{"id":15266,"date":"2012-10-06T22:12:04","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T22:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=15266"},"modified":"2012-10-06T22:12:04","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T22:12:04","slug":"the-person-position-paradox-once-more-with-avatars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=15266","title":{"rendered":"The Person \/ Position Paradox: once more, with avatars"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — a follow up to my previous post — and it’s not religion that’s the alternate reality this time, but games ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n.<\/p>\n

I just posted a long and potentially contentious post<\/a> about what I called a person \/ position paradox<\/strong>: that of the member of the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and chairman of the US House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Rep. Paul Broun<\/strong> MD (R-GA), who said recently:<\/p>\n

that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he meant it.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Well, while I was writing that post, this little gem (above) crossed my bows (ht Paxsims<\/a>) — so perhaps you’ll permit me to poke a little fun at a member of the other US political party.<\/p>\n

It seems that Colleen Lachowicz<\/strong>, Democratic candidate for the Maine State Semnate, is also Santiaga, Orc Assassination Rogue<\/strong> in the game-world, World of Warcraft<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Questions arising:<\/p>\n

Does that make her more representative or less?
\nwhat about the fact that she plays at level 68?
\nis that a representative level to play at?
\nand an Orc Assassination Rogue? really?
\nor is she just a candidate who happens to be a gamer?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The image above comes from the Maine GOP<\/strong>, btw.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

To look at this minor contretemps <\/em>from another angle: how far are we from religion, here in the land of Orcs?<\/p>\n

The great literary critic Northrop Frye<\/strong> in his Anatomy of Criticism<\/a> writes of:<\/p>\n

great art using popular forms, as Shakespeare does in his last period, or as the Bible does when it ends with a fairy tale about a damsel in distress, a hero killing dragons, a wicked witch, and a wonderful city glittering with jewels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Frye is not knocking Revelation <\/em>here, though one might at first think he is: he’s assigning it to a literary genre, as one might assign the Psalms <\/em>to poetry, Kings <\/em>and Chronicles <\/em>to history, or the Gospels <\/em>and Acts of the Apostles<\/em> to biography. The Epistles<\/em>, after all, are already classified as epistolary works. And — give the man a break — he’s also placing it in the same realm of great art as Shakespeare<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

How far, then, do you suppose CS Lewis<\/strong>‘ Narnia <\/em>— or Tolkien<\/strong>‘s Middle Earth<\/em>, with its Elven folk Firstborn of the Children of Il\u00favatar — might be from the World where Colleen is an Orc?<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

How much room can we concede to imagination in our “real world”?<\/p>\n

And Dante<\/strong>‘s voyage took him through the three realms of Inferno<\/em>, Purgatorio <\/em>and Paradiso<\/em>, didn’t it, and according to the Apostles Creed<\/a>, Christ’s Harrowing of Hell<\/a> took place between his death and resurrection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So my next question would be: <\/p>\n

When will we build and play the games of Paradise?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — a follow up to my previous post — and it’s not religion that’s the alternate reality this time, but games ] . . I just posted a long and potentially contentious post about what I called a person \/ position paradox: that of the member of the US House Committee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[361,526,497,185,415,529,809,652,251,676,581,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-democratic-party","category-elections","category-games","category-imaginal","category-literature","category-republican-party","category-scriptures","category-tolkien","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15266"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15298,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15266\/revisions\/15298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}