IN THE ENGLISH LESSON
Games, creativity and freedom
As a kid I would spend countless hours playing with Playmobil. From what my parents told me over the years and from what I can recollect, I could spend a whole day figuring out where to place every single building, figure, and item until the whole floor of the room was covered. After that I used to destroy everything, without“ playing” with the figures the way most children do. In retrospect, I can tell that what fascinated me was the freedom of creation that this game offered. At that age, there were of course many things about the grown-ups’ world that I just could not understand. Everything in the real world seemed so dull to me that the only reasonable option was to build a world of my own, a world where the challenge was not to get the hang of its rules and laws, but to invent them from scratch by experimenting, taking initiative and understanding how things really work. There is no doubt that reality is harsh, and no matter whether you are a child or an adult, you may need an escape from it occasionally. When most people feel such an urge nowadays they try to fulfill it by spending hours doomscrolling in TikTok or Instagram and guess what- this does not help at all.
And how could it? When using social media your only options are to skip a post, double tap to like it and if you want to get“ really creative” you can even make a comment like“ HAHAHA”. The user of social media becomes more of a robot than a human being. And it gets worse. Not only do we engage in such a foreseeable and dictated behavior, but the algorithm manipulates us into belching, threatening and offending other users; it transforms us into wild animals. Luckily for us, the distinct characteristic of humans is that we are able to control our instincts and think before we execute. We are in a position to use critical thinking in order to decide how to act. And a big decision we have to make is whether we want to live in a world where we are being played or create our own worlds by playing. There are no limits to the imagination, nothing that the human mind cannot manage when it is free, uses critical thinking and sees the world with wide-open eyes. This is what creative games offer us; spiritual freedom. There is no handbook in creativity, no dos and don’ ts only ideas, experiments and redemption.
Marios Malioris a4
IN THE ENGLISH LESSON
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