The Madness Of Playing :: essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign affairs Web SitesIf a lone, unkempt, person, standing on a soapbox were to learn that he should become the Prime Minister, he would have been diagnosed by a passing psychiatrist as suffering from this or that mental disturbance. moreover were the like psychiatrist to frequent the same spot and see a crowd of millions saluting the same lonely, shabby figure - what would have his diagnosis been? Surely, distinguishable (perhaps of a more political hue). It seems that one thing setting complaisant games apart from madness is quantitative the amount of the participants involved. Madness is a one-man(prenominal) game, and even mass mental disturbances ar limited in scope. Moreover, it has vast been demonstrated (for instance, by Karen Horney) that the definition of certain mental dis hostels is highly babelike upon the context of the prevailing culture. Mental disturba nces (including psychoses) are time-dependent and locus-dependent. Religious behaviour and wild-eyed behaviour could be easily construed as psychopathologies when examined out of their social, cultural, historical and political contexts.Historical figures as diverse as Nietzsche (philosophy), Van Gogh (art), Hitler (politics) and Herzl (political visionary) do this smooth phase transition from the lunatic fringes to centre stage. They succeeded to attract, convince and solve a critical human mass, which provided for this transition. They appeared on historys stage (or were placed on that point posthumously) at the right time and in the right place. The biblical prophets and delivery boy are similar examples though of a more severe disorder. Hitler and Herzl perchance suffered from personality disorders - the biblical prophets were, almost certainly, psychotic.We play games because they are reversible and their outcomes are reversible. No game-player expects his involvement, or his particular moves to make a invariable printing on history, fellow humans, a territory, or a business entity. This, indeed, is the major(ip) taxonomic difference the same class of actions can be sort as "game" when it does not intend to exert a lasting (that is, irreversible) influence on the environment. When such intention is evident - the very same actions qualify as something completely different. Games, therefore, are only mildly associated with memory. They are intended to be forgotten, eroded by time and entropy, by quantum events in our brains and macro-events in physical reality.Games - as opposed to absolutely all opposite human activities - are entropic. Negentropy - the act of reducing entropy and increasing order - is present in a game, only to be reversed later.