AshvinP wrote: ↑Mon Feb 09, 2026 3:13 pm
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.
First you have now shifted the topic to “virtual spaces” rather than games. These two sets only intersect. We can discuss virtual spaces too, but here we were discussing games, not virtual spaces in general, so I will stick to games for now. Surely, in what you call imaginative rehearsal - by which you basically mean reflecting about things to come, by oneself and in a quiet environment/home - one may feel safe, comfortable, protected, shielded from the outside and from direct contact with people. Every sane person needs some of that.
Now you are saying that a video game is an extension of this “imaginative rehearsal space”. I can’t agree with that. I agree that by playing video games, one may address a need for feeling safe, comfortable, protected within the intimacy of a private physical space. And this may become precisely one of those out-of-focus motives that induce someone to play daily video games. But that’s very different from education. If I’m home alone and calmly rehearse my engagements for the next day, or if I play my usual video game because it brings peace and comfort to my stressed mind, I can’t say that I am educating myself: I am merely satisfying a need through the repetition of a habit. Some would smoke instead, or drink a glass of wine to unwind. Education is something entirely different, it’s a willful effort, and in the context of the path of living thinking, education should moreover respond to additional criteria, as we know.
A video game can’t be simply an extension of our quiet reflection space, also because it is a model. In our reflection space we have large freedom to shape the space as we want. We may meditate, we may study, we may rehearse and ponder, etcetera, whereas a game is a shell with gross rules of transformation inside. As long as we keep them gross, it takes very little to look around and extract whatever metaphorical educational value there may be. And if we want to make the rules less gross, we have no choice but to make the game resemble life at large, which means, we build a transparent materialistic private island of consciousness in which we can indulge in our out-of-focus materialistic drives. As I said above (which you have ignored) we fall in the MoE trap, that is, in Cleric’s words, in the desire to "build the perfect model of reality".
Because of this trade-off typical of games, I say that their educational value beyond what Cleric has called interactive demos, is typically zero, for adults. When the games are too simple to work as Metaphors of Everything, they may be instructive, but their educational value is quickly exhausted. Like, the elastic circles interactive demo is great, but you wouldn't go on playing it every day, on and on. One may try it a few times, possibly return to it from time to time, and that’s it. And it has no big entertainment value (I believe). Conversely, when the game rules are made complex, we are leaning toward building a perfect model of reality, which means that we are creating a transparent shell that satisfies our materialistic-modeling drives. We create a simile for the world at large, but with a very convenient inbuilt control panel. So I really can’t find this parallel with the educational value of art, science, sports, etcetera, that you speak of.
I guess chess as a game, in its digital form, is more or less in the middle of the spectrum I have just delineated. I am curious, may I ask you a question? In the last online chess game you have played, what is the additional educational value you have extracted that you had not already gained from previous games? And can you say that such educational value was preponderant compared to the relaxing, calming, or entertaining value?