The Importance of Play

I have long maintained the value of the romance genre--not based on some quasi Marxist theory application (what academics do when they want to write about popular topics and need an excuse). But for the human-nature-people-enjoy-it value of the genre.

Paul Kriwaczek in Babylon: Mesopotamia and The Birth of Civilization makes the following argument:

Could not such an extraordinary eruption of creativity and imagination [as took place in the late Uruk period] be the result of recognizing play, in the word's widest sense, as a legitimate way of interacting with the world? (46). 

Kriewaczek gives an example of a toy, made simply for the fun of the thing, discovered in ancient Eshnuuna. No deep meaning, just fun. 

I'm not one to believe that civilizations get worse and worse. They rise and fall. Unfortunately for many of us, we appear to be stuck in a moment in time when the "serious" people hold sway. Every thought, every joke, every endeavor has a Victorian-good-stories-for-good-children aura--except the Victorians had more fun, what with dancing bears and steam engines. (What? Is one not supposed to mention the dancing bears? How about parachute bicycles?) Every production is tut-tutted at for violating or offending something or other. Experimentation--"try again, fail again, fail better," as Samuel Beckett wrote--is practically anathema. 

This demand for instant, non-fun perfection seems to be based in an idea of purity, so that even someone like Stephen Fry, who should know better, will argue that his science is better than that religion since his science has a pure form behind all the bad ideas and silly press. And the religious people--when faced with Inquisitions and leadership hypocrisy--argue that the pure form of beliefs is quite, quite different from what is being criticized.  

And on paper, yes, all the people arguing for a "pure" version are right. But they seem to believe that arguing for a "pure" version means rejecting/ignoring the reality that every human endeavor will be odd, incomplete, idiosyncratic, testable, flawed. Original sin has become a way of life, not an acceptance of human fallibility--okay, let's move on. 

The result of propounding a pure standard as the way of dealing with people and life is a lack of room for human endeavor, trial and error, what-ifs, what-abouts. Here's the "correct/proper/acceptable/allowed" way to address an issue, discuss a concept, tell a story, speak of deity, enter the political arena--even the "correct/proper/acceptable/allowed" way to protest/rebel. 

The biggest benefactors of adhering to this supposedly pure standard are the bullies and non-artists. After all, they don't have to create anything that will come under fire. They can sit absolutely still, risk nothing, yet get shocked, sooo appalled. 

What's even sadder is the "correct/proper/acceptable/allowed/non-offensive" pure standard is not based on grand philosophy or moral struggling--or even the rigorous standards of a discipline. It's "pure" according to personal reaction, relativity raised to a kind of iconic worshippable secular figure (even gods have more fun).

Or, rather, a focus on getting one's personal upstanding self and one's upstanding collective into utopia rather than in journeying there. 

At least romances (mostly) still give us the journey.