April 22, 2008
“Revitalizing Dead Culture”
Chris, at The Artful Gamer, muses about the history of gaming:
First, let’s correct a false assumption that often undermines this kind of historical exploration: it does not involve living in the past, it involves living through the past. In history we look at ourselves in the present through the past, and come to understand ourselves as standing in a long genealogy of meaning that pre-exists us. Now that’s a lot to swallow for the modernist who sees him/herself as largely being self-made and sees the past as a sequence of barbaric events that are thankfully left far behind her/him. That kind of modernist philosophy still persists today: we see it in people who cannot understand why Yar’s Revenge, Chrono Trigger or The Faery Tale Adventure are still compelling games. They simply stare blankly at the screen and think to themselves, ‘these graphics sure suck!’.
I love this idea.
It is only in history that we glean meaning, context which vivifies truth. It is this sussing out of history, contiguous connected events, rather than parsing abstractions or isolated particulars (both breeding the solipsism/onanism of modernism), that we are able to bring truth to struggle, to know who we are.
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6 Responses to ““Revitalizing Dead Culture””
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if you’re interested in breeding solipsism and onanism you should check out Robert Irwin’s ebook.
sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
of course, of course. well played, sir.
gracias.
Wow, nicely put Andrew
Looks like someone has been reading Ricoeur..
(well, it sounds like something he’d say, anyway!)
Much thanks for the followup. Looking forward to reading your blog
It’s funny how often I have seen people lament the technical bent of modern philosopy, noting how abstracted from the “lived” world it has become–only to then explain themselves in the same mode of hyper-qualification and Vis a Viss and qua qua quas. For instance:
“Firstly, to call each event singular, is to catch oneself in a generalization of a particular, that is to say commit a “contradiction” (in the most etymological sense: contra-diction)”
How close are we here (yet) to what the word “wisdom” usually brings to mind? My point is not to indicate that what this speaker is saying isn’t true–it’s simply to note that the making of his point begins with opposition to a view he has generalized. The qualifications are then required in order to subtract obvious self-interest from the formulation–which generates the mire of abstraction being “banished.” It may be convenient–as it often seems to be among those seeking a more manageable view of Wisdom–to reduce whole modes of thinking (modernism, for instance) to the status of masturbatory imputence. But in this case it seems a good thing to ask: why this sense of being failed in grave ways by traditional thinking–and how might one hope to break free of the rolling powers of containment represented by tradition, at least to the extent of being able to see it from a perspective that allows a more useful critique and intervention? It is the determinism of history many modernists wanted to confront–and of course it is always an easy argument to make that such a desire is necessarily utopian even as it is dystopian, that it always reveals an inflated ego, since daring to question the accumulated wisdon of history marks one as self-obsessed and self-important. A more accurate view would be to note that we all do this all of the time–unless of course you are a clone of a parent, brought up to be unwaveringly loyal. Artists, for instance, never make a name for themselves by simply making a work “as good as” those other established artists did. I have said too much–sorry. I just get tired of seeing modernists set up as eggheads jacking off on God, history, and Mom’s apple pie.