PoP Book 06.2s MidRes - Flipbook - Page 19
concept — a way of describing all reality as the outcome of creative play.
It makes the creation, destruction and re-creation of everything that cycles
in the cosmos, the play of the gods.10 And in this sense ‘Lila simplifies the
unintelligibly complex into the most disarmingly spontaneous and childish’.11
It’s also an artistic and spiritual destination to aspire to — probably the
most difficult simplicity to achieve. A kind of homecoming to a true self.
If that has you worried you’re slipping towards a scary place of incense
and exposed feelings, take comfort in the knowledge that hard-nosed
empirical scientists studying questions of universal scale regularly come
around to play. The Nobel-winning chemist Manfred Eigen says the
history of play goes back to the beginnings of time and, ‘once begun by
the elementary particles, atoms and molecules, play is carried on by
our brain cells.’ ‘Man did not invent play’, he says, ‘But it is play and only
play that makes man complete.’ 12
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In a similar vein the biologist Brian Goodwin sees play as an arc for the
organisation of all biology, across a vast spectrum of size. He describes
the dynamics of creative play in ‘chaos-to-order transitions’ for all nature,
saying it’s a much better way to frame the big picture than selfish genes
and competition. And in this sense the creative play of humans echoes
the energetic properties which shape the universe itself.13 Humans, their
play and their creativity, inextricably joined. Even if this feels like territory
you kind of know instinctively, if not in detail, still there are other directions
beckoning. To places that the various views and theories hint at but never
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quite explore. These are the strange blank parts of the play map that
continually taunt the animal behaviorist Robert Fagen. ‘We feel that something is behind it all, but we do not know, or have forgotten, how to see
it’.14 Meanwhile, Mihai Spariosu, expert in human development, just throws
in the towel: ‘Play is one of those elusive phenomena which can never be
contained within a systematic scholarly treatise; indeed, play transcends
all disciplines, if not all discipline’.15 Play: 1, Academics: Nil.
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The fact is whatever your personal playground of interest, delight or
experience, you can map out a view of play that suits you fine, and somehow still miss the major root-system underneath. Like so many regular
people, even specialists tend to look only at their own specific aspect of
this beast. In just the same way those blind men fondled the elephant,
they’re never running their fingers over the entirety.
What is Play? / Elephant
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