#important to note that these are completely unreformed thoughts

[makapatag]

tabletop role-playing games, as a medium i think, are predisposed to crafting reals, on top of it being largely an exercise of language.

i'm using "real" right now as a basic "something that is completely true thing." in a sense, role playing game design is reality-crafting.

this means that every mechanic and every word used in the game, down to the language, is a way of crafting a real wherein the players must accept that is real (within that space). the reality is the bounds of the fiction and also the major expressive influence into the player's minds. however in a very weird positivist way, what mechanics exist in a game reify what the game says is real, and what doesn't exist doesn't exactly mean something isn't real. so instead of a real/unreal dichotomy we have a real/real (in fiction)/implication(pseudo real)/unreal

so for example: a game might have Stats, Classes, and mechanics for making attack rolls. all of these are Real, and they inform the fiction (a high STR might mean your character is strong, being of a FIGHTER means you're good at fighting and you can pull off maneuvers, making attack rolls is you committing physical violence on another). So they're both real and real in fiction. the localized reality around player characters now exist and they interact with the game through these reals.

now these things might be non-diegetic (frex, a FIGHTER (CLASS) might not actually exist within the game setting, they're archetypical representations, which is something D&D 4e and D&D 5e do), but that doesn't matter: those things are now real due to game design. this means there ARE fighters in your game, even if there is only one kind of fighter that the PC is, there are still fighters.

going further, these Reals also imply something about the established game world. these are not yet the pseudo-reals: so for example, a game that has CAP Skills (skills that cap any other skills you might use while doing something within their field, such as Horseback Riding [a Riding Skill 3 might mean you can only add +3 to when you're doing Melee Combat despite your Melee Combat being at +7, etc.]) this presupposes then that someone who isn't good at Riding cannot be as effective with their martial skill despite having been skilled at martial skill for years.

is this realistic to real life? it doesn't matter: with that established within the game mechanics, that is now what's Real there. and in role-playing you must follow along the Reality crafted there. this has a number of pseudo-reals (implications) such as (cavalry are all good at horseriding, etc.) but the importance of pseudo-reals is that these are things the table (the player aspect) can interface with as they wish. those things which the player has no choice but to interface with are the highest of reals in a roleplaying game

your choice of language informs this even further. not just the fact that you choose to write it in english (tagalog, spanish, etc. expresses things and imposes different priorities when it comes to real) but the wording choice you choose. frex: having INTELLIGENCE as a Stat can be somewhat ableist. what does high INTELLIGENCE mean? aren't there different kinds of smarts, is knowledge the same? or is this an abstraction? but is it a meaningful abstraction or an abstraction brought about by historical momentum (it's what D&D used). why is INTELLIGENCE a meaningful abstraction but STRENGTH and CONSTITUTION are split? these are all arbitrary until it isn't, and you must establish a real to live in the imagined space (that is, the fiction). i'm not saying the 6 stat array is a bad thing mind you but i think it's useful to understand why you have it in there in the game. if it's just because it's the most well known stat array then that's fine i guess

finally, what reals you put into the game is inherently informed by your own worldview. it actually doesn't have to be (that's the point of creation) but commonly game designers simply inject their worldview into the games as real and recreate that real into their tabletop rpg (frex, misogynists who think its realistic for men to be stronger than women, capping women's STR stats etc.) so choosing what is real and what isn't is a matter of paradigm shifting and realizing that not all realities irl are the same (not to go into metaphysics and sociopolitical philosophy)

#waksthoughts #absolutely unhinged word vomit #about ttrpg realism and the things that influence a reality #important to note that these are completely unreformed thoughts #like this is word vomit straight from the chaos of the soul #pure vibes based writing #nothing final #no authority #just vibes #take what works and reject what doesn't

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Disciplining the Mind – North Korean style

Sun Myung Moon was in North Korea from 1946-1950.

Ron Paquette spoke to one of Moon’s sons about indoctrination: “And I said in many ways it reminds me sometimes of the communist camps, and at that point he said: ‘Yeah I know,’ he said, ‘and Father learned that when he was in prison camp,’ and I kept trying to make the point that no, no, the way we bring in people, and the way we control people is kind of like the way this goes on in North Korean prison camps, and he kept saying ‘I know.’” from “Reverend Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe” TV special (Ron Paquette speaks at 23 minutes)

Review: “When the history of North Korea is discussed, the focus is usually on the division of the peninsula, the installation of a pro-Soviet regime, and the application of communism. But Charles K. Armstrong went far beyond this approach in this work.

Armstrong went through several aspects of North Korean society, touching upon even art, to show how the government’s authority and ideology touched upon every aspect of daily life and every imaginable segment of society. To his credit, he highlights the communists’ significant overturning of traditional Korean classes, as the communists placed the peasantry on top.

A sound work free of political bias which examines what the North Koreans did between August 14, 1945 and June 25, 1950, in their attempt to revolutionize their half of the peninsula.”

The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 By Charles K. Armstrong

Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1 edition (February 19, 2004) ISBN-13: 978-0801489143

North Korea, despite a shattered economy and a populace suffering from widespread hunger, has outlived repeated forecasts of its imminent demise. Charles K. Armstrong contends that a major source of North Korea’s strength and resiliency, as well as of its flaws and shortcomings, lies in the poorly understood origins of its system of government. He examines the genesis of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) both as an important yet rarely studied example of a communist state and as part of modern Korean history.

North Korea is one of the last redoubts of “unreformed” Marxism-Leninism in the world. Yet it is not a Soviet satellite in the East European manner, nor is its government the result of a local revolution, as in Cuba and Vietnam. Instead, the DPRK represents a unique “indigenization” of Soviet Stalinism, Armstrong finds. The system that formed under the umbrella of the Soviet occupation quickly developed into a nationalist regime as programs initiated from above merged with distinctive local conditions. Armstrong’s account is based on long-classified documents captured by U.S. forces during the Korean War. This enormous archive of over 1.6 million pages provides unprecedented insight into the making of the Pyongyang regime and fuels the author’s argument that the North Korean state is likely to remain viable for some years to come.

pages 210-214

Disciplining the Mind In the North Korean surveillance regime, social discipline was ideally not something to be imposed by outside regulation and coercion. Discipline was to be internalized through self-examination and reform at the individual level, and “thought struggle“ leading to “thought unification“ at the collective level, North Korean communism shared with its counterparts in China and Vietnam, as well as (with a different ideological content) prewar militarist Japan, a strong emphasis on drawing the wayward individual into political conformity through reeducation and reform rather than physical coercion and punishment. The most dramatic example of this was the public ritual of “‘self-criticism” (cha-a pi’p’an or chagi pip’an).

Originally a Soviet technique, self-criticism was used to a much greater degree by the North Koreans and Chinese, and became well-known in the West during the Korean War as part of communist “brainwashing.” It may be that in cultures deeply influenced by neo-Confucian notions of the innate goodness and spiritual malleability of human beings, all deviants are in theory capable of being reformed through self-reflection and reeducation. Self-criticism was the public expression of this reform, through which the genuinely repentant individual could be reintegrated into the community. Its quasi-religious nature has often been noted, although the public nature of self-criticism is much more like evangelical Protestant “testimony” than Catholic confession.

What the Korean communists called “thought unity“ (sasang t’ongi’l), or what the American observers in their characteristic fashion called “totally conditioned public opinion,” was a theme the state and every social organization in North Korea constantly stressed. This stress on ideological conformity derived not only from Soviet influences, but also was clearly resonant with the relentless “thought policing” of the late colonial period, albeit with a very different political content. The North Korean regime put enormous resources into propaganda, as we have seen in the previous chapter, both to encourage support for the regime as well as to uproot subversive ideas that might aid the Americans and the South Korea agents who were suspected behind every corner. Thought had to be free of all reactionary taint and politically pure. The undisciplined mind was a thing to be feared.

Disciplining the Body One final object of discipline stressed in the North Korean literature was the human body. Immediately Following the creation of the DPRK, there was a considerable emphasis on hygiene, sports, and physical purity. The individual had a duty to perfect his physical condition in order to strengthen the society and better serve the state. In particular, there was an emphasis on large, coordinated group sporting events, the precursors of the “mass games” that would in later years be a hallmark of North Korean entertainment for visiting foreign delegations. In North Korea of the 1940s, images abounded of parades of young athletes carrying flags, group calisthenics, and public drills celebrating holidays and events of all kinds. This too had a resonance not only with the Soviet Union and other communist societies, but also prewar Japan and, further afield, the mass-mobilizing states of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

The extent to which society was portrayed as an organic unit to which the individual contributed his entire physical and spiritual being, in which “all hearts beat as one” (to use a later North Korean phrase) was probably closest to Imperial Japan. But, as John Dower has pointed out, the Japanese government chose to portray such a rigid image of national unity precisely because many feared that the masses did not share in the virtues the state espoused. The state seemed to be attempting to create a sense of unity and political cohesion in part through the active involvement of the individual in public, physical displays of bodily conformity. These would not be the “docile bodies” that Foucault refers to, but “active bodies” moving in choreographed unity, sports reflecting the indivisible purpose of the nation in all areas of politics, economics, and culture.

The well-trained individual body was a synecdoche of, and a prerequisite for, a well-functioning body politic. Both had to be disciplined, strong, and determined. The inaugural issue of Inmin ch’eyuk (People’s Physical Education) in February 1949 proclaimed that physical training “will help realize complete national unification and democratic development.” Physical education was the “firm foundation” of the people’s economic development and the defense of the Fatherland. Although there were already more than 60,000 members of 11,208 athletic groups in the North, there was still a need to “permeate physical education more broadly among the people,” to replace the antiquated Japanese physical education system, and to educate all people in the workplace, farm, and school to become good comrades. Everywhere the nation was supposed to walk in step, both literally and figuratively.

Internalizing Security After the creation of the Democratic People’s Republic in 1948, the North Korean documents show an increasing concern with external dangers to the nation and social discipline appears increasingly militarized. Although references to “reactionary elements” and “national traitors” within North Korea diminishes, criticism of reaction and national betrayal is increasingly focused on South Korea and talk of “defending the Fatherland” ( chogukk powi ) escalates. At the same time, there is a move away from the negative elimination of “bad elements” to the positive creation of “thought unity” within the party and local People’s Committees and the spiritual and physical training of individuals, all linked in turn to the defense of and integration into the state that represents the “national subject,” the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. There is, in short, an unbroken continuum from the internal discipline of the individual to the external defense of the nation.

Local counties and villages were linked to the national security/military complex through the Self-Defense Units ( chawidae ), supervised by the Procurator’s Office, which was in turn part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Self-policing institutions were a common feature of traditional Korean villages, but it was the Japanese colonial authorities who first linked these organizations effectively to the centralized police forces and the state.86 The North Korean state also drew on this system of local self-defense, but the social hierarchy was reversed: rather than being headed by the village elders, held in respect due to their age and perhaps a modicum of Confucian education, the local Self-Defense Units were run by local peasants who were generally both poor and young. In the village of Tongmyon in South P’yong’an, for example, most of the twenty Self-Defense Unit members employed in the local police substation were in their early thirties, all were poor peasants, and two were women.87

The responsibilities of the Self-Defense Units were broad, including the dissemination of state policy (including foreign policy), protection against “infiltration of reactionary elements,” and security from fire and theft.88 At the first meeting of the Tongmyon Self-Defense Unit in October 1949, the members promised to “work for the benefit and productivity of the local people,” to “expose and smash reactionaries and puppets and their helpers,” and above all to “overcome all difficulties and discipline ( hullyonhada )” themselves “for obedience to the demands of the state.”89

86. Likewise, the Japanese in Taiwan made effective use of the traditional Chinese baojia neighbohood family system of local security. See Chen, “Police and Community Control Systems,” 226.

87. RG 242, SA 2005, 4/36. “Personal History of Each Village Guard,” Tongmyon Police Sub-Station, 1949 (“top secret”)

88. RG 242, SA 2009, 8/58. Poster on responsibility and mission of Self-Defense Units, belonging to Cell Section, Kangwon Provincial Public Procurator’s Office, 4 November 1947.

89. RG 242, SA 2005, 4/36. “Record of the First Meeting of the Self-Defense Unit,” Tongmyon Police Sub-Station, 12 October 1949.

90. RG 242 contains a “handbook” on self-criticism, a translation of a 1927 Soviet document, which states that “self-criticism [ chagi pip’an ] is a method of promoting revolutionary consciousness of party members, cadres, and ordinary working-class.” RG 242, SA 2009. 7/32. Propaganda Section Chinnamp’o Korean Communist Party Committee, May 1946. Party members also circulated translations of Chinese articles on “Thought Guidance” by Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and others, indicating the mix of both Soviet and Chinese influences in postliberation North Korea. See RG 242, SA 2009, 6/73.

91. Prewar Japanese tenko (conversion) of “thought criminals” used techniques quite similar to later North Korean and Chinese “reeducation” See Mitchell, Thought Control, 127-47. As mentioned earlier, many Korean communists had themselves been objects of tenko campaigns during the colonial period.

92. For a brief description of self-criticisim in North Korea see Schramm and Riley, “Communication in the Sovietized State.” 764.

93. State Department, North Korea, 91.

94. John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 31. For an interpretation of North Korea as a “corporatist” organic state, see Bruce Cummings, “Corporatism in North Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies 3 (1983): 269-94.

95. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), 135-169.

96. RG 242, SA 2008, 10/122 Inmin Ch’eyuk 1, no. 1 (February 1949): 1.

Moon: “… you must know the knack of holding and possessing the listeners’ hearts. If there appears a crack in the man’s personality, you wedge in a chisel, and split the person apart.”

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

Politics and religion interwoven

The Resurrection of Rev Moon

#Sun Myung Moon #North Korea