[Xmca-l] Re: Do adults play?

[Daniel Hyman]

Dear all,

As a musician who plays Mozart, Shostakovich, and a number of the other
usual suspects, I'd like to stress that not all symbolic play is verbal,
nor necessarily game-related. In many cases music has associated lyrics, or
programs (e.g., the Beethoven "Pastorale" or the Berlioz "Symphonie
Fantastique"), but often not. Perhaps (to paraphrase a favorite '70s poster
about drugs) reality is for people who can't handle music...


On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 9:49 AM, <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes, Doug, you speak to the heart of the CHAT Matter, is the play of
> adults the same as the play of children? Or is there a development or two
> along the way that involves a radical transformation in the possibilities
> of play.
> Seems like Vygotsky and mead would suggest that play changes over
> developmental time. But it seems like vygotskys narrative of the
> development of play has the main character, play,going down in a blaze of
> glory -  sacrificing itself for the sake of the Sacred Symbolic Development.
>
> But maybe I've got that wrong?
> Greg
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Oct 22, 2013, at 2:31 AM, Douglas Williams <djwdoc@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi--
> >
> > I play bridge....does that count? :)
> >
> > What is play? In all species, a rehearsal; a symbolic enactment echoing
> past and future activity. In humans, a possible world that represents what
> is, what was, and what could be, in a symbolic form that enables it to be
> shaped through thinking about rules, relationships, perceptions, and
> feelings. Games are the sum of human experience, in a form more available
> for introspection and renovation than the "real" world, precisely because
> they are games. Bridge, for example, is a game of coalitions, of strategy,
> of psychology, of deception, none of which is so far distant from the real
> politics of offices and of the streets. On another level, the Duke of
> Wellington famously (and for some, inexplicably) observed that the Battle
> of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. What Wellington meant is
> that the rehearsal of adversity and courage in sport enabled a beaten army
> to persevere in following a strategy that enabled that beaten army to win a
> long and
> > terrible battle. Wellington meant that field sport games, in their often
> wanton brutality and sudden reversals, prepared his field commanders to
> treat the even more wanton brutality and reversal of war with practiced
> familiarity and undaunted spirit, in the certain belief that as they had
> come from behind to win at Eton, so they would at Waterloo.
> >
> > We are a symbolic species. We live and breathe symbols. We dream of
> ourselves and each other, and out of our dreams, the world is given form
> and substance. Communities take shape, symbolic interactions begin, and
> towers of iron and concrete expand outward and upward from doodles. And
> sometimes, we just remind ourselves in games of who we are, and where we
> come from. I lay an offering of that kind of play before you.
> >
> >
> http://uwch-4.humanities.washington.edu/~WG/~DCIII/120F%20Course%20Reader/CR5_Geertz_Deep%20Play.pdf
> >
> > Adults not play? What is the business of minds such as ours, if not to
> dream of the impossible, and make it real? Or, in the words of a Mr.
> Church, who was confronted with similar doubts:
> >
> > No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand
> years from now, Virginia,  nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he
>  will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
> >
> > ...and I would add, the minds of adults.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Doug
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Monday, October 21, 2013 5:38 PM, "White, Phillip" <
> Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Greg  -  Valerie back-channeled me:
> >
> > Something quantum physics going on here in a gnomic zen sort of way.
> >
> > Valerie
> >
> > and in considering what she wrote, i am now wondering if classical
> mechanical physics isn't being used here in xmca to explain
> perception/consciousness and the distinction between "play" and "reality"  -
> >
> > whereas, for our 'mind', in the world of quantum physics, what is
> perceived - regardless theater, performance, movies, television, whatever
> the media - the mind does not discriminate between what we call 'real' and
> 'imaginary' .  it's all the same.
> >
> > so perhaps it's a false duality to think of play and real as polar
> opposites, but rather multiple genres of performance would better work as a
> theoretical framework.
> >
> > phillip
>
>