Kris begins today's address "Let's Play" with a brief overview of the nature of games, both traditional - 'primitive' and those more tech-focused, many of which we will remember playing in childhood and as adults.
He asks: "In the 'game of living', what should we be learning in our play today - more than we may have needed in more 'primitive' times?" Kris proffers "discernment in deciphering the news we receive from social media, sorting truth from distortion and bias, and needing more games that allow us to practise discernment". And, as scammers prey on the gullible in a world increasingly tech-connected, there are practical benefits in being more discerning.
He asks: "What if we tried playing Life - as a game"?
Listen on for some practical advice about the mindsets we need to cope successfully in the unavoidable "Game of Life".
Expanding Horizons
Let's play
Kris begins today's address "Let's Play" with a brief overview of the nature of games, both traditional - 'primitive' and those more tech-focused, many of which we will remember playing in childhood and as adults.He asks: "In the 'game of living', what should we be learning in our play today - more than we may have needed in more 'primitive' times?" Kris proffers "discernment in deciphering the news we receive from social media, sorting truth from distortion and bias, and needing more games that allow us to practise discernment". And, as scammers prey on the gullible in a world increasingly tech-connected, there are practical benefits in being more discerning.He asks: "What if we tried playing Life - as a game"?Listen on for some practical advice about the mindsets we need to cope successfully in the unavoidable "Game of Life".
- Duration:
- 27m
- Broadcast on:
- 25 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
[Music] You're listening to Expanding Horizons, the podcast of the Unitarian Church of South Australia, a home of progressive spirituality and free religious thought and action since 1854. The views expressed in these podcasts are those of the speaker and are not intended to represent the position of the church itself or of the worldwide Unitarian Universalist Movement. For more information visit UnitarianSA.org.au [Music] The theme today lets play, gets me thinking about games and the most modern form, or for some young people, the only form they know, is video gaming on the computer. Here is a story entitled, "The Screen Went White". I had started playing Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare. Unlike previous first person shooters I had played, this was set in the present day. In one of the characters I played, I was a US Marine participating in the invasion of an Iraq type country. While in the not bagged ad, capital, my squad and I heard that the dictator had a nuclear device, so we evacuated by getting onto a helicopter. While flying out of the city to safety, our escorts Cobra helicopter was shot down and crashed in the streets and the pilot while alive was close to being overrun by the local forces. So to be the heroes, we ignored the evacuation order and went back for her. Command told us we would not be safe in the event the Nuke went off. Whatever, we knew what the hell we were getting into. The game gave me only 90 seconds to get off the helicopter, fight my way to the crash site and then carry the pilot on my back to the landing zone. It was tough and exciting, and when I got her back into the plane I felt like a hero. Then the helicopter took off. We were on our way to safety, mission accomplished, then the Nuke exploded. You could see the mushroom cloud first, then the force of the shockwave sent the helicopter hurtling through the air and we crashed. The screen went black. A cut scene then played. It showed a graphic of the Nuke exploding and the worldwide reaction to the event. Then it showed me a list of casualties and zoomed in on my character's name. I had died. I was shocked. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I was successful. I'd won the mission. I did everything right. I wasn't supposed to die. While I was trying to wrap my head around this, the game went back into my character's perspective. I was in the crashed helicopter. I was alive. I knew it. The game wouldn't have done this to me. But I crawled out of the helicopter. My character was coughing and sighing. I looked out and the city had been turned into a nuclear fallout zone. The mushroom was still there, just fainter. I got a bad feeling. I tried to walk and find where I was supposed to go, but I kept on wobbling. I also kept on coughing and sighing. Then I just couldn't walk anymore. I fell to the ground and just looked at the devastation. The screen went white. I hadn't survived. The game just wanted me to see how I died. I had never died in a video game before. Well, I had, but it wasn't a real death. I just respawned and it was just like nothing ever happened. But this was different. This was permanent. This felt real. I was ten years old and I saw myself die. I'll never forget it. Now for something completely different. Let's sing a hymn. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ So please feel free to stand if you're able. ♪♪ ♪♪ Now I'll ask Jane to come forward with a reading for us. Some words from Alan Watts in a book that he called A Book. God likes to play hide and seek, but because there's nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, and all the animals, plants, all the rocks and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams for when he wakes up they'll disappear. Now when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's the whole fun of it. Just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly. For that would spoil the game. That is why it's so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single self. The God who is all that there is and who lives forever and ever. So please excuse the gender-specific language, but it is a lovely idea, isn't it? That God is all around us in disguise. So I have some reflections today on the theme of playing. Are you playful enough? There was a fellow Bernie de Koven who died a few years ago, an American game designer, author and self-declared fun theorist. Great job description, fun theorist. Anyway, he said, "We have been taught to distrust play. Worse we have been taught that we are not and should not be playful. We have been taught that play is childish, immature, destructive. Taught this by people who have themselves lost the path, who were themselves taught by people who believed that fun was sinful. Taught by people who have inherited a broken culture where common sense has been replaced by common senselessness. In his book, Homo Ludens, Translation Playing Man, Playing Human. The 20th century Dutch historian Johann Wisinger defined play as follows. Play is a free activity, standing quite consciously outside ordinary life, as being not serious, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds with its own proper boundaries of time and space, according to fixed rules, and in an orderly manner. Note the reference there to play without any material gain attached to it. Obviously, when Wisinger was writing in the 1930s, he wasn't aware of the flags of seductive sports betting, proliferating on our television screens when we're watching sports. Sometimes we play games, sometimes we just play. Games have one or more players, actions to follow, and a resolution. Most importantly of all, playing requires our imagination. To play well, you transport yourself from everyday reality into the world of the game. One must imagine the rules of the game as binding, then one performs perhaps creatively within that self-imposed framework. Most games can be placed into just a few categories - accuracy, racing, hunting or finding, gaining territory or power, and puzzle solving. I'm not sure about other animals, but humans play language games as well. Play occurs outside of games, of course, exploring a new environment, building things, playing at being grown-ups. Most of us are doing pretty well at playing at being grown-ups, aren't we? Just some examples, accuracy games, courts, sports involving throwing or kicking a ball, racing, snakes and ladders, backgammon, hunting or finding, hide-and-seek, battleship, power or territory, chess, drafts, monopoly, the Japanese game of golf, puzzle solving, jigsaw puzzles, cluedo, spot the difference, language, charades, scrabble, wordle. All of these activities are usually incorporated into modern video games, a journey, a race, fighting with accuracy, figuring out clues and finding treasures. The historian, Huizinger, wrote of humanity as animals who played. It is an ancient human activity, and there were evolutionary advantages in learning to hunt, find and detect danger or resources from a distance. Significantly, games allow young people to learn in safety. If you're going to play catch the lion, it's good to have a bit of practice first. Biologists have established that other animals play as well, such as the chimpanzees which build non-functional structures out of stones. Apart from the skills I've mentioned that one can learn from primitive games, what should we be learning in our play today? We admire the sprinters in the Olympics, but we ourselves don't have to run for our lives anymore. Accuracy is still required, especially when driving. We don't need to hunt, except for bargains. Often I need to hunt for my keys or sunglasses as well. Unfortunately, occupying other people's land is still going on, such as the ugly examples in Palestine, the Ukraine, maybe Taiwan, one day. Most of the acquisition these days is done by buying resources and real estate on the open market. So what should we be learning? What do we need today more than in primitive times? I think one of the most important skills in our modern environment is probably discernment in deciphering the news we receive from the mass media and social media, sorting truth from distortion and bias. We're not so far as we think from the Soviet Union when readers had to read between the lines to guess what was really going on, and ironically the Soviet Union newspaper was called Pravda, meaning truth. So perhaps we need more games which allow us to practice discernment. Back in the 1960s there was a game show called To Tell the Truth, where a panel questioned three people who all claimed to be a particular person. One was the actual person, two were imposters, and at the end of the questioning and guessing by some celebrities, the host would say, "Will the real Chris Hannah please stand up?" or whichever person it was, and the truth would be revealed. And there is currently on television a TV show called "Would I Lie to You?" in which somebody tells a story and the opposing panel must question them to figure out if it's a true story or not. Poker requires that skill as well. It helps to read other people's reactions depending on what cards they might have. So they should probably teach that in primary school as well. There is a real practical benefit from being more discerning in our world today when there are so many people trying to scam us out of money online and by telephone. And some of the scammers becoming highly sophisticated with their presentation, leaving even some very intelligent people to part with large sums of money. Playing can also teach us lessons about life, about mortality. I think despite the story I read earlier, it's probably more common to have the experience like I had with a nephew a few years ago. I think it was about 13 at the time. He was busy on his phone, but I thought, well, I'll try and engage him in conversation anyway. And he grunted in disappointment at something. I said, "Oh, what happened?" And he said, "Oh, I just died." And I said, "Oh, that doesn't sound good. Is that the end of the game?" She said, "No, no. I've got three more lives." So we have quite a lot of talk about it. And of course that's the very negative side of gaming for young males, especially thinking that it is nothing to have violence and death and to have that desensitization. But from the story I read earlier, it is possible to provoke some thoughts about mortality and have the opposite effect of becoming more sensitive to the horrors of the world. Let's have a break to hear some more music from Brendan and Grant. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] Now, I have an exercise in imagination for you. First, we have to overcome the barrier of thinking that our personal projects, including survival, are the most important projects on Earth. What if you tried playing life as a game? When we play a game of scrabble or chess or tennis, at the end of the game there's always a winner or a loser, and people shake hands and think you enjoyed playing. The more mature of us will not get terribly depressed and anxious about not winning a game of chess or tennis, because we know it's just one small part of our lives. It doesn't really affect the value, the sacredness of who we are. We are still worthy of love, and we are loved. We can say to ourselves, "It's just a game." As we go through life and unpleasant experiences, why can we not say to ourselves, "Well, yes, I had some bad news from the doctor, or I just had an argument with my friend." But these are all to be expected in the experience of life on Earth. Our bodies decay. At times, our ego or the ego of our friends comes to the fore with insults, obstruction, or annoying behavior, it is inevitable. If we could imagine for a day, or maybe until next Sunday, or ongoing, that we are playing the game of life, that we remove ourselves one step from the tribulations of life. We can put life in perspective. We can say to ourselves, "All of these problems, these tribulations, this pain, it's all part of life on Earth." It doesn't alter the fact that we are to be loved, and we are loved. As we hear the good news and the bad news, this exercise of the imagination that we are playing life can help us to be free of the ego reaction to the disappointments, losses, and unfortunate events in the world. And none of this means that we lose our enthusiasm or our intent and effort or the joy of living. Alan Watts, who we heard from in our reading today, also wrote, "This is the real secret of life to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now, and instead of calling it work, realize it is play." In the same way that the athlete in the Olympics or on the football field can apply themselves 100% with intensity and concentration to the task, we can live that way as well. After the game, after the Olympics event, they can reflect on the event and their performance, while at the same time knowing that they remain a person who is worthy, who is loved, whether they won a medal or not, whether they kicked a goal or not. I talk about personal projects, there's a distinction, isn't there, between our effort to be good and wise and kind, with, on the other hand, all of those external projects we have, whether they be in relationships or to do with material things, we experience joy as we become wiser and kinder in our relationships, in contrast to our pleasure or displeasure at the various projects we have. If we realize that all of those projects are something we can play at, we can perhaps keep in mind that distinction between our inner project of being wise and kind and loving people and all of those external projects which we carry out every day. I think this is the distinction Yeshua was talking about when he asked, "What good is it to gain the whole world if you lose your own soul?" Perhaps the rational mind can't admit it, but can you at least imagine that there is that precious inner being in distinction to all of those activities and projects we carry on in the world? As Richard Bach said, "Perspective, use it or lose it." Allow yourself to imagine that a playful, wise being is your essence, and mischievously it presents you with opportunities to learn every day. Will you surrender to being a victim of circumstance when personally challenged or will you relish the opportunity, playfully, joyfully, to overcome the challenges of life, the annoyances, and to learn? Life as a game of cards perhaps, it has been said, the hand that you are dealt is determinism, the way you play it is free will. And indeed, we all come into this world with a particular family, and for the first years of our lives we have little agency as we soak up the impressions and the culture, the education of the world, whether it be good or bad, whether it be helpful or not, whether there is wisdom in it or simply the imposition of others' egos. But once you become an adult, and certainly once you step onto the spiritual path, it is entirely your choice, what you do with those cards you have been dealt. You can strengthen the cards in your hand by accumulating around you loving and wise friends and by extending your depth of understanding through wise and sacred words. Without losing your sense of self, you can have a sense of being a fictional character for a while. As Shakespeare said, "All the worlds are stage, and all the men and women merely players." The notion of Alan Watts that we heard earlier, that God is playing hide and seek in the world in us and in every encounter we have with every creature, I find that is an exercise of the imagination worth trying. Next to that passage, he also wrote, "It is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be God. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single self, the God who is all that there is and who lives forever and ever." Now, I'm not sure if Alan Watts had read anything of Yalmar Gulberg, the 20th century Swedish poet. Gulberg wrote a poem, "Fur kled good, God in disguise." And by the way, I relish the fact that in Swedish, the word for disguise is "Fur kled" which is related to the English "Fur kled" dressed in fur, so probably thousands of years ago when people in Sweden, or that part of the world were in disguise, they put a fur around themselves, like a fur of a bear or something, if they have bears in Sweden, I'm not sure. Anyway, this is an English translation of "Fur kled good." The gods are wandering yet over the land. One of them sits, perhaps, near where you stand. Think not that any God can ever die. God walks beside you, but you shield your eye. They bear no spear nor wear a purple gown, but by their deeds a God might be made known. It is a rule unbroken, be advised. When gods are on the earth, they go disguised. So I invite you to join in a world of the imagination where God's still act unseen, or to put it another way, that there is something divine in us and the world around us. In every encounter with every creature, can you play in the world and imagine that God goes in disguise among us? Today that it's a model that makes you fat, or really doesn't matter what you're aiming at, and there's something you enjoy every single one, that gets a little bit immoral, or it makes you fat. We hope you've enjoyed this Expanding Horizons podcast. These podcasts are the intellectual property of the presenter. They can be used only with the express permission and appropriate acknowledgement of the presenter. This permission can be obtained by emailing admin@unitariansa.org.au Please feel free to leave a comment or visit us on Facebook or Twitter by searching essay Unitarians or by visiting our website at unitariansa.org.au There are many philosophers who will all agree that the best things in life are absolutely free but you're bound to fire before you go to fire if it happens to be fun, that chances are.