[Xmca-l] Re: Do adults play?

[Larry Purss]

Greg,
Let's follow your lead or guidance [or invitation]whaen you pose the
question:
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.
This question poses *play* as the main *character* in earlier *stages* [?]
of development who then in a blaze of glory leaves the stage for the sake
of *Sacred Symbolic to take over center stage.

I would like to bring in Luria's article "The Problem" which Huw recently
attached to explore this entering and leaving the stage [situation, context]

The hypothesis is that the dominance of "graphical-functional" forms of
*knowledge* transform when economic forces of production change [and school
becomes an arena of development]
In Luria's words, "We needed to examine how REASONING processes took place,
whether they were part of the subjects' DIRECT practical EXPERIENCE and
what changes they underwent when reasoning WENT BEYOND graphic functional
practice and into the REALM of theoretical or FORMALIZED [systematized,
sedimented] thought."

The next paragraph captures Greg's graphic-functional character exiting
stage left while "Sacred Symbolic" enters the *play*.

Luria continues, "The next stage was a study of IMAGINATIVE PROCESSES, THE
REMOVAL OF ONESELF from IMMEDIATE perception [?? M-P would say ALL
perception involves tradition] and operation on a PURELY symbolic, verbal,
and logical level."

Now my further question [invitation to dialogue] is to wonder if there is
another *act* on this stage of consciousness??

Perception AS *mediated* [not immediate] implies
graphic-functional orienting as involving *traditions*.
"Sacred Symbolic" requires *imaginal realms*.
Is there a need for reflecting on the notions of *knowledge* and
*understanding*.
Knowledge appropriated FROM the external inwards while understanding moves
FROM the internal directed outwards?
I am using the inside/outside as metaphorical to IMAGINE  a graphical
image. In reality experience moves in EXCESS [m-p] of all metaphors and
models.
The move to distinquish knowledge and understanding may return us to the
realm of *play* [Huw's reminder that play is *as if* knowledge and
understanding]
Larry


On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 6:49 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
>
>