Art, Play & Ritual

Here's an interesting quote from Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. "Art, play and ritual probably occupy more time and energy in most cultures than work. While these activities may serve other purposes as well, the fact that they provide enjoyment is the main reason they have survived."

Later, in the same chapter, "One of the most ironic paradoxes of our time is this great availability of leisure that somehow fails to be translated into enjoyment. ..... Opportunites alone, however, are not enough.We also need the skills to make use of them. And we need to know how to control conciousness - a skill that most people have not learned to cultivate."

That touches on an element of Tuscan River that has not been discussed much as of yet - our desire to make the Tuscan River one that enriches Guests' lives on a level that contributes to long lasting enjoyment - an not simply momentary pleasures. Personal enrichment will be a feature of the entertainment parks.

The Arpiann Confederation

I was asked some questions about the Arpiann Confederation the other day. The Arpiann, aka the bad guys, are collectively the antagonist in the Portal to the Edge of Time story. Below is one part of my response.

"The Arpiann are the result of a mistake. A single Arpiann was created with the intent that the creature be an obstacle to be overcome during a portal race. Whether it was created as a living flesh and blood creature, or some kind of robot isn't explained in the book, but my thought was that it was created flesh and blood as part of a fabricated reality." (Tuscan River people fabricate realities and alternate dimensions all the time there was a great program on the Science Channel the other night - Traveling to a Parallel Universe Sci Fi Science - http://science.discovery.com/videos/sci-fi-science-videos/)

"The Arpiann is gender neutral and incapable of producing offspring. The Arpiann creature took its mission to stop portal racers too far. It was supposed to simply capture a careless portal racer and return them to Tuscan River, disqualifying them from finishing that particular race. The Arpiann, understanding its mission as to stop portal racers, grew frustrated that the racers it captured would return to race again, and that it would end up catching the same racers over and over again. It deduced that if it locked them up some place instead of returning them to Tuscan River it would be serving its programming more effectively. That’s when the trouble began. The good people of Tuscan River, realizing their racers were not be returned followed the Arpiann to the world it now created for purposes of imprisoning captives (The Arpiann was given portal technology to facilitate its role in the portal race, which meant it too could create new realities). All the captives were freed once unattended by the Arpiann, who went off to capture more racers. This frustrated the Arpiann even more, and it now determined it had to end portal racing on Tuscan River forever, and prevent portal racing from ever taking hold in other parts of the universe. It realized that this job was too big for one creature – so using the time displacement feature of the portal technology it created many, many copies (billions and billions??) of itself. For example, if two Arpiann were seen side by side, what you really are seeing is the same Arpiann at two different points in the timeline of its existence. They may be a mere five minutes apart in age, or maybe as much as 5,000 years apart. (or maybe 5 billion years?)"

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I'm enjoying a great book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow has some great insights into what makes for the enjoyable and rewarding times in our life. The book examines the process for achieving happiness through control over one's inner world. Not surprisingly adventure plays a role in creating happiness. Although Csikszentmihalyi does not (at least so far in the book) explicity use the work adventure, he observes that by accomplishing meaningful challenges, whether primarily physical, mental or social, we achieve states where we are both focused and happily engaged. I hope that in building Tuscan River we succeed in creating an environment that provides meaningful adventures with the Parks and inspires people to take on desired challenges outside those properties.