Computers and the New Shamanism

A new Japanese video game has been designed to fight cancer.

The strategy of “imaging” has become popular in cancer treatment circles, and there really is evidence it helps.

This is, in fact, exactly the same technique used in traditional shamanic medicine. In a dance or ritual, often using masks, the evil demon causing the disease is conquered by a good spirit, as the patient watches. I’ve seen it in Korea, in Sri Lanka, and among Native Americans.

Given that mind and body are connected, it should be effective with physical illnesses, just as chemical treatments can help with mental or spiritual illnesses, like “depression” of “schizophrenia.”

But really, what we need are similar games for depressives, manics, and schizophrenics. Since the connection to the imagination and the mind is more direct, they should be most effective here.

Art has always worked for depression and other spiritual ills: “music has charms that soothe the savage breast”; and Saul’s depression was helped by David’s lyre. The shamanic cure is also an artistic performance.

This is because art is an extension of the imagination, an extension and intensification of the “imaging” faculty.

Computers could be especially powerful for this. They are very good at making the imagined seem real: simulation, interactivity, multimedia. There is an opportunity for a vast new field here.