In his book Homo
Ludens, Dutch historian Johan Huizinga asserts that culture arises in and
as play. This is quite a bold assertion. It is not a statement
about our love for sports and board games. He is not talking about play as a
microcosm of culture, a characteristic
of culture. He is saying we have culture because
we play. Play creates culture, macro-culture.
Huizinga believes that play is the mother of government and
religion. Even law and language have play as their source. I happen to agree
with him.
Since today is July 4th and I happen to be an
American, I wanted to reflect a bit on this theme that culture, macro-culture,
is a child of play.
America has been and always will be an experiment. There is
no way America’s founders could have seen or predicted what America would be
like today. That’s because our history is a story of testing limits, seeing how
far the boundaries of our Constitution will stretch.
Drafting the constitution was a creative, imaginative
endeavor. The framers wanted to find just the right words to ensure
long-lasting liberty, freedom from tyranny and oppression.
The authors of the Constitution put in place a system of
checks and balances, a feature shared by play in its fullest form. That is what
creates interest. These checks and balances attenuate the effects of conflict, but
they also establish an arena that creates
conflict and within which conflict is played out. Putting in place a three-part
system takes into account that conflict is bound to happen—and when it happens
these same checks and balances ensure everyone plays the game fairly.
Notice that play happens in specific locations. The Supreme
Court is just as much a playground as the area rug in my son’s bedroom. When my
son was much younger, we would role play together on that rug with his sister
and a menagerie of stuffed toys. When we were in that place, one role served to
mitigate the power of another. Playing fairly meant honoring the role another
played, no matter how different they were from you. We had a special language
when we role-played and there were special rules to govern the playtime.
Huizinga: “All play moves and has its being within a
playground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or
as a matter of course…The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple,
the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in
form and function play-grounds…within which special rules obtain. All are
temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an
act apart.” (10)
The accusation “I hold you in contempt of court” is telling.
It is a charge that someone in the playground is flaunting, twisting,
disregarding and disrespecting the rules that apply in that place. We cannot function properly in such an environment—which is why we have grown sick
to our stomach at the games people
play with our legal system.
“That is not how it is intended to work!” We know when
something is awry by instinct—our creative,
joyful, generous play-instinct. When the rules are twisted, it is a game that
is anti-play and we do what we can to restore the situation to free play that
honors the true spirit of the rules of the playground.
Why does this matter? As an American, all this begs
humility. America was and is an experiment—and so are other forms of
government. We do not have a monopoly on truth. We are still learning and
growing (hopefully). Our system is not perfect and conflict will always be a
factor for which we must account. We can choose to embrace conflict as an
opportunity to grow--an arena within which we may work towards reconciliation--or we can
manipulate conflict to enact innumerable power-plays.
PlayFull’s hope is that the latter will diminish as we
choose to nurture the former. America, we wish you a long future of gracious,
imaginative play.
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