Topic: the Medium is the Massage
Timothy Leary was eulogized by Hunter S. Thompson as "forgotten, but not gone." Leary was one of those cagey guys who have been jailed, chased from academia and the subject of cruel and heavy-handed smear campaigns, but his legacy just won't go away. From his Leary Interpersonal Grid (1957) (schemata of the basic personality types and how different aspects of one's personality interact) and Transpersonal Diagnoses of Personality (1958) through such works as Neuropolitique and Info-Psychology and beyond Leary's theories offered the individual the powerful opportunity to "map" or "model" their personality ("What am I thinking? Why am I thinking it? What can I do to change the parts that do not serve me?"). .
Leary was as fascinated and excited about the impact that electronic media and technology can have on consciousness in the 70s, 80s and 90s as he was about the possibilities of psychedelics in the 1960s. Mind Mirror is a computer program that he designed to let people discover their personality ("What is really going on up there in my head?").
The manual itself is fascinating, going into a lot of the theory behind the program. The interview with the man himself is priceless.
ABOUT THIS MANUAL
This manual, like the accompanying software, is a trip through inner space. The following Prologue is a short treatise on the evolution of "thought processing" from the early oral traditions to the present microcomputer revolution. It is not required reading and there will not be a quiz, so feel free to skip it and go to the next section. There you can read about Mind Mirror and its many faces. The last part of the manual is an interview with Dr. Timothy Leary. in which he provides insights into his program as well as into life in general.
PROLOGUE - THE FOUR STAGES OF HUMAN THOUGHT
Human thought can be traced through four distinct stages - Oral, Feudal, Mechanical and Electronic. Each stage was accompanied by a corresponding tool or object-in the case of Oral Thought, the accompanying "tool" was, of course, the tongue and the vocal cords, while in the case of Mechanical Thought the accompanying tool was Gutenberg's movable typesetting machine. Our current stage in this evolutionary process revolves around the micro-computer, the "thinking machine" that has made it possible for anyone to access and process vast amounts of information. The following is a brief description of the four stages.
ORAL THOUGHT
Words are elements of thought which combine into the grammatical molecules of meaning that direct our lives. Most humans do not use words with precision and clarity; rather, they are used, enslaved by words. Tribal folk, for example, were awed by the words of God transmitted by the voice of the Priest. In pre-literate cultures thought was stored in the memory of the Old Ones. Individuals were forbidden to think for themselves by pain of taboo. As children, all of us recapitulate this stage. Some of us never go beyond it.
In a hand-tool culture, the mind is imagined as a handmade tool. When Plato, for example, described ideas as "wax impressions" taken from the mold of God, his handy country-folk were mightily impressed.
FEUDAL THOUGHT
In the totalitarian feudal society, the word of God (or that of his authorized agents) was preserved on marble tablets or illuminated manuscripts -expensive mainframes located in the palace of the Cardinal and guarded by socially alienated nerds (called monks) who knew the machine language - Latin. There was no interest in teaching people how to think. Indeed, those who tried to think for themselves were guilty of heresy. Because "the word" came directly from the Divinity, any attempts to study linguistics and improve semantics was rewarded by a visit from the Inquisition.
This mode of formulating, storing and transmitting thought still operates for fundamentalist religious partisans who make up a majority of the human species.
MECHANICAL THOUGHT
In 1456 Johannes Gutenberg invented movable-type, thus making possible the inexpensive, portable, micro-book. Within a generation literacy swept Europe. Millions of people learned how to read and write. Gutenberg's new thought technology created the Protestant reformation which knocked the feudal God for a loop. Mass literacy also stimulated the Renaissance, the growth of science, free enterprise, free thought, the Industrial Revolution, and a quantum leap in human intelligence. Words, for example, no longer came from God but were invented by writers, translated from other languages, and devised by scientists. Writing and the distribution of mass-assembled, fibre-based storage systems (i.e., books) produced a new profession of thought entrepreneurs: librarians, publishers, journalists, writers, experts, critics and men-of-letters.
The printing press and the industrial society created a new concept of human nature. In the factory culture, God was the great engineer of the clockwork universe, and the ideal human being was an appendage of the all-hallowed Machine. The basic virtues were dependability, responsibility, productivity, promptness, economy of operation and replacability. The industrial society did very little to encourage us to think for ourselves. We are born in factories called hospitals, we go to educational factories where we all read the same books and learn the same lessons and take the same tests in spite of our differences in creativity, intelligence and learning style.
Innovation, spontaneity, individuality, and interactivity are not encouraged by bureaucracies or standardized institutions. The philosophers of the industrial age (including hard-hat hot-shots like Pavlov and Skinner) see the mind as a machine designed to crank out standardized ideas. Smart experts collect lots of heavy thoughts from factory-made books. Authors' thoughts are distributed in frozen letters impressed on paper. There is little interaction with a book. Readers passively react. Sages with minds like steel traps carefully weigh these Macro-thoughts. Those whose ideas do not meet industry standards are said to have a "screw loose."
ELECTRONIC THOUGHT
The emergence of the electronic computer has given us a new model for thinking. The brain, as John Lilley suggested, is seen as a "bio-computer." The mind is now defined as the software which programs the realities we inhabit. Ideas are no longer viewed as flawed impressions of a Platonic ideal mold. Thoughts are not uniform products to be monopolized by intellectuals, passed on by teachers and reproduced by students. Thoughts are packaged as clusters of information bits which can be processed and reprocessed, fissioned, combined with swift facility.
The computer is not a machine that manufactures thought (as some naive Artificial Intelligence fans believe) but an electronic micro-mirror which reflects back processed clusters of electronic thought signals. The computer can be programmed to help the individual become a thought-maker, spinning out dozens of new ideas an hour. Computers encourage us to change our thoughts.
Just as the industrial age replaced the one-tool-at-a-time hand craftsmanship with tool making machines, now the mechanical thinker - the Ph.D. "man of letters" (who laboriously wrestles heavy Macro thoughts in and out of wood-pulp paper) - is being replaced by the electronically literate person who has access to a thought making program. Such a program is MIND MIRROR, an intelligence appliance ("IA") that lets you analyze your ideas by helping you break them down into their component parts for closer scrutiny.
THE AIM OF THIS PROGRAM IS TO MAKE YOU LAUGH, CRY, BLUSH, CREATE, REMEMBER, REFLECT... BUT MOST OF ALL TO ENCOURAGE AND EMPOWER YOU TO: THINK FOR YOURSELF
INTRODUCTION
Part tool, part game and part philosopher on a disk, MIND MIRROR is an innovative software package that helps you see familiar things in a new way. It is part tool because, like screwdriver or a wrench, it can help you tear down rigid old thoughts, stereotypes and prejudices into their component parts, making it easy to analyze and, eventually, revise or eliminate them. It is part game because it challenges you to respond to various hypothetical (and amusing) situations in accordance with those stereotypes, thus putting their consistency and integrity to the test. And, like a game, it grades your performance, letting you know how close you are to the marks you yourself have created. As a game, MIND MIRROR lets you play with the computer, or with another person or group. Finally, MIND MIRROR is a resident philosopher, providing you with insights (and a multitude of quotes) as you proceed along its winding paths.
"All that is
Comes from the mind,
Is based on the mind,
Is fashioned by the mind."
-The Pali Canon, ca. 500 B.C
Most people agree that the ultimate organ of pleasure, creativity, humor, growth and human contact is the MIND. The human brain comprises over 100 billion neurons, each with the information processing capacities of a microcomputer. This staggering array of idea-power is programmed by the MIND. But who programs our minds? Apparently we don't. Our minds are conditioned during our development by stimuli which are beyond our control. We choose neither the time, the environment nor the personnel of our birth and childhood. Consequently, many of our thoughts, conceptions and stereotypes, once formed, are rarely revised, even though they represent the very foundation of our perception of the universe.
With MIND MIRROR, however, you can modify, qualify, and quantify your thoughts, plot them on statistical maps, and replace global, vague "either/or" ideas with more precisely scaled mind elements. MIND MIRROR is a "thought qualifying" device which allows you to "microscope" any thought in your mind into elements, plot these elements on Mind Maps, reconstruct game films of your life, compare your thoughts with those of others, and construct mind models of persons and places.
WARNING! You may be surprised by what pops out of your head on to the screen! Heavy, important inflexible THUNKS, suddenly magnified and reflected, can be life-changing. "Idea scoping" can be entertaining and food for further reflection. Using psychometric techniques, MIND MIRROR allows you to dissolve ambiguous Macro-Thoughts into specific mind elements which can be recombined the way chemists create molecules.
Why do this? What's the point? Simply this: any time you wish to clarify your thoughts, create new "Ideas," communicate clearly, or have some innocent head fun, then turn on, tune in, boot up your MIND MIRROR screen and let it reflect exactly ... what's on your mind. By letting you see familiar people, places or things in a new light, MIND MIRROR gives you a fresh perspective on your universe. Note that MIND MIRROR uses only the information that you give it, and adds no data of its own. By breaking that information down into its component parts, however, MIND MIRROR makes it easy to analyze any thought, concept or idea you may be carrying around in your head.
The best way to begin your relationship with MIND MIRROR is to dive right in and follow the on-screen prompts - you have nothing to lose but your own preconceptions. If you feel you need additional guidance, however, the following descriptions may come in handy. Bear in mind, however, that these descriptions are just that -they cannot take the place of direct, hands-on experience with the software.
SOME PRELIMINARIES
1. A Mental Roadmap
MIND MIRROR proceeds in a logical, orderly fashion, presenting you with a number of choices at each of its many levels. You make a choice by highlighting the desired item and pressing Return (see your reference card for details). This brings you to the next level, where you are given further choices. (MIND MIRROR'S roads are two-way streets, so you can go forward or backward as you see fit). You proceed from level to level in this fashion until you reach the Scales, the heart of the program, where you can rate your subject on a number of different attributes. When you have finished rating your subject, MIND MIRROR converts your input into a Mind Map (see The Mind Maps, below) a graphic representation of your subject as you see it.
At this point MIND MIRROR gives you the opportunity to play Life Simulations, an exercise
in conceptual consistency (see Life Simulations, below). In Life Simulations you are invited to respond to a number of hypothetical situations as though you were the subject you have previously rated. Depending on the level of expertise you have selected, MIND MIRROR will either give you feedback as you proceed, or wait until you have finished playing. In either case, MIND MIRROR tells you how consistently your subject responds to these situations, based on your previous ratings.
2. The Mind Maps
The Mind Maps represent the results of your ratings in graphical form. Each of the four Mind Maps deals with a certain psychological realm -Bio- Energy, Emotional Insight, Mental Abilities and Social Interaction. By the time you have finished rating your subject on the 16 attributes, MIND MIRROR has summarized the results, representing them as a point on each of the four Mind Maps (see Figure 1). The coordinates of each point determine the value of the attribute that it represents, so that a point at or near the center of the circle (or in the inner ring) shows a relatively weak manifestation of the attribute, while a point at the circumference (or in the outer ring) would show a strong manifestation. In addition, opposing segments represent opposite ends of the same continuum. A continuum also exists between each pair of adjacent segments, so that the placement of a point determines the strength of the underlying attribute not only in an absolute sense, but also relative to the neighboring attributes. For example, the numeral 1 in Fig.1 is in the outer ring of the forceful segment, which means that forcefulness is strongly manifested. At the same time, however, the numeral 1 is closer to the Proud segment than it is to the Confident segment, which means that the underlying attribute has more elements of pride than it does confidence.
Mind Maps come into play at two different points in MIND MIRROR. First, you can call up the Mind Maps as soon as you have finished rating your subject, to see where he or she falls with respect to each attribute. In addition, you can use the Mind Maps to monitor your progress as you proceed through the Life Simulations (see below).
LEVELS OF PLAY
1. BEGINNER
At the BEGINNER level you are taken, hand-in-hand, step-by-step, through simple "thought-toddler" exercises, to introduce you to the rudiments of Microscopy and Mind Map cartography. At this level, you are offered relatively simple comparison exercises to help you understand your subject. For example, if you choose to explore Self Reflections in the area of Psychological Insights, you can choose between two exercises: you can compare yourself with your ideal self, or you can compare your best self with your worst. Or if you choose Work Arena in the area of Career Productivity, you are given the choice of comparing your boss with another, or of comparing two of your colleagues.
2 . INTERMEDIATE
At the INTERMEDIATE level you are offered illustrative lists of subjects to Microscope. You are also given the opportunity to type in additional subjects, thereby learning to take a more active role in thought-qualification. Thus, to use the above examples, if you choose Self Reflections at the Intermediate level, you are given the opportunity to rate yourself in up to four different situations, which you can select from 12 "presets" (such as "Self with men," "Self with women," "Self stressed," " Self relaxed," etc.), or by typing in your own topics. MIND MIRROR will then summarize your ratings and let you view them in graphical form through the Mind Maps.
3. MASTER
At the MASTER level, you proceed directly, without coaching, to rate the subjects you wish to examine. At this level, your first choice is between Auto-Play (where you play on your own or in tandem with a colleague) and Inter-Play (where you can play against up to three other persons or teams). See Interaction Modes below for more information on this choice. Once you have chosen, you can then tell MIND MIRROR the subject or subjects you wish to rate.
4 . PROFESSIONAL
At the PROFESSIONAL level you can choose among three areas to explore: Psychological, Personnel Management and Educational. Once you have made your choice you then choose between Auto-Play and Inter-Play. As in the Master level, you are given complete freedom to nominate the subjects you wish to rate.
MIND PLAY vs MIND TOOLS
If you choose either the Beginner or Intermediate mode, you are given a further choice between Mind Tools and Mind Play. The main difference here lies in the kinds of topics you will be exploring.
1. MIND TOOLS
Here you are presented with three significant areas to choose from: Psychological Insight, Career Productivity, and Education. Each of these provides you with further choices, as follows:
a. Psychological Insight
"The geometrical mind Is not so closely bound to geometry
That it cannot be drawn aside
And transferred to other departments of knowledge.
A work of morality, politics, criticism,
Perhaps even of psychology
Will be more elegant, other things being equal,
If it shaped by the hand of geometry."
- Bernard Le Bovier Fontenelle.
Choosing Psychological Insight presents you with four further choices: Self Reflections, Autobiography, Home Life, and Mating Game.
Under Self Reflections you are invited to examine your psychological persona under a number of different situations. In Beginner mode you can choose between two simple comparison exercises, while in Intermediate mode you can elect to rate up to four "selves" (Self at work, Self at play, etc.) from a total of 12 (or more, if you choose to add your own categories).
Under Autobiography you are given the opportunity to explore members of your family as well as others who played a significant role in your formative years. As before, if you are in Beginner mode, you are given a choice of two simple comparison exercises, while in Intermediate mode you are presented with 12 "presets," from which you can choose four.
Home Life lets you explore your housemate in a number of situations. In Beginner mode, you are given a choice between two comparison exercises (Present housemate vs. ideal; Housemate vs. self). while in Intermediate mode you can choose from 12 presets, including Housemate Sad, Housemate Ill, Housemate Working, etc.
CAUTION:
"A stranger moral fervor
Has rarely been seen.
They who dirty the mirror
Complain it isn't clean!"
- Juana lnes de la Cruz.
Finally, under Mating Game, you are presented with a number of situations relating to more intimate activities. Remember,
"Nuffin can flower
When yo' love life's gone sour."
-Mama Woodruff.
In Beginner mode you are invited to choose between two exercises: Current Loves (in which you compare your present love and your ideal) and Past Loves (in which you compare your first and best loves). In Intermediate mode you are given 12 subjects (such as A Recent Date, Tonight's Date, First Date, Ideal Date, etc.), from which you can choose four to rate and explore.
b. Career Productivity
This choice provides you with four further choices: Career Planning (where you can
engage in some informal career self-guidance); Work Arena (where you can analyze several aspects of your work environment); Decision Making (where you can examine a number of topics that may require decisive action); and Company Style (where you can rate and explore some of the things that give your company its unique personality). As before, at the Beginner level, you are given a choice between two simple comparison exercises, while at the Intermediate level you can choose from 12 "presets."
c. Education
This choice presents you with four additional choices: Liberal Artistry (where you can examine your thoughts about great books, authors, artists, etc.); Philosophy and Science (where you can rate the great philosophers and scientists); Social
Geography (where you can explore your thoughts about different geographical personas); and History (where you can examine your attitudes towards different historical personages and events). Again, the Beginner level presents you with two simple \ comparison exercises while the Intermediate level lets you choose from 12 different topics.
2. MIND PLAY
"Play so that you may be serious"
-Anacharsis, ca. 600 B.C.
Psychologists and psychiatrists are well aware of the value of play in a therapeutic environment. In this section MIND MIRROR suggests eight topics for you to explore: 1. Religious Prophets and Sects ("Religious Tolerance"); 2. Politics ("Political Partying"); 3. Film Stars and TV Programs ("Film and TV Madness"); 4. Newspapers & Journalists ("Pop Stars of Print"); 5. Musicians ("The Sounds of Music"); 6. Computer Stars and Hardware Heroes ("Computer Games"); 7. Athletes & Teams ("The Sporting Life"): 6. Famous Cops and Beloved Outlaws ("lnlaws and Outlaws").
In Beginner mode, MIND MIRROR presents you with simple comparison exercises, while in Intermediate mode you are given a choice of 12 topics from which you can choose four. For example, choosing Religious Tolerance in Beginner mode presents you with the following exercises: 1. Compare two religious prophets; 2. Compare your religion with another. Choosing Religious Tolerance while in Intermediate mode, on the other hand, gives you the following 12 topics to choose from: Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Moslems, Humanists, The Pope, Jerry Falwell, Ayatollah Khomani, Ghandi, Jehovah, Jesus Christ, and Buddha. As before, you can choose up to four of these or make up your own. When you have finished making your choices, you can go on to scale your selected subjects.
INTERACTION MODES: AUTO-PLAY or
INTER-PLAY
If you select either the Master or Professional level, you are given the further choice of Auto-play or Inter-play, depending on whether you wish to play on your own or with others.
1. In the AUTO-PLAY mode, you are on your own. You can experiment with ideas, poke your mental anthill with a reflection stick and watch your thoughts scuttle around on the screen. You can shuffle and deal novel conceptions, or create new associations. You can use your mind as a "fantasy amplifier." You can become an Einsteinian MasterMind, defining thought elements in terms of their relative location on the ever-present Mind Maps. (See The Mind Maps, above). Whenever you come across novel ideas or persons in books, movies, or conversations, you can slide them under MIND MIRROR'S "microlens," modify them, qualify them and watch them move on the screen. For example, if you are a Shakesperean scholar, you may want to scope lago and Othello, or Romeo and Juliet to help you understand their behavior a little better. Or if you are a novelist or a playwright, you can use MIND MIRROR to help you define your characters (and the ways in which they interact) more consistently.
2 . INTER-PLAY
"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us!
To see oursels as others see us."
- Robert Burns
In the INTER-PLAY mode you compare your thoughts with those of others. Up to four different persons or teams can rate the same subject and then compare their results. Although MIND MIRROR cannot give you any objective information about your subject, it can provide a forum for analyzing any differences in ratings among the different players. For example, if one player rates Sigmund Freud as nearly always compulsive, while another rates him as rarely compusive. this tells us more about the players than it tells us about Freud. After all, whether or not Freud was compulsive is a moot point (unless you happen to be writing his biography), while the attitudes of the players towards Freud's perceived compulsiveness is very much alive and to the point, Remember what it is that MIND MIRROR is reflecting - most of the time, it is reflecting you and your attitudes.
Here are some ideas for Inter-Play parties:
GOSSIP! Up to four persons (or teams) scope their thoughts about someone known to all. This minor moment of truth cannot fail to amuse. CELEBRITY GOSSIP! The group nominates 8 celebs to be scoped. Up to four persons (or teams) can play. Each team secretly selects a name and scopes it, item by item in front of the group. Each team then tries to guess the celeb being scoped.
NAME THAT COUPLE! Each person, or team, secretly selects a couple (known to ail the group). Each team then scopes that pair, item by item in front of the entire group, which, in turn, tries to guess the identity of the secret couple. This is a powerful, accurate device for exposing thoughts. Many people will at first be shy and hesitant about projecting themselves, describing loved ones or ideals. In that case, they might prefer to start by reflecting safe, neutral thoughts. New York vs L.A.; Truth vs Beauty; Ronald Reagan vs Jimmy Carter. But most people will quickly catch on to the power of the device for self discovery. If you are hosting a MIND INTER-PLAY party, you should be sensitive to anxiety reactions. You must be alert to potentially embarassing disclosures. Many, perhaps most people, do not want to see themselves clearly. In some cases you may wish to suggest that some people return to use MIND MIRROR in private.
LIFE SIMULATIONS
There are some among us who live behind thick walls of shyness, not really knowing what others think and feel and do. The Sophisticated Person is one who has, with prudent courage, ventured out to touch, feel and listen to others of different caste, class and belief. Such a person can assume the viewpoint of others, see through their eyes and walk a step or two in their shoes.
LIFE SIMULATIONS allows you to use the interactive power of the computer lo do just that, After you have rated your subject (whether another person or an enlity such as a city, an automobile, a movie or anything else you can think of), you are then given the opportunity to view the universe through its eyes. This part of MIND MIRROR presents you with a series of situations representing various stages of human development, and invites you to respond to each situation through the eyes of your subject. Here's how it works:
As soon as you have finished rating your subject you can access the Mind Maps (see The Mind Maps, above) to see where your subject fits in the grand scheme of things. To play Life Simulations, you respond to the various life situations consistent with the way you rated your
subject. For example, if you rated your subject as high in energy or enthusiasm, then you would need to respond accordingly in the Life Simulations phase. When you call up the Mind Map after rating your subject, that subject will show up as the numeral 1 (see Figure 2). Now as you play Life Simulations, MIND MIRROR plots your responses on the same scale, showing your recent responses (Le., those you have made since the last time you consulted the Mind Maps) as the numeral 2 and your overall score as the numeral 3. To play consistently, you should aim to have your overall score fall within the "win circle," the dotted circle that has the numeral 1 as its center. (See Figure 2). The win circle is bigger at the Novice level than it is at the Experienced level. There is no win circle at the Wizard level. See Levels of Play below for more information on the different levels. At any time you can press the Spacebar to toggle between the inner and the outer circle attributes.
Fig. 2
PLAYING THE GAME
The game of LIFE SIMULATIONS is the most entertaining as well as the most interactive part of MIND MIRROR. Its multitude of life events can provide hours of thought-provoking insights.
Here's how to play:
First, select the realm and the area you wish to explore through the eyes of your subject. Only three of the four realms are available to you at this stage: Bio-Energy, Emotional Insight and Mental Abilities. The Social Interaction realm becomes available as soon as you receive a passkey credit. You receive passkey credits by successfully navigating through one or more of the three available realms. If you end up in the win circle, you receive two passkey credits at the Novice level, and one passkey credit at the Experienced level. The Wizard level has no win circle, and you receive one passkey credit for completing Life Simulations. Wizards don't need win circles to prove their mettle.
Once you receive a passkey credit for completing a particular realm, that realm is no longer available to you; the realm of Social Interaction then becomes available. You can now enter this realm by trading in your credit for a passkey. Passkeys are tokens that may or may not be appropriate to your subjects lifestyle. Therefore, selecting the most appropriate passkey is the first step towards successfully entering and navigating your subject's "home zone." For example, if your subject ended up as influential, then a welfare card would obviously be an inappropriate passkey, whereas an embossed party invitation would be. Once you enter your subjects home zone, your remaining task is to navigate through the life situations, responding in a way that is most appropriate to your subject.
When you first enter the Social Interaction realm, you are given seven passkeys to choose from, none of which is for the home zone you need to win the game. You can then choose one or more of the seven passkeys (depending on the number of credits you have accumulated), after which you will be told about the home zone passkey. Once you successfully play one of these alien zones you will be given the opportunity to go back and select the home zone passkey. You win the game by playing through your home zone consistently.
LEVELS OF PLAY
MIND MIRROR lets you play Life Simulations on any of three levels: Novice, Experienced and Wizard. The three levels differ in the amount of feedback and coaching available.
1. NOVICE PLAY
The best way to learn LIFE SIMULATIONS is in the NOVICE MODE. After every response you should access the Mind Map to see whether you navigated your part consistently with the personality you constructed. In addition, "Head-Coaching" gives you tips after each play, suggesting ways to respond to the next situation so as to give you a consistent overall score (see your reference card for the key commands to access these features). For example, if you have strayed away from the "correct" coordinates (those based on your original ratings), the Head-Coach can prompt you for the response that will bring you back toward those coordinates.
There are over 2400 scored events in Life Simulations. These appear randomly so that you
almost never repeat the same life adventure. As you replay you will uncover surprise twists. hidden jokes, buried challenges, and startling espionage clues that keep the game fresh.
2 . EXPERIENCED PLAY
Here, you take off on Life Odysseys with no Head-Coaching. But like the Novice mode, you can choose whether or not to access the Mind Map after each turn.
3. WIZARD PLAY
The testpilot challenge. Here you zoom through varied encounters of life, colliding with ever-
changing events with no navigational maps between responses. You navigate by the seat of your intuition - only after completing the entire Realm can you call up the Mind Map to see how close you came to your designated role. This plotted discrepancy (1 vs. 3) can be revealing. You may have played your subject, in the heat of interaction, very differently from your mental image. Once again, we must recall that there is no "right-wrong." The mirror does not tell you what to do. It reflects back only what you have wrought.
APPLICATIONS OF LIFE SIMULATIONS
MIND MIRROR is a game/tool with as many uses as you dare apply to it. For example, using the Auto-Play Mode, you can compete with friends in these tests of cultural sophistication. After rating a subject, save your scores onto disk. Have your friends do the same thing for the same subject. You can then retrieve both sets of scores and compare them. Revealing differences! Lively discussions! Mind Play does not give answers; it raises fascinating questions. Or you and a friend can copilot the MIND MIRROR journey. You can discuss each response on the attribute scales and come to an agreement. During simulations, you discuss each reaction and get instant replay. Or you can play "Thought Doubles": you and your pal alternate responses during simulations.
In short, Mind Play is a flexible tool: if there is a limit to the games, interactions, or interplays you can devise, then it is probably to be found between your ears.
EPILOGUE: TIMOTHY LEARY - THE INTERVIEW
Electronic Arts: Why don't you begin by telling us some of your thoughts on life in general - what is life to you?
Timothy Leary: I define life as a process of evolution. To be alive means growth, change, metamorphosis, mutation, progress. I know this is very American, but I feel that America is the most evolved country in the world right now, despite all the flaws. I believe in the evolution of intelligence. I don't follow Darwinian thoughts of survival of the most powerful, or survival of the most progressive. The fittest are the smartest.
EA: What about death? The Moody Blues once wrote a song that greatly exaggerated the reports of your demise. What did you think of that?
L: At one time during the late 60's the Moody Blues were one of a group of wonderful musical organizations. Minstrel bands that were expressing, very powerfully, the aspirations, and the fears, and the feelings of the baby boom generation and during their process of leaving the industrial society. The Moody Blues got a little dizzy one night and wrote a song called Legend of the Mind which used my name. They are just four or five goofy, fun-loving Englishmen being silly. I know that millions of people listened to that song and tried to read deep philosophic meaning into it. But it was just a put on, a joke.
EA: The Beatles were very good at that, don't you think? Like Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, for example. People thought that it stood for LSD, but John Lennon said that it was something his son said about a drawing he did at school.
L: Right, but how does that lead to tangerine taxis and all the other imagery? One thing that's true of the Beatles is that they were always putting us on in a most funny way, and that John's comments should be taken with a grain of salt.
It's all a joke, a wonderful media game. Naturally the Beatles were resisting being categorized, pinpointed, and stuck to the wall. It was part of their charisma.
EA: A lot of people saw rock stars as prophets or the leaders of the future. What were your thoughts on that?
L: One thing we learned at the end of the 60's is that any illusions we had of rock musicians as philosophers and wise percipient prophets of the future were pretty optimistic. They were wonderful minstrels but, unfortunately, many of them began to take it too seriously and froze up. Take Bob Dylan, for example. He was a wonderful voice. He gave us those magnificent philosophic statements about the human condition. He was considered one of the major poets of the twentieth century. Now he's giving us Revelations just like Jerry Falwell. It was very hard on everyone who went through the exalted confusion of the 60's to maintain perspective and to face the fact that none of us was really very clear on where we were headed. We thought it was all wonderful, but then nobody had a final fix on what was going on. John Lennon and Yoko Ono certainly got carried away with their own importance. They stopped laughing, and I think they lost their precise force when that happened.
EA: Of the four Beatles, Ringo Starr seems to be the least affected. Do you agree with that?
L: Well, I am prejudiced because I know Ringo the best. Ringo remains, today, pretty much what he was back then - a wonderful, fun-loving, fast-partying, good natured guy. When he drives up in your driveway you're glad to see him, because you know you'll be partying for the next 24 hours. And you're almost as glad to see him leave because you want to catch up on your sleep. He's an enduring testament to the spirit of goodness and fun. In each of their ways, the Beatles were a wonderful part of a great mosiac. George Harrison has done wonderful things in his own quiet style in supporting movies. He has backed some of the Monty Python movies, for example.
EA: Who are your current heroes in the pop world?
L: I personally admire David Bowie and David Byrne, and now Grace Jones. These people have grown with the times and can deal with the faster moving and more sophisticated fine-tuning of the 80's.
EA: Back to life and death for a moment. Alan Watts said that he was nothing but the universe seeing what it was like to be Alan Watts, and that when he died, he would simply go back to being the universe. What do you think about this?
L: I knew Alan Watts very well. He influenced me and impressed me more than any other person I've met. With the exception of my wife, of course.
EA: Of Course.
L: His notion was that the human being acts as the forward intelligence probe of the genetic process on our planet. We are the intelligent fibers and tentacles sent out to monitor the universe. Now, the answers to these questions depend upon your definition of the human mind. The human mind is the focus. The human mind is the scope through which everything happens. I have had a life-long interest in this. I studied psychology because it seemed to offer the best hope of understanding the human mind. Unfortunately, psychology at that time was more involved in emotions - the Freudian, and the Jungian, and the Adlerian, so it wasn't so much intelligence that was stressed as it was adjustment and emotional balance.
My work as a psychologist in the 1950's revolved around methods for helping people better understand themselves, My Ph.D. thesis was on interpersonal relationships. In the 60's when I was at Harvard I stumbled on a great secret of human psychology and human wisdom: that consciousness could be altered, and that there were methods for accelerating, complicating, deepening, or refocusing consciousness. In other words, limitless numbers of levels of consciousness and awareness were available if you only knew how to access them. Drugs are one way of doing this, but the many different forms of yoga and self-development which
blossomed in the 60's was all part of the attempt to understand these levels of consciousness and was all part of the attempt to understand these levels of consciousness and the workings of the human mind.
EA: We often hear about the new "information" society. What effect is this "information boom" having on society?
L: The concept of work belongs to an agricultural or industrial society where you're defined by the nature of your job. Under that system, a virtuous human being is one who works productively, dependably, promptly and can be replaced just like an appendage to a machine. A good human being is a good machine part. In the information age it is humiliating and anti-human for anyone to be forced to perform a task that can be executed better by a robot or by a computer. So that the notion of work to us in the information age is like the notion of slavery and serfdom was in the feudal age.
The industrial age freed the slaves and the serfs so they could become workers, and th information age has freed the workers so they could become, what? What is the function of the human being in a society where you don't have to work, where you don't have perform the functions of machines or robots?
What's the function of the human being? We come back to original philosophic definitions of what's life about. My answer is that the function of the human being is to grow and evolve, to change. The function of the human being in the information age is simply to get smarter.
EA: Do you think the world is a better place than it was 20 years ago?
L: Yes. I define better in terms of intelligence, and I define intelligence very practically, in terms of technology. The fact is that we have hand-held tape recorders, we have videos, we have home computers, we have satellite dishes, and we're being flooded with more information than was ever available in the history of mankind. In addition, we have greater mobility and communication than ever before.
Habitat determines species. Geography determines your destiny. Who you are is determined by where you are. If you're under water, you're marine life, you're a fish. The point is that you must move to the place where you find the people with whom you're at harmony, find the people who share your aspiration.
Consider this: the average American five year old experiences more in one week, in terms of geography, history, news, and so on, than was experienced by the most travelled Marco Polos of the past. The average American kid has gone down the rapids in a canoe, has seen the grand canal, has seen camels in the desert, has seen acts of glory, horror, brutality, and wonder, just by sitting in the playroom. Not to mention the fact that you can get on a plane and within an hour you're in an entirely different place.
Communication and transportation together mean mobility of body and mind. To answer your question, I think the world is a better place than it was 20 years ago, and its getting better all the time.
Posted by mediafaction
at 2:11 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, 2 November 2004 2:13 PM EST
