Internet Forum as Verbal Video Game

[coberst]

Internet Forum as Verbal Video Game

I claim that when we make an Internet discussion into a “debate” we are often trying to derive the same titillation as we receive from a video game. We are transforming the forum into a ‘verbal video game’. This gives us the pleasure similar to that received by playing a video game; but has the detrimental effect of inhibiting learning.

I once took acting lessons and our professor taught us “method acting”, which is founded upon the premise that, as Stella Adler said “We are what we do, not what we say”. This means that when I make the bodily actions of conflict I will feel conflict.

In the ordinary code of “debate” one must develop an anti-thesis in order for there to be a contest. We do this because it is this contest that brings to us the titillation similar to that derived by the video game.

This ant-thesis acts as a means for conflict and thus an inhibiting fashion for our ability to learn.

“One’s experience of doubt is a fully embodied experience of hesitation, withholding of assent, felt bodily tension, and general bodily restriction. Such felt bodily experiences are not merely accomplishments of doubt; rather, they are your doubt…Doubt retards or stops the harmonious flow of experience that preceded the doubt. You feel the restriction and tension of your diaphragm, your breathing, and perhaps in your gut. The meaning of doubt is precisely this bodily experience of holding back assent and feeling a blockage of the free flow of experience toward new thoughts, feelings, and experiences”

We must learn to entertain a new idea without either accepting it or rejecting it until we have prepared our self to form a considered opinion of the matter.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Aristotle

Quotations from “The Meaning of the Body” by Mark Johnson