Theory and Practice

"How empty is theory in the presence of fact."
-Mark Twain

I never usually look at the stat traffic of this blog. After the last entry was posted on goreanforums.com though, I thought I'd check to see the activity just to see its effect. Sure enough, I got about 1 daily hit to the site...until there was a spike of 100 unique visitors for a 3 day period that coincided with my last entry. Now we're at 2 daily hits. Progress?

On a tangent, I realize there's no contact info listed on the blog. It didn't occur to me anyone would want to. But in case someone does develop an itch, there's now an e-mail box on the sidebar that allows you to do so. I won't promise I'll answer but now that people are actually reading this thing, the option is there.

Before posting the "solution" to the basic psychological problems of roleplay, I need to weigh in on what the psychology of roleplay means.

The 8 observations as described in the earlier entry mean nothing. Diagnosis is only relevant when applied to fact. In theory, it's only instructive. A theory is only true in the abstract because it draws conclusions from the general population. However, a particular individual is never the "average" in all things. He or she is always unique in some way that makes a general observation only partially helpful. It's one thing to say that, in general, men have intimacy issues because of some latent oedipal complex. However, to say that Person X has intimacy issues because he is a guy...is not necessarily true. If you had to make a blind guess, you'd be better off guessing that he has intimacy issues, but it's just a blind guess. Without specific facts, theory provides a starting point for introspective examination...and that's about it.

The other problem is trying to figure out how helpful theory is in day-to-day interactions. When people are actually roleplaying, they are not thinking about the way they interact with their environment; they ACTUALLY interact with it. Therefore, if someone is roleplaying as a kaijra, she's not thinking about whether the reason she did X was motivated by an underlying feeling of depression brought on by self helplessness. That's absolutely ridiculous. Rather, she does X because she thought it was the right thing to do at that time. Psychological analysis usually can't be applied in real time because of lack of perspective. Time and distance are required to analyze. Instead, the best a person can do is form a rule set of principles and ethics that incorporate the psychological analysis to confront any future problems. That's about the best that can be done.

That being said...engaging in a theoretical diagnosis of the "typical" roleplayer isn't a waste of time. It produces interesting insights and directions that are not normally contemplated. How many people take the time to honestly assess whether a leisure activity that they engage in for the purposes of fun actually produces the OPPOSITE result? The general evidence suggests that addiction tends to do that. Pleasure runs on a bell curve- too little of an activity is frustrating and too much is overkill. So it becomes a matter of finding the right amount of time to roleplay. Exploring theoretical underpinnings isn't a solution, but it's helpful information to discovering a solution.

It's important to keep this in mind when navigating the roleplay universe...especially the Gorean universe. So many people will says, "Goreans are such and such." That's only true on a theoretical level. Such statements hold as much credence as "men are pigs" or "women are bad drivers." Those statements may be true as a trend, but they are universally false. Anyone trying to educate a person in how Goreans acted all the time when presented with a certain situation is being dishonest.