RPS Chapters 6 & 7 (Micaela)

I think yesterday’s game of Werewolf ties into chapter six of Len Fisher’s Rock, Paper, Scissors perfectly. This chapter really got me thinking about how easily I trust people. If there were a scale, I’d say I’m somewhere on the middle. Initially, I go with my gut; however, time and actions are the real determinants of whether I trust someone or not. In Werewolf we had no time to eye everyone, interrogate anyone, it was all snap-judgement after snap-judgement, and (as Hyewon can probably confirm) I’m very bad at those! Not to mention, there was the definite possibility that three people in the class were acting/lying. Fisher makes trust seem like the most obvious choice in the world, but we saw in class yesterday how hard it can be in social contexts with multiple people. The game changes and the group either turns in on itself or hunts a scapegoat. Maybe, in some convoluted way, trusting everyone is the secret to the game… I can’t see it though.

Chapter seven hit close to home for me because I was raised with “treat others as you want to be treated” as a mantra. Even now, I’ll recall something I said and ask myself: would I have wanted to hear that? However, Mrs. B and D took different stances on that same issue. Mrs. D being the act and Mrs. B being the reward or punishment. It’s basically karma, or what karma is perceived to be in a simple sense. I really liked how Fisher tied forgiveness and apologies into this chapter rather than coming at it from the “so long as you do that, every relationship will be peachy!” angle, because that’s unrealistic. People have different standards, how you’d like to be treated may be entirely different from how another wants to be treated. What you see as funny may come off as rude to other (something I’ve found to be a very common disconnect). Still, I don’t think there are many people who don’t want apologies, even if they’re slow to accept them.

Posted on by Micaela Willoughby
Categories: Uncategorized

4 Responses

  1. Carson Clark says:
    September 25, 2018 at 5:55 pm

    Our game of Werewolf was certainly a bloodbath of scapegoating and distrust. But then again how could we trust one another? When we don’t really know who someone is, it’s seemingly impossible to trust them. It would be nice to cooperate together for final end goal, but then again we couldn’t trust each other to make the right decision. It was all based on our gut feelings. We’d like to treat others the way we want to be treated, but in the end we will most likely always try to better our position over others.

  2. Alexander Clinton says:
    September 26, 2018 at 10:58 am

    I agree that the game Werewolf required some trust with part of people when nominating villagers and killing villagers. However, I think that if people became to comfortable with a person they could turn on them in a second. The game exploited peoples paranoia of thinking anyone could be the werewolf. As Fisher says “most of us have innate urge to trust”(130). In order to have a chance at survival and not go after everyone in the village players had to trust someone. So I think that the game supports fisher thought that every human has to trust someone at a point in this game.

  3. Wogan Snyder says:
    September 26, 2018 at 12:58 pm

    I love the connection you made between the reading and our game of Werewolf in relation to trust. Unlike you, I think I tend to be on the less trusting side. So naturally during Werewolf, my accusations were more focused on those that followed patterns of behavior whether it was always initiating debate (James in the first game) or not talking at all (Alex C.). As for your comments on Fisher’s exploration of the “Golden Rule,” I completely agree: not everyone wants to be treated the same way.

  4. Alexandra Smith says:
    September 26, 2018 at 1:22 pm

    I think Werewolf is the perfect manifestation of Chapter 6. Some people I wouldn’t say I know particularly well and had to make a simple gut judgement about them. While these were sometimes correct, they were incorrect just as often. More interestingly, there are people in our class who I would say that I trust (to some degree). In the game, instinct would tell me to spare them because of our mutual trust. If they acted against how I expected them to, the unstated “trust pact” would temporarily dissolve for the rest of Werewolf. What makes a trust-breaking act different than a relationship-ruining act is the context of a game.