“Do I have a split personality?” The question may arise when we hold two contrasting or conflicting beliefs, at the same time, and instead of trying to resolve or erase them, we let their differences flourish. Indeed, we may expect benefits from the tension.
There are different ways to perceive a split. On the one hand, we may cringe in the presence of cognitive dissonance, a symptom of unbalance and stress. On the other hand, we may proudly quote F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
(He wrote function, not prosper. Just making that clear to contrarians in our midst.)
Oxymorons are beloved by folks with a split personality. Take the oxymoron serious games, for example. Games are played, and by definition gameplay is amusing, frivolous, entertaining, somewhat meaningless. A wonderful miniseries, The Queen’s Gambit, weaves an entertaining tale of struggle and conquest by a chess player, but chess itself is just a game. When you learn how to play it, the only benefit is that you now know how to play it.
(The miniseries has other ideas.)
So why pair game with serious, when serious is mindful, thoughtful, analytical, earnest. I once asked Clark Abt, who coined the oxymoron as the title of his book in 1970. He said that his editor came up with the title, it seemed catchy, and he didn’t think more about it.
When Oscar Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, he had just this sort of oxymoron in mind. As an aesthete of the decadent fin de siècle, he thought a great deal more about it. Ultimately, it cost him his life.
Well then, there are two contrasting or conflicting beliefs whirling through my mind these days, not fatal but nonetheless twisty. They are video games and health promotion.
I believe in both. There’s even an oxymoron that I coined, scientific entertainment, in order to pace Clark and jolt readers or listeners into paying closer attention to my project. So far, I have preserved my ability to function, though I’m still striving to prosper.
So does Humaginarium create video games or health promotion? The answer is, both at the same time. Yes, I know that you can survey the field of health promotion and not find a single video game sprouting in its barren soil. You can likewise survey the video game industry and not find anything that quacks like health promotion. That’s because video games and health promotion have nothing to do with each other.
(Until now.)
While claiming that Humaginarium makes video games and health promotion, at the same time, and expects to benefit mightily because of it, I am challenged every day to put them in order, to prioritize, to say we do one in order to do the other (not the other in order to do the one).
This challenge was a damned nuisance until I referenced it to the concept of yin and yang, or dualistic-monism (another oxymoron): a “fruitful paradox.” Yin and yang are complementary (rather than opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic system, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Thus I arrived at the wheels within wheels of a conceptual breakthrough:
— Video games that are health promotion
— Art that is science
— Play that is work
— Freedom that is limiting
— Pleasure that is painful
— Silly that is smart
— Vulnerability that is strength
— Knowledge that is power
This list could go on. You probably have examples of your own.
The taijitu symbol famously depicts dualistic-monism. I chose a version of the symbol for this post, that reminds us, with markings around the circumference, that yin and yang are not reducible to this and that, subject and object, you and me. Instead it is a vortex of possibilities, in which every inferred possibility is accommodated and allowed to flourish. It is all-inclusive and balanced.
Not coincidentally, the quest of Humaginarium is for balance, or homeostasis. We are not trying to make sick people well, we are trying to make them happy. That may be the germ of our ultimate oxymoron.
The HUMAGINARIUM Gazette 
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