what is it about playing?

Inbox

Crack Man

Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 12:35 AM

to me

Hey JL,

how are you doing, hope the eye and brain are still holding up.

[Thank you. The brain is foggy from the nerve meds, which is great for writing fiction, but hard for losing hats and such.]

I was wondering, while, after a long time, reading on your blog again, what is so enchanting about games and playing. Do you have an opinion to that?

[For the men of Antiquity, gaming intersected with war and heaven. Knucklebones that men gambled with, little girls prayed with. Chess is an abstraction of war. Tamerlane, after defeating the Ottomon Sultan, kept him alive for two reasons: to serve as a stool for mounting his horse and to play chess. The mix of calculation and chance in dice and cards reminds the player that success is more than calculation, but of the awareness of chance, friction, fog and the intercession of heaven. For this pagan religious reason, cards and dice have rarely been sanctioned by the church. Not so with chess, where the bishops are powerful pieces.]

Sometimes I feel games and playing are a mythical divine seed, a leftover from the paradise of eden. Gambling, pretend-plays and chesslike board games as old as human history. And even many grown men are often still intrigued by tabletop or roleplaying games. As far as you going back to a dnd adventure 40 years ago.

[I have noted that working men who play cards and dominoes have better mental stability. Dice seems more of a high/low experience, where cards tends to calm someone down after work. In the Pacific North West, most people have exchanged social gaming on tabletop for the hypnosis of the electronic gaming machine.]

While playfully interacting physically with my daughters, they never can´t get enough of it. But when I sit down with my oldest (4 years old), there is something special going on. Her eyes widen, mouth slightly open in anticipation and a big smile is seemingly glued to her face, when I engage actively in her play with little toy animals, dinosaurs and dolls.

In my observations the joyfulness and curiosity of engaging in games and roleplaying leaves women more frequently than men after maturing. My wife has many qualities but she struggles to connect on this level with our children, saying she lacks the creativity and mind for that.

[Children are wired for play. Most women and some men lose this under social stress. The creative advantage in warfare that barbarian tribesmen usually enjoyed over civilized foes, was that the children in hunting societies play a lot, the boys mostly at war, while those of farming societies were put to work by 8. I think the mass and individual hypnosis of smart phones and video games—many games played on phones by women—are expressions that men and women all miss play, play being scenario building for life, lost when we are overtaken by the rampant pace of economic life. My editor tells of her girls making paper dolls, involving them in stories and aging the dolls. Such activity would have gotten them burned by most Christian sects from roughly A.D. 400 to 1700. This type of play is an imitation of The Creature, our maker, narrator, punisher and Savior.]

What gets a child more going, the prospect of playing or working...? And I have to admit the same often still does apply to me.

[Playing beats hell out of working. In physical occupations gaming the activity with co workers has helped improve our performance. Playing helps develop planning and solving skills that can be applied to work. The memory development in gaming is a huge advantage over the submissive cadence of work. There is a reason why the barbarians that conquered the agrarians in 2,000 B.C. reserved work for slaves and played at war in sports. That said, by encouraging active gaming such as cards, darts, billiards, dominoes and dice, as industrial society did in the 1800s and early 1900s, put into play Arуan men with a huge work ethic coupled with creativity and made for military actions previously attributed to heaven.]

Maybe you have some thoughts to share.

Greetings,

Crackamn

[Thank you so much, Crackman, and keep those girls playing through their teens.]

James LaFond <jameslafond.com@gmail.com>

Wed, Jan 3, 9:25 PM (13 hours ago)

to Crack

Thank you, Sir.

This will be an article soon writ.

I appreciate it.