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Reclaiming the power of play

#1
C C Offline
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/201...r-of-play/

EXCERPT: Play is the highest form of human activity. At least that’s what Friedrich Nietzsche suggested in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” when he described a three-step development of the human spirit. First, the human psyche has the form of a camel because it takes on the heavy burden of cultural duties — ethical obligations, social rank, and the weight of tradition. Next, the camel transforms into a lion, which represents the rebellion of the psyche — the “holy nay” that frees a rule-governed person from slavish obedience to authority. Finally, this negative insurgent phase evolves into the highest level of humanity, symbolized as the playing child — innocent and creative, the “holy yea.” Cue the Richard Strauss music.

As usual with Nietzsche, we can debate the precise meaning of this cryptic simile (e.g., is the child supposed to be the nihilism-defeating Übermensch?), but it’s clear at least that Nietzsche considered play vitally important for humanity. Apart from such a rare paean, however, philosophy has had little interest in play, and where it does take interest it is usually dismissive. For many hard-nosed intellectuals, play stands as a symbol of disorder. Plato’s reproach in “The Republic” of artists as merely playing in the realm of illusion famously set the trend, as did Aristotle’s claim that play (paidia) is simply rest or downtime for the otherwise industrious soul. He calls it a “relaxation of the soul” and dismisses it from the “proper occupation of leisure.”

Leisure, for Aristotle, is serious business. We get our word “scholar” from the Greek word for leisure, skole. It should not be squandered on play, in Aristotle’s view, because play is beneficial only as a break or siesta in our otherwise highbrow endeavors.

The Roman poet Juvenal (circa A.D. 100) used the expression “bread and circuses” to describe the decline of Roman civic duty, in favor of mere amusement. The selfish common people, he scolded, are now happy with diversion and distraction. They care not for the wider Roman destiny because play has distracted them from social consciousness.

To be fair, philosophy has not been completely devoid of proponents of play. Bertrand Russell, in his 1932 essay, “In Praise of Idleness,” offered a positive view of “idleness” and leisure, lamenting “the modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.” He also argued that “the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.” If we reduced our workday to four hours, he suggested, we would have the leisure time to think and reflect on every topic, especially the social injustices around us and the manipulations of the state.

[...] Philosophy should come out to play. [...] The stakes for play are higher than we think. Play is a way of being that resists the instrumental, expedient mode of existence. In play, we do not measure ourselves in terms of tangible productivity (extrinsic value), but instead, our physical and mental lives have intrinsic value of their own. It provides the source from which other extrinsic goods flow and eventually return....
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#2
Magical Realist Offline
“Very well. He'd lighten up. As a matter of fact, he felt as light as the bubbly froth that flew from the lips of the waves. Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play--more than piety, more than charity or vigilance--was what allowed human beings to transcend evil.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
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