied). There is Catholocism (Italian), Messianic Jewish, Protestant (German/Dutch), and Christianity as a doctrine began in the Mediterranean and Middle East. So I'm not sure what this person is really saying. I feel like they're just mad about people who use the Bible to talk down about evolution and are trying to stick it to them. My opinion.
Please pardon my constant use of the word 'ascribing'. I failed to proofread.
ReplyDelete*Judaism, not Jewish
ReplyDeleteAlso also, I'm not on board with the correlation between geography and meaning. Geography and what religion is largely in place and what types of worship spaces are available to the individual, yes. But that's like saying 'if you lived in Japan, you'd eat sushi. If you lived in Ukraine, you'd eat reindeer. If you lived in New Guinea, you'd eat guinea pigs. If you lived in North America, you'd eat cheeseburgers. Your meal isn't delicious, it's just geography.'
ReplyDeleteComparing two unrelated things: geography and deliciousness, or geography and truth.
"Is the soil of the earth giving off a 'religion vapor'? No?"
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't think so either. I think by geography they meant your cultural location. At least that is the point I was trying to get at. Truth is an arbitrary thing in itself. What you consider truth is going to be based largely on your experiences and the context in which they took place--not where you're standing per se, but where you're standing in conjunction with the primary beliefs of the area.
It isn't that so-and-so religion is the only one that exists in an area, just that it might be the most practiced and so the most relied upon or sought after for what is "true" (at least as far as theism goes).
So yes, I am on board with geography (mainly the culture of different places) having as much influence on what we consider delicious, as what we perceive as truth. It isn't the only thing--because religions do mesh and Christianity is so diverse--but it is a big thing.
ALSO, I do agree with you that whoever the author on that image is did paint religion with the fattest brush he/she could find. Being born in North America makes you very likely to be any number of religions, because that is what our culture tries to be about. Diversity, acceptance, etc.
Culture (which isn't ultimately defined by geography, but geography can play a part in), largely determines the kind of lens you will see the world through.