Jonathon Delacour the heart of things

At play on the bridge of dreams

Dorothea Salo responded to AKMA’s latest on pseudonymity and its dangers with a fascinating post about her “participation in role-playing games, a pastime substantially based on pseudonymity.” Why was I so immediately engaged by Dorothea’s argument? Because of how she describes the leakage between her RPG characters and her “real-world self.”

Is it coincidence that at the same time leaving graduate school shattered my self-concept, Juskinah transgressed badly, lost a number of special abilities the gods had given her, and likewise had to pick up the pieces of her self?

In hindsight, it does not feel like coincidence. Why should it? Insofar as my RPG characters derive their selves from mine, they ought to exhibit my habits of thought and emotion; they ought to end up echoing bits of my life. Just as pseudonyms have been blown for employing the verbal and rhetorical tics of their owners.

Not coincidence at all, I’d say. Dorothea’s experience suggests nothing less than the fact that she is acting authentically in both “worlds.” And although I might give equal weight to her experiences in each realm, it’s not surprising that she anticipates and tries to counter the objection that such pseudonymity is superficial or merely ludic (spontaneously playful). It’s a common misconception that play isn’t serious. Except around World Cup time.

She also worries that AKMA “might dismiss [her] RPG characters as ‘inauthentic,’ not really part of the Dorothea identity, since they and their context are clearly fictional.” To the contrary, writes AKMA, “RPG characters do matter, and the ways they matter deserves closer attention than mass-media hysteria about Satanism.” Dorothea doesn’t have to convince me that fictional characters are real.

The idea that games, role-playing or otherwise, are unworthy of serious attention has always baffled me. How else do we learn to behave “authentically” but by modeling the behavior of experts and mentors? Children do it. Language students too. Sportswomen. Actors. Software engineers. Accountants.

Dorothea nails it when she writes:

The best conclusion I can come to just now is this: if we are to count the costs of pseudonymity, something I have no trouble admitting is necessary, we ought to consider that perhaps it confers benefits (beyond the merely exculpatory) as well. It can illustrate parts of us we are not aware of (good and bad), help us deal safely with parts we wish we didn’t have, let us model behavior we would like to transfer to non-pseudonymous contexts.

This is simply marvellous: by playing games we become aware of our deepest strengths and weaknesses, we embrace the disowned parts of our psyche, we allow ourselves to practice potentially risky strategies before integrating them into our “real-life” behaviour.

Perhaps I responded so positively to Dorothea’s argument because at some essential level I believe that life itself is a role-playing game; and that playing the game well requires nothing more than acting in existential good faith.

Like Dorothea, “I am at a severe disadvantage in philosophical discussions, which makes me wonder why I participate in them.” My guess is that we participate for the same reasons that we play: to attract illumination, to embrace the Shadow, to model constructive or destructive behavior.

It doesn’t matter that I see life as Yume no yukihashi, a floating bridge of dreams: the beautiful image contained in the title of the last chapter of The Tale of Genji, which Ivan Morris borrowed for his English translation of the Sarashina nikki, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams. Even in this view of life as “a flimsy, dreamlike structure which we cross in our journey from one state of existence to another” one’s duty is to act authentically, according to the rules of the game.

I suspect that my blurred conceptions of “reality” and “identity” may not find favor with AKMA nor with Mike Sanders, who recently wrote:

One thing is clear is that it is impossible to reveal your identity on your blog. The people who really know you will always be your closest friends and families who have witnessed your thoughts, feeling and actions in numerous situations over an extended period of time. And that time is usually measured in years.

Although it’s not my goal to reveal my identity on my blog, I think I understand what Mike is saying; and yet I can’t bring myself to believe that anyone “really knows” anyone else, no matter how long the relationship has lasted. Certainly some people know me better than others and yet I can’t escape the feeling that those who think they know me best don’t “really know” me at all. As Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote in his poem Autobiography:

I am a good Joe,
I am an open book
to my boss.
I am a complete mystery
to my closest friends.

Or does this rather suggest my failure to act authentically?

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