Ancient Rituals for a New Medium
at the Avatars97 Conference

Michael gave thanks to all the panelists including Amy Jo Kim of Naima, Johnny Wilson of Computer Gaming World and Charles Cameron of HipBone Games.

The art of community-building is very old, and the basic social dynamics that bond human beings into groups are timeless. We can study the ancient social rituals that have successfully shaped real-world communities, and apply them to the building of virtual ones.

Johnny began by painting an image in our minds of the ancient Roman games played at the Forum [shown above] where the stakes were life and death. In those days, champions met to see who was stronger on the battlefield to prove supremacy of their people, Hebrews or Philistines for example, but if it had been in modern times [he mused] Vegas odds would have been on Goliath and not on David [to chuckles from the Peanut Gallery].

Transporting us back to the days of the Old Testament, he proceeded to telling the Riddle of Samson's Wedding. The story goes, he [Samson] falls for a Philistine woman of great beauty, on his way to see her, he meets and subdues a lion. Later he proceeds to ask for, and receives, permission to marry this woman. At this time it was customary to have a riddle as part of rituals surrounding ceremonies including marriage, so Samson returns to the scene of lion-wrestling, and scoops out honey from some bees now living inside of the lion carcass, and brings the honey back for Mom and Dad without telling them the riddle yet.

The prize for winning the contest of the riddle is announced as thirty items of fine clothing for the wedding, an expensive and generous gift. On the other hand, if they could not guess the answer, the Philistines would have to provide thirty pieces of clothing out of their own pockets. This illustrated a point that Johnny asked us to remember, the consequences being stressed in ancient stories. The riddle is asked with seven days to solve until the wedding Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet. What could it be?

Not to be the last time or most famous of his betrayals by a woman, his fiancee needles Samson into revealing the answer to the riddle. Later, the day before the wedding when the riddle is asked, the leader of the Philistines offers the exact answer, What could be sweeter than honey! To which, Samson replies, If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have known how to sweeten the milk! Well, as you can guess Samson has figured out how the Philistines got the answer and gets pretty mad at his wife for cheating to allow her people to win and he goes out and kills thirty Philistines! He returns home with the dead men's clothing to pay off his debt and the next day his faithless bride was wed to the best man! [Samson continued to have poor luck with women]

Many Greek Myths have a theme of life or death hanging on the answer to a riddle. Often, upward mobility in the social classes was predicated on playing [and winning] the ancient games.

The problem with non-persistence in playing games online today, is where [he asked plaintively] do the Bragging Rights go?

Fame is fleeting in the online world. You may claim to be number one for a whole twenty minutes. He played Sole Survivor until he could be the winner, for all of ten minutes. We continue to play games that have no cultural significance. Of course in ancient times [he said as if an afterthought] they had a player problem, such as with Samson going around killing the other players and some of the non-players too! [more chuckles from the Peanut Gallery]

Downloading a game to play on a local machine by oneself, may solve a technical bandwidth problem, but creates a social one. There is no consequence to killing other players or stealing gold from newbies.

Games have social needs!

When ancient Romans went to the Forum, there are markings in the stone, the first graffiti, where citizens played games and made wagers while they waited for the Gladiators to begin.

He mentioned how you could lack physical skills yet still win at Chess or Go [a Japanese board game that teaches battle maneuvers such as surrounding the cranes in their nest].

Corporate America is only funding games online at this point [he sneered] because they have no idea, and are waiting to see if it will make money.

Gaming [online], he continued with emphasis, will continue to be a very self-centered, egotistical thing to do [some grumbles from the Peanut Gallery] until we have Game Masters who lead us in the Dragon Hunt, and return to tell tales of valor how the battle was fought and won, or if he simply succumbed to Divine Intervention, describing a warrior thumping his breast-plate lamenting Why me Lord! [ cheers from the Peanut Gallery]

Holding up an ordinary-looking white towel, she explained the significance of having a physical object to help relive the memories to better tell her story. She began by introducing herself as a nice, Jewish girl who married a nice, Korean boy and because of her traditional Hebrew faith, her sister-in-law offered to find a place for them to perform a ceremony called Mikvah which is a ritual bath that is performed once a month for women along with other times of cleansing, including right before a wedding. Combining the tradition of Hebrews and Koreans, they found a suitable Korean steam-bath in downtown Los Angeles, for the occasion, and she fondled the towel as she continued her story. She brought a prayer book to read from as part of the ritual but a little, old Korean woman kept asking them to hush and be quiet [as she clutched the towel for a virtual security blanket].

Social, public rituals mark a change of identity in the social group.

You need persistence and clarity!

She now asked if anyone from the Peanut Gallery had guessed what the curious crystal contained, and I did! It was the toasting glasses from her traditional Jewish Wedding, a part of the marriage ceremony in which the Groom steps on the toasting glasses which symbolizes many things, including the breaking of the hymen, among others. Her husband's parents had the broken glass encased in the crystal as a beautiful keepsake [and conversation piece!] for her anniversary.

The key phrase she asked us to remember

The first time you tell a story to a newcomer, you raise your own status because now you are no longer the newcomer! [applause from a delighted Peanut Gallery]

Charles began by describing ancient South American ball games in which the winning team was actually the one to be sacrificed, as they believed it was a ritual of ascension to heaven, but wished for a place to find a reliable source confirming that story. [I found something close following the links from the image of Tezcatlipoca, an Aztec God requiring a sacrificial victim who was treated with great honor].

Threat of death, he explained, is something that makes people feel more alive. Even today, in modern South America, after a devastating earthquake wiped out a large city, the people simply started building again and three days after the houses had been leveled to the ground, people were going about their business, making do and life continued as usual.

In response to previous discussions of ritual baths, marriages and riddles, he thought of two images:

• A Curtain
• A Doorstep

What happens, he explained, where people make contact and bond, is they move through a curtain. Bonding that goes on before is quantitative that is to say, you need not have met.

Dropping in an elevator 30 floors with a total stranger [which he qualified actually happened to him], on the other hand, creates an instant bond, because you faced danger together.

He quoted Victor Turner's The Ritual Process, explaining when you get to a threshold you are at a special place called Lema in Latin.

Lemanality: is the Thresholdness so-to-speak.

The Leman is a place between Yes and No. Really, between the pairing of anything.

The story of the Nossing Avatar

At dusk, the half-lion, half-man Nossing Avatar waited for the King to step on the threshold and pounced on the King and tore him apart in the Leman.

We have to find a way to bring people together in some way other than cramming them into an elevator made by Plunger [a good laugh from the Peanut Gallery].

Michael proposed a rhetorical question for us to ponder [are you pondering what I'm pondering Pinky?] about how people like the Amish, have reacted to twentieth-century encroachment on their ways and how people of the Philippine Islands have survived [culturally] through European conquerors. Extending the analogy, how will we survive with no notion of Euclidean space in Cyberspace? No more commute, no more days of travel to reach the nearest watering hole.

It is necessary to figure out what works works in communities that exist, and use that formula in Cyberspace for virtual communities.

He gave us an example, people define boundaries of community, such as how much you need to make. Most communities have a common mythology about creation.

There are two Archetypes he defined for us:

• Watering Hole: where we go to tell stories and be seen, also to gain sustenance.
• Campfire: speaking metaphorically, sitting around a ring of light and telling stories generation to generation, reflecting history.

As young children hear the stories, they get to reflect on their own identity. TV, on the other hand, pumps myths and stories at us, but we don't get to respond with how it affects who we are. An Online community would allow that, but what he sees is a Cyberspace with brilliantly executed online worlds such as Onlive here you have some of the most breathtaking avatars, beautifully drawn, actual lip-synching and sound to create a realistic environment, fun, community-based, but the people popping in and out of these spaces have nothing to say! [fervent nods of agreement from the Peanut Gallery and Panel alike]

With that bold statement, Michael invited the Panelists to respond to his question, Can we manufacture symbol and myth?

Johnny responded he believes the archetypes are there, but in terms of Cyberspace, using an example of a Utopia-type world with moon stones to teleport, what if you had to learn a ritual to do that? There needs to be an advantage to learning the ritual.

Real world myths that stick around, open up a truth, they have some impact on the Universe. Can we artificially create a myth, he queried? Yes, but it needs to give something in return. Unlike a Neverworld, where the myth just goes on and on, but doesn't help you play the game.

Amy added that she loved the Passover as a little girl and gave three points to consider:

• It tells a story that provides guidance in how to live our lives.
• The Exodus from Egypt teaches until all our people are freed, we are all slaves.
• Rituals themselves, embody culture.

Encouraging the young children to ask engaging questions as part of the Passover ritual, is part of their culture. Amy asked us to think about what values you want to teach, and that will make the ritual meaningful.

A European gentleman from the Peanut Gallery argued that the Exodus from Nazi oppression during World War II, coming to America to escape persecution was in itself, a myth. Now, he perceives it to be starting the myth all over again [I think he meant claiming that Cyberspace is a place for hand-holding, love-one-another community spirit, but I'm filling in a space at the end of his response that sort-of trailed off inconclusively].

Michael responded that by providing good myth-forms, we can provide a scaffolding with which to build in Cyberspace.

Amy quoted the Darwinian viewpoint, that is to say communities that last, are the ones that hold myths and rituals.

Johnny made two definitions:

• Demythification: as losing the bonds and shackles.
• Remythification: would be writing our own stories, rebuilding for our own time and culture.

Michael gave his own analogy, when he passes through any curtain, he brings along his own personal myth. He knows other people do too, because he logged onto a game called Meridian, and some guy claimed to have been playing since October of 95, which is a good trick since they didn't go online until December of 95!!

Misty West in the Peanut Gallery [Conference Manager from Miller Freeman], mentioned the Frontier Mentality, in which there is a perceived desire to build this medium to overcome myths, but it never works, you just get another Pioneer. If you look at myths as just organized principles, then you could call them shackles. She later mentioned [but added here to continue flow of discussion] that she disagreed with the idea that we are building from nothing. After all, what about the creation myth of the Internet itself, many people believe it was born from a Usenet web created by and for the military DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency].

Johnny countered that if you ask most communities for a creation myth, the best you can get is a good rendition from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "We are the Knights of Nee!" [to great howls of amusement from the Peanut Gallery].

Michael cautioned it is a perilous task to create these myths.

Amy concluded by quoting Randy Farmer, who said not everyone is going to create and we don't know who is going to create!

Storytelling and objects, myths hold the archetypal seeds we can plant in Cyberspace.

Thanks and praise to our panel for planting the seeds of thought for us to nurture in the vast, unexplored regions of our own imagination!