The Madness Of Playing :: essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and abroad Affairs Web SitesIf a lone, unkempt, person, standing on a ambo were to say that he should become the Prime Minister, he would have been diagnosed by a passing psychiatrist as suffering from this or that psychogenic disturbance. But were the same psychiatrist to frequent the same spot and reassure a crowd of millions saluting the same lonely, shabby figure - what would have his diagnosing been? Surely, different (perhaps of a more political hue). It seems that one thing orbit social games apart from madness is quantitative the amount of the participants involved. Madness is a one-person game, and even mass mental disturbances are limited in scope. Moreover, it has long been demonstrated (for instance, by Karen Horney) that the definition of certain mental disorders is super dependent upon the context of the prevailing culture. Mental disturbances (including psychoses) are time-dependent and locus-dependent. Religious behaviour and romantic behaviour could be easily construed as psychopathologies when examined out of their social, cultural, historic and political contexts.Historical figures as diverse as Nietzsche (philosophy), Van van Gogh (art), Hitler (politics) and Herzl (political visionary) made this smooth phase transition from the lunatic fringes to centre stage. They succeeded to attract, change over and influence a critical human mass, which provided for this transition. They appeared on historys stage (or were dictated there posthumously) at the right time and in the right place. The scriptural prophets and Jesus are similar examples though of a more repellent disorder. Hitler and Herzl possibly suffered from personality disorders - the biblical prophets were, almost certainly, psychotic.We play games because they are bilateral and their outcomes are reversible. No game-player expects his involvement, or his particular moves to ma ke a lasting impression on history, fellow humans, a territory, or a telephone line entity. This, indeed, is the major taxonomic difference the same class of actions can be classified as "game" when it does not intend to exert a lasting (that is, irreversible) influence on the environment. When such intention is evident - the truly same actions qualify as something completely different. Games, therefore, are only softly 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 in all other human activities - are entropic. Negentropy - the act of reducing entropy and change magnitude order - is present in a game, only to be converse later.