I'm thinking Dungeons & Dragons is the way to save humanity.
Well.
Maybe not Dungeons & Dragons per se.
But some kind of collective storytelling exercise on a mass level.
People really need to ransom back their imaginations.
Right now, the human imagination is colonized largely by governments & corporations through the use of propaganda. I do get that a certain amount of propaganda is necessary to keep civilization running, but I dunno: Propaganda is such a one-way broadcast model; imagination flowing from the top down. What the world needs, really, is a freer exercise of the collective imagination. Don't laugh! Role-playing games could be it!
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Anyway.
I spent three hours playing Dungeons & Dragons yesterday.
It was the Big Fun even though I couldn't figure out any of the weird dice throws just because I could imagine myself in the Tavern at the End of the World (thank you, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), the Tapestry Hall with its weird Escher-esque staircases, and the blighted fishing village of Amphail, and I got to inhabit Maximon, the last Mayan god.
I have no idea whether these were standard storylines from some D&D scriptbook or the unique-ish manifestations of DM Declan (not his real name), but he was very, very good at spinning worlds, was unembarrassed by having—and using—a large vocabulary, and really, it warmed my heart that of all the things he could be doing, he liked to do this.

This cute little 14-year-old is also very interesting because you can watch him observing everything but the character he has elected to play is a singularly obtuse, clueless human male:

(Maybe religion is an attempt at a collective story-telling exercise.
But again—sort of a top-down model.
And what we want for the free exercise of collective imagination is horizontal dispersion.)
Well.
Maybe not Dungeons & Dragons per se.
But some kind of collective storytelling exercise on a mass level.
People really need to ransom back their imaginations.
Right now, the human imagination is colonized largely by governments & corporations through the use of propaganda. I do get that a certain amount of propaganda is necessary to keep civilization running, but I dunno: Propaganda is such a one-way broadcast model; imagination flowing from the top down. What the world needs, really, is a freer exercise of the collective imagination. Don't laugh! Role-playing games could be it!
###
Anyway.
I spent three hours playing Dungeons & Dragons yesterday.
It was the Big Fun even though I couldn't figure out any of the weird dice throws just because I could imagine myself in the Tavern at the End of the World (thank you, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), the Tapestry Hall with its weird Escher-esque staircases, and the blighted fishing village of Amphail, and I got to inhabit Maximon, the last Mayan god.
I have no idea whether these were standard storylines from some D&D scriptbook or the unique-ish manifestations of DM Declan (not his real name), but he was very, very good at spinning worlds, was unembarrassed by having—and using—a large vocabulary, and really, it warmed my heart that of all the things he could be doing, he liked to do this.

This cute little 14-year-old is also very interesting because you can watch him observing everything but the character he has elected to play is a singularly obtuse, clueless human male:

(Maybe religion is an attempt at a collective story-telling exercise.
But again—sort of a top-down model.
And what we want for the free exercise of collective imagination is horizontal dispersion.)