Quote from: p220A new kind of courage . . . In place of the Kantian courage to resist the madness of crowds, we need the courage to leap in and experience it. . . . Only by having been taken over by the fanatical leader's totalizing rhetoric, and experienced the dangerous and devastating consequences it has, does one learn to discriminate between leaders worth following and those upon whom one must turn one's back.

Quote from: p221Ours is not a moralistic claim, but a claim about what the gods are calling us to do. It is a natural temptation to ask why one should hear the call, or why one should heed it if it makes itself heard. But these moralizing temptations must be avoided. There is no reason why one ought to hear or respond to the call of the gods: callings just demand to be heard an obeyed. . . . our focus on ourselves as isolated, autonomous agents has had the effect of banishing the gods--that is to say, covering up or blocking our sensitivity to what is sacred in the world. The gods are calling us but we have ceased to listen. . . . like Dante's sinners, we have closed ourselves off by telling ourselves that we ought to be self-sufficient.

Quote from: p222Ask not why the gods have abandoned you, but why you have abandoned the gods.

I shall take this quote out of context:

Quote from: p215. . . landmarks, street signs, wind direction, the height of the sun, the stars—all . . . meaningful . . .

I love this small list of things that 'the noble art of navigation' may have given birth to reverence of in the past, that the GPS bulldozes.

Quote from: p213[Unskilled automatic work may produce worse results.] Even worse than losing quality, however, is losing the skill for telling the difference. As we lose our knowledge of craft, the world looks increasingly devoid of distinctions of worth.

Quote from: p213To the extent that technology strips away the need for skill, it strips away the possibility of meaning as well. To have a skill is to know what counts or is worthwhile in a certain domain. Skills reveal meaningful differences to us and cultivate in us a sense of responsibility to bring these out at their best. To the extent that it takes away the need for skill, technology flattens out human life.

Quote from: p212Meta-poiesis, as one might call it, . . . the higher-order skill of recognizing when to rise up as one with the ecstatic crowd and when to turn heel and walk rapidly away.

Quote from: p209For the master of wood, each piece he works with, and therefore more generally each woodworking situation in which he finds himself, is unique . . .

Quote from: p210. . . the uniqueness of each situation gives a sacred dimension to the craftsmanship. . . . each piece of wood is distinct, has its own personality. . . the woodworker has an intimate relationship with the wood . . . Its subtle virtues call out to be cultivated and cared for. . . .

But it is not just the wood alone, as if it sprang fully cut and dried into his workshop. The wood has a place of origin, too, so the master becomes familiar with the local soil, the terrain, and the sources of water that nourish the trees. He comes to know intimately the weather and the seasons, since they change the way the trees will respond to his saw. . . .

Quote from: p208"My own eyes know because my own hands have felt, but i cannot teach an outsider, the difference between ash that is "tough as whipcord," and ash that is "frow as a carrot."

Quote from: p209The skilled craftsman does not decide to treat the ash as if it were "frow as a carrot," . . . The task of the craftsman is not to generate the meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill for discerning the meanings that are already there.

Quote from: p205We must position ourselves so that we can condemn an act like this even if we find ourselves in a crowd drawn to applaud it at the time.

Quote from: p203. . . there is sense behind Kant's caution. There is, after all, a vanishingly small distance between rising as one with the crowd at a baseball game and rising as one with the crowd at a Hitler rally.

They claim Kant has proposed that one ought not, ever, 'rise as one with the crowd.' Were the above given scenario the primary one at question, consider that the ideal solution involves rising as one with the crowd at a Hitler rally, then — and only then — reflecting upon the sensation having truly experienced and understood it. The only other options are to shut oneself off from properly experiencing a way of being in the world, or in other words to shut oneself off from part of the world entirely.

PASSWORD ROOM. Summoning games by right positioning of elements... a more complete realization of Yrkkey's Paradise, perhaps?

Different combinations produce different game worlds.

SERPENTES LOOP--
You spend a little time committing to a world. Some initial setup happens, revealing initial information when the stakes are low. I'd like to experiment with this... an easy introduction that sets you up for some of the drama which will appear later in the run, the actually dangerous stuff.

Who will I be, at the end of all this?

Where will I end up?

Experience: wondering, where is this going? Where are they going? Saturn Apartments—a single long mystery (where's dad?). Girls Last Tour—yes, literally, where are they going, but perhaps more accurately, where will they end up?

Chain reactions