Play's the Thing
How to create lightness of spirit
For a culture to be able to play, it needs a lightness of spirit, a certain confidence. In Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, originally published in 1944, Johan H. Huizinga argues that while Homo Sapiens may have been too hubristic, and Homo Faber too aspecific, given that plenty of non-human animals also make and build, play has been neglected in our understanding of human attributes. Animals play too, of course, but, for Huizinga, “civilization arises and unfolds in and as play.” Pure play, he writes, is one of the main bases of civilization. It is sacred.
Play transcends need. It is not a reflex or purely biological phenomenon: it has a social meaning. If we seek a reductive account, Huizinga suggests, we miss its “profoundly aesthetic quality”. That is to say, we miss that which resists analysis and logical interpretation. Huizinga notes that only English has a word—fun—that captures what play is all about (French, he notes, has no corresponding term at all, while German has “Spass” and “Witz”, which come close). Play, he writes, cannot be denied: “You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play.”
What does contemporary culture have to say about play? In one sense, play is everywhere: the video game industry made an estimated $455 billion last year, more than the film and music industries combined. Gamergate, a little over a decade ago, arguably began the pushback against the progressive takeover of culture in the name of fun: “go woke, go broke!” reveals that absolutely no one likes being lectured to. Games, films, music, literature and art that seek above all to impart a moral message—over the past decade usually one that bares no relation to reality, and is nothing but propaganda. And people don’t want to waste what little spare time they might have being told what to think by those who believe they’re more intelligent and moral than their audience.
At the same time, we’ve seen a terrible reification of play—that is to say, a fixing of something that should remain at the level of a fleeting joy. Children, for a variety of reasons, are predisposed to play—as Huizinga puts it, “Child and animal play because they enjoy playing, and therein precisely lies their freedom”—yet adults in the Western world have sought to capture this freedom and turn it into a static identity. When a child pretends to be an animal, or the opposite sex, or a dinosaur, or an astronaut, they know very well that time itself has become the plateau for a little game. “Every child knows perfectly well that he is ‘only pretending’, or that it was ‘only for fun,’” as Huizinga says. Yet our culture seeks to lock down these moments for utterly malign reasons: to profit from them, or to steal the refracted glory of play for adult reasons.
Yet it is in the world of relations between men and women—where all kinds of cultural games, from dancing to flirting to unspoken gestures—come alive, that play has perhaps taken the greatest hit. Young people talk about app-enabled dates as feeling like job interviews, where both parties are auditioning for an unpaid internship. MeToo has created a world in which flirting at work or approaching a woman in the wider world isn’t worth it: one wrong move and you’re broke and your name is splattered all over the internet. Dating apps might act as a kind of filter and give the impression of interest and initial consent, but they run the risk of taking all the surprise out of life: what if you don’t know what the kind of future person you might love is like? Perhaps they won’t share your politics, won’t be your “type” and maybe they’ll introduce an element of joyful chaos into a world of spreadsheets and bureaucracy. But you wouldn’t know if what guides you is a checklist: human relationships are not recipes.
So how do we get back to a culture that is light enough to risk flirting? That finds fun and pleasure in taking the time just to see where a conversation or a flirtation leads? Huizinga suggests that, perhaps surprisingly, there is an affinity between play and order, and has a tendency “to be beautiful”. All play has rules, even if these change as the game goes along. One must demonstrate a certain openness and willingness to go along with what may come, to be, as it were “game”. Games are also intimately connected with secrecy—the exact opposite of the relentless imposition of transparency central to the surveillance, and self-surveillance, age.
We often mourn the loss of rituals in the West. While some religious milestones barely cling on, there is a generalized absence of cultural markers. Platforms are too fragmented, there is little left of a shared culture. Games are played, certainly, but often alone, and without room for spontaneity. Free-flowing conversation online is increasingly policed and locked down, both by states and self-appointment monitors. But all is not lost. The outside world still exists for those finally bored and alienated by the promises of the virtual. Others exist. Spontaneity and delight await: very few job interviews are held in parks, after all.
In Plato’s Laws, he answers the question of the right way of living by stating that “Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the Gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest.” Our culture is infinitely more fractured than the collective world of the Greeks—though this moment was hardly without its antagonisms—but we would do well to remember that play is intimately connected to peace. An excess of seriousness often contributes to the very thing one is concerned about—be it war or more anxiety. The person who cannot play is in a melancholic place: play reminds us that life and love can be understood with a light heart, and that unexpectedly good things happen the moment we loosen our grip.
Nina Power is a writer, editor, and philosopher. She is the author of “What Do Men Want?” (Penguin:2022).
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What is important in play is that it is post-teleological and anti-machinic.
A machine is built for its ends; A machine cannot play. A machine is a worker. A machine will end the universe if it meant being delighted to death.
Man is not a machine. We don’t predominantly care about ends, but means. There is satisfaction that comes in about living within our means. Doing what we can where we can so that we may be awed at how things unfold.
As the machinic becomes reified in the world, play becomes supreme.
Interesting that Plato or perhaps I mean Socrates approves of play and not of laughter which he refers to somewhere in the Republic as an 'unripe fruit', I think because it perceives disjunction or disharmony in the scheme of things. I think of play and laughter as intimately connected, yet animals play but they don't laugh, and children play terribly seriously.