Well, imho to include a thing like "spiritual damage" in a game is imho insofar a leap forwards in the sense that it seems to acknoledge the presence of a spirit at all.
I know a lot of people who favour a mechanistic, logic-driven view of the world, a view that is heavily supported by science. A human, a plant, an animal is simply an automaton driven by the programming of its DNA or RNA. Spirits, religiousity has there very little to no space to exist within this view of the world.
Here in Germany I'm quite concerned by the fact that people leave the christian church alone and tend to become atheists or so. Also, there is - on the other hand - a part (how big or small it is I cannot say) which tends to transfer themselves into other religions than the christian one.
I see two things causing this :
- The Christian Religion currently not representing here what people believe in (no matter how weird this might sound)
- the spreading of a mechanistic point of view like what's described above.
In a way, Science has become a new belief-system ( I wouldn't dare to call it an "Religion"). It believes in that everything you can believe in is measurable (is that a word ?) and can be reproduced within a scientific environment. What can be measured and reproduced any time is true.
The problem with this is that things that cannot be measured cannot believed in, from this point of view. And that descriprion fits very well with everything spiritual.
As I pointed out in a recent, very interesting discussion with Buad in the German RPG Chat, it might well be that our measure systems are not good enough for certain things - so that we simply cannot measure them. Which - as a result - leads into the proposition that
if we cannot measure things this does not automatically mean that they are not real. A good example for that is imho one of our youngest sciences : Psychology. Things there are so complex aand often so subtle, tht they simply cannot be measured according to "normal" scientific stabndsrds known from e.g. Chemistry, Geology, Physiscs and some others. The older the science, the better the methods are in it. Psychology is so complex that it still bears heavy signs of the Science it once came from : Philosophy. Yes, Philosophy was - according to what we know from the ancient times - the first science there is, because everything derived from there (although I've read that Tracking is another, yet earlier Science in its own right, but has been neglected, because no-one needs it nowadays. I early times , eralier than the Ancient Times, it was essential for survival.)
What we have here in fact is a hiatus between the Science id the Spirituality. At least here in Europe, maybe in the USA as well, I don't know.
With this discussion I was particularly (is that a word ?) interested in cultures which might or might not be represented by forum-members here, where this hiatus still doesn't exist. I've heard fragments of asian belief-systems and those of south-america, and in some cases of north-american natives. I fact, Natives no matter where they live don't have such a complicated field of Science like we Europeans have, and therefore I don't think they have such a big hiatus.
The Second Principle of Huna is : "There are no limits". Resulting from that, "everything is connected". This is imho a rather non-cientific point of view.
Science, therefore leads to the opposite of that : "Everything is divided." Which I tried to show with that hiatus mentioned above. Science divides the human from its spiritual part, simply by negating its existence, because it cannot be measured and reproduced under scientific circumstances as a proof of its existence. From my point of view, people sense this division, but only subconsciously, and therefore are not able to do anything against it. If they even notice it at all. Religion (and Spirituality) has been there as long as the human being exists, and I don't think that this is something someone can tell me about "you don't need it", because I believe that things that are deeply ancient are also things the human simply needs, in one way or another.
So, now I've run out of text (so to say <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> ) , I conclude my speech for now. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
Alrik.
