The Game Loop: Part 1 Mental pipelines

[Federica]

I agree, Federica - the dangers are many. To be sure, with this game idea I imply nothing more than something like the elastic circles interactive demo. If we add some scoring criteria and other things that make the demo more game-like, the focus will inevitably shift. The goal is only to provide the conditions for an experience of a kind of IO flow that has some dynamic similarity with the more intimate IO flow that we aim to point attention to. Clearly, in both the demo and the potential game, that goal would be missed if one simply remains with the enjoyment of the controller and visual flow.

For me, the challenge is to find such controller-sense dynamics for which I can say "this has something in common with the deeper experience of the flow-steering. By following the sensations and steering the game flow, I find some feeling-similarity with the deeper flow dynamics." I completely acknowledge the inherent danger that this endeavor easily turns into a search for the perfect MoE (Metaphor of Everything). This is exactly like the search for the ToE, except that we do not constrain ourselves to mathematical painting only.

At this point, I'm inclined to say that it is better if our metaphors are obviously limited. It should be easily seen how they are inadequate as soon as they are spread beyond the particular dynamic that they convey. I think that this would serve as a natural reminder that what we're after is something else. Otherwise, if we try to refine the metaphor such that we can fit all aspects of existence in its art form, our thinking inevitably is seduced, and we act as if we can traverse reality by looking only at a GPS map without lifting our gaze (a metaphor I use in the next part).

Sorry, Cleric, I misunderstood your previous posts. I thought the idea was to develop a game, like Markus Persson did with Minecraft. Goes without saying, I find all your interactive demos the most brilliant and helpful. Following what you say here, thank you.

[AshvinP]

All of this remains a very vague idea at the moment. And to be honest, I avoid spending much time on it, because it very easily lapses into an attempt to find the perfect model of reality . But in any case, I think that the game should have this gradient between local and non-local interactions. Otherwise, the sense would remain "Yes, we live in a purely material world ruled by local interactions, so the most we can do is to agree on a protocol of moral rules that ensure peace and brotherly relations."

Maybe one day something more concrete will come of these ideas, but we'll see

Sorry to be the game party pooper here, but all this seems potentially dangerous to me, for the reason you are giving, and even more so because the idea that “the game” should have this or that characteristic, already implicitly gives the game a value that goes beyond its educational value, its value of example. If the whole endeavor very easily lapses into an attempt to find the perfect model of reality it is because in a sense, that’s what a game is - inevitably and by nature. As I see it, developing a more advanced game with non-local features (or any other more advanced features) with the intention to kindle spiritual insights, would mean to proxy nested educational needs that do not actually exist, as if in an inward game spiral - just like the world proxied in the game also does not exist.

I think it's important to also see how these same dangers, which you have articulated well here, exist for the 'virtual space' (Maya) that we normally consider "real life" activities. In other words, the Minecraft simulation works so well as a metaphor for the wider I/O flows because our experience of navigating those flows has become quite similar to the constraints of a virtual game space.

We can consider how the ordinary flow of life can be almost fully re-created within Minecraft. For example, many people can now conduct their work fully through the computer with Zoom, phone, email, collaborative workspaces, and so on. Or when we go on vacation somewhere, is it really so different from traversing a virtual landscape? It seems to me that the more we become inwardly sensitive to the inner flow and its possibilities, the more we notice how the physical navigation of the flow is often quite mechanical and flattened, especially in modern times when materialistic culture has become the common denominator across most of the World. When we move from one place to another, we encounter different configurations of familiar sensory perceptions and very similar impulses, feelings, and thoughts in our fellow humans. We are constantly tempted to feel like this physical flow is a foundational aspect of reality, and the goal states we seek within that flow are the most important and serious vectors of our attention and imagination. It is quite like becoming fully immersed in a virtual game space and forgetting about an entirely different sort of existence, of which the game state is only a picture-in-picture representation.

It's also interesting that, through the evolutionary course of development, modern technology can now provide us more opportunities for honing in on what we are doing with our inner process than anything we encounter in the normal flow of work and relationships. For example, in Minecraft, we can somewhat live through the experience of working with others to creatively design and engineer a Minecraft Gotheanum, or to experience acting as a political leader who needs to legislate and provide for its citizens. We can form many social relationships through these virtual activities. Again, the experience of this would not be too much different from what it would be within the non-virtual physical flow. And these are simply circumstances that most people would never encounter when navigating the physical flow. Through such experiences, we can kindle intuitions about the wider I/O flows and their collective dynamics that would otherwise be more difficult to encounter. As we see with these essays, such technologies can be leveraged to clearly distill the inner principles that are characteristic of the contextual I/O flows, whereas we can imagine how it would be much more difficult to construct a pedagogical essay around the theme of 'going to work'.

I'm not suggesting that this is a preferable path of spiritual development, and that we are better off immersing ourselves in a virtual space than navigating the ordinary physical flow. I am simply trying to point out that, from my perspective, there is no need to neatly carve up human activities into those which are intrinsically meaningful for spiritual development and those which aren't. Everything depends on our cognitive perspective within the flow and the soul habits we bring to bear on our navigation of that flow, whether it is physical, virtual, imaginative, or otherwise. After all, the modern meaning crisis of humanity is precisely that which stems from souls failing to recognize the educational value of the ordinary physical flow, when conducting their intellectual inquiries, social and political projects, artistic projects, religious activities, and so on. That is exactly why the spiritual scientific Impulse became necessary in our time, to reveal how this ordinary physical flow is always symbolizing a higher-order navigation of existence to which we must attune. Without that attunement, the experience of the physical flow becomes nearly identical to that which can be simulated through computer technology. I think we can simply keep our thinking fluid and recognize the potential upsides and downsides of our intrinsically metaphorical activities in life on a case-by-case basis.

[Federica]

I agree with the essence of your claim, but I think there are certain relations and proportions to highlight.

I'm not suggesting that this is a preferable path of spiritual development, and that we are better off immersing ourselves in a virtual space than navigating the ordinary physical flow. I am simply trying to point out that, from my perspective, there is no need to neatly carve up human activities into those which are intrinsically meaningful for spiritual development and those which aren't. Everything depends on our cognitive perspective within the flow and the soul habits we bring to bear on our navigation of that flow, whether it is physical, virtual, imaginative, or otherwise.

The distinction I made in the other thread is between the game loop metaphor on the one hand, as a clear educational tool (traceable to how a scientific model is a tool for the educational value it may have, no matter how limited), and relationships, work, art, etcetera - what you have called the wider IO flows - on the other hand.

My point is, the wider IO flows can’t be considered tools in the same way, safe that one can and should continually learn from navigating them, of course. Put another way, the distinction is that, when we live through the various inner and outer life events (game playing included if you will, since it can be seen either as an activity among other activities, or as a world simulation to fall into) we learn by doing. However, when we read the Game Loop essays, we are not learning by doing in the same way (although I see how it could be logically argued that there is no neat distinction). Instead, we are learning by the power of metaphor. That’s the same distinction Cleric just made between the interactive demos we are familiar with (metaphors, tools, artistic pointers) and their potential inflation, transformation into a fully fledged game à la Minecraft, that is, a Metaphor of Everything.

I stand by this distinction, for the reasons delineated above: when the artistic metaphor is inflated to the point that one spends significant shares of daily life inside it - to the point that it becomes a de facto MoE - it means that its educational value, its tool value, has been long exhausted, whereas, more or less consciously, completely different motives have taken over. This, in my opinion, also applies to simply spending regular time in game playing, with the conviction that we are still extracting new educational value. This remains true even after we observe, as you notice, that our life at large itself easily becomes a sort of inescapable mega game, if we are not vigilant. I agree with this heads-up, but the point is, just because in our modern life we are continually at risk of becoming constrained in our daily flow - similar to how we are constrained inside the semi-randomly generated game-world - doesn’t mean that we are justified to spend countless hours in that game-world, under the pretext that there is further educational, metaphorical value to extract, and that everything is tool anyway. One would be better off acknowledging other motives, I think.

That you may be a little on the fence on this, and thus prefer to consider things on a case-by-case basis, seems reflected here:

It seems to me that the more we become inwardly sensitive to the inner flow and its possibilities, the more we notice how the physical navigation of the flow is often quite mechanical and flattened, especially in modern times

and then:

Without that [spiritual scientific] attunement, the experience of the physical flow becomes nearly identical to that which can be simulated through computer technology.

This is also on the fence, as I see it:

modern technology can now provide us more opportunities for honing in on what we are doing with our inner process than anything we encounter in the normal flow of work and relationships.

That “through such [technological] experiences we can kindle intuitions about the wider I/O flows and their collective dynamics that would otherwise be more difficult to encounter” is true only up to a point. And I believe you are generally overestimating that point. The line is thin. Again, it is the line that goes between limited metaphors that heighten consciousness, and “experiences” in which we feel that we are getting more introspective opportunities. As Cleric wrote: “it is better if our metaphors are obviously limited. It should be easily seen how they are inadequate as soon as they are spread beyond the particular dynamic that they convey.”

I agree that, if we let us free fall, the physical movie easily becomes mechanical, squared, constrained, just like our urban environments and dynamics are. And we easily end up emulating those physical environments in our flow. We say we like structure, workflow, clear routines, but instead of creating harmony and rhythm from the inside out, sourcing it in the divine, we cling to outer structures and processes as crutches, to make up for our defaulting freedom and creativity (not to pretend that I don’t constantly fall in this trap too).

Yes, the same dangers we encounter in virtual space are present in life at large, because ultimately these dangers reside in us, rather than in the particular experiential space we navigate. The constant temptation is in us, and yes, we can forget the real end goals when navigating the larger IO flows, just as we can forget the world at large when we are immersed in a game, a movie, or even a novel. But the reason why I stand by the distinction is the loss of proportions and perspective that happens when we say, "everything is a tool for higher existence anyway", as I have tried to describe. Then we feel justified to flatten the perspective that connects the nested reverberations of the ideal flow.




Andrea Mantegna, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, c. 1483. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons


At the dawn of the 5th PA epoch, perspective appeared in visual art, the sacred began to slowly disappear, and the modern scientific mindset was born. It soon became the fountain of more and more comprehensive modeling intents and modeling outputs. In the 20th century, these models ended up getting a foothold on the physical flow, through computation. Now in our present century, the foothold has steadily expanded, to the point that today the distinction between our incarnated flow and its representations is so blurred, as you describe, that it’s completely possible (and common) to fall below consciousness not only in our moment-to-moment conceptual-perceptual apprehension of the flow, but also in our daily rhythm, within which we can easily live all day entirely inside a model, or a game, losing perspective/consciousness on our daily rhythm too. That is, the adversarial forces have gained terrain, ramping one notch higher in their colonization intents of the human mind. Probably, the next century will be the one when their efforts to colonize the entire incarnational rhythm - the life rhythm - will be powerfully unleashed.

I think we should keep this perspective solidly in mind today, and constantly resist, or negotiate, the modeling expansion, through, not outside, perspective, now that we have gained it, for better and for worse. Just as we don’t want to (ideally) let ourselves indulge in perceptual free falling, claiming that we know what we are doing, we also don’t want to indulge in 'model free falling', under the same claim. We may know what we are doing, but do we know why we are doing it? When modeling is used as a precise metaphor, as in the Game Loop essays, we are hijacking the adversarial expansion, bringing perspective and consciousness back into the world process, but it’s a fine line that we cross once we begin to find comfort and set up camp within that metaphor, letting the reality of our daily rhythm unguarded.

An alternative way to say it is through the idea of Beauty. This comes to mind in relation to Max Leyf’s recent treatment of the idea of Beauty. I will not attempt here to synthetize his last essay series on Beauty, but I guess it’s intuitively clear how the more we let the metaphoric expansion roll on our daily rhythm and flatten our flow perspective - even if we have developed sensitivity to the flow - the less we remain open to experiencing the gratuity of Beauty in all things.

[AshvinP]

The distinction I made in the other thread is between the game loop metaphor on the one hand, as a clear educational tool (traceable to how a scientific model is a tool for the educational value it may have, no matter how limited), and relationships, work, art, etcetera - what you have called the wider IO flows - on the other hand.

My point is, the wider IO flows can’t be considered tools in the same way, safe that one can and should continually learn from navigating them, of course. Put another way, the distinction is that, when we live through the various inner and outer life events (game playing included if you will, since it can be seen either as an activity among other activities, or as a world simulation to fall into) we learn by doing. However, when we read the Game Loop essays, we are not learning by doing in the same way (although I see how it could be logically argued that there is no neat distinction). Instead, we are learning by the power of metaphor. That’s the same distinction Cleric just made between the interactive demos we are familiar with (metaphors, tools, artistic pointers) and their potential inflation, transformation into a fully fledged game à la Minecraft, that is, a Metaphor of Everything.

I stand by this distinction, for the reasons delineated above: when the artistic metaphor is inflated to the point that one spends significant shares of daily life inside it - to the point that it becomes a de facto MoE - it means that its educational value, its tool value, has been long exhausted, whereas, more or less consciously, completely different motives have taken over. This, in my opinion, also applies to simply spending regular time in game playing, with the conviction that we are still extracting new educational value. This remains true even after we observe, as you notice, that our life at large itself easily becomes a sort of inescapable mega game, if we are not vigilant. I agree with this heads-up, but the point is, just because in our modern life we are continually at risk of becoming constrained in our daily flow - similar to how we are constrained inside the semi-randomly generated game-world - doesn’t mean that we are justified to spend countless hours in that game-world, under the pretext that there is further educational, metaphorical value to extract, and that everything is tool anyway. One would be better off acknowledging other motives, I think.

That you may be a little on the fence on this, and thus prefer to consider things on a case-by-case basis, seems reflected here:

It seems to me that the more we become inwardly sensitive to the inner flow and its possibilities, the more we notice how the physical navigation of the flow is often quite mechanical and flattened, especially in modern times

and then:

Without that [spiritual scientific] attunement, the experience of the physical flow becomes nearly identical to that which can be simulated through computer technology.

This is also on the fence, as I see it:

modern technology can now provide us more opportunities for honing in on what we are doing with our inner process than anything we encounter in the normal flow of work and relationships.

That “through such [technological] experiences we can kindle intuitions about the wider I/O flows and their collective dynamics that would otherwise be more difficult to encounter” is true only up to a point. And I believe you are generally overestimating that point. The line is thin. Again, it is the line that goes between limited metaphors that heighten consciousness, and “experiences” in which we feel that we are getting more introspective opportunities. As Cleric wrote: “it is better if our metaphors are obviously limited. It should be easily seen how they are inadequate as soon as they are spread beyond the particular dynamic that they convey.”

I agree that, if we let us free fall, the physical movie easily becomes mechanical, squared, constrained, just like our urban environments and dynamics are. And we easily end up emulating those physical environments in our flow. We say we like structure, workflow, clear routines, but instead of creating harmony and rhythm from the inside out, sourcing it in the divine, we cling to outer structures and processes as crutches, to make up for our defaulting freedom and creativity (not to pretend that I don’t constantly fall in this trap too).

Yes, the same dangers we encounter in virtual space are present in life at large, because ultimately these dangers reside in us, rather than in the particular experiential space we navigate. The constant temptation is in us, and yes, we can forget the real end goals when navigating the larger IO flows, just as we can forget the world at large when we are immersed in a game, a movie, or even a novel. But the reason why I stand by the distinction is the loss of proportions and perspective that happens when we say, "everything is a tool for higher existence anyway", as I have tried to describe. Then we feel justified to flatten the perspective that connects the nested reverberations of the ideal flow.

Yes, I think we are in much agreement on the general points here. What you express above in glow is the critical theme of my expressed perspective on this topic. The spiritual scientific impulse invites us to contemplate how we spend countless hours navigating the physical flow, and corresponding intellectual, artistic, religious pursuits, as an excuse to avoid encountering deeper imaginative, inspired, and intuitive flows and corresponding self-knowledge. It is a demanding invitation because it's hard to suspect any other way of spending our hours, but nevertheless, this is the consistent theme of spiritual science. I think that is the most important distinction to focus on because otherwise we may get to a point where we say, "At least I'm not one of those souls immersed in virtual reality games, chess, and so on, rather I am more directly encountering the wider I/O flows by immersing in my work, relationships, art, etc. " But such a stance would underestimate how the same idolatrous dangers present in the former are also there in the latter.

What I am truly on the fence about is making sharp categories or rules that partition human life into activities that are perceived as being of different natures. We may say, for example, "it is only acceptable to use Minecraft or chess for X pedagogical purpose and to spend Y amount of hours/day experimenting with it", but I see no need to constrain our inner activity with such rules. Depending on our karmic soul constitution and environmental circumstances, we may be drawn to different types of activities for their pedagogical value and spend widely varied amounts of time with them. For some people, that will be an artistic practice, for others it may be philosophical/scientific investigation, others will cultivate sporting skills, others will do humanitarian work, and so on. Even video game designing and playing, in this context, could become an artistic practice through which we paint higher intuitions of reality's lawful structure through a palette of sensible elements which are intended for pedagogical value (for ourselves and others).

You are entirely correct that we need to remain vigilant and always try to feelingly intuit the underlying motives which may be at work in these pursuits. In fact, discovering those motives should be the very aim of those pedagogical pursuits, as our sensitivity to the inner dynamics grows and we can feel the varied and overlapping 'pushes and pulls' on our flow. Again, we need to clearly recognize how the shadowy motives that may lead us to continually experiment with Minecraft or chess, for example, are also the ones that steer us in our ordinary physical flow and its relations. I am reminded of a quote from Steiner here:

“Take the following case—It may happen in life that two people live together for a long time and that through the strange forces playing out of the unknown regions of the astral body and Ego of the one person into the astral body and Ego of the other (these forces remain in the hidden regions), the one has in relation to the other a real desire for torment, a kind of need for cruelty. It may be that the one person who has this desire for torment, this need for cruelty, has no inkling whatever of the existence of these emotions in the astral body and Ego; he may build up about the things he does out of this urge to cruelty, a whole number of ideas which explain the actions on quite other grounds. Such a person may tell us that he has done this or that to the other person for one reason or another; these reasons may be very clever and yet they do not express the truth at all. For in ordinary life, what we all-too-often picture as the motives of our own actions, indeed of our own feelings, frequently stands, as I say, in a very, very distant connection with what is really living and weaving in our inner being. It may be that the Luciferic power is actually preventing the person concerned from realising the nature of this urge for cruelty, of these impulses to do all kinds of things to the other person, and that under the influence of this Luciferic power everything he says about the reasons merely spreads a cover over what is actually present in the soul. The reasons we devise in our consciousness may often be cut out for hiding from us, disguising what is actually living and working in the soul. These reasons are too often of a character which indicates a desire for self-justification, for we should find ourselves just as antipathetic as the professor of philosophy of whom I told you. We should not at all like what is in our soul if we had to acknowledge what kind of instincts and emotions are really holding sway. And because we have to protect ourselves from the sight of our own soul-being, we discover, with the help of these reasons, all kinds of things that guarantee us protection, because they deceive us about what is actually the ruling force in the soul. Just as it is true that the external world becomes a Maya to us because of the peculiar character of our faculty to form mental pictures, it is also true that what we have to say about ourselves in ordinary life is, to a very, very great extent, Maya.” (GA 161, I)

At the dawn of the 5th PA epoch, perspective appeared in visual art, the sacred began to slowly disappear, and the modern scientific mindset was born. It soon became the fountain of more and more comprehensive modeling intents and modeling outputs. In the 20th century, these models ended up getting a foothold on the physical flow, through computation. Now in our present century, the foothold has steadily expanded, to the point that today the distinction between our incarnated flow and its representations is so blurred, as you describe, that it’s completely possible (and common) to fall below consciousness not only in our moment-to-moment conceptual-perceptual apprehension of the flow, but also in our daily rhythm, within which we can easily live all day entirely inside a model, or a game, losing perspective/consciousness on our daily rhythm too. That is, the adversarial forces have gained terrain, ramping one notch higher in their colonization intents of the human mind. Probably, the next century will be the one when their efforts to colonize the entire incarnational rhythm - the life rhythm - will be powerfully unleashed.

I think we should keep this perspective solidly in mind today, and constantly resist, or negotiate, the modeling expansion, through, not outside, perspective, now that we have gained it, for better and for worse. Just as we don’t want to (ideally) let ourselves indulge in perceptual free falling, claiming that we know what we are doing, we also don’t want to indulge in 'model free falling', under the same claim. We may know what we are doing, but do we know why we are doing it? When modeling is used as a precise metaphor, as in the Game Loop essays, we are hijacking the adversarial expansion, bringing perspective and consciousness back into the world process, but it’s a fine line that we cross once we begin to find comfort and set up camp within that metaphor, letting the reality of our daily rhythm unguarded.

An alternative way to say it is through the idea of Beauty. This comes to mind in relation to Max Leyf’s recent treatment of the idea of Beauty. I will not attempt here to synthetize his last essay series on Beauty, but I guess it’s intuitively clear how the more we let the metaphoric expansion roll on our daily rhythm and flatten our flow perspective - even if we have developed sensitivity to the flow - the less we remain open to experiencing the gratuity of Beauty in all things.

I suppose the critical point for me is that the modeling tendency, as you have nicely described, is practically what we are doing all the time, whether we are immersed in a virtual space or the physical space. Our daily rhythm is just as much unguarded and at risk from setting up camp within the non-virtual activities as it is from the virtual ones. These two have become largely conflated in our time, just as we cannot turn anywhere without encountering an aspect of our environment and relationships modulated by computational technology. This is simply the reality of our ordinary flow that we need to be honest with ourselves about. It's one thing to say that we are grateful for the ordinary sensory flow and see the beauty in it, and another thing to truly experience that gratuitous Beauty. When we attain to the latter, then we become like the legend of Christ who admired the beautiful teeth of a dead rotting dog. The 'dead rotting dogs' of our time are precisely the most mechanical and computational aspects of our environment. What we need to remain vigilant about is sustaining the metaphorical perspective on these aspects of the physical or virtual 'dead dogs' as consistently as possible, so that through the lowest we always can intuit the highest, the idea of the Good that attracts our flow at all scales.

[Federica]

Yes, I think we are in much agreement on the general points here. What you express above in glow is the critical theme of my expressed perspective on this topic. The spiritual scientific impulse invites us to contemplate how we spend countless hours navigating the physical flow, and corresponding intellectual, artistic, religious pursuits, as an excuse to avoid encountering deeper imaginative, inspired, and intuitive flows and corresponding self-knowledge. It is a demanding invitation because it's hard to suspect any other way of spending our hours, but nevertheless, this is the consistent theme of spiritual science. I think that is the most important distinction to focus on because otherwise we may get to a point where we say, "At least I'm not one of those souls immersed in virtual reality games, chess, and so on, rather I am more directly encountering the wider I/O flows by immersing in my work, relationships, art, etc. " But such a stance would underestimate how the same idolatrous dangers present in the former are also there in the latter.

What I am truly on the fence about is making sharp categories or rules that partition human life into activities that are perceived as being of different natures. We may say, for example, "it is only acceptable to use Minecraft or chess for X pedagogical purpose and to spend Y amount of hours/day experimenting with it", but I see no need to constrain our inner activity with such rules. Depending on our karmic soul constitution and environmental circumstances, we may be drawn to different types of activities for their pedagogical value and spend widely varied amounts of time with them. For some people, that will be an artistic practice, for others it may be philosophical/scientific investigation, others will cultivate sporting skills, others will do humanitarian work, and so on. Even video game designing and playing, in this context, could become an artistic practice through which we paint higher intuitions of reality's lawful structure through a palette of sensible elements which are intended for pedagogical value (for ourselves and others).

You are entirely correct that we need to remain vigilant and always try to feelingly intuit the underlying motives which may be at work in these pursuits. In fact, discovering those motives should be the very aim of those pedagogical pursuits, as our sensitivity to the inner dynamics grows and we can feel the varied and overlapping 'pushes and pulls' on our flow.

I agree with how you describe the essence of the spiritual-scientific impulse of course, but there is also the other pole of the question, the risk of pursuing a MoE within the game world. You only acknowledge the similarity between the game flow and the wider IO flow, and take no step to also acknowledge the distinction to be made between the game world and the the wider flow. Your distinction is valid and I acknowledge it, but in a way or another we also need to acknowledge the difference between game and life at large, because game is nested modeling in a way that the rest of life just can't be, and if this is not recognized, there is no way to guard against the risk of the game flow becoming a fenced receptacle for unchecked dynamics, even before it becomes a MoE.

You may object that the right understanding of the spiritual-scientific impulse preserves one from that risk in any case, no matter how daily time is spent, but I don't think this is valid. We are complex beings, and counting only on the top-down understanding of the "most important distinction" is not enough, as I see it. Here the risk is to say: "At the end of the day, how exactly I spend my physical time in the flow of becoming counts very little, my karma steers that. The flow that really counts is the inner flow, and once I get that right, everything else will fall into place rightly." This would only be true if one could get the inner flow instantly 100% perfectly right, as if by magic powers. But in reality there is a cross-action orchestrated by the will, where the outer and inner flows cooperate with each other to spiral up or down, virtuously or viciously. One cannot count on a purely top-down, unidirectional relation. How the daily rhythm is spent and willfully adjusted in the physical flow counts. There is a constant risk that the game world becomes a pocket of unconsciousness, an unchecked duty-free zone for surviving materialistic impulses, and this needs to be kept in check as a high priority.


As I said, I think that there is, in general, zero educational value in becoming highly proficient in any game, as an adult. However, there is definitely a value in trying out games, demos, simulations a few times, even periodically, to allow certain circumscribed metaphors, and their feeling context, to stand out in full clarity. Thus I can't agree that video game playing can be an artistic practice, beyond the circumscribed limits I have just given. It can't become a sustainable artistic practice, like architecture, acting, poetry, craftmanship of any kind, and life at large can be. Art needs a certain balance of choice and constraint. The game world is so plagued by lack of choice and heavy constraints that it inevitably takes a limited amount of time to extract the very targeted educational value, the modeling value, from those constraints. And as soon as an attempt is made to loosen the constraints, through collaborative endeavors (as in the long video Cleric shared) trying to bring life at large within the game itself, we inexorably topple into the MoE risk-zone. Then, the game turns into a transparent materialistic shell for the wider IO flows where we seamlessly bring the materialistic control panel back in, while our focus is distracted by the entertainment value, the metaphorical value, the philosophical value.

I think that the idea that game playing can be a sustainable artistic practice that helps paint higher intuitions is a veiled excuse to simply keep playing every day, way beyond the exhaustion of any last drop of educational value, for motives that remain out of focus. And we cannot discover those motives from within the game playing activity itself. I have to disagree with that too. That would be super convenient! But no, it's not possible, for the same reason that we cannot discover that we are asleep in our mental pictures from within the mental picture flow itself. Instead, we need to do something different, in order to realize how things stand in reality.



PS: Regarding the 'dead rotting dogs' of our time being the mechanical and computational aspects of our environment - I agree, they are a part of them. But you have a way of going all in in the technological descent (you have always had it, for as long as I have known you on this forum) that seems unbalanced.

[AshvinP]

Yes, I think we are in much agreement on the general points here. What you express above in glow is the critical theme of my expressed perspective on this topic. The spiritual scientific impulse invites us to contemplate how we spend countless hours navigating the physical flow, and corresponding intellectual, artistic, religious pursuits, as an excuse to avoid encountering deeper imaginative, inspired, and intuitive flows and corresponding self-knowledge. It is a demanding invitation because it's hard to suspect any other way of spending our hours, but nevertheless, this is the consistent theme of spiritual science. I think that is the most important distinction to focus on because otherwise we may get to a point where we say, "At least I'm not one of those souls immersed in virtual reality games, chess, and so on, rather I am more directly encountering the wider I/O flows by immersing in my work, relationships, art, etc. " But such a stance would underestimate how the same idolatrous dangers present in the former are also there in the latter.

What I am truly on the fence about is making sharp categories or rules that partition human life into activities that are perceived as being of different natures. We may say, for example, "it is only acceptable to use Minecraft or chess for X pedagogical purpose and to spend Y amount of hours/day experimenting with it", but I see no need to constrain our inner activity with such rules. Depending on our karmic soul constitution and environmental circumstances, we may be drawn to different types of activities for their pedagogical value and spend widely varied amounts of time with them. For some people, that will be an artistic practice, for others it may be philosophical/scientific investigation, others will cultivate sporting skills, others will do humanitarian work, and so on. Even video game designing and playing, in this context, could become an artistic practice through which we paint higher intuitions of reality's lawful structure through a palette of sensible elements which are intended for pedagogical value (for ourselves and others).

You are entirely correct that we need to remain vigilant and always try to feelingly intuit the underlying motives which may be at work in these pursuits. In fact, discovering those motives should be the very aim of those pedagogical pursuits, as our sensitivity to the inner dynamics grows and we can feel the varied and overlapping 'pushes and pulls' on our flow.

I agree with how you describe the essence of the spiritual-scientific impulse of course, but there is also the other pole of the question, the risk of pursuing a MoE within the game world. You only acknowledge the similarity between the game flow and the wider IO flow, and take no step to also acknowledge the distinction to be made between the game world and the the wider flow. Your distinction is valid and I acknowledge it, but in a way or another we also need to acknowledge the difference between game and life at large, because game is nested modeling in a way that the rest of life just can't be, and if this is not recognized, there is no way to guard against the risk of the game flow becoming a fenced receptacle for unchecked dynamics, even before it becomes a MoE.

You may object that the right understanding of the spiritual-scientific impulse preserves one from that risk in any case, no matter how daily time is spent, but I don't think this is valid. We are complex beings, and counting only on the top-down understanding of the "most important distinction" is not enough, as I see it. Here the risk is to say: "At the end of the day, how exactly I spend my physical time in the flow of becoming counts very little, my karma steers that. The flow that really counts is the inner flow, and once I get that right, everything else will fall into place rightly." This would only be true if one could get the inner flow instantly 100% perfectly right, as if by magic powers. But in reality there is a cross-action orchestrated by the will, where the outer and inner flows cooperate with each other to spiral up or down, virtuously or viciously. One cannot count on a purely top-down, unidirectional relation. How the daily rhythm is spent and willfully adjusted in the physical flow counts. There is a constant risk that the game world becomes a pocket of unconsciousness, an unchecked duty-free zone for surviving materialistic impulses, and this needs to be kept in check as a high priority.

We definitely need to be vigilantly conscious of how we spend our time within the daily flow, based on our intuition for what lives and weaves within our soul and needs to be worked upon, but again, I don't think that is something that can be universally legislated for spiritual development beforehand. In other words, if we see someone spending a good amount of time interacting with the game flow for spiritual pedagogical purposes, we don't need to warn them about it as if that is inherently more dangerous than spending an equal amount of time cultivating an artistic skill, studying philosophy/theology, working with projective geometry, and so on. It all depends on their individual perspective and circumstances.

There is an interesting distinction that emerges from the nested modeling layer of virtual space, as you put it, which I tried to hint at before. We have spoken before of how our inner volume provides a space for rehearsing speech and deeds in an iterative fashion, such that we can follow 'branching pathways' of potential movie continuations with our imagination and anticipate which potential pathways fit best with the goal states we are pursuing. This is the picture-in-picture mental flow that is already a kind of virtual space, and we know there are many benefits to this flow for inner development. For one, it provides a kind of low-stakes environment where we can simulate how our deeds may contribute to the metamorphoses of the World flow without risking undue bodily or psychological harm. The other thing about this rehearsal space, which is of course tightly connected to its rehearsal function, is that it provides a spectrum of experience into which we can withdraw from distracting outer impressions of the World flow that would otherwise demand our attention if we wish to survive, navigate, communicate, etc., effectively. In general, our virtual spaces are simply technological extensions of this imaginative rehearsal space.

When we are immersed in the ordinary life flow, going from point A to point B, communicating with another person, and so on, it becomes practically impossible to concentrate within the imaginative process and hone in on what we are doing to navigate the flow, without risking bodily harm or seeming like a zoomed-out dunderhead. The virtual space, in an interesting way, can recreate the wider circumstances of the physical environment while also preserving the ability to concentrate within the imaginative process that is used to navigate the virtual environment, since the low-stakes function of the rehearsal space is carried over. To use a chess example, we can quite easily concentrate within the game flow and try to sense how certain forces are living and weaving within our inner being when we are attacked by an opponent's pieces, when we are attacking the opponent's pieces, when time runs low and we are searching for moves, and so on (and these circumstances can all be understood as symbols for those that also manifest in the ordinary life flow). It is even easier when we are not too concerned about winning or losing, but are explicitly engaged with the game for spiritual pedagogical purposes, for love of the inner process that comes to expression within the game flow. Such pedagogical play then gives us a basis to become more sensitive to shadowy motives and habits within our soul life that we otherwise have no basis to discover within the ordinary non-rehearsal life flow.

As I said, I think that there is, in general, zero educational value in becoming highly proficient in any game, as an adult. However, there is definitely a value in trying out games, demos, simulations a few times, even periodically, to allow certain circumscribed metaphors, and their feeling context, to stand out in full clarity. Thus I can't agree that video game playing can be an artistic practice, beyond the circumscribed limits I have just given. It can't become a sustainable artistic practice, like architecture, acting, poetry, craftmanship of any kind, and life at large can be. Art needs a certain balance of choice and constraint. The game world is so plagued by lack of choice and heavy constraints that it inevitably takes a limited amount of time to extract the very targeted educational value, the modeling value, from those constraints. And as soon as an attempt is made to loosen the constraints, through collaborative endeavors (as in the long video Cleric shared) trying to bring life at large within the game itself, we inexorably topple into the MoE risk-zone. Then, the game turns into a transparent materialistic shell for the wider IO flows where we seamlessly bring the materialistic control panel back in, while our focus is distracted by the entertainment value, the metaphorical value, the philosophical value.

I think that the idea that game playing can be a sustainable artistic practice that helps paint higher intuitions is a veiled excuse to simply keep playing every day, way beyond the exhaustion of any last drop of educational value, for motives that remain out of focus. And we cannot discover those motives from within the game playing activity itself. I have to disagree with that too. That would be super convenient! But no, it's not possible, for the same reason that we cannot discover that we are asleep in our mental pictures from within the mental picture flow itself. Instead, we need to do something different, in order to realize how things stand in reality.

PS: Regarding the 'dead rotting dogs' of our time being the mechanical and computational aspects of our environment - I agree, they are a part of them. But you have a way of going all in in the technological descent (you have always had it, for as long as I have known you on this forum) that seems unbalanced.

The bold is an example of these universal legislative tendencies, or "circumscribed limits", that I think we need to avoid. For one thing, it is simply not possible that there could be zero educational value when "becoming highly proficient" in a game is synonymous with disciplining the imaginative process, i.e., strengthening concentration, cultivating patience, expanding orientation to the intuitive flow, and so on. In these circumstances, there is endless pedagogical value when we strive to remain conscious of what we are doing in this expanding proficiency process. In fact, the principle of concentrated meditation can be characterized as continually expanding proficiency within the 'game' of imaginative rehearsals. We are no longer so interested in the content of our imaginative rehearsals and how they correspond to some 'outer reality', as we are in the ordinary flow of life, but instead we become interested in perfecting the rehearsal process with full consciousness. In this way, the virtual rehearsal space becomes imbued once again with a more high-stakes seriousness that was previously stripped away through our intellectual development. And some degree of this expanding meditative consciousness is how all players of games, sports, etc., reach the highest levels of their respective activities, although the whole process is carried out instinctively and not followed in full consciousness (as you described to Kaje on the other thread).

There is no need to make these things too complicated or rigid. The wider I/O flows are present in everything we do, in any space we navigate. It is only a matter of attuning to how these flows are present within those spaces through the principle of concentration and the corresponding cultivation of virtues. The fact is that our lives unfold in an increasingly technological environment, and therefore, our opportunities for inner development will greatly depend on our ability to leverage that environment through these introspective efforts. We can certainly discover the deeper motives living in our souls through the navigation of virtual spaces, and as mentioned above, these spaces actually provide prime conditions for such discoveries. We don't need to be afraid that we have somehow fallen into some self-enclosed sphere of life from which we can no longer intuit the deeper spiritual foundations and refine our feeling for them, since they are always present within our imaginative rehearsal space and its technological extensions.

[Federica]

...

Ashvin, this is an iteration of what you previously stated.
I don't have a mission to convince you. I have now expressed my caveats and if we don't agree, so be it.

[AshvinP]

...

Ashvin, this is an iteration of what you previously stated.
I don't have a mission to convince you. I have now expressed my caveats and if we don't agree, so be it.

Actually, it has introduced new considerations about the imaginative rehearsal space, but I understand why you don't want to engage with them more deeply in this context, and that's fine

[Federica]

...

Ashvin, this is an iteration of what you previously stated.
I don't have a mission to convince you. I have now expressed my caveats and if we don't agree, so be it.

Actually, it has introduced new considerations about the imaginative rehearsal space, but I understand why you don't want to engage with them more deeply in this context, and that's fine

Ashvin Now you have switched to 'overboard mode'. Whatever you feel you "understand" about my supposed unwillingness to engage, is incorrect, since I am always ready to engage more deeply. It's only that you actually hinted at this rehearsal space before, while speaking of chess, in another thread. Which is why this point you make (below) doesn't sound new to me (apparently to you neither, given the bold ) In any case, I am ready to come back to this specific point if you wish, let me just give it more thought.

There is an interesting distinction that emerges from the nested modeling layer of virtual space, as you put it, which I tried to hint at before. We have spoken before of how our inner volume provides a space for rehearsing speech and deeds in an iterative fashion, such that we can follow 'branching pathways' of potential movie continuations with our imagination and anticipate which potential pathways fit best with the goal states we are pursuing. This is the picture-in-picture mental flow that is already a kind of virtual space, and we know there are many benefits to this flow for inner development. For one, it provides a kind of low-stakes environment where we can simulate how our deeds may contribute to the metamorphoses of the World flow without risking undue bodily or psychological harm. The other thing about this rehearsal space, which is of course tightly connected to its rehearsal function, is that it provides a spectrum of experience into which we can withdraw from distracting outer impressions of the World flow that would otherwise demand our attention if we wish to survive, navigate, communicate, etc., effectively. In general, our virtual spaces are simply technological extensions of this imaginative rehearsal space.

When we are immersed in the ordinary life flow, going from point A to point B, communicating with another person, and so on, it becomes practically impossible to concentrate within the imaginative process and hone in on what we are doing to navigate the flow, without risking bodily harm or seeming like a zoomed-out dunderhead. The virtual space, in an interesting way, can recreate the wider circumstances of the physical environment while also preserving the ability to concentrate within the imaginative process that is used to navigate the virtual environment, since the low-stakes function of the rehearsal space is carried over. To use a chess example, we can quite easily concentrate within the game flow and try to sense how certain forces are living and weaving within our inner being when we are attacked by an opponent's pieces, when we are attacking the opponent's pieces, when time runs low and we are searching for moves, and so on (and these circumstances can all be understood as symbols for those that also manifest in the ordinary life flow). It is even easier when we are not too concerned about winning or losing, but are explicitly engaged with the game for spiritual pedagogical purposes, for love of the inner process that comes to expression within the game flow. Such pedagogical play then gives us a basis to become more sensitive to shadowy motives and habits within our soul life that we otherwise have no basis to discover within the ordinary non-rehearsal life flow.

[AshvinP]

In any case, I am ready to come back to this specific point if you wish, let me just give it more thought.

Yes, that would be good Federica, and also the related point that becoming proficient at a game, just like a sport, scientific technique, or artistic practice, can become synonymous with strengthening and disciplining the imaginative-will process, and that we can always make what we are doing within this process more conscious. Therefore, there is always potential spiritual educational value from experimenting with such pursuits. I think it goes without saying that I am only interested in exploring these things based on phenomenological experience and corresponding insights, as a way of improving our orientation to the inner process, its characteristic dynamics, and its potential for refinement and expansion, not as a matter of theoretical argumentation or debate. Thanks.