Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Peter Philippson
My younger son came to me one day when he was eight years old
and said: "You know the theory of destiny: that we are destinied to do
what we do? Well I don't agree with that. We are destinied to be where
we are; what we do with it is ours."
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Suppose you've never seen a pinball table before, and come across
one for the first time. Stripped of all the flashing lights and noises,
what you see is a large bagatelle game, most of which operates
automatically. It seems the only control you have is the spring-loaded
plunger and two flippers. If you then try and play the table, you
discover that most of the movements of the ball are entirely random
and out of your control.
Then you watch a 'pinball wizard': the ball moves precisely to the
places needed to rack up points and replays. So what extra control is
involved? Purely mechanically, there are three mechanisms involved:
precise control of plunger speed, which controls where the ball goes
first; precise timing of flipper use, so the ball goes off at the right angle
(which would sometimes involve just letting the ball bounce off the
flipper rather than being flipped, or trapping the ball at rest with the
flipper); and 'nudges', where the table is nudged gently to slightly
deflect the ball at the moment it hits an obstacle and changes direction
(you must nudge gently, or the table registers a 'tilt' and penalises
you).
OK, now you know! However if you try and play with this extra
information, you will find that you will not score much more. But what
you need to know is that you have all the technical information needed
to achieve a large measure of control of the ball, just like the experts.
So what do you lack? Practice, yes, but practice to do what?
There are several traps along the way: firstly, the illusion of
powerlessness we abstract from the smallness of our individual
choices (looking at the pinball table for the first time); secondly, the
illusion that the answer lies in amassing large amounts of knowledge
(learning about plunger, flippers and nudges); thirdly, taking
enlightenment as a goal in life rather than a recovery of something
always available to us (getting addicted to pinball).
Finally, we need to be aware that, for all our skill, the ball will
eventually go out of play, and the game will end. If I am desperate to
avoid this, I will never push the plunger, I will stop the ball on the
flippers, playing 'safe' to avoid the end of the game. The life will have
gone out of my pinball, and I will fail to achieve anything on the
scoreboard. In accepting the game, and knowing that it will end some
time, I can play my game at my highest level of skill, and then, when
the time comes, withdraw and leave the table to others.
Pinball is not unique: there are many recognised Zen arts (martial arts,
dance, painting, calligraphy, etc.). However, you are unlikely to see
these practiced in the West with as much dedication as I used to give
to pinball. Watch a good player on a good table before they all get
replaced by video games and you may discover an extra dimension to
your life!
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