thread: 2005-08-09 : The New Open House 2: Religion
On 2005-08-23, Tony Pace wrote:
Religion is a strange subject for me. I was raised pretty much atheist, and in a way it left me unprepared for North American culture. All these things that touch most people in all these strange and deep ways leave me just??? cold. Curious but unaffected. Waiting for the punch line I guess.
I???ve never played Dogs, but I wonder if this might happen to me there too. I mean, a lot of people all around me seem to have a lot of unresolved issues with religion, from my wife to my fellow gamers and beyond. But me??? just not much feeling. Maybe there???s some sort of Creator, maybe not. Seems impossible to prove either way, short of glowing letters in the sky (I think my teen religious thoughts were shaped by Douglas Adams as much as anyone else).
I just wonder if the power of the game is derived from all that unresolved tension. And if it is ??? I suspect it just wouldn???t work on me.
I???m an economist by schooling, and in a way that???s a religion of its own ??? well more of a worldview really. I???m skeptical of it as well, but the heart of the dismal science is a diffident, reductive, ???just the facts maam??? skepticism which I find repulsive yet ingrained in my thinking.
I live in Taiwan now and I do find the Buddhism and Daoism very affecting, very exciting and colorful (sometimes I wonder if the Buddhism and Daoism professed by some of the other correspondents here has anything at all to do with those religions as they are practiced here). Daoism here is more like magic in a kung fu flick than anything you???ll read in a book. Full of swords and people chasing down the street with a bell on a pole and burning paper money and all sorts of perfectly irrational almost Catholic ritualism. Still, it affects me somehow ??? at time I almost feel as if there is truth hiding around the corner, behind the flashing fireworks and smoking incense.
But in stronger light I dismiss it as the cheapest sort of exoticism, the hazy appeal of the dimly understood.
This makes BL go "[OT] Taiwan?"
What are you doing there (school, job, teaching, something else)? If I go to visit Taiwan, do you want to get together for a beer or gaming or both?
This makes TP go "Yeah, sure!"
I teach there (and some other things). Contact me via tonypace at gmail.
