Never Say Doesn't Mean Don't Have

Creative interioration is a seminal component of traditional Western space-time and is epistemologically derived from mythological roots and ancient architectural design. It is evident in traditional places of worship that are designed to retell and support the mythology of their origins. The clarity of architectural resolution provided by the surfaces and thresholds in cathedrals enable the senses to perceive conditions that are imperceptible in daily life. Role-playing games utilize surfaces and construct space to simulate these kinds of conditions. Thresholds, surfaces and ritual movement are used to educate, integrate, and transform the consciousness of worshippers in Hebrew and Roman Catholic spaces in the same manner and for the same purposes as they are used in role-playing games. The relationship of space and place to identify in these religions as in role-playing games strongly suggests a coincidence {perhaps “intersection” might be a better word} between corporeal and spiritual reality. This reality is revealed by movement through space into place, and is part of the natural human predisposition to paradigmatic space-time as a precursor for personal and collective identity, even more than the semiotics of cultural and religious typology.

“I can’t write the assignment about World of Warcraft. I don’t understand the game. Last time I logged on, someone spat at me.” These words came from a despairing student in one of our classes on digital culture. After analysing the situation, she found a way around her problem: being new to the culture of World of Warcraft could be compared to being an immigrant in a foreign culture. The spitting episode was the result of the student’s lack of knowledge of the game’s unwritten rules (Sniderman 1999)[1]. Playing a healer, she had fought instead of healing fellow players, a mistake that a more established resident of Azeroth, the universe of World of Warcraft, would recognise as a deadly sin. As she began to understand more of this local knowledge and language, the student could finally laugh at how she had thought that the text “LFG WC” in the in-game chat channel meant that the player had to go to the toilet. Now she knew that it meant someone was Looking For a Group of fellow players to kill monsters in a place called Wailing Caverns.

The more severe the depression, the earlier the first REM begins. Sometimes it starts as early as 45 minutes into sleep. That means these sleepers’ first cycle of NREM sleep amounts to about half the usual length of time. This early REM displaces the initial deep sleep, which is not fully recovered later in the night. This displacement of the first deep sleep is accompanied by an absence of the usual large outflow of growth hormone. The timing of the greatest release of human growth hormone (HGH) is in the first deep sleep cycle. The depressed have very little SWS [slow-wave sleep, Stages 3 and 4 of the sleep cycle] and no big pulse of HGH; and in addition to growth, HGH is related to physical repair. If we do not get enough deep sleep, our bodies take longer to heal and grow. The absence of the large spurt of HGH during the first deep sleep continues in many depressed patients even when they are no longer depressed (in remission). The first REM sleep period not only begins too early in the night in people who are clinically depressed, it is also often abnormally long. Instead of the usual 10 minutes or so, this REM may last twice that. The eye movements too are abnormal — either too sparse or too dense. In fact, they are sometimes so frequent that they are called eye movement storms.

Early Hindu and Punjabi scriptures portrayed mental illness as a channeling of sorcery or witchcraft. Socrates had hallucinations and his own demon, yet he also considered mania a positive source of prophecy and poetry. Pythagoras heard voices, Florence Nightingale had severe depression. Job and King Saul, Nebuchadnezzar, all a bit mental. One of the first psychiatric wards was built in Baghdad in 705. They treated patients with baths, drugs, music and activities. How utterly clever of them. Lunatics were named after Luna, and it was thought they had been moonstruck by the goddess. A mass dancing mania was reported in the Middle Ages. I raise them Acid House and early Rave. I raise them gospel churches and shopping centers, our collective need to stand among others.

This officer could have come from any branch of service. Here one finds a commissioned officer, a captain, a member of the Profession of Arms, on a mission in which he will very likely take human lives and destroy significant amounts of property on behalf of the American public. Yet beyond his immediate operational mission he can’t answer why it is that the American people have asked this of him. One could imagine that he’d spent years following established bureaucratic guidance from on high. And eventually, in Libya, he was wholly unable to connect his tactical actions to American national policy. Is this OK for the Profession of Arms? Should that sense of context not be a basic warfighting requirement for those with the privilege of holding a commission?

But slowly my nights begin to change. Everything I do has an added value beyond the intrinsic one: Watching the latest episode of Homeland provides more than some drama, it gives me the quadrillions of cookies I earn during those 50 or so minutes I am distracted. Playing Borderlands 2 with my friends for 2 hours gets me over the hump for the next huge upgrade. And when I am too tired to watch TV or read a book or play a video game, I go to my PC and I click. And accumulate. And achieve. The next few nights are much the same. I pause the film we are streaming on Netflix so my wife can run to the bathroom. I run to my cookies. Getting that building an hour earlier than I planned may mean I can get one last upgrade before I go to sleep...

It’s about control, really. Gabe talked to me about how the best moments in WoW are the ones where he feels like he’s in charge, where he’s not being driven by his compulsions. Things like Battlegrounds (the competitive player vs. player mode) or running dungeons feel like options he has to choose, ones that involve engagement as opposed to skinning the same animals again and again because he feels driven to get his leatherworking skill up to 100. We have more fun when we feel in control. Sherry Turkle’s a professor at MIT who spends a lot of time examining the social and psychological impact of technology. In her book Alone Together she argues that texting and social media brings people together while simultaneously isolating them. “People can’t get enough of each other, if and only if they can have each other at a distance, in amounts they can control,” she said during one of her TED Talks. MMOs cater to this desire, letting players run anonymously through a world full of people, and interacting with no one.