On Anti-Trivial Pursuit
It seems that I started a trend in my journal of skipping a day and then doing double entries....
I've no idea why I thought of board games while in the shower at the gym (after having run 2 mi for the first time on a treadmill, keeping my pulse below 175 -- yay!), but I did. I tend to think of some odd things while working out or showering there....
shadewright, in a comment to one of my entries on favorites [1], coined a very Bonte-esque term for me: "anti-favorite." He claimed that I have a lot of them. I have not analyzed the truth of that statement yet, but I liked the term. Certainly, I do have anti-favorites, just like I also have favorites; I think with both, though, that I try to understand in as much detail as possible why.
One of my least favorite (or most anti-favorite) board/party games is Trivial Pursuit. This sometimes comes as a surprise to people who know me, because they (presumably) think, "J. must like mental games and he likes knowledge, so he must, therefore, enjoy playing Trivial Pursuit." While it is true that I like mental games and I like the gathering of knowledge, I very much dislike Trivial Pursuit. Just like I dislike small talk, I dislike trivia.
I am not sure of the derivation of the word trivial (Now, I have just made myself curious and would not be surprised if I do know the derivation of the word by the end of the night,) but my interpretation of the word is as synonymous with "useless" or "frivolous" or "unimportant" knowledge.
I wish that someone would invent a game called Anti-Trivial Pursuit, in which the categories would be broad subjects or fields such as one would learn in school or college. There could be math questions, language arts questions, social studies questions, science questions, etymological/vocabulary questions, technical skill questions, etc., etc. I would love such a game. (Unfortunately, I do not foresee it selling very well in today's populace....)
But the question remains, and I have raised it before [2], "How does one draw the line between trivia and useful knowledge?
I am not quite sure where this line is, but I think it must vary for different people. If I never am going to do open-heart surgery, is not anatomical knowledge just as useless to me as understanding the current theory as to where every last electron flows in the Hell-Volhart-Zellinsky reaction is to a heart surgeon? However, can it universally be stated that knowledge of, say, what Abraham Lincoln did for our country is more valuable to the average person than knowledge of what Marlon Brando did for the film industry?
Perhaps the only way of going about "drawing a line" for such a thing is to deal with averages as I stated in the sentence above. For someone who makes his or her living from the film industry, certainly knowledge of Marlon Brando is very important. However, this rise of importance in a usually trivial matter does not take away from the importance Abraham Lincoln's actions should have on the majority of Americans. The two groups of facts may become equal for some individuals, but does the important stuff, the anti-trivial, ever become trivial? I am not sure.
I suppose that for a person playing Trivial Pursuit professionally, the collection of trivial knowledge ceases to be trivial. For me, I consider that I have an only finite amount of brain cells to store information, and it is better spent on things that make me happy or help me make a living or help me benefit others.
But the makers of Trivial Pursuit have prided themselves in producing genera after genera of cards of useless information -- information decided by some secret process by their editors to be trivial to the general masses. Could not the opposite be done?
And if anyone ever sees such a game as Anti-Trivial Pursuit, do let me know. Thanks.
I've no idea why I thought of board games while in the shower at the gym (after having run 2 mi for the first time on a treadmill, keeping my pulse below 175 -- yay!), but I did. I tend to think of some odd things while working out or showering there....
shadewright, in a comment to one of my entries on favorites [1], coined a very Bonte-esque term for me: "anti-favorite." He claimed that I have a lot of them. I have not analyzed the truth of that statement yet, but I liked the term. Certainly, I do have anti-favorites, just like I also have favorites; I think with both, though, that I try to understand in as much detail as possible why.
One of my least favorite (or most anti-favorite) board/party games is Trivial Pursuit. This sometimes comes as a surprise to people who know me, because they (presumably) think, "J. must like mental games and he likes knowledge, so he must, therefore, enjoy playing Trivial Pursuit." While it is true that I like mental games and I like the gathering of knowledge, I very much dislike Trivial Pursuit. Just like I dislike small talk, I dislike trivia.
I am not sure of the derivation of the word trivial (Now, I have just made myself curious and would not be surprised if I do know the derivation of the word by the end of the night,) but my interpretation of the word is as synonymous with "useless" or "frivolous" or "unimportant" knowledge.
I wish that someone would invent a game called Anti-Trivial Pursuit, in which the categories would be broad subjects or fields such as one would learn in school or college. There could be math questions, language arts questions, social studies questions, science questions, etymological/vocabulary questions, technical skill questions, etc., etc. I would love such a game. (Unfortunately, I do not foresee it selling very well in today's populace....)
But the question remains, and I have raised it before [2], "How does one draw the line between trivia and useful knowledge?
I am not quite sure where this line is, but I think it must vary for different people. If I never am going to do open-heart surgery, is not anatomical knowledge just as useless to me as understanding the current theory as to where every last electron flows in the Hell-Volhart-Zellinsky reaction is to a heart surgeon? However, can it universally be stated that knowledge of, say, what Abraham Lincoln did for our country is more valuable to the average person than knowledge of what Marlon Brando did for the film industry?
Perhaps the only way of going about "drawing a line" for such a thing is to deal with averages as I stated in the sentence above. For someone who makes his or her living from the film industry, certainly knowledge of Marlon Brando is very important. However, this rise of importance in a usually trivial matter does not take away from the importance Abraham Lincoln's actions should have on the majority of Americans. The two groups of facts may become equal for some individuals, but does the important stuff, the anti-trivial, ever become trivial? I am not sure.
I suppose that for a person playing Trivial Pursuit professionally, the collection of trivial knowledge ceases to be trivial. For me, I consider that I have an only finite amount of brain cells to store information, and it is better spent on things that make me happy or help me make a living or help me benefit others.
But the makers of Trivial Pursuit have prided themselves in producing genera after genera of cards of useless information -- information decided by some secret process by their editors to be trivial to the general masses. Could not the opposite be done?
And if anyone ever sees such a game as Anti-Trivial Pursuit, do let me know. Thanks.