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[Nonfiction] [Review] Dangerous Games by Joseph P. Laycock AKA The Satanic Panic or Arguing with Morons
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<blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 8608224" data-attributes="member: 8461"><p>I've also read this, and I'm very much in disagreement with your take on it.</p><p></p><p>The frustration in your review seems, if I'm reading you correctly, to come from the fact that you perceive it to be engaged in a futile task of rationally explaining something (i.e. the Satanic Panic) to irrational people. But that's not what this book is; while it does deconstruct where the hysteria (both religious and otherwise) came from, it doesn't do so for those irrational people. This book was never going to be something you could hand to the "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons"-type people and watch them return to sanity as they read it. As you noted, nothing could do that, and I don't see this book as trying.</p><p></p><p>The explanations here are for us, the people who aren't rushing to judge, so that we can better understand what exactly was going through the mind of the crazed reactionaries who saw so much that was never there. It's an explanation, not an argument, which spotlights what motivated the fear-filled and closed-minded groups who demonized RPGs as being about demons. There's value in deconstructing idiocy, as you put it, because unlike them we want to actually <em>learn</em> about what we don't understand, instead of either making things up or simply saying that they're not worth knowing.</p><p></p><p>In that regard, I found this book to be very illuminating, because it puts into stark terms things that most RPG players can intuit but struggle to articulate. Issues of why shared fantasy worlds (emphasis on "shared") are so powerful, the importance of unreal things in understanding both the world and ourselves, and why some people find that threatening and/or get lost in those imaginary worlds. Games of the imagination, as the book notes, can be serious business.</p><p></p><p>The Twain quote, in other words, doesn't apply here. This book is about peering into the minds of the idiots, rather than arguing with them.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alzrius, post: 8608224, member: 8461"] I've also read this, and I'm very much in disagreement with your take on it. The frustration in your review seems, if I'm reading you correctly, to come from the fact that you perceive it to be engaged in a futile task of rationally explaining something (i.e. the Satanic Panic) to irrational people. But that's not what this book is; while it does deconstruct where the hysteria (both religious and otherwise) came from, it doesn't do so for those irrational people. This book was never going to be something you could hand to the "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons"-type people and watch them return to sanity as they read it. As you noted, nothing could do that, and I don't see this book as trying. The explanations here are for us, the people who aren't rushing to judge, so that we can better understand what exactly was going through the mind of the crazed reactionaries who saw so much that was never there. It's an explanation, not an argument, which spotlights what motivated the fear-filled and closed-minded groups who demonized RPGs as being about demons. There's value in deconstructing idiocy, as you put it, because unlike them we want to actually [I]learn[/I] about what we don't understand, instead of either making things up or simply saying that they're not worth knowing. In that regard, I found this book to be very illuminating, because it puts into stark terms things that most RPG players can intuit but struggle to articulate. Issues of why shared fantasy worlds (emphasis on "shared") are so powerful, the importance of unreal things in understanding both the world and ourselves, and why some people find that threatening and/or get lost in those imaginary worlds. Games of the imagination, as the book notes, can be serious business. The Twain quote, in other words, doesn't apply here. This book is about peering into the minds of the idiots, rather than arguing with them. [/QUOTE]
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[Nonfiction] [Review] Dangerous Games by Joseph P. Laycock AKA The Satanic Panic or Arguing with Morons
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