In his 1985 essay The Abolition of Work, Bob Black quoted me as defining “play as the ‘suspension of consequences.’” That egregiously out of context quote has egreged me for many a year and several minutes. Today, however, probably because I am feeling, well, playful, it has inspired me to write a post. To be more specific: this post.
Play, in truth, is rife with consequences – immediate, and long-term. Beyond rife, even. And playfulness, I do believe, is even rifer. Playfulness opens you. It lightens your heart. It makes you more receptive (because you are looking for things to play with and people with whom). It engages more of you: mind, body, senses, abilities.
Play, especially when you are playing games, and even more especially when no one is being particularly playful, also has its consequences. It focuses you on the game and decreases your awareness and sensitivity to what is happening outside the game. It focuses you on the objectives, the goals of the game and decreases your awareness and sensitivity to anything outside of the game that might be engaging the hearts and minds of your fellow players. It releases you from responsibility for what might be happening outside the game so when the game is over you are like someone who has recently awoken, and in that moment of temporary disorientation more open to the world, to your fellow players.
Playing playfully is profoundly consequential. It redefines the game and the consequences. It is transformational. It changes you. It changes how you relate to your children, your peers, to the people who serve you, the people who love you, the people you with whom you sing, eat, love, pray; the people you sit next to, the people with whom you stand in line, cross the street. You don’t get disturbed as easily. You listen more carefully. You are more interested, more compassionate, more aware. You become the person you love being: alive, energetic, caring, responsive. You laugh more completely, you smile more deeply, you are a better friend, parent, lover. You dance more. You paint more. You are more.
Does play have consequences? Oh, yes, oh so wonderfully yes.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I never saw the original document so I don’t know how much this contributes to the conversation.
Maybe he used the word “consequences” thinking less about the definition of the word and more about the connotations of the word. Perhaps he personally associates it with negative thoughts, emotions or memories.
Here’s the link to his essay – http://www.inspiracy.com/black/abolition/abolitionofwork.html – As you will see, he’s in fact advocating play. You may very well be correct in your assessment.
Beautiful post Bernie. Totally agree…through play – we can reveal how we are and what the true consequences of our behaviours are – do they help or hinder – delight or dampened the flow of energy…in a meeting, in a project, in an office, with a client – and all of the other types of people you mention. xx
I just finished reading Black’s essay. I think, if I am interpreting your and his ideas about play correctly, that you are treading down a similar path: Play as life, play as a zen exercise in becoming and realizing the truest sense of self. That’s a wonderful notion of play, one that seems to get lost in the results-only-oriented “games” (i.e. professional sports, gambling, Play Station war “games,” endless contests for sports even as ludic play-oriented as surfing) that permeate our culture. It’s one of the reasons I think I personally gravitated toward such non-competitive play activities as surfing, body surfing, skateboarding, and playing music while a teenager (well, that and the fact that I grew up in San Diego). But I also have another perspective that Black, possibly, fails to consider: What about people who are biologically wired to like “work,” or to enjoy hyper-competitive play, who find work and hyper-competitive pleasurable/self-realizing and not painful/self-negating? I say this as someone who basically identifies with Black’s view of work, but as someone who, now, as an adult, am acutely aware of my biologically-based anxiety disorder and how it has pushed me into avoidance behaviors (i.e. being fearful of competition, being anxious because “work” forces me to be assertive, which is so hard for me) for much of my life. In fact, for me, ironically, some of the things I have done to avoid work, or avoid competition, were probably lost opportunities for self-development. Anyway, just some thoughts. I have many more, but will stop there for now.
Wonderful, profound, generous sharing, Chris. Thank you for going this fearlessly deep.
Work can most definitely be fun. Csikszentmihalyi has a wonderful account of this. Competition can also bring deep fun, especially when we are able to achieve a well-played game together, as Bill Russell describes. In both cases, it is not work or sports themselves, but the institutions surrounding sports and work that transform them into something other. Something sickening, debilitating, dehumanizing. The same is true of education, religion, government, even the business of making beautiful games. I think maybe the “biologically based anxiety disorder” you describe might be based in some very deep wisdom, and that, in your avoidance of competition and certain kinds of work, it might not be an opportunity lost, but a sanity gained.
Bernie:
Well, I certainly appreciate your calling my anxiety “wisdom.” That’s gentle of you. But it’s hard to show in words the havoc (opportunities lost, inability to care of myself) this “wisdom” has wrought on my life. I mean, with me, we’re talking about a kind of anxiety that prevents me from working, or from seeing the world clearly, in terribly frustrating ways. (I tend to go for the Apocalyptic/most paranoid at the drop of any old problem/challenge, say, a kink in my backyard hose.) So, I’ll leave it at that for now.
In terms of hyper-competitive sports, I think Bill Russell (and you) are spot on about institutions dehumanizing competitive sports (or education, religion, government, gaming). What do organizations such as the NFL and MLB promote beyond the crudest type of consumerism, a Marcusian uni-dimensionality of the most horrifying kind? At the same time, it is hard for me to separate sports (or education, religion, government, gaming) from said institutions, as I cannot truly envision how human survival would manifest itself in some Kropotkin-esque Mutual Aid-tinged world/society. And then there are issues of culture and historical context for such views (Most of us in the West share the assumption that challenging and regulating what we perceive to be authoritarian institutions is part of what helps us develop into our highest individual selves.) I don’t see these assumptions manifesting themselves in the same way (if at all) in places such as Confucianist-oriented East Asia and Hindu-oriented South Asia. The former tends to frame (what I perceive to be the rankest forms of) authoritarianism as some socially stabilizing force and the later relies on the caste system (to a degree) to frame issues of suffering and social injustice. So, not sure how the world would look if all institutions disappeared and we were all left to our own devices. I am sensing more chaos than Mutual Aid at this point in my life. Just my two cents.
Chris