Humans are in it for more than survival, we are in it to grow. Part of having awareness is that we realise that there is more to life than eating, sleeping and fornicating. Although many would be happy with a little more of the latter.
Being aware and wanting to grow means that we have a sense of where we are going, the future, and where we have been, the past. What we are doing right now, is based on what we know, past, with the hope of getting somewhere in the future. This is how we basically experience and act according to time.
This movement would be a progression through time, progress, and we mark it with milestones, achievements. Achievements are very important to humans as it is how we know we are making progress towards where we want to go. They are things we plan for, invest for and realise.
Some people of course count their achievements retroactively, this is cheating. It is rewriting personal history as if it was intended, but that is another post entirely.
When we aim and hit what we aim for, it feels good. A positive feedback loop that provides happy endorphins to the brain and leaves us with a sense of achievement, some personal feeling of pride in what we have done. This drives us to want to feel it again.
But, to feel it again, we must up the challenge for once a goal becomes easy to reach, the sense of achievement falls away. We no longer get the rush of aiming, reaching and emotional feedback. This is why we push harder and harder to get more and more.
There are many ways that this manifests itself in humans. Some get this sense from sporting development, some physical strength or mental challenge, some from charitable action, some from making money. Competition is tied closely to achievement, the act of 'beating' someone seems to make the achievement more worthy, sometimes of course, it is required for a sport or tender application.
But, in general, to consistently achieve, one must aim, do, learn, redo, succeed, up the challenge, aim again, do, fail, learn, repeat. It is a constant spiral of development where skills are constantly tried and tested and with each success and failure, learning takes place and the skills are improved. This is how it has always been, this is how we evolve.
Until recently.
Whereas in the past skills were developed with each iteration of the achievement cycle, now the sense of achievement can be built without much investment or skill improvement results. It is called, gamification. And it is everywhere.
Making things into a game is a fantastic way to learn, but if the game doesn't build any actual skills, it can suck a mind and body into a cycle of false sense of achievement and no growth.
The most obvious example is of course the million or so gaming apps that suck our faces into a phone for hours on end as well as the social media platforms that manipulate our lives in a thousand micro ways. For many, these seem harmless. They are not.
This faking of the senses means that our skills are not developing adequately in many areas as these games are hijacking our attentional resources and everything has an opportunity cost. The cost is practical skill.
But, this isn't limited to digital gaming, Television has also got heavily into the act. The entire 'reality tv' genre is based on a gamification model that tries to make one feel part of a family, group or star's life. Live life vicariously as they say. And of course, the game shows and competitions are obviously based this way.
If you notice, game shows used to be like 'Wheel of fortune' where you could watch one episode and play along. These may still exist but the popular ones are where you watch stars dance and the audience sits and consumes, week to week. Game shows are now series. Guaranteed attentional resources for the media companies each week, the stars bring the attractive glamour.
Even the news media gets in on the act as bars and graphs, graphics, counts and ticker tape banners swirl hardly leaving any room for the actors pretending to be reporters on screen. This covers everything from a terrorist attack, to an election count, to the birth of a panda at a zoo.
To repeat, the problem with all of this is that we become consumers that feel that we are part of something and achieving yet, our skill levels are hardly shifting. It can be argued that some of these things like interactive gaming can have positive impacts on cognitive functions and this is true. But, it is like using a grip strength builder to get fit, yeah, you will have strong forearms but your ability to run and jump hasn't changed.
Achievement is addictive because of the good feel chemicals the brain shoots through the body and getting it from playing a game is a very cheap high indeed but the long-term ramifications of being near skilless, is yet to truly unfold.
I wrote a tongue in cheek post before about nerds. You are not a nerd if you play lots of games, you are a nerd if you can code the games people play. You are not a good driver by playing need for speed, you are not a farmer from farmville, a dancer from watching dancing with the stars, a singer from watching idols, or a guitarist from tapping at guitar hero.
To be able to do these things for real requires investment into building a range of skills that compound and support each other to be able to complete a task at both the physical and mental level. To be very good at something, takes a lot of investment. No wonder so many people choose not to invest, it is hard work. Better to just get that feeling cheaply from an app.
As I often do, I will bring children into this equation also. We use these entertainment activities as babysitters and learning tools and they are absorbing the lessons well. We are living in times of unprecedented obesity, lack of motivation and drive, instant gratification, disengagement, failing social skills, falling language skills, dismal motor skills and general drop in ability to care for themselves.
Funnily enough though, they all feel like they will achieve great things and change the world. They will change the world greatly most likely, it won't be for the better at this rate.
All of these consumptive achievement behaviours are all tied back to a few points. Massive companies and the governments that benefit from them. The entertainment companies, the IT companies, the television stations and all forms of marketing are all in this together it seems. The money is huge.
It is a massive machine that drops our faculties and forever ties us to a reliance on others for our products and services as we do not have the skills to produce our own. It is a centralised brainwashing and we are walking into it not only willingly, we think it is an achievement.
I am not saying that all of the gaming industry is evil, nor that there is some master plan to make us as stupid as possible but, it does point in that direction. As fun as it all is, it is probably beneficial to diversify the attention resources into a wider array of skill developing activities. Ones that will provide practical skills that cover the physical and mental aspects as well as enough positive and negative success to build a strong emotional frame work too.
I know, I know, not fun is it? Should I have gamified it for you?
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
