Reality is Broken: Why games make Us better and How they Can Change the World
Reality is Broken: Why games make Us better and How they Can Change the World
…I’m healthy enough to get back to my ponderings.
I’ve been mulling this over for a while and I’m like to have a multi-part series on mindfulness and gaming (digital and non-ditigal). For the first part I’d like to share a book I read soon after my seizure called Reality is Broken (why games make us better and how they can change the worldby Jane Mccgonigal).
For me, the title alone caused me to gravitate to it. As I’ve shared previously, the concept of my life (and death) went through a heavy overhaul after the seizure.
Why go into a topic like mindfulness and games– two subjects that seem at odds with one another? For me personally, I’d really like to reconcile my own gravitation to both. I think each is can be immensely helpful and both have helped me significantly in my own journey of healing, thus far.
On one hand, I have my love of nature through historical figures and some of my own mystical experiences. I’ve written before about how St. Francis and his unique bond with nature and how there is something mystical about dying slowly outside (St. Francis, Christ, and Marcus Aurelius are good examples) On the other hand, I still really enjoy games (digital and non-digital) and, the environment, the challenge, and the happiness they bring me– how do those fit together? For one thing, when you’re playing a game you are never alone. I’ve heard a game defined as
Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
Bernard Suits
When you’re playing a game (even solo) you’re engaging with the designer of the game, people who have played the game before you, and in a way people who will play after you (think about high scores and leader boards.) This helps with the problem of the paradox of self-help (which I’ll get into later). After a lot of thought and reading, I have my own ideas but it’ll take a few posts to hash it all out. Not all of these posts will be easy to read, but some (like this one) will.
Part of my interest also came from a podcast I’d heard here as a guest on. If interested, I believe it was the Tim Ferriss podcast, link here.
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