My two current crushes – an intellectual one (anthropologist David Graeber) and entertainment one (comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan) recently collided when the latter casually quoted the former in a podcast interview on Adventuring Academy.
Sidenote: Adventuring Academy is a Dropout TV show about table-top roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons and while I’m not really into TTRPGs (my teen is which is how I ended up down this particular rabbit hole) I’m very into storytelling and can highly recommend listening to Mulligan talk about it even in the context of table-top role-play, as it is applicable to many other kinds of storytelling too.
What Brennan brought up was a 2014 article of David Graeber’s, “What’s the Point if We Can’t Have Fun” where he responds to biological determinism of the likes of Richard Dawkins and thinking behind the “selfish gene” which reduces animal behaviour to mechanism of either survival or reproduction (I hear a lot of similarities with Adam Smith’s theory of a rational economic man here – and that’s something Graeber alludes to as well, writing that “the neo-Darwinists assumed not just a struggle for survival, but a universe of rational calculation driven by an apparently irrational imperative to unlimited growth”).
We all know how important play is for our children’s wellbeing – there’s an ever-growing body of evidence that supports the view that playing, throughout childhood, is not only an innate behaviour but also contributes to children’s quality of life, and their physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. Play is considered so important for children’s development that the right to play is even enshrined in article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
But what about the grown-ups? Does the need to play – and the benefits of it – stop when we hit 18 (or, it seems, even earlier these days – I wrote a little bit about it in “This Dis-imagination Machine”).
Doesn’t it sometimes feel like we’ve forgotten how to just play – without the need to justify our time spent playing by making it our job (oh, hello, most photographers), excelling at it at an incredibly high level (why would you spend so much time playing this sport if it’s not to become a world champion) or monetise it, somehow (hello, literally every artist or crafter).
I’ve been exploring this idea of play recently in my own creative practice with collaging and embroidery, and that doesn’t really have a purpose (it’s interesting to observe that I’m tempted to add a “yet” here – here’s that ingrained belief there has to be a productive goal behind play) apart from the fact that I enjoy it, it’s fun, it lets me get away from my computer, and it helps me quiet down my brain in a similar way that walking does.
(Oh god I’m still justifying it, aren’t I? The truth is I just started collaging because I wanted to and it was fun… all the things I listed above are just side-benefits I discovered later).
I’m keen to keep thinking, writing and making around this idea of play both in my own creative work and in my capacity as an educator, and a business owner too, but for now, I’m inviting you to ask yourself:
Do I leave enough space for play, experimentation and fooling around in my life, business or creative practice? How can I add more play – without an expectation of a result – to my everyday life? What would it look like? How can a practice of daily play help me – us! – break out from the cycle of being in survival mode and maybe even imagine (or even “play test”… see what I did there) better futures?
P.S. I’ll leave you with this quote from the same podcast I mentioned at the top, it’s a fun thing to ponder: “the first little critter than came from ocean onto land… where they engaging in some sort of behaviour that improved their chances of survival… or where they just fucking around?”
P.P.S. Take this quiz from the artist and illustrator Lindsay Braman to find out (or confirm!) your play style. Mine’s “a storyteller”, what a surprise! 🙂 What’s yours?
P.P.P.S. Watch this crow engage in play by sliding down a rooftop on a yoghurt lid, over and over and over again.
