[ox-en] "Play" (was: Re: The Abolition of Work)
- From: "B. Fallenstein" <b.fallenstein gmx.de>
- Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 16:35:08 +0100
Hi Claude & others!
"I. Claude Harper" wrote:
You want to find a word closer to "play", if not "play" itself.
For reference you might check out, Bob Black's "The Abolition of Work"
http://www.primitivism.com/abolition.htm
Using "play" may make one sound overly optimistic, but it definitely
emphasizes freely chosen activity, which allows for free association. At
the same time it does mean a lack of physical or mental effort.
The obvious problem with play is that it suggests not being serious
about something. This can be taken as an advantage, because the idea
that play is not serious is tightly tied to the idea that if you take
something serious, it cannot be fun, and vice versa. This, of course,
runs counter to the idea of self-unfolding as a possible basis of
society, and attacking the notion could well prove helpful.
But there is a not-so-obvious problem with "play," too, which is that it
essentially has two very different meanings. According to Chris
Crawford, the ancient Greek had two words: padia and agon. One of them,
padia, is playful exploration, as is usual in children's play. The
other, agon, is competition.
Agon-play is, of course, a building block of our society. Workers
compete for employment, companies compete for sales, students compete
for the teacher's favor. People who see competition (at the each other's
expense) as a beneficial thing for society will also emphasize the
'playfulness' of it (as in agon-play) to argue that it's a good thing
for the individual as well. In other words, they will say, "But
competition is fun!" After all, don't we play chess because of the competition?
Chris concludes an article about "The Dark Side of Play" as follows:
By acquiescing to an egregiously adversarial mentality on the part
of our lawyers, we do for justice what Doom does for play. The
richness -- and therefore the educational or revelatory value --
of the interaction is lost in the intensity of the confrontation.
Yet the lawyer flashes his boyish grin and confesses, "Aw, shucks,
I just like to win", and we indulge him his paidia -- and
what we get is agon.
The term "play" is a Trojan horse of paidia concealing a deadly
cargo of agon. The rapist advises his victim, "You might as well
just play along."
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/Lilan/darkside.html
The play we would want to base a society on is paida-play. But since
English doesn't make the distinction (nor does German, for that matter),
I feel the word is not clear enough. In other words, I fear that
replacing "work" by "play" could be mistaken or subverted to mean
promoting competing all the time for all sorts of resources. I
understand the die-hard capitalists as promoting competition as
agon-play (even if they may not use the word play).
Better find some other word... Why not invent one? ;o)
- Benja
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