Of Play and Survival

From an article by By Rick Nauert, Ph.D. Senior News Editor of Psych Central, titled Leisure Play is Important for Human Collaboration:

"Play and humor were not just means of adding fun to their lives," according to (Boston College developmental psychologist Peter) Gray. "They were means of maintaining the band’s existence - means of promoting actively the egalitarian attitude, intense sharing, and relative peacefulness for which hunter-gatherers are justly famous and upon which they depended for survival."

This theory has implications for human development in today’s world, said Gray, who explains that social play counteracts tendencies toward greed and arrogance, and promotes concern for the feelings and wellbeing of others.

"It may not be too much of a stretch," says Gray, "to suggest that the selfish actions that led to the recent economic collapse are, in part, symptoms of a society that has forgotten how to play."

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith