Don't click ... no, there, no, maybe ... Blooey! Sigh.

Yesterday I said playing computer games was complete waste of time. (I was talking about so-called "board" games, like Solitaire or Tetris, instead of 3-D games that I have no experience with whatever.) But I don't think they are a complete waste of time. The game I cited as addictive yesterday -- Minesweeper -- is a good example.

In Minesweeper, you have to click on various square buttons laid out on a square grid. Behind each of these buttons lies one of three things: a blank space, a space with a number, or a mine. You hit the mine, and -- blooey! -- game over. In the beginner's version, the grid is 9X9 with ten mines laid along it. The game will automatically reveal all the blank squares in a certain connected series, if you click on the proper one. If you get a number, that's how many mines are on squares touching that numbered square in any of six directions. For instance, if you click on a square and get a "5", that means only three of the adjacent squares are mine-free. When you click on a mine, the game ends and all the mines are revealed, with the one you hit highlighted in red.

What's fascinating about Minesweeper is that most of the mines (in the beginner's version, anyway) are either isolated or are in some symmetrical geometric pattern (a square, a triangle, a diagonal, etc.). But some are laid out asymmetrically, like a constellation. Those are the hardest to fathom, because they are harder to visualize and thus more easily trap the player.

Asymmetric forms in the game remind me of asynchronous experience in human behavior. Most human behavior is phasic, follows a logical pattern, and thus can be predicted or anatomized in some way by, say, therapists or detectives. But some human behavior can't. It's asynchronous, extralogical and perhaps even preconceptual -- 'instinctive' might be a better term.

This behavior is mirrored by nonlinear thinking, which, to me, is the most fascinating kind. It can be the inspiration behind great art, or monstrous criminality. Even more so, when the thinker begins to make connections, symmetrical and logical, among seemingly unrelated events in the asynchronous series. In other words, when great artists or monstrous criminals begin to make order out of apparent chaos, something big is about to happen.

It just seems to me that the more you try to rein this "power" in, to control it, the more monsters you make -- because this nonlinear thinking and asynchronous behavior will squeeze through the cracks somehow, like a poison weed through the concrete. But the more you respect the process in a person, let it develop naturally, the more I think you're likely to get the art. It may be that a lot depends on the person doing the creating (and this is a region in which norms of "good character" may or may not apply -- some bad persons have made great art, some good ones can turn to unspeakable crime) and a lot depends on the environment that person is working in (my qualification about "norms" applies here, too).

It just seems to me we're a very long way from understanding the inner nature* the human spirit and how a society can help foster more Ludwig Beethovens than Ted Bundys. I don't know if you can -- or it's even desirable to -- make "more" Beethovens numerically. There's only going to be a certain small percentage with that potential in any given population. But the trick, it seems to me, is to make more of that percentage aim its talents toward creating art and less toward wreaking havoc.

What's that got to do with Minesweeper? I don't know. See what you can come up with. I'll have my (suggested) answer tomorrow.

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*I left "of" omitted in the first line of the penultimate paragraph, just as it was in the original.


LJ orig.: 12/09/06