Play

Play
“Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays” Friedrich Schiller, 1973
“S.Diamond observed free human being who survived into our age, also in Africa. He could see that they did no work, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it in English. Instead he said they made no distinction between work and play.” (Fredy Perlman, 1983)

One of the curious consequences of civilisation and its attendant domestication is its power to infantilise and regress a species: I sit on the train each day surrounded by pallid, bloated, childlike creatures enfeebled by the daily grind, their self-mastery eroded to a bare minimum through a dependence relationship fostered by a world of exchange-value.

It is a common (Hobbesian) assumption that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived short, brutish lives. In fact, until very recently, it seems that their lives were comparatively healthy and that, moreover, they lived happy and peaceable lives by today’s standards. Studies of the !Kung who still live hunter-gatherer lives people show them to be physically and mentally superior to us in most regards.

The mistake made by many people is essentially a reductionist one – they assume that what makes for a successful society, makes for happy people. On the contrary, the success and sophistication of our civilisation is largely founded on the collective misery and stupidity of its elements. The best analogy is the cancer cell: the cancerous cells come to dominate the whole organism, despite the fact that individual cells are diseased and dysfunctional.
What is clear is that modern man is warped by his environment in a reciprocal fashion: his early childhood deprives him of a sense of belonging and closeness due to the artificially imposed constraints on parenting, leaving him with an enduring sense of loneliness and alienation that he tries to remedy through religion, acquisition or the pursuit of status. As he develops through childhood his activities are slowly drained of immediate meaning, and an artificial division (‘fence’) erected between work and play. His restricted diet, unnatural groupings and over-stimulated cognitive systems leave him stressed, self-centered and aggressive – lacking creativity or the desire to share. His ability to learn is diminished.
For years I travelled with a tent and camping kit in the back of my car. I have been purchasing Ray Mears’ books for some years now and learning how to build shelters in a variety of inhospitable environments. I have no idea why I do these things, but possible explanations are as follows:1) I camped as a child, it’s a Freudian thing2) It’s some kind of instinctive impulse that just can’t be blotted out by modern life3) It stems from a prophetic sense of foreboding regarding the next thirty years4) I’m a victim of the same marketeers that persuade obese people to wear football shirts and surf wear.

Whatever the explanation, I am comforted by the knowledge that I can purify water using only a sock, charcoal and a handful of moss.
But it’s the work/play distinction that bothers me most during my daily life: if our work cannot be play, then something is very, very wrong. I am not advocating irresponsibility: precisely the same actions can be termed work or play depending on your 'attunement'. What grates is the cumulative inauthenticity, the lack of wholehearted engagement, the sense of entrapment and coercion that can undermine a healthy environment. Something that Nietzsche termed the ‘spirit of gravity’ – by which he meant people taking themselves too seriously. His point was that serious matters are best tackled with a light heart – as if at play. Some of the most successful programmes of the last few years seem to follow this pattern: for many years ‘Wake up to Wogan’ has preserved this ‘men at play’ format, something which is increasingly reflected in television programmes such as ‘top gear’ and the Saturday morning childrens shows that both ‘Ant & Dec’ and ‘Dick and Dom’ did so well.

By the way, did anyone else pick up that gaffe yesterday: a BBC editor came on Eddie Mare's radio 4 slot to extol the virtues of the BBC’s ‘glass room’ (or something like that) – and, very enthusiastically claimed that this format would make the programme ‘more opaque’ to audiences. Excellent. A glass room that makes a programme opaque.

I’m working towards a completely opaque role: nobody will know what I do, or how I do it. I will, however take myself very, very seriously and work very, very hard.