fantasy, poetry and philosophy

Cleverly Ursula le Guin wrote (she has never written otherwise) that fantasy, like poetry speaks the language of the night. I really like that. Maybe in some way it could be said that fantasy and poetry belong to the night, while philosophy and science belong to the day. Enlightenment: say no more squire. However the relationship of fantasy, poetry and philosophy is much more complex. The philosopher father in Barker's novel Sacrament is an interesting, and rather scathing, comment by a fantasist on modern philosophy - what a boring and sad horrible little character that guy is, and, of course, Barker studied philosophy - but found it way way too small for his all-encompassing mind and spirit....  All my favorite sf and fantasy authors deal with highly complex philosophical and existential issues in their work, le Guin, Miéville, Banks and Stephenson, and do so in ways much more interesting and captivating than most philosophers (sorry guys) do... Of course: they feed of academic philosophy and science but they rework it  in very appealing ways. It's interesting how they refer to them, also, by for example having characters own old books, like in Embassytown, of having characters discuss them, like when Stephenson discusses Husserl in Anathem..... 

Another weird cultural fact is how the contemporary art world and the world of sf and fantasy seem to be completely separate. It seems to me that fantasy and sf aficionados, reading their weird books and playing even weirder games are quite reactionary when it comes to visual art, and vice versa that contemporary artists (and intellectuals to a large extent) seem to look down up on the fantasists as being childish and escapist, which is a serious misconception and very superficial. 

So, while I may be wrong, it seems to me that there is enormous potential in opening these cultural spheres that are all very dear to my heart: sf and fantasy, philosophy and contemporary art  to each other and create more interesting and crazy works to propel the human spirit into the next weird chapter of its insane journey through the space-time-continuum.

Gamification, playfulness, role playing games and education

Yeah, well a pretty long title. Currently I'm engaged in getting acquainted with the wondrous world of Role Playing Games. I'm really enjoying it - if nothing more comes out of it I'll have become acquainted with a great hobby - but it could also signal a host of interesting approaches and projects for education.... currently there is a discussion starting in Iceland about how university students (and secondary school students too) seem to be alienated from there studies and do not seem to be really engaged. In this interesting article by Sarah J. Mann one of the solutions to this could be more play and creativity in the schools and academia. Well.... gaming seems to be an excellent way to approach that.... In my opinion tabletop and live role-playing seem to be a far superior solution to video games...

So, gaming, philosophical debating, dancing and active research would be the order of the day in my dream school....