When I
was being a big hippy playing story games whenever I needed to generate
something and there was no point where dice needed to be rolled and no random
table, this is what I would do;
I
would look off into the middle distance. I would imagine everything about the
game world that I could, try to hold as much of it in my mind at once. I would
try to hold it uncategorised, the pieces would not be consciously arranged by
type or ordered in hierarchies.
I
would try to imagine the active elements, all the people and monsters, but also
weather systems and plots and nations, in a state of half-completion.
That
is, someone in the middle of getting off their horse, one leg slung over,
weight shifted, already almost inevitably on their way down. Not frozen in the
action in the same way as a photograph would freeze it, but held, not looping
through the same thing but with time stilled.
It
sounds complicated when you try to put it into words but when you run it
through your mind you realise that you can imagine the essence of a movement
without it being like a snapshot in your head, or like a repeating gif, you can
just recall the nature of the movement itself.
Anyway,
that immanence of something being about to happen but no absolute guarantee as
to what is how I would try to imagine the active living things.
Sensual
aesthetic things are important too. How would the ash-stained snow feel? What
does it smell like, how to boots crunch walking through it.
So I
would hold this all in my head as intensely as possible and, this is the
important part, for as short a time as
possible.
As
much as I can, in as much depth as I can, absolutely without forcing it to any
particular decision. Something will then rise to the surface. it must be two
things, it must have the right fit, and it must be unexpected. It must genuinely surprise me. That shock is important.
It’s a
kind of a paradoxical thing, the shock and the rightness. You must think 'of
course that would happen' but you must also be surprised.
The
whole thing shouldn't take more than 5-15 seconds, if it has gone on too long
it has probably failed.
Now
obviously, looked at rationally this is not a random generator of any kind.
Everything there came from inside my head. There was no outside force.
But it
_felt_ random. At the moment of creation it was unexpected.
You
can't roll dice inside your head, but all dice really do it bounce about in
gravity and air. You could argue that if you knew all the physical forces
acting on the dice at the moment of the throw then you could calculate the
exact result ever time. You could go further and say that if you knew all the
circumstances in which the dice were thrown, with a god-like knowledge, then
you could still predict the result.
Does a
vast number of powerful idea's and potentials colliding in the human mind have
more or less potential for a random result than a platonic sold falling through
the air?
I
would submit that if the dice can genuinely be random then the mind can, in
some circumstances, be random as well.
Counter-arguments?
The
mind takes in ordered information and all it does is create order. You cannot
get randomness from mashing different kinds of order together.
(Maybe
you can? The dice analogy again.)
Just
because something feels like a surprise that doesn't mean it is one. There are
lots of levels operating below your conscious mind and one of them will simply
hand you the result it thinks you want.
(Maybe
if there are lots of levels and inner factors in the mind, and I bring as many of them into play as possible
as quickly as possible, then it gets more random, not less?
If one
person works for you in an office and you keep asking them questions the
answers will not be random but if a hundred people do and you force them all to
leap into unexpected work that is unfamiliar to them without specifying an
exact answer and then take the first good result, that must be more random at least.)
The
mind creates patterns, it’s impossible for people to generate a bunch of random
numbers without there being some pattern to them, that's how codes get broken.
If you can't generate simple random numbers what makes you think you can
generate more complex structured forms of information and have them be random?
(Numbers
are alien to the mind. It is bad at numbers. It is good at complex 3d
environments, complex social situations, interesting objects that can be
grasped in the hands and highly distinctive living beings. This is the natural
programming language of the mind. So using this language will allow you to
manipulate and combine much more data than simply using numbers, human
processing capacity improves the further from abstract data you get so even
though you can’t create a string of purely random numbers your capacity to
create a random event, with powerful and energising constraints, in conjunction
with the processing capacity of other people who are also doing what their minds
are naturally good at, might be much higher.)
I
would argue that in the right conditions you can use your mind to generate
something at least as random as the throw of a die.
