I think jducoeur was indulging in rhetorical flourishes when he said it was a worst blight. But I think he and I are in basic agreement that it is a problem, and it is an important but ignored and subtle danger.
Let me digress for a moment, and revel in YOU. You seem to have an unnatural sense of the right way to exist, and to play the game. You seem to instinctively avoid bad choices. I admire that, but I think the way the right thing is blindingly obvious to you, means that you may not appreciate that the right thing is not always so obvious to others.
That said: what do people who come to the SCA do within it, and why do they do it? It turns out that the award system can be both "something they do" or a too-powerful motivator for what they choose to do.
To expand and support that particular remit, is something I think Justin and I feel is a bad thing.
Ironically, for those who do not fall into that remit, when the award system gets too diffuse and complex, it ceases to have sufficient meaning. If I can't remember if "the yellow pony is for service to juggling or music", the fact that others have such a thing becomes meaningless. Plus, if the "juggler service" people are mentally subdivided from the "music service" people, we lose the cross-pollination and support we can provide one another, and perhaps even get a little tribal.
Award dilution not an existential threat, to me, but it's definitely something I think is Not Helpful.
That is different from how we feel as individuals about the rewards and awards we get. Which, again, are more explanatory of our maturity and personality than the systems which gave them to us.
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Date: 2014-11-18 04:49 pm (UTC)I think
Let me digress for a moment, and revel in YOU. You seem to have an unnatural sense of the right way to exist, and to play the game. You seem to instinctively avoid bad choices. I admire that, but I think the way the right thing is blindingly obvious to you, means that you may not appreciate that the right thing is not always so obvious to others.
That said: what do people who come to the SCA do within it, and why do they do it? It turns out that the award system can be both "something they do" or a too-powerful motivator for what they choose to do.
To expand and support that particular remit, is something I think Justin and I feel is a bad thing.
Ironically, for those who do not fall into that remit, when the award system gets too diffuse and complex, it ceases to have sufficient meaning. If I can't remember if "the yellow pony is for service to juggling or music", the fact that others have such a thing becomes meaningless. Plus, if the "juggler service" people are mentally subdivided from the "music service" people, we lose the cross-pollination and support we can provide one another, and perhaps even get a little tribal.
Award dilution not an existential threat, to me, but it's definitely something I think is Not Helpful.
That is different from how we feel as individuals about the rewards and awards we get. Which, again, are more explanatory of our maturity and personality than the systems which gave them to us.