Killing Desire?

Scene from Assassin's Creed, Unity. 

On Christmas Eve, I was wrapping presents (probably my least favorite activity in a life full of far too many unpleasant activities) and I was watching the classic film It's a Wonderful Life. In one scene, George, as a boy, is talking to Mary (his future wife) across the counter in Mr. Gower's drug store. George is telling Mary about all of the places he is going to see when he gets old enough, and he pulls out a copy of National Geographic Magazine so he can show her some pictures. I know how he felt. Do my kids feel the same?

I remember (I grew up in the 70s and 80s) seeing a picture that fired my imagination. I remember watching nature programs on old, grainy and square TVs and wishing I could visit jungles and deserts. I remember seeing places in movies -- whether shot on-location or whether they were studio recreations -- and feeling a pull of curiosity.

Once, I worked with a principal who told the faculty: "You have to remember. This is no longer the one-room schoolhouse. We, as teachers, are no-longer able to dazzle our students with stories of far-away lands. Teachers are no-longer 'the sages on the stage'."

Her point was that, with modern technology, the kids have seen more in their early years than we could have have dreamt of seeing. They live in a world that offers so much virtual experience that, I fear, it might really be blunting their cravings for reality. We don't impress them by pulling back the curtains on the wonders of the world. (Well...we literature teachers kind of do... We just have to make kids understand that we are.)

Both of my sons have walked through very realistic depictions of medieval villages; both of them have fought in historical wars. They have wandered the streets of Paris and London and New York City while wearing their pajamas. They have sailed pirate ships and flown planes.

Of course, none of this is as good as the real thing. [Or, is it? Consider the idea that the people who created the Notre Dame cathedral for Assassin's Creed might be consulted in the reconstruction of the cathedral.] But, it is pretty darned good. I've seen depictions of water in video games that make me swear I can smell salt. And, now, we have VR gaming with 360 degree headsets...

Still, VR is not as good, let's face it. But is it blunting our kids' desire to get to the places they no longer have to dream about? -- the places they can now see while wide-awake?

A year ago, I discovered that a large system of wooded trails exists in the town I grew up in. (It is quite well-hidden.) All my life, I had no idea it was there. I found it online, believe it or not, listed as the best trail walk in New Jersey. I think that a video of my face as I walked into it the first time might have been embarrassing. I think I was doing what they call "beaming." Every corner turned; every trail found made me a little goofy with the joy of discovery. With every step, I cannot help thinking that it must have been a meeting place for the Lenni Lenape Indians -- it's a huge hill from which one can see Philadelphia in the distance, almost twenty miles away.

I think it may be the result of a young life of wishing I could really experience things I saw in pictures and films. Unlike my boys, I never got to walk through haunted medieval forests until later in life... With our desire to make better and better experiences in education and gaming, are we extinguishing dreams?

Consider this: teen pregnancy is down. One possible cause, according to some, is "sexting." If the next-best-thing can quell that desire, what can it do to the urge to explore our world?

Internalized Einstein: Grown-ups, Kids and Time

One of the big mysteries of maturity is why or how the perception of the passage of time changes -- why time seems to go so much faster as we get older. Conjectures include biochemical brain changes and increased actual activity, often as a result of responsibility -- a greater amount of time spent working for others and not playing for ourselves. But I think it might be that we, somehow, lose the  connection that kids seem to have to Tao. Kids are so much better at just being that adults are.

"Aragorn's Quest"

Yesterday, my eight-year-old was playing a video game called Aragorn's Quest. I played it first, a year or so ago. I enjoyed it very much and I completed the entire game. He played it after me, and he finished it as well. 

Yesterday, he was playing it. "That was a pretty darned good game, wasn't it?" I said, watching.

"Yeah," he replied. "How come you don't play it anymore, Dad -- if you liked it so much?"

"I don't know." I replied. "I don't much like playing games after I have finished them -- it's not fun to me."

"Oh," he said, sounding a little perplexed by this answer.

When it comes down to it, I'm a little perplexed by it, too.

Those Who Ponder Millenium Falcons

Must . . . not . . . . write . . . about Charlie . . . Sheen . . .

KIDS! I’ll write about kids.

One day, I was wandering through a bookstore by the seaside. It was crowded with people and it was one of those gloriously cluttered places, with teetering piles at the ends of the over-laden shelves. It was a beautiful mess. Books cuddled together on chairs and tumbled out onto the floor. It was the kind of place where you could make a discovery, not some electronic book-vending machine; not a place of credit cards and digital ghost novels. An honest-to-God bookseller's.

With a small summer-reading stack under my arm, I poked and flipped through whatever caught my eye. Turning a corner, I nearly stepped on a young boy -- maybe ten -- who knelt reverently over a gigantic, glossy tome spread open on the floor to a diagram from Star Wars. The title on the page: “Design Specifications of the Millenium Falcon.”