Escaping the Positivity Trap

There's an ongoing debate on the subject of positive thinking, which seems to have been raging for years. On one side is the camp which - broadly speaking - suggests that one can fix any multitude of problems in one's life if one changes one's outlook; the other, that such a position is naive at best, and tends towards a kind of victim-blaming narrative.

Both sides of the argument are, as always, not entirely wrong, nor entirely right. My personal feeling is that the truth of the matter lies somewhere in the synthesis of the two; in this post, I would like to hash out a few of my thoughts on the matter.

The pro-positivity crowd offer numerous solutions to life's problems, which on the surface seem to be mostly about thinking happy thoughts. The likes of Oprah relentlessly promote this strategy - that one can fix all, or almost all of one's problems simply by changing one's outlook. These can come in many guises - ranging from from daily affirmations, encouragement to smile, re-framing one's life experiences, meditation, and the ever popular "cutting negative people out of your life".

Glurgemonger-in-Chief  Doreen Virtue, to nobody's surprise, offers "Daily Guidance From Your Angels"; the equally crap-saccharine Louise Hay, of You Can Heal Your Life fame, has similar "Power Thoughts"; as does, inevitably, Deepak Chopra, the only man in existence who seems to understand less about Quantum Physics than Peter Carroll.

If you read any of the above and felt a sense of general revulsion trickling down your spine, you're not alone. One has to wonder if the advice is meant as a cure for depression, or merely to sooth the minds of those suffering from what Freud called "common unhappiness". Ask anyone who has ever suffered from clinical depression, and you'll quickly find out that these kinds of positive encouragements are worse than useless; indeed, they are often listed as being some of the worst things that can be said to a depressed person. Not only do those spouting such positivity seem to completely misunderstand the nature of depression - which is perhaps thought of less as sadness, more a profound feeling of meaninglessness and futility - but by giving such pieces of advice, even well-meaningfully, there is a tendency to shift the blame for one's circumstances onto the individual.

Even if one was to argue that psychological factors are the primary cause of depression (they aren't), the demographics of mental illness point towards extrinsic social factors as being a contributing cause. Even for those not suffering from depression, it is no great leap of logic to suggest that being part of a disadvantaged population is likely to reduce one's opportunities in life, and cause a greater exposure to stressful factors. For ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, women, the economically disadvantaged, and those on the LGBT spectrum, the simple fact is that the oppressive structures of society as it exists today are ones which act externally. No amount of positive thinking is going to change the pay gap between men and women, for example; no amount of smiling is going to prevent the trauma caused by governmental persecution of the most vulnerable (CW: sexual assault).

For this reason, there has been a great amount of backlash against the positivity movement, much of it justified. It could even be said that positivity is for "Rich White People" - a soothing balm for the worried well, who are not harmed by structural inequalities.

But that's not the whole of the story. As much as we rail against the cult of optimism, there are some small grains of truth at the root of all the mindless positivity; indeed, it clearly works for some people, one way or another. As much as it is argued that, as in the joke about the anarchist and the lightbulb, it's the whole damn system that needs changing more than the individual, if it works, then it's useful.

Let's take a two common examples of Positivity Advice and dissect them a little:

Happy Yoga - Mindfulness and Postural Feedback

Often touted as the psychological panacea that society needs, mindfulness is a form of meditation that involves deliberately moving one's attention away from one's thoughts, generally focusing on bodily sensations or on breathing. There's a lot that can be written about the effectiveness of meditative techniques for psychological and personal development, which I shall save for another post. The most crucial thing to note here is these techniques are, at least until one is very well practiced in them, merely a "pause button", most effective at helping reduce the feeling of being overcrowded by thoughts. Similar claims are often made about the efficacy of yoga.

The old phrase about it taking less muscles to smile than to frown is, whilst technically accurate, entirely unhelpful (and misses out the fact that it takes even fewer muscles to flip the middle finger at anyone who thinks that this qualifies as advice). However, it keeps getting repeated within positivity circles, often with some kind of scientific studies backing it up. The science behind this one is a bit sketchy at best - the theory dates back to Riskind and Goatey's 1982 study on posture having a regulatory effect on emotional feedback, and Laird's 1974 study on facial feedback, which I can't find a non-pay-walled link to. 

The idea of there being a biofeedback mechanism related to posture or facial expression is reasonable enough in itself - if only due to the psychological associations that one inevitably develops with any given posture. Practitioners of yoga and certain esoteric traditions will recognize this as old wisdom; couched in terms of energy meridians or chakras is the general sense of a biointelligence which mediates between body and mental states. This could all be seen as supportive of "Smile Therapy", were it not for the fact that facial expressions are not culturally universal. In essence, it seems to boil down to determining what postures have specific resonances for you - and if any such postures do aid in bestowing a specific mood, using those. As always, experimentation and observation are key.

Arguably, this all ties into the many strange and hard-to-explain observations around the placebo effect, but that is a matter for another post. 

Incidentally, I'll here plug Steve Wilson's excellent Chaos Ritual, sadly out of print and difficult to get ahold of, for having one of the most interesting deconstructions of the mind-body-neurology link when it comes to posture.

Positive Visualizations and the Law of Attraction

So, here's the big one. As a random aside, I've been reading David Allen's Getting Things Done this week (don't judge me), and I had a sudden insight into why Rhonda Byrne's The Secret and its numerous tie-ins got things wrong. Aside from the Chopra-level quantum woo, obviously. Allow me to save you a few pounds and reveal the Ancient Secret of the Secret Masters of Secretness:

Thinking about things gets you things.

Specifically, imagining a positive outcome, gets you that outcome.

Now, it is pretty clear that this is utter rubbish. If it were true, I wouldn't be writing this blog, because I'd be too busy lying on my poolside recliner in the blazing sunshine, being served cocktails by a selection of nubile personages of various genders as I gaze lovingly at my enormous, Scrooge McDuck-worthy pile of cash. But, as with so many things of this nature, it does contain a grain of truth.

A simple explanation is that by visualizing specific outcomes, you prime the part of your brain that acts as a perceptual filter - the reticular activating system, or RAS - to focus on information that you would not have consciously perceived. Like all simple explanations, it's not entirely true - the neurology is a lot more complicated than that; the RAS certainly has a significant role in the routing of sensory stimuli, alertness, and habituation (the process by which the brain trains itself to stop noticing background stimuli), but it isn't the all-powerful mental filtration system that some make it out to be. Nonetheless, it can easily enough be observed that there is some kind of perceptual filter which determines what the conscious mind becomes aware of. On some level, whether this is a neurological or psychological filter is irrelevant; the function can be considered to be the same regardless of the origin.

There's a good amount of evidence that suggests that these perceptual filters can be primed by expectation, as well as by thoughts, beliefs, and mood. The totality of these filters makes up what Robert Anton Wilson referred to as the "Reality Tunnel". The theory then follows that if one sets up the right positive attitude and visualisations, then one is more likely to notice opportunities and the like which can lead to the occurrence of the desired outcome.

And yet, what is missed so often here is that the visualisation is only the first step - it must be matched by action. This is seemingly obvious, but is easily missed in the flurry of positivity. No matter the strength of one's affirmations, they will remain mere words unless they are acted upon. This is the Positivity Trap, the new Opium of the Masses: the idea that merely changing your thinking but acting the same will magically lead to some great change. This is one possible cause behind the observation that positive fantasies predict poor achievement - if one buys deeply into one's visualization to the extent that one believes it to be inevitable, regardless of actions taken or not taken, then one is probably in for an unpleasant surprise.

So, what then?

I'm not going to say that you should simply chuck positivity. There are some useful tools to be found buried in the woo-mines. As always, the trick is to use them critically. Positive thinking for the sake of positive thinking is an exercise in intellectual masturbation: and, more to the point, it isn't the opposite to negative thinking. There is no forced duality - after all, most negative thoughts do have a kernel of truth to them, but so do most positive ones.

One should not attempt to annihilate all negativity with positive thoughts - this is the swift way into the Positivity Trap. Having the vision of a positive outcome is useful - it allows one to gain a certain degree of clarity, by which to direct one's actions. But this must be tempered by a degree of realism, and, of course, backed up with action - whether on a physical, or a psychological plane.

The Book of Jugs: Behavioural Conditioning For Fun and Prophet

Content warning: discussion of techniques (towards the end) which could be classified as deliberate self-harm

What do drugs, World of Warcraft, speeding tickets, Facebook, and Aleister Crowley have in common?

No, whilst "things the Daily Mail disapproves of" is technically correct, it's not the one I was looking for...

Here's a clue:

 

Operant conditioning (hereby referred to as OC) is a particularly interesting bit of psychology, which emerged from the works of noted pigeon-weaponiser, saxophonist, and Chomsky-baiter B.F. Skinner. It can be distinguished from classical (Pavlovian) conditioning in two ways: firstly, because it describes the ways in which a single pattern of behavior can be altered in isolation, whilst the later describes the way in which a stimulus, not a behaviour, is associated with a consequence; and secondly, because it's more about pigeons than dogs.

OC makes a number of assumptions about animal (and, indeed, human) behaviour which may or may not be accurate: the main one is around the ultimately mechanistic origin of many behaviours. However, ignoring some of the somewhat spurious logical-positivist offshoots of Skinner's works, and the consequent endless arguments over free will, it becomes relatively clear that - at least in a subset of cases - OC can work. Adopting a certain amount of theory-agnosticism, I will focus on the effects and uses of OC, rather than whether the underlying assumptions are strictly true.

The mechanisms by which behaviour is changed can be broken into three main categories: Reinforcement, Punishment, and Extinction. The first two are then broken down again into Positive and Negative subcategories. Reinforcement is considered to increase the likelihood of a behaviour; punishment to decrease it. Positive interventions involve adding something - pleasant or unpleasant - whereas negative interventions are considered to be removing something. Extinction, on the other hand, refers to the process which occurs when a behaviour which previously was reinforced or punished no longer becomes associated with any such outcome, or where the outcome becomes sufficiently disconnected from the behaviour.

For example:

• Positive Reinforcement: I go to the gym. I reward myself with coffee. I go to the gym more.
• Negative Reinforcement: I pay off my debts to the mob. I don't get my kneecaps broken. I pay off my debts quicker.
• Positive Punishment: I drink too much. I get a hang over. I drink less.
• Negative Punishment: I have a cigarette. I put a pound in the Quitting Jar, the contents of which will be donated to Westboro Baptist Church. I smoke less.
• Extinction: I go to work, hoping to be paid. I don't get paid. Eventually, I stop going to work.

There is a certain amount of cross-over between reinforcement and punishment, depending on how any given example is worded; for example, I could consider having my knees broken a positive punishment for not paying off my gambling debts, rather than it being a negative reinforcer. The difference is somewhat academic - it boils down to three simple premises, that:

Pleasant outcomes encourage a behaviour

Unpleasant outcomes discourage a behaviour

Unexpectedly pleasant or unpleasant outcomes reduce the degree of encouragement or discouragement.

Numerous factors influence the effectiveness of reinforcements. Humans are pretty terrible at making long-term cost-benefit analyses, so more immediate consequences are generally far more effective than delayed ones, for example; likewise, more extreme consequences generally are more effective than less extreme ones.

There are two interesting observations which spiral off Skinner's research, and which are somewhat intertwined. First, consider the problem of contingency: when a consequence occurs consistently following a behaviour, the behaviour is quickly modified, but should the consequence later become inconsistent, only occurring following a proportion of instances of the behaviour, it will soon become extinguished. Conversely, if a behaviour only triggers a given consequence on occasion, it takes longer for the behaviour to become learned, but likewise takes longer for that behaviour to be extinguished should the stimulus stop.

One good example of this process in action can be found in road speed cameras. It is well known that many static speed cameras across the UK are "empty" boxes, with some areas only having 10% of their cameras actually active at any one time. Whilst there are numerous economic and logistic reasons behind this, it could also be argued to be a subtle method of maintaining the non-speeding behaviour of motorists. Were every camera to be normally active 100% of the time, extinction would kick in relatively quickly upon encountering a camera that had malfunctioned or been taken down for servicing. However, if only a certain, random number of cameras were ever active at a given time, it would take far longer for the extinction of non-speeding - as one would never know if a camera would activate the next time one sped through it, and would thus have to keep on one's toes, so to speak.

The second related phenomena is what emerges when a subject is rewarded and punished with zero contingency; that is to say, on an entirely random basis. Skinner demonstrated that pigeons that were randomly given food pellets quickly developed complex behavioral patterns (pecking, spinning, neck turning, and other such pigeoning things), presumably in an attempt to replicate the conditions in which the food was released.

Admittedly, research subsequent to Skinner does cast some doubt on the validity of this observation - but we may consider it, true or not, to be an interesting and potentially useful explanation for a wide variety of behaviours. The ever-fascinating Derren Brown explored this effect with humans on Trick or Treat in 2008, and showed similar effects, albeit in a much less controlled fashion. One could consider this effect to be closely linked to such things as magical thinking and apophenia.

Turning to matters more esoteric, I now want to look at one of the lesser known and more interesting texts by pioneering mountaineer and scatological poet Aleister Crowley. Specifically, Liber III vel Jugorum (CN - discussion and photographs related to self-harm, albeit not in the context of psychological distress, and allusions to animal cruelty. Contains Crowley.). 

Stripping out the usual incomprehensibilities and allusions to Higher Secrets (which, inevitably for Crowley, are all about sex), this text describes methods of gaining a degree of control and discipline over speech, action, and thought, using techniques that would be best described as positive punishment. A particular pattern of speech, action, or thought, is to be designated as taboo for a week or more, and all breaches of this taboo are to be punished by the aspirant. Crowley suggests using a razor to make a cut upon one's arm or wrist every time such a taboo is broken, and that one should record the number of breaches by the number of cuts.

These taboos are - intentionally - entirely arbitrary. Some examples, taken directly from Liber III, are given here:

• Avoid using some common word, such as "and" or "the" or "but"; use a paraphrase.
• Avoid using some letter of the alphabet, such as "t", or "s". or "m"; use a paraphrase.
• Avoid using the pronouns and adjectives of the first person; use a paraphrase.
• Avoiding lifting the left arm above the waist.
• Avoid crossing the legs.
• Avoid thinking of a definite subject and all things connected with it, and let that subject be one which commonly occupies much of thy thought, being frequently stimulated by sense-perceptions or the conversation of others.
• By some device, such as the changing of thy ring from one finger to another, create in thyself two personalities, the thoughts of one being within entirely different limits from that of the other, the common ground being the necessities of life

The aim here is not to change one's behaviour permanently; rather, it is to develop a certain awareness of one's thoughts, speech, and actions, and the discipline both to suppress such behaviours, and to punish oneself when one breaches the taboos. For Crowley, such a degree of awareness and control was considered central to all forms of magick; along with yoga, the practices here were a major pillar of his magickal system, the order known as the A.'.A.'. (commonly, though incorrectly, said to stand for "Argentium Astrum" or "Arcanum Arcanorum").

The methodology is interesting, though personally I wouldn't use a razor for the self-punishment aspect. A common suggestion is to use a thick rubber band around the wrist, which can be snapped back sharply; some Thelemites of my acquaintance swear by the electric-shock device known as the Pavlok. The exact method doesn't really matter - the stimulus is the important part.

I've experimented a couple of times with this system, using the rubber-band technique, and from my own observations, it is quite an eye-opener. One tends to initially miss a lot of taboo-breaches; over time, these become more noticeable, but equally one becomes more adept at avoiding the taboo and working around it. Eventually, it almost becomes natural; in a way, it follows the competence curve from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, though this fades a few days after completing the exercise due to the extinguishing effect described above.

What I'm trying to say, is that magick and psychology have an awful lot of crossover.

The first is pretty much an applied form of the second, anyway...

Magick For Beginners: Elemental Directions

Being the first in a series of blatherings about topics which keep cropping up and confusing people when they look into Matters Esoteric, for the Elucidation of the Novice, the Amusement of the Adept, and the Inspiration of the Speculative Fiction Author.

As any budding witch, magician or estate agent will tell you, directions are Important. Most Western magickal traditions use some form of element-to-cardinal-direction correspondence, though as ever there is precious little agreement and endless internet arguements over which direction signifies which element. Newcomers to any magickal practice tend to get very worked up and confused about the specifics here; to what extent they can be said to really matter is pretty much down to one's individual practices and theories of How It All Works. Personally, I don't believe that there is One True Way of assigning elements to directions, though certain arrangements can be seen as being associated with particular assumptions about the microcosm and the macrocosm, and how it all fits together.

Most Western traditions derive ultimately from the Greek philosopher Empodocles, via Aristotle, in their use of elements. By this system, all matter is divided into the four root elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water, with a fifth element, Aether (most often "spirit" or "magic" in modern traditions) representing that which is not of the physical world. Aristotle theorised that the unchanging stars were composed of Aether, as all things on earth could be seen to ultimately degrade; note here the similarities with the various gnostic and pseudo-gnostic ideas about the corruption of matter and eternal nature of the spirit.

These four elements were arranged, as seen in the following diagram, by two measures of their sensible characteristics, which is to say their heat or coolness, and the wet or dryness. This, naturally enough, produces an arrangement which sees fire as being the opposite of water, and air the opposite of earth.

There is, of course, nothing remotely sensible about the Aether

There are, of course, other schema of elements, the Chinese Wu Xing (consisting of wood, fire, earth, metal and water) being a prominent one - though it is worth noting that the wu xing should not be thought of as being component parts of the universe as the classical elements were, but rather as being representative of fundamental processes that described relationships and interactions between differing phenomena. More modernly, one might think of the elements of the periodic table; or of electrons, protons and neutrons; or of the various flavours of quarks - the underlying concept is not altogether dissimilar (and leads to the idea of Opening the Watchtower of Bottom, which should not be confused with any of the OTO higher grades...) Equally, one could consider the four classical elements to be archetypal representations of states of matter - solid, liquid, gaseous and plasma.

So, naturally enough, the "classic" arrangement of elements that crops up everywhere, is this:

(The arrow is pointing North in all the following diagrams)

Wait, what?

So, this is the standard, "microcosmic" arrangement that is ultimately derived from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, best known as the arrangement of the elemental archangels in their pentagram ritual (though, incidentally and like many things involving the Golden Dawn, the pentagram ritual is A Bit More Complicated Than That). Alex Sumner makes a few good arguements about the origin of this arrangement - that it can be tied to the arrangement of the winds according to Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, or that it is tied in to the rather obscure "Adonai Forumla" of notable eccentric and spirit-chess enthusiast Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, one-time leader of the Golden Dawn.

Crowley aficionados will also recognise this as one of the sets of directional associations that are used in Liber Resh, his Egyptian-ish ritual in praise of the sun in its four stations across the sky. In a way, this can be quite easily rationalised - Air is the sun at dawn, rising into the sky; Fire is the sun at its height; Water is the sun as it sets and fades into the underworld; and Earth the darkness and stillness of midnight.

Another tradition gives the following:

What the hell's going on here?

This is derived from a couple of sources, most notably traditional astrology. Agrippa listed this arrangement in his Second Book of Occult Philosophy; it derives ultimately from the position of the cardinal signs of astrology (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn respectively, working counter-clockwise from Fire in the East, following the order of their rising above the Horizon from the Spring Equinox). The Golden Dawn also used this in their hexagram ritual in certain circumstances (primarily when within the Vault of the Adepts); it could be said that this arrangement represents macrocosmic forces, rather than microcosmic ones - those forces which are of the stars, rather than extant upon the earth.

A somewhat more obscure, used by some Thelemic authors including the wonderfully-named Rodney Orpheus, uses a model based on the fixed signs of the zodiac that derives from another one of Crowley's rituals, Liber V vel Reguli. For reasons that may best be described as "perverse" and "complex", this places the viewpoint of the magician as being upside-down in the centre of the ring of the zodiac, facing Taurus (Earth), which is assumed to be the East. This results, naturally enough, in Scorpio (Water) being placed to the West, and the apparent direction of the zodiac as running clockwise; Leo (Fire) thus ends up in the South, and Aquarius (Air) in the North:

Just to make things more confusing, by Thelemic convention East does not actually refer to East, but rather in the direction of Boleskin House, a property on the shores of Loch Ness which was once owned by Aleister Crowley (and later by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame). Interestingly, Boleskin burned down a few weeks ago, a fact which will likely launch a thousand increasingly ludicrous conspiracy theories. In practice, this means that using the above arrangement results in a variable position of the four elements depending on where one happens to be on the globe, which could be argued was quite intentional on Crowley's part; Lon Milo DuQuette suggests in The Magick of Aleister Crowley that the counter-intuitive placement of the elements in the Reguli ritual was designed to deliberately disjoint the magician from the old geocentric model of the universe that is intrinsically implied by the Golden Dawn's microcosmic arrangement, in favour of a heliocentric arrangement in which the magician identifies with the Sun - a perennial theme of Crowley's philosophy.

Most Wiccan groups tend to use the Golden Dawn arrangement but rationalise it in more naturalistic ways; considering that most of Gardnerian Wicca is an assortment of GD/OTO rituals with the serial numbers filed off, with a certain amount of Old Gerald's sexual pecadillos scribbled in the margins and then gradually crossed out by various editors and revisionists, this is hardly surprising, but that is a rant for another post entirely.

Other pagan traditions use a variety of different arrangements; one of the most common is the system used by Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain, which has been adopted by various practitioners of non-Garnderian traditional witchcraft. This system is, ironically, the closest to the arrangement that is implied by Aristotle:

There are various interpretations of this arrangement, the most common of which is to consider North to be representative of celestial realms, being that the Northern celestial pole is consistently above the Northern horizon, and the South being representative of the chthonic underworld, the Southern celestial pole being below the Southern horizon. The nodes of Fire and Water are assigned to the points of dawn and dusk, and can be seen as representing the birth and death of the sun.

Most or all of the above applies best in the Northern hemisphere. There are differing schools of thought around the application of these theories in the Southern hemisphere - some authorities, usually of the Goldeny-Dawny-type, argue that there should be no difference, as when one is conducting a ritual which uses the elemental correspondences, one is not actually in Basildon, or Alice Springs, or wherever, but in the metaphysical space implied by the Temple - and so the energies that one is dealing with are archetypal, and based on tradition. Others, particularly the more earth-focused pagan traditions, argue that if one is connecting to the energies of the Earth, location is far more important than any archetypal form.

I would generally advise keeping an open mind on the whole issue, including whether or not any of this matters one jot. Which, when you think about it, is a fairly good maxim for everything when it comes to magick.

On Maps and Models: An Introduction of Sorts

"The map is not the territory" - Alfred Korzybski

"Ceci n'est pas une pipe" -  René Magritte

"A model which took account of all the variegation of reality would be of no more use than a map at the scale of one to one." - Joan Robinson

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted" - attrib. Hassan-i-Sabbah

"Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable." - Paul Valéry 

"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them." - Aleister Crowley

"Convictions cause convicts" - traditional Discordian catma 

The obvious Magritte + Discordianism pun

As my A-level chemistry teacher used to tell me, "all models are wrong, but some are useful". The
complexity of life and the observed universe is such that, to understand it, we simplify it, reducing it to a model. There was something of a running joke throughout those lessons, that any statement could be appended with "actually, it's a bit more complicated than that..." - the orbits of electrons about the nucleus of an atom being a particularly good example.

This trend continued when I went to university to study medicine, with new and more complex models of anatomy physiology replacing those taught at school. Every previously-certain fact became an over-simplification of a more complicated truth; and in time it became obvious enough to my mind that even these new models were merely that - models, all of which were wrong, but some of which were useful.

This is but a preamble to the main point of this post - that, regardless of the objective nature of truth, we view it only through our own models, which, whilst they are never entirely accurate, may be useful.

Wandering a little into philosophy for a moment, I doubt that it is actually possible to say very much at all about the nature of objective reality. Consider the metaphor of cartography. The map is produced as an abstraction of the land which it seeks to represent, compressing and simplifying the details of the territory. But a map is made by human hands and human eyes - and it is only ever as accurate as the eye that sees the territory, and the hand that draws it.

We take data from the outside world through our senses, and interpret it in accordance with our own preconceptions. This assumption lies behind all manner of branches of psychology, from Object Relations to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and is borne out by numerous studies and observations on such things as framing effects. We do not see the world as it truly is - rather, we see a model of the world, created by our senses and our beliefs, what was termed by Robert Anton Wilson (he of Illuminatus! fame) as a "reality tunnel". Thus, to return to the model of cartography, any map that we draw is a step abstracted; not a map of the world, but a map of a map.

But this doesn't make our maps useless. Consider the maps of the London Underground, laid out not in accordance with the exact position of the stations on the surface, but more in the fashion of a flow chart. It is significantly abstracted from the surface layout, which hides certain useful bits of information (such as it being significantly quicker to walk from Paddington to Lancaster Gate than to take the underground, despite their apparent distance on the tube map), but which aids comprehension of the routes.

Though this tube map is rather awesome

We jump between models all the time, often without knowing it, shifting our frames of reference to better adapt our thinking to a particular problem. Oftentimes this is unnoticed to us - in the desire for a sense of internal consistency, we like to think that we have a fixed worldview with which we can interpret all things by, though when we rigidly adhere to a single model of our experienced reality we run into what might be called the "First Year Physics Student Problem", in which we attempt to crowbar everything into a single model without really understanding the basis of the model in which the information is first presented. This could also be called the "Internet Rationalist" or "Richard Dawkins" problem, but I digress.

Indeed, the ability to switch models is so fundamental to our ability to function as social beings, that we practically take it for granted. Empathy and the development of "theory of mind" is a good example of one of these model-switching processes: in attempting to gain some understanding of how another person thinks or feels, we place ourselves in their shoes, and create a map of their own internal map - a map of a map, a simulation of a simulation.

I ramble, but there is reason within it, and the fact that I have begun this blog with this particular topic lies here, as it gives rise to some assertions:

• That any given truth is only true within a model; indeed, all truths are defined by the model in which they are contained, and what is true within one model may not be true within another.
• That models relate only to other models; if there is some objective truth that exists outside a model, it cannot be found in any model, save perhaps in the convergence of models.
• That the "truth" of any model is secondary to its utility, which is, ultimately, a measure of how well it allows one to relate to and understand another model.
• That material that exists within one model is best understood, at least initially, by accepting as true any and all assumptions that comprise the structure of the model, regardless of their truth outside that model.
• That, ultimately, these assertions are merely another model; a map of many maps.

This should perhaps be considered the bare-bones of a manifesto of sorts, or at least a set of working assumptions that one might use to better understand the world.

In short: Magick is psychology is religion is science is art is lifehacking is spirituality is sociology is madness is mysticism, and so on and so forth.

All models are models of each other.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted to be true.

The Malkavian Problem: Mental Illness in LARP

It's a little late for World Mental Health Day, but I've been thinking about these issues for a while now, and would thus like to talk a little about issues surrounding mental illness in LARP. This post is going to mostly focus on portrayals of mental illness within LARP, though I'm also going to touch on a couple of other things, such as accessibility issues.

More so than any other form of disability, mental illness is subject to a great degree of mystification, prejudice and stigma in contemporary society. Indeed, the argument can be made that mental illness is the last true social taboo; and whilst the twentieth century has seen (for various reasons) a gradual reduction in stigma associated with depressive illnesses and other "neurotic" disorders, there still remains a great deal of stigma directed towards illnesses characterised by psychosis, and towards certain other categories of mental ill-health or non-normative psychology.

(Quick definition time, for the baffled: neurosis and psychosis is one paradigm by which mental illnesses can be classified, currently more in use in psychoanalysis rather than "medical" psychiatry. In this schema, a neurotic state is one in which there is a degree of emotional distress evolving from unconscious conflict; a psychotic state, on the other hand, is one in which there is a distortion or break from the commonly-assumed conception of reality)

For a simple demonstration of the extent of the problem, let's look at the etymology of some common terms.

Mad - from the Old English "gemæd", meaning "enraged"

Insane - from Latin "insanus", meaning "lacking soundness (of body or mind)"

Deranged - from French "déranger", meaning "to disrupt"

Lunatic - from Latin "lunaticus", meaning "of the moon"

Crazy - from the Middle English "crasen", meaning "to shatter"

Now, etymology is hardly conclusive, as the usage, and thus meaning of words undeniably shifts with time (linguistic prescriptivists be damned), but the etymology of a word does provide a certain framing of context which is important. Language influences modes of thought; thus, the language that we use to discuss mental illness influences, to some extent.

(Let us not have that argument about the Sapier-Whorf hypothesis again)

Pictured: A typical linguistic relativist

We thus see that the linguistic picture of mental illness is one of violence and disruption, which meshes closely with the way in which mental illness is stereotyped. This is backed up by numerous negative depictions of people with mental illness in film and literature - the plethora of violent serial killers from Norman Bates to Dexter Morgan; the quirky "craziness" of characters such as Deadpool; characters who are locked in elaborate fantasy worlds; or characters whose illnesses are portrayed as practically a superpower, such as Dr. Daniel Pierce's crime-solving hallucinations and Adrian Monk's magical OCD.

A good overview of these cultural stereotypes is provided by the Time to Change campaign, who break down the stereotypes into Comedy, Faking & Indulgent, Pity, and Violence. Such stereotypes are not only inaccurate, but also harmful to those with mental health conditions.

So, what about portrayals of mental illness in LARP? Well, they're pretty varied. Let's take a look at a few examples, starting with two well known systems in which mental illnesses are dealt with by a central system mechanic.

The post-namer is, of course, from the table-top and numerous LARP implementations of Vampire: the Masquerade. There are a bunch of bad examples in the World of Darkness, with the worst by far being Clan Malkavian. They are a group of vampires often described as "mad seers", who are defined by having some intrinsic "derangement", the vast majority of which are taken straight out of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness, AKA The Big Grey Book). A quick flick through some of the Mind's Eye Theater (the "official" LARP implementation of the old World of Darkness) lists such things as "Antisocial Disorder", "Bulimia", "Compulsive Lying", "Hebephrenia", "Manic-Depression",  "Obsessive/Compulsive", "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder", "Sadism", "Schizophrenia", and "Self-Annihilation Impulse". In news that will surprise exactly nobody who has played a World of Darkness game, they are not exactly handled well or realistically.

Derangement: Obsessive/Compulsive

Whilst it does away with Clan Malkavian (kind of), the Mind's Eye Theater implementation of the New World of Darkness is no better. Indeed, it is arguably worse, due to one of the central mechanics around character morality. Across the game lines, characters are given a morality rating ("humanity" for vampires, "wisdom" for mages, and so on) which can be lowered if one performs morally questionable acts. Leaving the inherent issues with moral absolutism in LARP for another post, the particular problem here is that characters are at risk of acquiring "derangements" whenever their morality rating decreases - thus leading to the unfortunate association of mental illness and evil.

Another major offender, again a tabletop RPG with multiple LARP implementations, is Call of Cthulhu, and Lovecraftian horror in general. One of the major themes of the genre is the breakdown of sanity due to encounters with horrific and incomprehensible forces from Beyond, often using some kind of scale of "sanity points" to represent a character's grip on reality. The Cthulhu Live ruleset gives a variety of disadvantages that one may begin play with, such as "Phobia", "Obsession" and "Psychosis", which provide additional points to purchase abilities during character generation; characters can lose sanity and rack up various disadvantages across the game due to traumatic events. One of the worst aspects in CoC adaptations is the categorical association of madness with the "bad guys" - indeed, a common fate of a character who loses all their sanity points is that they become a cultist and begin worshiping the Unmentionable Evils.

A great number of other systems have what might be referred to as "incidental" portrayals of mental illness; these typically fall into the general categories of "player-originated" portrayals, and "system-emergent" portrayals. A player-originated portrayal is one in which a player makes an active choice to portray a character with a mental disorder, whereas a system-emergent portrayal is one which is imposed on a player through some system mechanic. Both categories have the potential to invoke offensive and inaccurate stereotypes, in different ways.

Player-originated portrayals crop up in just about every LARP, in one form or another; the reasons that players give for such portrayals vary tremendously. I won't judge anyone on their reasons (larp-as-therapy or larp-as-personal-exploration are entirely valid playstyles), but will just note that it is often done very badly.

90% of Mental Illnesses in LARP

System-emergent portrayals are again massively varied; they often come in the form of simulacra of symptoms of mental illness being imposed on characters as the result of some external agent - potions, magic, science, or what have you. The way in which these mimic psychiatric symptoms is variable - some systems include effects that mimic auditory hallucinations (Project Ragnarok's whispering demonic voices), disassociative states (Falling Down's malevolent auras of power which override one's personality), and any number of others. Again, these have the possibility of being roleplayed in an offensive manner; an equally important problem here is that being subject to effects which compel one to roleplay certain symptoms can be extremely distressing for players who have mental health problems of their own.

So, what can be done to make this better?

Players - if you are considering playing a character who exhibits traits associated with mental illness, consider why. LARP Hacks provides some very good advice around how to roleplay mental illness in LARP - above all, I would recommend that you don't let a character's mental illness being the defining factor of a character.

Designers - there are a lot of factors to be taken into consideration here, both in terms of system and setting. In terms of system, a few good questions to ask yourself would include:

• Do I really need mechanical rules for "sanity" or the like? 
• If so, what purpose should they serve?
• Do any NPCs that are portrayed as having mental illnesses fall into any harmful or offensive stereotype? I'd recommend this, and the ubiquitous TV Tropes as fairly good starting points.
• Are there any mechanics which compel a player to roleplay in a way which could be seen as mimicking the symptoms of mental illness?

Another very useful piece of advice is to consider writing a statement of thematic intents covering what is and is not considered acceptable within a game: a good example of this is the one for Falling Down.

The role of mental illness in any given setting is an extremely complex question, beyond the scope of this post to offer any real advice on; what I will say, however, is that if you wish to include themes around mental illness in a fictitious game-world, it is vitally important to determine how mental illness is conceptualised in that world. There is a school of thought that suggests that all mental illnesses are socio-cultural constructs; thus cultures significantly different our own will likely have vastly different ideas of mental illness, and likely a different set of symptomatic presentations. I will try and cover this at some point in the future - for those who are interested, and can deal with somewhat-dense French structuralism, recommend reading Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization as an excellent starting point for looking into the power dynamics behind concepts of sanity and madness.

The Rule of Woodlice

There's an occasionally quoted rule of thumb in certain LARP circles called the "Two Dead Woodlice Rule", which approximately states that one should never introduce a plot that couldn't be solved by the aforementioned pair of isopods if you ever want a chance of players solving it.

It's a rule that I deeply dislike.

Pictured: Half of an average player party

I'm going to talk today about this theory, depth, complexity, and storytelling. Certain assumptions will likely about, but that is as much a result of my personal preferences as anything else.

If you are familiar with the youtube channel Extra Credits, you may have come across this already. If not, a number of their videos on game design are worth watching. They focus on video game
design, but a lot of the ideas that they talk about are pretty relevant to larp. In particular, I want to talk about things that spiral off from this video, whilst vaguely touching on this one on exposition.

We can consider larp analogous to video games in certain aspects, especially when the focus is more on a single-author-creation than on a collaborative-creation, which is to say that the majority of setting material is written by the game organisers rather than the players. It's important to note that there isn't a sharp distinction here - all games fall somewhere between the two extremes. The analogy is most fitting in this first case, as it describes a system written by one party, to be primarily experienced to a second party, to whom they must communicate the elements of the system in order to allow the second party to experience it as fully as possible.

What is, then, "full experience"? Simply put, it is the sum total of the possible actions that can be taken by a player within the framework of the game. This framework is created by system designers, whose role is then to communicate such information to the players as to enable them to have the choice and opportunity to take any possible action within the game. The full experience is not something that can ever be reached, for taking any particular action necessarily forbids taking some other action; it is perhaps better to say that players should be able to make as many free and meaningful choices as possible, within the framework of the larp.

It is also worth explicitly stating that, as implied above, any action undertaken within a larp represents a choice on behalf of the player. Sartre aside, it is worth noting that participants within a larp can potentially have a much greater freedom of action than in most other forms of interactive culture.

This freedom to make meaningful choice is synonymous with the concept of depth. Choices must be meaningful, as for a choice to be false (as in the case of a strictly dominant strategy), or ultimately arbitrary (where the outcome of the choice is beyond the understanding of the player, and is thus equivalent to an essentially random outcome or an entirely fixed one) reduces experiential depth. Players should thus - in theory - be able to predict the outcome of any choice (within margins of error as defined by the frame) based on information that they have, or could acquire.

This is not to say that it is essential for there to be no secrets within a system or setting, although that is an approach that is used in certain Nordic larps. Nor is it saying that there need be a strict degree of causality within a larp; it is rather that players should know enough to make choices that have an impact on their experience of play.

There are thus two essential limiting factors to player agency: concealment, and complexity. Concealment, as alluded to above, is where certain facts of the system or setting are kept from the players. There are various kinds of concealment that we can describe: Total concealment, in which specific information is kept from the entire playerbase; partial concealment, in which only a proportion of the playerbase are privy to the specific information; strict concealment, in which there is no in-character way of gaining that information; and weak concealment, in which there exist in-character methods of acquiring the information in question.

Note that a single system can easily use multiple levels of concealment for different pieces of information; consider, for example, Maelstrom's native herb descriptions (weak-partial, as it was freely given to one part of the playerbase and could be relatively easily discovered by others), versus the exact process by which the gods chose how to respond to prayers and supplications (total, and fairly strict, as no more than the barest information was provided to any part of the playerbase, and the exact out-of-character process of judging responses was not discoverable through in-character means).

Other than the fact that Coyote was clearly up to no good, obviously.

Partial concealment is by its nature weak, or at least as weak as those who have the information wish to make it. Total concealment, however, is discoverable at the whim of the organisers alone. The former could be said to increase player agency - as indeed does weak concealment in general - whilst the latter can be said to decrease it, as it binds the scope of meaningful action.

A second consideration is complexity, which can simply be defined as the amount of knowledge that a player needs to be able to make a meaningful decision for a given choice. From a mechanical point of view, consider the difference between the combat system of Odyssey (more-or-less fixed and predictable number of hit points, all weapon blows do one point of damage, a few fairly intuitive special calls) versus that of Insurrection (quite famously convoluted, and once described as "all calls having two parts - the first to tell you which set of resistances that you don't have will let you ignore it, the second whether you can scream or not as you die"). In the former case, it is far easier to make a meaningful choice in regards to weapon selection, fighting style, and so forth than in the latter, as the amount of information that one needs to understand and memorise is substantially lower.

The typical result of combat in Insurrection

Similarly, complexity can be seen in setting as well as system. In all settings, there will be a minimum amount of information that a player must know in order to meaningfully interact with the world; the information provides context, without which all decisions are fundamentally arbitrary. The amount of detail that a player must know varies substantially between systems and situations, and can include out-of-character skills: for example, certain plot documents in Empire are written in other languages, including Latin and Welsh; the knowledge thus required to make sense of an object within the setting is thus substantially increased.

Complexity is a two-edged sword in larp: an overly-simplistic system or setting provides too little depth as the potential for meaningful choice is limited. Paradoxically, too much complexity has an equally inhibitory effect on player agency - the higher the "information barrier", the harder it is for players to make non-arbitrary decisions.

Concealment and complexity can combine to make a system near-unplayable; to protect the guilty I shall name no specific examples, but if a core mechanic of the game is both exceedingly complex and not fully divulged to players, then it is likely that a substantial part of the playerbase will feel that they have no agency whatsoever when it comes to choices made around that mechanic. It is possible to work complex, ill-explained mechanics into a system without producing this kind of effect, but it is difficult.

Mentioning no crafting systems.

We can see thus that it is in general worth reducing complexity to a relatively low level, at least as far as things that the entire playerbase will need to know. This thus places a low information barrier on participating in the larp at any level, thus improving player agency across the board. However, in order to increase depth, we might wish to increase the maximum complexity that exists within the framework to a level substantially higher than this.

There are certain methods of doing this - most noticeably via concealment, and by modular design. Concealment relies upon the players to desire discovery in order to be useful in this way, and thus best suits games in which such discovery is fitting with the overall themes. This can apply both to system and setting - consider a particular mechanic that only comes into play in unknown but discoverable situations, or some facet of a setting that is deliberately concealed but might be found out in play. Such concealment cannot work if it is strict; there needs to be a mechanism by which it
could be conceivably learned, or else it is merely more arbitrary noise for players to have to work around. Total concealment gives the organisers the ability to fine-tune the point at which increased complexity is revealed, whereas partial concealment does not, and tends to become fully revealed rather quickly (note the old adage that once three people know a secret, it's no longer a secret).

A surprisingly easy ritual, once you've got the one weird prereq

Second, let's consider modular design. Rather than deliberately concealing parts of the system or setting to reduce the general complexity, one might hive off certain pieces of information as being addenda to the general body of the framework. This is most commonly and simply done with system mechanics, assuming that only players who make an active choice to engage with that part of the system will need to understand or memorise the mechanics. Examples might include the workings of Odyssey's world forge (which only really needs to be understood by one specific character class, and even then only if they choose to deal with the world forge; note that it is also subject to a degree of weak concealment), or Empire's ritual metaphysics (which barely need to be understood by anyone, save research magicians, and even then there's rarely a need to have it all memorised).

Aspects of setting can likewise be made modular, with a degree of "core knowledge" that is required reading for all players, and as many additional details as required. The key to doing this well is to condense what absolutely needs to be known into as simple a form as possible - Profound Decisions do this well in both Odyssey and Empire, by providing bullet-pointed "key facts" about aspects of the setting in their documents, along with reams of additional information.

Medical skills, for example, rarely need to generally understood

We might stereotype these approaches as "The Maelstrom Method" of primary concealment, and "The Empire Method" of primary modularity - though of course most larps use a balance of both methods. Primary concealment reduces the "buy-in" of complexity by making much of the information about the setting and system unavailable to the average player, whereas primary modularity keeps information freely available whilst lowering the complexity of that which a player needs to know to "buy-in". Both have their benefits, but both have their risks.

Primary concealment has a tendency to lead to complexity inflation, in which the required baseline of knowledge that is needed to fully engage with the game world tends to increase over time. This has a tendency to go hand-in-hand with power creep, and has the effect of severely disadvantaging new players, who need to swallow a large amount of information (much of it second or third hand, most likely) in order to reach the average level of understanding.

Primary modularity, on the other hand, is less vulnerable to this effect, but suffers from the problem of inconsistency. This is a particular issue when setting complexity is modular - it is all to common for players in this kind of game to end up with entirely erroneous assumptions about basic facts of the gameworld if they have only read a portion of the briefing material available. It is also more difficult to impart a "strict culture" within parts of a modular setting, as the more that is set in stone within the framework, the more complex the general information requirement becomes. This has the secondary effect of encouraging projection of real world concepts into areas of the gameworld that are
undefined, which can lead to all manner of unintended and frame-breaking consequences.

The result of these problems when both applied to Maelstrom

It should be noted that neither of these problems are unique to either method, but can be found to varying extents in varying game frameworks.

This all being said, how can we increase depth without over-burdening players with complex rules and settings, causing an upward spiral of baseline complexity, or risking players ending up wildly off brief?

My general feeling is that an attitude of "show-don't-tell" may be the solution to this, at least as far as setting details go. By designing aspects of system, setting and world to be interlocking, self-revealing and self-reinforcing, it may be possible to ease players up the learning curve, allowing a smooth increase in the upper level of complexity without significantly disadvantaging or over-burdening new players, and without leaving too much room for erroneous assumptions about the gameworld.

How to do that in practice? Well, that's going to be another post, I guess.

The Obfuscated Elephant: Racism

So, it's been talked about quite a lot in the larping side of the blogosphere recently, (well, let's be honest, it's been talked about for years in the larpnet, in that I can vaguely remember the same "is-Drow-blackface" argument on Pagga a decade ago), and whilst I would like to think that we are getting better at things, there's still a lot of distance to go.

So here it is. I'll say it again, probably less eloquently than others, but whatever.

There's A Fair Bit Of Racist Content In A Lot Of LARP

Now that I've alienated half my audience, I will alienate the rest by taking something of a step back from that initial position - I am absolutely not saying that most larpers are racists, nor saying that there is even a particularity large minority that would be comfortable to express "classically racist" views. Indeed, most larpers would be horrified at the suggestion.

Which is exactly why we need to have this conversation, and why it cannot be simply brushed off as "a load of SJW crap", to quote various people.

I should add a disclaimer here - I am white. I would consider myself reasonably aware of my privilege here, but as a member of the privileged majority, I will almost certainly screw up and not recognise elements of racial prejudice, simply because I do not suffer them, and furthermore, because I passively benefit from a society in which there is institutional racism. There's a school of thought that white people have no place in talking about racism; in this case, though I feel I am justified in talking as an ally, because there are few people of colour talking about these issues within the (predominantly very white) UK LARP scene.

(As an aside, if anyone knows of any POC blogging about LARP in the UK, I would very much appreciate links and suggestions here)

There are a lot of different kinds of racism - which, for the purposes of this post, we shall consider to be defined as Prejudice, exercised by those with racial Priviledge, so please pipe down if you are about to start talking about how white people experience racism too, or whatever. Within the larping community - at least in the UK - there doesn't seem to be a large amount of racial discrimination, and out-and-out racial abuse is, to my knowledge, pretty rare. However, what is more common is the more subtle kind of racism, which is frequently not recognized as racism by the privileged, white, majority.

What does this "subtle racism" look like? It begins with the assertion that one is "colour-blind", and does not contribute to any racial prejudices within society. Having first assuaged oneself of any guilt, it then moves to normalize whiteness, and thus to make non-whiteness an "other". From here spring any number of issues - cultural appropriation, minimization, accidental gaffes, and so on.

This is important. The beginning of this symbolic racism inevitably comes from a denial of contributing towards racism.

This means considering yourself "colour-blind" or "post-racial".

This means saying that LARP is "just a game".

This means claiming immunity due to intentions.

This means claiming justification due to context, without actually unpacking, considering, or exploring what that context is.

This means using lazy justifications when called out, rather than engaging.

Feeling uncomfortable? Good. That doesn't mean you are a bad person, though - to err is human, and one of the most troublesome effects of racial privilege is that difficulty in recognising what does not affect you. We all fuck up - hell, I once played a conniving, corrupt Setite who was actually Simon bar Kokhba, a concept that shall forever be nailed to my wall of Things I Did Not Think Through as a warning - what is more important is that we are willing to listen, openly and without rancour, and modify our choices in the future.

Not a very good Setite concept

We can divide the ways in which this symbolic racism manifests into three broad categories:

• Cultural appropriation
• Stereotyping
• Dismissive behaviour.

Taking these in turn - cultural appropriation is pretty ubiquitous in LARP, and is such a thorny subject that I'm not going to even try to tackle it fully in a single post. The short version is that it can be seen in the adoption of symbols, imagery and objects from a minority culture, using them outside their traditional context in a way that is offensive. A classic example would be the wearing of a Plains Indian war bonnet as a generic bit of costume - which would be much like wearing a Victoria Cross as part of a "Generic European" costume. Blackface and the like are also a part of this phenomena - this is a good article on the subject, albeit written for a cosplay audience.

Stereotyping can be seen in the propagation of certain offensive caricatures of a racial or cultural group. The most commonly seen in UK LARP tend to be the "Noble Savage" (Knifewinter's Stoats, Dark Tempus' Falket, etc), the "Interchangeable Asian" (Maelstrom's Kamakura, Empire's Urizen), the "Standard Aladdin" (Maelstrom's Rukh, Empire's Brass Coast), and the "Dodgy Nomads" (Vampire; The Masquerade's Ravnos, 1318's Vici). Such stereotypes easily become a kind of dumping ground into which all manner of unpalatable racial prejudice can be channeled - and, simultaneously any degree of separation where the stereotype is still plainly visible often merely gives rise to the excuse of "but it's only fantasy", as if it is in any way not obvious to everyone in the surrounding mile or so that your kimono-wearing-honour-obsessed-funny-accented-badger-people are not quite clearly a racist caricature.

Also a problem.

Finally, dismissive behaviour. Nobody likes being called a racist - partially because of the social approbation that comes with that label, and partly because if one accepted that one was being perhaps even a little bit racist, one would have to start a process of self-examination and thinking about uncomfortable truths around privilege. Thus we have the usual pleadings of intention being somehow magical, or any of the thousand and one equally unconvincing excuses.

So, what's the take home message?

To quote Dame Hixxi:

What we should be doing at LARP events is taking design work for any aspect of our games, whether we are writing, crewing, playing, running, or whatever, and criticising it from every angle, ESPECIALLY a racist one. And really? I can’t see the downside to doing this. I just can’t.

What does the LARP community have to lose by being more critical of themselves and the choices we make when it comes to being more inclusive?

Seems reasonable, no?

There's no need to play into harmful stereotypes. There's no need to appropriate elements of other cultures that you do not fully understand. There's no need to deny the presence of the elephant in the room that is racism in LARP.

If nothing else, what harm can come of a little honest self-analysis?