Edited by Pat Kane (email)



:: Play and Care: the New Lifestyle Balance ::

Always a delight to see a mainstream newspaper invoke Howard Gardner's theories of multiple intelligence positively - they overlap so usefully with the "seven rhetorics of play" model (more here) that I'm developing. The point of both paradigms being that humans are productive and creative in many more diverse ways than the image of a functional "worker" can allow.

In any case, last Sunday's Observer ran a huge article on the rise of "emotional literacy" programmes in schools, invoking Gardner's notions.

His various intelligences - such as intrapersonal (understanding your own feelings), interpersonal (understanding others), bodily-sensual (solving problems physically), musical, etc - seem to allow teachers to educate children in ways that defy the Gradgrindery of the national curriculum.

Areas like the "Friendship Stop" (where you can find people to play with if your pals have rejected you) and the "Quiet Room" (where kids can retire from the playground melee for a while) are places of emotional resource - safety-banks that kids can draw on when the demands of playground life get too much.

This demonstrates one point I'll make in the book, which is that the complement to the play ethic isn't the work ethic, but the care ethic - ie, from the work-leisure balance, to the work-life balance, to the play-care balance. (For more on this, see some of our consultancy around social work [Powerpoint] with the Scottish Executive).

In my view, there is no reason why we can't continue the exuberance and passion that the average child shows in the playground into our adult lives.
Yet we fear to do so, because we know the consequences of "falling", as an adult, are incredibly high - in terms of identity, stigma, resources. For example, can we disconnect the huge and rising levels of personal debt, from a mass desire to live messier, more experimental, less strictly utilitarian lives? A desire which our hyperconsumerist culture can clearly answer, with electronic credit making minutely tailored products and services instantly available?

But what if our adult productive lives were less of a conveyor belt between workplace and mall, and more like an ever-expanding "scholarium"? This is, strictly speaking, a place for scholars, defined in Greek philosophy as the adepts of shkole, meaning the freedom to set one's own creative and productive schedule, to be in control of one's time - which is an enabling condition of the player.

But that freedom to play can only be fully realised when there is a level of active support for failure in a society - the "trampoline" of well-being and well-becoming, rather than the "safety net" of welfare. This is what the emotionally literate school in the Observer article seems to be modelling.

What I'm calling the "care ethic" is an extension of that concern for the sustainable resources of the player (which is what the learning child is, at his or her best) to adult life. (Note: the care ethic is a big theme in feminist thinking which I'm respectfully tapping into here).


:: If We Build It, Will We Come? ::

The question, as always, is how radical the socio-economic reforms need to be, in order to reproduce a society of players - which, let's remind ourselves, is about humans at their most generative and dynamic. Such investment may not have precisely measurable "outcomes", but it will create huge energy and vibrancy in a society. And the next question (as always) is what kind of personal development is needed to fuel the demand for such reforms.

On the second question, see my recent contribution to a BBC Radio 4 discussion slot on parenting books (ram file, Real Player required). I explore the notion that the "parenting industry" (as the programme presenters rather sneeringly put it) is actually a sign that adults (particularly men) are playing around with their identities as gendered carers of others, building something out of the ruins of the patriarchal work culture. And that if they need a few self-help volumes from Waterstones or Borders to help them in that construction, this is no bad thing (and actually, no bad market, either).

On the first question - how radical should our societal restructurings be to support a civilisation of play - there's always a sprinkling of portents out there. A flurry of thoughts about how we institutionally and organisationally sustain play has burst into life in the Comments page of last week's Play Journal. Nick Currie (aka Momus, who is the rich man's Brian Eno) has pitched in on a debate about the role of failure, risk and experimentation in the public and private sector.

We mention everything from Paul Morley's new book, the creativity of failure, and the BBC's grand act of open-source television, in their announcement of the Creative Archive.

(If you find it gets too policy-wonkish, you have my permission to use the Auto-Wonker from Geist of the Zeit. Satire might well come up with better answers. Talking of which...)


:: Into the Funny Bone: Satirical Play ::

I've been so busy defending play against work-ethical charges of triviality in this project, that I'm often guilty of neglecting the primal power of play as laughter, fun, subversion, taking nothing seriously. But the ability to laugh at power, to properly see the emperor's new clothes, is fully part of the play ethic. Some links to illustrate, and a promise to establish this as a PlayJournal theme:

Al Franken on Lying Liars The follow-up leftist populist to Micheal Moore, being sued (unsuccessfully) by the right-wing Fox News for using their strapline "fair and balanced". Here's an extract, and some interesting commentary.

Vaclav Havel's Laughter in the Dark Brilliant essay from Phil Agre on Havel's anti-totalitarian satires as a means of "issue enterpreneurship" - a way to rally hearts and minds around a cause, in ways that keep them committed through absurdity and humour.

Leaders of the Free World And what can the hackers do to bare their arses at authority? If Hogarth were alive today, he'd be using Macromedia and Flash like this too. Try all the icons at the bottom: my favourite's third from the left.

:: Play Times ::

Newsgaming It had to come: real-time online multi-player simulations around the day's news.

A Love Tank What Iraqi kids do to military hardware, given half the chance
Dante's Inferno Test Take it and see. What Ring of Hell suits your personality?

Scots Invented Gospel Music! So says Willie Ruff, an Afro-American professor of music at Yale. Praise the Lord, and pass the stovies.

Jazzers Are Madder Than Anyone Else This... is news?


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