Quote

We don't like to think of ourselves as subject to the forces of the world, we like to think of ourselves as exerting that force.

Ian Bogost

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ian Bogost
Age: 47
Born: 1976
Born: December 30
Entrepreneur
Philosopher
University Teacher
Video Game Designer
Video Game Developer
Writer
Think
Thinking
Like
World
Exerting
Forces
Subject
Subjects
Force

More quotes by Ian Bogost

Image
We know exactly where the path to despair and insanity lies. It's in that sense that life is meaningless, there's nothing about today that's worth doing because it's just like yesterday and it's going to be just like tomorrow.
Ian Bogost
Image
I think this dichotomy or opposition between work and play, between leisure and serious stuff, is definitely a bad way of thinking about the useful insights that play provides.
Ian Bogost
Image
The actual effort that you can exert upon the universe is fairly limited.
Ian Bogost
Image
We're used to thinking of fun as a sort of synonym for light pleasure.
Ian Bogost
Image
The problem with fun is we really don't know what fun means at all.
Ian Bogost
Image
Every now and then if you try, you can discover something new.
Ian Bogost
Image
If you start the day not really expecting substantial change, but anticipating some small new revelation or some small alteration, then over time you're able to find them in more places.
Ian Bogost
Image
Play isn't you being clever, or finding a trick, or finding a way of covering over your own misery, or persuading someone to do what you want. It's the process of working with the materials that you find and discovering what's possible with them.
Ian Bogost
Image
The universe is not particularly concerned with you.
Ian Bogost
Image
No one wakes up and says, Yay I get to mow the lawn! But if I can find meaning there, then there's nowhere I can't find meaning.
Ian Bogost
Image
It's not even that finding laundry pleasurable or delightful should be our goal rather than finding television delightful. It's that both laundry and television can be delightful.
Ian Bogost
Image
Even when we tell kids to go play, what do the kids do? They come up with a set of constraints and structures. Oh, we're gonna build a fort out of clothes, and now that we're in the fort we're going to pretend that we're prisoners, or whatever.
Ian Bogost
Image
If you think of play as being in things, there are things that are playable, then it becomes the work of figuring out what a thing can do.
Ian Bogost
Image
To me, being able to find gratification in more venues, rather than greater gratification in a few, seems like a much more sane way of living.
Ian Bogost
Image
The playful perspective is not meant to turn your life into a game or a jungle gym. It's rather that the activity is looking outside of yourself.
Ian Bogost
Image
Our ideas of happiness, gratification, contentment, satisfaction, all demand that those feelings come from within us. If you flip that on its head and say What if I took the world at face value? and then ask What can I do with what is given? it's an interesting trick to turn around the whole problem of how you feel.
Ian Bogost
Image
I think the most important thing to realize about play is that it's this thing that's in stuff, it's not in you.
Ian Bogost
Image
A fun movie is something that is pleasurable without being demanding, you don't have to think too hard.
Ian Bogost
Image
My wife, there's certain kinds of housework that she just doesn't see as necessary to do in the way that I do. Things like the state of our closet or where things are in the kitchen. I have this almost unhealthily obsessive desire to have things in their place and she just totally doesn't. And this is a potential point of conflict, of course.
Ian Bogost
Image
God will not speak to me and tell me to mow my lawn today.
Ian Bogost