Dungeons & Daddy Issues

What happens in the dark? Not physically, but mentally. What monstrous realities do we imagine into the reflectionless moments of the world, like those of basements without electricity? In order to find out, let's add a couple of torches, and observe the whispers between the shadows. This is how every proper game of D&D should be played. That's how we used to do it, at least.

We did it hardcore: we used continuously refined house rules, went into endless negotiations with the DM in order to exercise the limits of possibilities that the multiverses of role-playing bring, listened to relevant ambient epic stoner, and quite often got lost between the boundaries of whatever is between our everyday personae and fantasy-flesh alter egos. (All this in a basement filled with dripping stalactites/stalagmites, of course.) Yes, we did it to pass the time and have fun. It's just a peculiar definition of fun. We did it to exercise our imagination and see how far we can go, when we bear the divine power of metamorphosis to take on roles of entities in worlds with yet undreamed qualities. How would we actually act if we could read minds? Or slit throats one after another in order to increase our reputation? If we lived among a gene pool of self-aware creatures so vast that with practically every adventure we could meet previously unseen races? What would our philosophy be; and which factually existing gods would we bow to? Would we decide against pursuing magic? And why?

As it turns out, leaving our own unconscious tendencies out of the picture is easier imagined than actually done. I had several characters throughout the years, of whom I'll mention the two I actually designed completely on my own. These characters lived, and they eventually died or went on quests to which our all-seeing powers had no interest in paying attention. When one of these two things happen, a player simply creates a new being to follow the rest of the adventuring party, who are destined to be played with by Their actual gods.

The Divine Projector

Do You have a pet? Observe it, Your real pet or the one You would prefer, in Your imagination. Don't do it only once, but for a while. Try to see It for what It is.

Since I was a kid, I was trying to unravel what is the gaze of non-human animals hiding when it's staring into our own. I have different theories about different species and individuals within species, and at least some of them, I believe, look at us in some kind of awe. We provide shelter, food, and constraint with conditioning techniques, leashes, bowls, cages, legal papers – not unlike how we sometimes act towards each other. If we humans are not aware of how most stimuli are affecting us, and we mostly shrug it off as faith, circumstance or whatever force beyond and larger than us – how are we not literally a form of a divine power for pets? The saying that 'You should first get a pet to see if You are fit to have offspring' is not without merit...

Monu-Mental

Directing breakdown and
disgrace before the whole cast

Too bad the mass is sightless with ignorance so vast
Thirteen syllables, thirteen lines to force a new take
Another posed act shot - fallow egos have been fed
No one knew what could have been left undone or unsaid
To the deepest dismay, no one cared, for goodness sake
Artist's block strained the result to befall foully fake
The mob heard laughter, didn't care about the tale's thread
Self-worth high as the flame, violent minds packed with lead
A crimson pond mirrors the wish to turn a new slate
And who crawls beneath the debris can stand as the last
Who observes with the sight from a script burned in the past


Curtains seal, clap for the chronic
longing to create

Now You Ψ Better: Are You Normal?

You know that moment when scientist warned humanity of the danger it has posed upon itself? More than two decades later, we barely started raising our heads to question the severity of our behavior. The measured reality, in its pure informational form, needs an amazing amount of time to enter into common knowledge. As it's the same with every branch of science, psychology suffers much unfairness in the face of rumors. These misconceptions are not only damaging to individuals and professions, but stop the actual data from being useful on a larger scale. So, I decided to address some of these fallacies in a nonsequential series of posts, each dealing with a cluster of concepts, which, when better understood, can hopefully bring better understanding between and within people. Let's give it a shot!

The first entry in the series dubbed Now You Ψ Better is about the so-called "normality".

In Ourselves We Trust

It seems to be plausible to think that since the beginning of our conscious thought bearing days we looked towards the inexplicable with awe and bonded it with the desire to give a comforting explanation to the sources of our fears. For reasons that concern the survival of our groups, we gathered together and invented rituals so that we could feel more at ease with our mortal destiny. Over time, as we started using more and more extensions of our will (namely tools), our groups became increasingly larger and some kind of centralization of authority on a bigger scale was inevitable to establish some kind of collaborative order. We invented countless rules in the form of religion to govern the behavior of masses, and with a good reason. Little did we understand that behind the semantic messages of sacred teachings there are certain meta-meanings, which give form to thought and behavior, and are much more significant from the point of socio-cultural evolution. To take an example: if a religious principle declares that people are to legally bond and not practice adultery, and a person still performs such a natural act, They might feel self-condemnation, which can further lead to psychological torment between the legally bonded and possible disintegration of Their association.

If we consider evolution as not merely a biological process, we can certainly appreciate the thought of adaptation of culture. It is a necessary and inevitable course of progress. There is a neat overview of known human history as a single human life in the form of the "second insight" found in the book The Celestine Prophecy (although the theory is a bit flawed due to being inconsiderate to non-western influences). In the fashion of its style, if we look at our history as an evolution of a collective and not as segregated groups and individuals, as species we have just left our infancy and don't quite know what to do with all the natural changes we are experiencing.