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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2016 12:05:02 GMT -6
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Post by sepulchre on Jan 16, 2016 16:23:55 GMT -6
For centuries academically trained religious scholars, clergy, and theologians have framed apologetics around the leading philosophical tradition of the day and even ideologically in our postmodern era. Through my time at university and afterward I eventually found this to be a rather backward endeavor, barring it's initial phase when it took shape through the language of Plato, Aristotle and the Scholastics. That said, the leading philosophical or rather ideological trend, speaking contemporaneously, more or less presents the prevailing mindset or underlying thread in the society at large, yet rarely if ever presents a dialectic which looks backwards in the hopes of bringing the past forward. No one in secular society gives a hoot about Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Aquinas, Bart, Lewis, Kung or Tillich just to name a few. Hence, engaging secular frameworks with the intent of making plain religious language in my experience turns out to be sheer folly. No one cares, really. There was a time in the postwar era of the 20th century when religion was vigorously debated in the literature of modernity and by civil and religious elites on BBC or in the editorial pages of the Times, but that time has long since past.
The idea that fantasy (fantasy not [ph]antasy, and here the connotations are philosophically critical, see Hobbes or really Plato)lends itself to religiosity or religious experience may have some credulity with children (and even that may be a stretch for many)but not adults. The divide of subject and object in modernity, the misguided reduction of everything to a material cause, and the self-absorbed orientation with the "self" today means that much of fantasy is an allowance we permit to our private selves and in some cases claim we deserve, like going out to eat at the latest restaurant, watching television, playing golf, buying the latest car model, or going on vacation. Fantasy is a pastime, and its likeness to religion does not make religion any the more accessible. To paraphrase, the American Indian just thought us to be a breed apart.
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Post by ritt on Jan 16, 2016 18:33:25 GMT -6
I'm glad to see an academic writing a book on the 80's Anti-D&D hysteria. Hopefully he'll do that shameful episode justice.
I'm not sure about the whole "D&D is like a religion" angle, though. But I would give Laycock a chance.
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Post by xerxez on Jan 17, 2016 10:51:08 GMT -6
Laycock's quotations cited in the article develop very interesting ideas.
I think he has a number of good assertions. I don't think, though, that people were afraid of D&D because it made them believe their religion was a fantasy.
My take on why D&D stopped being a scapegoat is far less romantic.
When an unknown commoner created a sudden potentially burgeoning cottage industry that gained rapid an unexpected popular appeal amongst young people, he was almost immediately and endlessly harassed and his game was held up as a work of the devil. Then a major corporation took the helm, and all the bad press went away. Now D&D makes regular appearances in sitcoms. "Money answereth all things" Ecclesiastes 10:19. This goes for a lot of things once considered nerdy and/or weird. To be frank, nerd culture became cool because it was profitable to make it cool. It isn't only because the tribe grew up and chose to normalize it.
He is definitely right about movies providing access to the old archetypes and fulfilling the myth-need, if that's what he is saying.
I think about this alot.
In a modern technological age where scientific and industrial demystification is lauded, I feel we as a world, as people, we have lost a great deal of ourselves, our myths, our sacred relations with the natural environment.
The musician Ronnie James Dio wrote songs about this loss quite poignantly, most notably in "Children of the Sea" and "Sign of the Southern Cross", the latter having a line in it which states "A story told that can't be real/somehow must reflect the truth we feel."
I think myths are true in a very real sense--they contain truth about who and what we are, to me it's actually inconsequential whether the fantastical elements of the story actually physically happened or whether they are metaphor.Did science prove the sun is not a god dying and being reborn every day? Maybe. But if it's purpose is only to deconstruct faith, beliefs and actual spiritual and mental faculties in people, well, I think that is a misapplication of science or even a misappropriation of the name.
There is a cure--get to nature if you can, let it immerse you, fall under its spell again. I own a good book about this- The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life by Thomas Moore. My wife is disturbed when we are watching Japanese anime and I wistfully say "I wish there were little roadside or forest trail shrines like that today. A place to make an offering and commune with the spirits of a place, whatever you want to call them." She thinks I'm being a pagan, but its not that. It's just, man, you tell me that wild Irish savage casting votive stones into a pool or a lake he or she thought held a sprite was all wrong, but here, we'll give you this instead--acres and acres of concrete with burger joints and malls, mechanical lights, rundown vacant lots and empty buildings and on top of it, we will tell you that the ideas underlying this bleak arrangement are food for your soul and the stuff of the dreams and aspirations of the world!
Nah. I don't think so. You can have that. The other is more appealing. And it isn't all pagan. I have to wonder how much of Saint Patrick's spirituality and connection to Ireland was born from his solitary sojourns in it's amazing wilderness, you think about a man who heard the voice of God in the sky speaking to him, I doubt he would have been as receptive sitting at a computer in a dirty city.
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Post by tkdco2 on Jan 17, 2016 18:08:34 GMT -6
Interesting article.
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Post by increment on Jan 18, 2016 20:51:16 GMT -6
I get the sense that he isn't quite willing to make the argument he really wants to make yet. I hope to see the final form of it someday.
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Jan 18, 2016 21:32:27 GMT -6
Interesting to read the response posts. Is Laycock saying anything new that hasn't been said or written before?
It is weird how there was the "beginning" of a witch hunt about D&D connected to the occult at one time. But as xerxez pointed out this has seemly been forgotten by corporate mega profits. I say "beginning of" because it did look like a one time there was going to be a firestorm of cleansing against D&D, thank goodness that didn't happen.
I always have to pinch myself when I read an article or watch a news documentary to remind myself to be skeptical about what is being presented to me. A journalist has to make a living like many of the rest of us so what easier way of making a buck than focusing on something that gets a rise out of people. America is obsessed with the occult, look at the popularity of horror movies in our culture. It was an easy win for some journalist to come up with the idea that D&D is an occult game. I am sure the articles took care of several mortgage payments.
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 19, 2016 10:00:38 GMT -6
sepulchre, I dig your post. A lot of stuff well said. If I may be so bold, I think the reason I play old school vs. new school is exactly for the reasons you post. New school wants to hijack the western literary tradition of the romance (what we now call "fantasy") so that they can play out their own subjective fantasies. Hence the emphasis on amateur dramatics and story telling. I like old school because I want to loose individualistic subjectivity through game-play. I want to engage the classical tradition of literary romance that the west inherits as (if I dare say it) a thoroughly Christian literary tradition. That is why things like Game of Thrones never really compel me or keep me engaged. "Medieval Fantasy" that is divorced entirely from the Christian mythos (regardless of whether I am Christian, or not) just comes off as inauthentic. I'd rather do an authentic Japanese medieval fantasy than a fake western one! xerxez, I dig a lot of what you are saying as well, man. increment, would you be willing to expand on what you mean by your statement? It sounds interesting, but it is so briefly stated I want to make sure I know what you are saying and I am not filling in the blanks with my own thoughts. Otto Harkaman, good points about journalism. I think D&D and religion, especially Christianity, are easily relatable to one another. I am not sure if I see them as related in the way the linked author does. The world didn't need "Dragonraid," because D&D is perfectly capable of supporting medieval Christian fantasy role play (if that is what the group wants) without any major modifications. Even the "cleric" was initially conceived as a fantasy version of the medieval western cleric, etc. (And, I would argue, not a regular parish priest but more like a knight of what of the military orders.)
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Post by xerxez on Jan 19, 2016 12:03:19 GMT -6
Tetramorph, you bring up Dragonraid, I still have my copy and used it once. However I did not run it as a learning game but largely as I would run a D&D game. I am still subscribed to the email list from Dragonraid and it has a tiny community of very committed fans. I bought it again because of nostalgia, as my mother once became concerned about D&D and felt a "Christian" alternative to D&D might wean me away from the old school books. However, she never did try to stop the gaming or take my books away.
My stepfather tried to get her to do it several times, interestingly he was the black sheep infidel in a family if ministers and Kay ministers in a Pentecostal denomination and did not object because of occultism but because he felt the game glorified thieving and killing and that it was a sign of mental instability to play it. He was a raging and raving lunatic during that entire affair with my mom though.
My grandmother, now deceased, who was the sweetest and kindest to me of anyone in this world, did not approve of the game at all, the lady who cut her hair being a church lady who had really given her an hours worth of the satanic nature of the game. My grandma didn't try to take it away either but she did take me for a haircut there one day for the purpose of having this woman explain to the 13 year old grandson what she "knew" about D&D. She didn't get beyond two sentences. I got a bad haircut that day and was later reprimanded soundly for being rude to the woman. All I did was tell her what she said was nuts and that I wanted none of it. This was taken by the woman as evidence of Satan's influence upon by means of the game.
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Post by increment on Jan 19, 2016 18:15:04 GMT -6
increment, would you be willing to expand on what you mean by your statement? It sounds interesting, but it is so briefly stated I want to make sure I know what you are saying and I am not filling in the blanks with my own thoughts. I infer that Laycock senses a more profound connection between role-playing and religious belief than he feels he can prove today. That argument would be a two-way street: kind of that religion is more like role-playing than we suppose, and role-playing is more like religion than we suppose. Arguably, the Satanic Panic owes a certain amount to the way that fundamentalists saw fantasy role-playing as a competitor to their belief systems, and indeed rather than young role-players believing in demons, it was the fundamentalists who projected their own belief in demons onto the role-players, ironically elevating role-playing to something equal to religion. In parallel, other scholars study the relationship between various sorts of ritual and gaming practices. I wouldn't want to mount this argument myself - not my neck of the woods - but I feel like Laycock is sort of dancing around it.
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Post by Porphyre on Jan 20, 2016 1:27:00 GMT -6
You mean that it was because they believed in demons before they became popular ?
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Post by tetramorph on Jan 20, 2016 8:46:33 GMT -6
increment, yes, I read you. I am interested in the intersection of game and ritual theory myself. But that would be an entirely different book, for sure.
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