Who doesn’t have stories? Who does something that isn’t play?
I think we are stories. We are stories and we are more. We are the shapers of stories. Problem is, we have some serious issues, like we believe things are serious.
Play is permission to do. When we play as kids, we get or give ourselves permission to do things, if only in our imaginations. We stop playing well as our brains grow up. No one can change our game but ourselves, and how many are bored or lost?
Play seems always about learning. It is always about learning, and death is about “winning”. Death is about “doing it right”, but we keep ourselves stuck in the panic loop of “doing it right”. Tell me, when has life ever let you actually do it right?
Pretend scenarios for fun, and learning without any expectation of return except the experience itself, would be closer to how I define play. Ok. What in real life is different from that beyond a failure of clarity?
If I took out the word “pretend”, but what separates it from the rest of what we’d normally call reality. Values? There are more than two divisions. Honestly, countless divisions if play is separated from life by values. But does life seem broken up into parts like that? In science, they have a good guideline. They check for the continuity of any assumptions. Look for how a theory can be a law, and the other rule they have is not to assume more than is necessary to explain whatever they are examining.
In some cultures play, it’s considered near to an evil. That‘s true, and in those cultures what isn’t an evil?
What we have in real life is activity. Can we qualify a difference between work and play?
Spend money on one, make money on the other? That’s how most see it. People make money with play. Actors, athletes, gamblers, gamers of all stripes, artists, philosophers. Oh, it’s a huge list.
In discussions like this, it’s good to know the semantics involved and that alone can make some encounters in Second Life very difficult. Play means many different things to as many people in it. A sadists idea of fun might be quite different from a masochists. Indeed, you raise a good point. Pain isn’t by itself an indicator of whether you are having fun. My brother was a pain/adrenaline junky.
The biggest question in life is not “What is my purpose”. Really, that’s just a silly question. Does your house cat seem to care one wit what its purpose is? The big question really is, are we having fun yet?
We have something inside us that informs us as to the degree that everything in us is functioning as it should. Mind and body. Heart and soul. Where is there any work in this, and if there is work as a principle of this guidance, why is anyone ever “lazy”? I find “lazy” people are often very busy. Just not doing the approved activities. I define work as the capacity to express energy. I see play as the permission to express that energy. What is at issue is the permission sets we work with.
Permissions sets = rules. All games have rules. Is there anything in your life that doesn’t have rules? Is there any science that doesn’t have rules? Any art that doesn’t have systemic forms? If there is art without systems, then how can you learn to play an instrument?
The unwritten rules we live by are sometimes referred to as consensus reality. In fact, the psychiatric guideline for sanity is now based on how in touch with cultural consensus you are. If you believe the doctrines of a faith you aren’t crazy. If you believe squirrels give you insights into the future and are telling you to kill the postman, you are crazy.
Ah, but if majority plus one believes it then I’m ok? Yes, because everything, science/medicine/sociology/society works on arbitrary made up rules. The problem is not with play versus work. There is no play versus work.
This is fun, therefore are we playing and playing nicely? If this is fun then yes, we are playing nicely.
If I am part of a group that believes in reincarnation, and I do it’s ok. If they believe in talking with the dead and I don’t, well… Arguably, this is true. So again I ask, What is serious? Where is the reality? What is work?
Serious is when it’s “the rules” and the rules were made by people just as strange as we are, if not stranger. The rules were made by narcissists, egotists, megalomaniacs, tyrants.
The realization of life as play lets us have an option we as adults forget we have. When kids aren’t having fun what do they do? When kids aren’t having fun in their sport or role playing, they re-negotiate the rules and they don’t think of the “high minded” serious, sanctimonious, self righteous nonsense, not normally.
We don’t have a consensus, because there is no consensus to be had. It isn’t serious. It isn’t real. If this seems silly that’s good. It means you understand what I’m saying about reality perfectly well.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~