Absolutely love, love love Sense8!!!
And again for the Whovians out there, it’s got Martha Jones in it 
(Well, Freema Agyeman)
2 Likes
Love Sense 8 too - one of my favourite TV programs - and the Wachowski sisters
Fallout 4. Immersive game, puts me in touch with the impending sense of apocalypse 
Man, I grew up with those Fallout games. Ever play the original Wasteland, which birthed the Fallout universe? I used to rock that game on my Commodore 64
Fallout 2 is my favorite old-school game. New Vegas is the closest I’ve seen to that aesthetic and humor. Both 3 and 4 are awesome. I could not get into Fallout 76, however.
You better get back to the game, I think Preston has another settlement he needs you to save.
1 Like
Longmire is an interesting meeting of “old school” sherrif with new challenges.
I loved New Vegas. I visited the real Las Vegas for the first time about a decade or more ago, and even though Fallout New Vegas was far from an accurate representation, I enjoyed the immersion into the spirit of the place that I found nostalgic somehow.
I’ve just gained entry to The Institute… was dreading the assembly of the signal interceptor, but it turned out to be a piece of cake in the end. 
I absolutely LOVE video games that take place in places I am familiar with. Fallout 4 is awesome, because I grew up in Massachusetts and went to college in Boston, and it was exhilarating seeing so much of that represented in the game. It’s one of the reasons Horizon: Zero Dawn became one of my all time favorite games — because much of it is set in Colorado, and has many well-known landmarks in the game, such as Red Rocks amphitheater, Denver stadium, Pike’s Peak, the Airforce Academy Chapel, etc. Makes the game so much more immersive by using real-life landmarks, and then forcing you to reimagine them hundreds or even thousands of years in the future. It creates a certain haunting existential pain that I find very appealing, as it forces you to imagine a world that has completely moved on without you, while simultaneously healing that existential pain by allowing you to re-insert your agency into that post-you world by inhabiting one its residents.
1 Like
Yes, I heard that Fallout 4 is based in a post-apocalyptic Boston. Would love to visit to see how it compares. It certainly adds special significance when you are familiar with a city in which a game takes place. I’m familiar with Prague, and Deus Ex - Mankind Divided especially resonated with me. It’s amazing how these games are often able to capture the atmosphere of their locations… for example, the apartments, the buildings, the scenery, the accents and the language.
Another thing about Fallout New Vegas. I love playing it in German. It shifts your sphere of possibility to try to imagine what America might have been like had German become the national language. The character of the game changes completely with change of language. I’m thinking of switching F4 to German, now that I’ve accessed the Institute, and become familiar with the game’s operations.
Games are a great way to learn a language (that was my initial motivation for New Vegas, to learn German). If someone comes up with an an app that translates the subtitles, that would be an immensely useful aid to learning. Pausing to switch between game and dictionary gets old very quickly, but as you become more familiar with the language, the less you need to do that (obviously).
The Metro games (based, loosely, in Russian locales) also have a ton-load of atmosphere, complete with Russian accents and attitude.
Oh, nearly forgot… and who can forget the half-life series? Like a first love, it leaves a lasting impression. Half-life 2 was especially resonant because it captured the atmosphere of the communist Europe that my parents took me to visit as a youngster. Even today, in Budapest, you hear the same police and ambulance sirens. I suspect that much of the mood of the game takes its inspiration from soviet-communist European influences. The media, the propaganda. “Don’t talk to me, we are being watched” “Stay on your guard” Spooky.
I’m interested in Dune and Matrix 4 but generally I don’t enjoy TV or Movies anymore. At least the new releases. I think the “craft” of telling a good story on the big and small screen has deteriorated dramatically. I’d rather watch an old movie a 15th time than newer releases.
For games I prefer the more fantasy oriented. Elder Scrolls has a nice mostly original world. Probably my favorite game of all time is Conan Exiles. It’s a game people can set up private servers and make whatever rules the community wants. It’s also has an extreme brutality you’d expect from a Conan game, and that brutality can be upped with third party mods. I spent a lot of 2018 and 2019 co-creating dark storylines on several servers.
But one thing I really dislike is the trend nowadays to increase what we call the “grind” factor of games. I just can’t be bothered now to spend hour after hour “grinding” for materials or gear.
So lately I’ve been getting back into Tabletop RPG, but replacing the actual table with a Virtual Tabletop and Discord, and enjoy co-creating a story with others.
For those of us who enjoy gaming, have you checked out the episode of Inhabit I did with Ryan Oelke, which uses a series of about 3 dozen different games to explore the major stages of development? If not, you might enjoy!
One thing I find interesting about Games and Fantasy or Sci-Fi settings:
They used to be pretty idealistic compared to modern versions.
Looking at games, most are very dark and gritty and the avatar is usually an antihero rather than a hero. This is the direct opposite of fantasy settings like Tolkien where Good and Evil were clearly delineated and there was no gray area. Even in the 1990’s you found more games with Heroes than antiheroes. Maybe the really big shift came with “The Horde” in World of Warcraft, when Orcs were no longer evil - just in different circumstances. I also remember a fun game called “Dungeon Keeper” released at the turn of the century where the player made evil dungeons and stocked them with evil creatures and prepared for the “Heroes”. You won if the Heroes died.
The most popular games usually have very dark settings where you as a player do some things that are pretty questionable on the “good” scale. The moral seems to be “the end justifies the means” and players often use some pretty shady means to overcome the ultimate BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy).
What the hell does “cultural enfoldment” and “re-cohere” mean to you Corey? Are we suppose to come up with our own subjective understanding of what that means? And in my eyes, dissonance is putting it mildly.
Aside from the above, the question arises: for those who have reached higher stages of spiritual and psychological development, do they find the industrial entertainment complex a rich source of narratives that are meaningful, thought provoking, and transformational hence worthy of the evolution of humanity? Why does the vast majority of people take pleasure in all manner of movies that depict wars, violence, rapes, corruption, fatal romances, stupidity and ignorance? It is as if the masses are addicted to stories with no social redeeming value. It’s like junk food. I ask these question because of what Erich Fromm said
"What was the function of the Greek drama? Fundamental problems of human existence were presented in an artistic and dramatic form, and participating in the dramatic performance, the spectator—though not as a spectator in our modern sense of the consumer—was carried away from the sphere of daily routine and brought in touch with himself as a human being, with the roots of his existence. He touched the ground with his feet, and in this process gained strength by which he was brought back to himself. Whether we think of the Greek drama, the medieval passion play, or an Indian dance, whether we think of Hindu, Jewish or Christian religious rituals, we are dealing with various forms of dramatization of the fundamental problems of human existence, with an acting out of the very same problems which are thought out in philosophy and theology".
For the the vast majority of people who will not sit and read what Dr. Fromm and other deep thinkers about the many ways we are fucking things up royally and how to stop it, all you can do is tell them stories that point in the direction of transformation. I mean, is it possible to have stories with “nutritious knowledge” that can fortify people to think more critically about themselves and stop being such a dick towards each other? When will we realize that the entertainment industry does not give two shits about the future of humanity. All they want is to make money and the only way to do it is to make movies that appeal to our imagination, irrational emotions, ignorance, and the level of emotional intelligence of the masses that continues its course towards madness. In the 60’s, Huston Smith asked Fromm this question:
Do you think that the American society is a realistic society?
Fromm: Indeed. I don’t think that at all. I think we are probably one of the most unrealistic societies which have ever lived under the sun
The most unrealistic I’ve experience besides two political parties who are all fucking idiots, is the entertainment industry that churns out stories 24/7 that keeps us distracted from realizing the truth about the world we live in and how we are all perpetuating the madness. Stories can have a powerful effect on the human mind -provided it has relevance, meaning, and the insight needed to remind ourselves of our humanity and that we still have much more to learn about what it means to be human.
To me, the vast majority of films of today are retrograde, distracting, depressing, demoralizing, and addictive. It’s not like the industry is interested in the most brilliant minds in philosophy, psychology, and sociology to help them create stories that are truly transformational. Hell no.
1 Like
Cultural enfoldment = folding each other’s perspectives into our own. Often “shared cultural experiences” helps facilitate this
Re-cohere = restore a basic sense of “coherence” within the community by remembering that, while we may have some fairly different views of the world, we are all here for essentially the same reasons
As for your other questions, I personally find that the integral framework helps increase my enjoyment and appreciation of “earlier-stage” cultural products, because all of these stages are to some degree still alive within us. We cover some of this in our “Learn Integral By Watching Movies” episode, here:
Corey and Ryan take you on a cinematic journey through the stages of human development, using a series of 21 carefully-curated film clips to illustrate some of the most important qualities of each stage.
Why film clips? Simple — it’s fun! Plus, these clips are from some of the most popular films from the last 80 years, commonly-shared reference points that most of us are already familiar with. This gives us the opportunity to put together one of the most accessible, friendly, and entertaining ways to introduce these important ideas to newcomers.
And for those who are already familiar with integral thought and practice, this discussion will still be fascinating, fun, and occasionally moving, while also helping you more deeply contemplate the important difference between enjoying integral art and enjoying art integrally .
And as you watch, try to remember: all of this is actually happening inside of you. You may be viewing these film clips on a screen in front of you, but the stages we explore here are all alive within you right now, either as capacities you’ve already developed or as potentials that are waiting to be unleashed.
The Witness itself is the ultimate movie screen — the effortless, simple feeling of being behind all of our perceptions. All of this is just a fleeting dance of light, sound, and shadow projected within your consciousness against that empty, all-pervasive awareness.
So grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy this very special tour of your own inner theatre.
1 Like
I like trains and was drawn in to The Railway Man w Collin Firth & Nicole Kidman last night. Not what I expected. Amazing Wake Up, Clean Up’er of a transformational watch.
I think it would be fascinating to do more work like this examining archetypal themes in other popular games:
I thought of a similar analysis of archetypes interacting with plot in the 1981 movie “Excalibur” but haven’t written it down, lol.
1 Like
You missed my point entirely…
Perhaps some day you and Ryan will give your take on the film Network
which drives home exactly how I feel about the present film, television, sports, and game industry. If you find the excerpt below disturbing because you see it actually happening in 2021, good. And so, what are we going to do about it? What is the integral answer to this madness that we have become addicted to?
We talk specifically about Network at the 47:10 mark in the video I linked above
Sorry if I missed your point. I was trying to respond to your question:
for those who have reached higher stages of spiritual and psychological development, do they find the industrial entertainment complex a rich source of narratives that are meaningful, thought provoking, and transformational hence worthy of the evolution of humanity? Why does the vast majority of people take pleasure in all manner of movies that depict wars, violence, rapes, corruption, fatal romances, stupidity and ignorance?
My answer is basically yes, I myself do continue to find the “industrial entertainment complex” to be a rich source of narratives, even if those narratives are themselves expressions of previous stages of being and becoming. As to why people watch films with war, violence, rape, corruption, etc., I think I tried to answer that as well – because the stages that produce those qualities are, in some way, still within us. They are certainly still among us, in terms of the larger human family. Plus, I don’t think these films are typically ABOUT these painful realities, as much as they are about overcoming these sorts of conflicts, and finding some sense of stage-appropriate meaning in response to them.
It is considerably harder to find integral-stage cultural artifacts that are totally fulfilling for people who are themselves at integral stages (beyond integrating previous stages), but they are out there, and Ryan try to identify a few of them ourselves in that episode.
Plus, I think there is tremendous value in allowing ourselves to set filters like these aside, and simply have fun with some of these films. Conan the Barbarian or Mad Max: Fury Road does not satisfy my integral 2nd-tier longing for meaning and sense-making. But I will still watch those movies any time they are on, simply because they are well-done and so much fun.
1 Like
And then, of course, there are the multiple states of consciousness that these films evoke, which in many ways are more immediate and more universal than whatever meanings are also coming through the film. Whether these are emotional states such as fear, awe, inspiration, disgust, humor, etc., or whether those are spiritual states of consciousness (which are obviously much more rare, and yet sometimes some of our favorite films are carrying a spiritual transmission that the creator never actually intended in the first place), all of these remain vital parts of the tapestry of our daily lives, regardless of how “highly developed” we might be. And so of course we select art that is capable of evoking and sometimes even transforming these states.
1 Like
Another episode that explores some of these themes:
The Art of Conscious Recreation
In this episode, Corey deVos and Ryan Oelke explore how to more fully inhabit our art and entertainment. We tend to think of “recreation” as a passive activity, but we actually share an active symbiotic relationship with our art and entertainment, both personally and culturally. We create art, which in turn re-creates us. We are constantly taking in the symbolism and themes and ideas from our surrounding cultural artifacts and reconstructing them as reference points for our own thinking, which then shapes the way we interpret and make sense of the world, whether consciously or unconsciously.
We are re-creating ourselves time and time again every time we engage with our favorite films, music, books, television shows, etc. The goal here is to escape the cynically critical inertias of a culture that tends to define its tastes in negative space, and find a way to bring this ongoing cycle of re-creation into consciousness as much as we can — the art of conscious recreation.
After all, who among us doesn’t have both an inner Tiger King and an inner Ted Lasso living somewhere inside us?
Art is not inert, and our enjoyment of art is anything but passive. We have a deeply psychoactive relationship with our art and entertainment, often revealing territories within us that we never knew were there, and these psychoactive qualities largely depend on the kosmic address of both the artist and the observer. In this episode we hope to make some of these psychoactive properties a bit more noticeable, and demonstrate how integral perspectives can radically increase our enjoyment and appreciation of art and culture. It’s not just about enjoying integral art, but enjoying art integrally.
Topics include:
0:00 — The Art of Conscious Recreation
21:39 — Why Are We Talking About Entertainment?
29:31 — Grace and Grit: An Integral Appreciation
44:52 — Integral Art vs. Enacting Art Integrally
49:23 — The Spiritual Awakening of Nine Inch Nails
1:01:22 — Cutting Through Cynicism: Ted Lasso, Life Coach
1:05:50 — Looking Forward
Thanks for taking the time to share your Integral perspective at length on this subject, Corey.