Liminality

“Can There Be a Form between a Game and a Story?”

With movies and books, the viewer and/or reader experiences the story, moves along with it, and sympathizes with the characters. The viewer becomes almost like a third person character, seeing everything that is happening, but never becoming a part of it. Video-games rely on the player becoming the character in order to play. To make a cross between the two different ways to take in a story, the person would have to interact with the movie, and still be a third person character. This seems almost impossible to me. You would have to combined an interactive narrative with a linear narrative. The closest thing to that I can think of is Interactive Fiction, or IF.

“The Obvious Aspects of Ritual”

So, this article was not so ‘obvious’ to me as I thought it would be. ‘Liturgy’ is a number of things. It can mean a form of public worship, a particular arrangement of services, or a type of Eucharistic services, something done in Eastern Churches. So, ‘Liturgy thoerists’ try to find the meaning behind such rituals and services, and explain it. Rappaport has a problem with this, as he believes that by defining ritual, you are desecrating the very sacrity of the ritual itself. He believes that liturgy is a very specific idea, and that the sacred is a byproduct of ritual. Of course, I have a few problem with that as I believe that the sacred is part of ritual, and not necessarily a byproduct. By saying that, he is suggesting that ritual is not sacred within itself, but the liminality to it makes it sacred over time. For me, in order to make a ritual meaningful to people, it needs to be the sacred as well as limited. Even now I am upsetting Rappaport, as he believes that rituals cannot be questioned, and that is one of the facets that add to its sacred byproduct.

“The Meaninglessness of Ritual”

So, now ritual is meaningless. Staal suggests that ritual are done no longer for meaning, but just simply ‘because’. The study of rituals has become a joke, as the meaning of rituals has been lost. Ritual theorists ignore the most basic rules to ritual, due to human evolution, rituals have become obsolete. I have to disagree. Sure, rituals allow for community building and moral boosting, but they still have a place in society. We may not need to do a ritual to ensure a good harvest, due to the advances of technology, but we still need to go through the ritualistic ways of marriage. We loose some rituals over time, but others become more entangled within our popular society, and cannot be removed as easily as Saal suggests. I do agree however, that ritual is the basis for religion. I believe I had written something like that in a past blog, but it makes perfect sense. Without any community builders or sense of control over chaos, religion would be nothing more than a some ideas and philosophies. Overall, I’m torn over Saal. He has some good ideas, but a lot of conflicting ideas with other theorists.

“A Performative Approach to Ritual”

This just seemed to be the bridge between all things. It seemed like he never said anything of value. “The distinction between religion and non-religion and ritual and non-ritual is not absolute”. Yeah, I believe everyone knows that. If you could define it clearly that easily, there woudln’t be debates about religion and what it means. Ritual is community, and activities done by the community. End of story.

“Territorial Passage and the Classification of Rites”

This article was really interesting, and it would’ve been nice to been able to read the book. So, rites of passages are only parts of rituals, and are rather phases instead of a repeated event or activity. Everyday people goes through different phases, or different rites of passage, and we must fulfill a rite of passage in order to pass on to the next “room”, or rather, the next stage of life. This seemed like a great idea, but not fully realized. I can only assume that the book covered it more deeply, because this left me wanting to read more.

Myths vs. Scared

When the directions said the reading was ’skimmable’, I was quite excited, and knew this was going to be an easy read. Well, much to my dismay, I open the link and it is 104 pages long!!! So, skimming the reading, I hope I got all the main points, but if not, please forgive me, as that seemed a little long.

This reading was definitely different from the other Eliade work. This seems to focus more on the physical hierophanies of the profane world, rather than the overall connectedness of all that is sacred. I definitely preferred this work over his “Myth and the Eternal Return”. His generalization here did not hurt him as much as the other one, and he could do it without offending me, which was a big step for him. The things he brought up, like how the sacred and profane are tied together in the real world, made perfect sense. He tries to do that in his other book, but his generalizations just defeat his point. Everything cannot be boiled down into a basic model in which everything can fit. It just does not work like that. However, this writing covers it quite eloquently, but on a different topic. He covers more of the sacred and profane, hence the title of the book, and the other more of the history of the past and how it is reflected in myth and the eternal return, hence the other book’s title. Overall, this one was a better read, and would suggest it over “myths” any time.

Ritual Development and Myths

It makes perfect sense to assume that rituals are instilled the most successfully when it is instilled as the individual is still a child. The sense of trusting one’s own parents is natural, and following their instructions, as long as they do not conflict with any other instilled ideas, makes perfect sense. Rituals develop in much the same way. It is both part biological and cultural, and it is maturing. The younger you start to teach the rituals, the more likely the rituals will still be used. Children are highly influential, and this reading simply made sense to me. It was fundamentally about the development of behavior, often lined with jargon I was unfamiliar with, but I managed and it all made sense in the end.

“Myths” had been a struggle from the begging with his simplistic and over generalization of things, and it had not improved by the end. I was withholding judgement until I had finished the book, and I see it as quite annoying. To understand the big picture, this book is ideal, but if you are one who needs the facts, this book is not for you. Apparently every culture, every religious idea, and everyone for Eliade, is the same, which in a sense is true, but not helpful. With a little research and some free time, I could have written this book. Overall: 4/10. Greta for an overall, watered down approach, and he is useful for that, but I know facts that she leaves out conveniently to make her model fit, and that became too much for me.

Archaeology in Cyberspace

Defined by the paper, cyber-archeology is “archaeology by systematically examining and modeling the framework for virtual community life provided by their cultural artifacts”. In other words, a cyber-archaeologist looks at the framework of a virtual community and the artifacts created by those people in the community. It is not so different than archeology in the real world. First step in this process is to develop a “taxonomy is to distinguish between virtual communities and their cyber-place”. Basically, they define what the virtual community is. Secondly,  they “define and operationalize the term virtual settlement so that they can be systematically characterized and modeled”, which means that the archaeologists use their definition of the community to categorize it. The art of cyber-archeology is defined by their “bounded hierarchies and material behavior”.

There are two forms of communities, group-CMC and cyber-place. Group-CMC is a virtual community created to be a community, whereas a cyber-place is the virtual settlement. Virtual settlements are defined by four characteristics : “1) a minimum level of interactivity; (2) a variety of communicators; (3) a minimum level of sustained membership; and (4) a virtual common-public-space where a significant portion of interactive group-CMCs occur.” These are necessary for a cyber-space, which in turn can also be a group-CMC. From there, cyber-archaeologists look at the virtual artifacts, and define the community.

Basically, this article was excellent, but quite a lot to read. Boiled down, it was all about explaining human nature, which the article repeatedly said has yet to be done, and is the hardest thing to define. Communities on-line are just an extension of our real lives, but in a virtual world. The cyber-archaeologists have to peel back the many layers of the Internet just to get to the basic structure of a community. This seems to be a new field that is developing rather nicely, but still needs a lot of work. Anyone with a good understanding of computers and sociology is well suited for this field.

“Myths” and Game Time

Forward, after Preface, after Introduction, do we finally get to the meat of the book, “The Myth of the Eternal Return”. At first it seemed to be nothing more than just modernist jargon, and I watched my brain drip from my ears, but things quickly became understandable, and I dared to venture on. As an Anthropology/History Major, I was a little upset by how Eliade generalized everything in order to fit it into her models. The broader one gets, the easier it is to claim all things are similar. She, at first, talks about how certain words like “being” and “real” do not exist in “archaic” cultures, and it is foolish to assume so. The only one that is a fool is her. Exact translations of those words do not exist, but other words with the same idea behind them do. “Real” is a matter of interpretation, and has been debated for centuries. Even the “archaic” cultures had defined reality, and she clearly ignores these things and calls ancient cultures “primitive”. Primitive? She was being so ignorant and arrogant I could not believe it. “Primitive” is the worst derogatory term for anthropologists. It is pretty much equivalent to calling a Native American a “Redskin”, or worse. I could not believe that she honestly thought that generalizing such vast and differentiating cultures and then dehumanizing them would convince me she was correct on her theories. Of course, this was only a matter of pages into the text, and had to restrain my anger in order to read farther. Things seemed to improve, and a lot of her ideas were very original in how she viewed things, especially the unifying idea of celestial usage, but I was still feeling the sting of the arrogance of her words. It seemed almost like an amoral person writing it. It was neither right nor wrong, just was. Hopefully things will improve.

I had to stop reading it and switch to “First Person” in order to calm myself a little. It was all about the duality in nature of playing games; how one person is really two, his alter ego in game form and himself. Simple games, like Tetris or checkers, are designed for play time, and nothing else, leaving out the dual nature. Games have to be fully interactive in order to be immersive enough to evoke the dual nature. Such games, like ones that tie in real time, are games that create a dual nature. Other game elements, such as mapping, cut-scenes, and chronology make the games more immersive. Of course, something goes wrong in the immersion, like sounds being played when they are not suppose to or time freezing, which can hinder the player’s game-play. Overall, easy to read and easy to comprehend. Excellent article.

Readings for 3/3

“What does a very large-scale convo look like?”

Conversations and communities on the Internet are not defined by geological borders, like communities in the real world. Virtual world communities are defined by their availability to the public and that they are networked-based. Anyone can access them and can access them anywhere. It is not really boundaries, but rather showing the lack of boundaries. Speaking and reaching thousands of people can be overwhelming for one person. The idea that you can reach anyone, but possible not be heard is no different than the real world. We can talk to anyone we want. Some people may be harder to reach, just like in any virtual community, but we can reach them. Our forms of communication in the real world may seem archaic to anyone familiar to a VR, (i.e. letters, face to face), but it is nonetheless effective. The navigation required of virtual communities is virtually the same as the real world ones, minus the physical aspect. Social navigation is something we do everyday to familiarize ourselves with something. Semantic Navigation is the same as going to a library, which every college student does frequently. Spatial Navigation is exactly what our eyes and brain does. We see things and translate it into something we can understand. Virtual Communities are no different than ones in reality. It is all a matter of perspective.

“How I was played by On-line Caroline”

First of all, this idea creeped me out a little. It is one thing to have a virtual life, but it is another to blend VR with RL. The real identity of Caroline was gone, and this on-line play-thing took over. Having a VR character is nice, because it relives people of the constraints of the real world. It gives a sense of freedom to the individual. This takes it away defeating the purpose of VR. If you must, in your real life, deal with people daily, why must you add another, but in the virtual world. Caroline is not just a game you can put down when you get bored, but rather a commitment. This freedom of worldly demands is destroyed when you make friends with a Caroline. She will consume your time like everyone else in the real world, except there is nothing physical; No hugs or hand shakes,  just her constantly asking you what shirt to wear.

“Digital Democracy”

Finally, we reach the disease called myspace. I have never had one, but I do have a facebook, another on-line community, and I am no better than the people with myspace, but I still look down upon it all the same. Social networking has become the way that people talk to each other, not face to face like one would think. Instead of talking to someone in class, you friend them and send them a “bumper sticker” that says something witty, in hopes that they will accept your friend request and perhaps say something to you next time in class. The nervousness of RL social interaction is dying out, as VR social interaction is taking hold. Soon, people will have no social skills at all.

Videogame Histories felt like a sudden topic thrown in there. It chaffed a little. Sure video-games are forms of artistic and political expression, but what has that got to do with VC (virtual communities)? Unless the game has on-line capabilities, this section is dead to me. Online communities allow for VR social interactions, but in the same sense as myspace. There are not physical interactions, just quick glib remarks to each other over who “pwned” who. There is definatley procedural rhetoric though. Every video-game wants you to do something, but how they make you do it varies. Certainly procedural rhetoric in democracy is a smart way to go. It influences the people in a way they are familiar with, but not able to identify how they are being lead.