Playing for a Living, Playing for Life

An anonymous comment on yesterday's Rejuveniles story pointed us to the World Series of Poker. The comment: "I have a suspicion that the increasing interest in poker is also partly because people who can make a living through play are so revered by our generation, and the poker stars are a living, breathing, high-profile example."

I would add: as are almost all of our "true champions" - the professional athletes in any major sport you can name, the heroes of the worlds of chess and billiards and backgammon and Scrabble, the superstars of ice skating and bowling, the fortunate few of bingo.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote what has become a classic study of this phenomenon: "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" (When you go to this site, you may think you're hearing something like the Macerana playing in the background. I welcome all and any hypotheses.) He concludes: "What the cockfight says it says in a vocabulary of sentiment-the thrill of risk, the despair of loss, the pleasure of triumph. Yet what it says is not merely that risk is exciting, loss depressing, or triumph gratifying, banal tautologies of affect, but that it is of these emotions, thus exampled, that society is built and individuals put together."

And they call this fun.