Work, Play Extremes
Humanity’s mix of work vs. play has varied over the millennia. Farmers played less less than foragers, and with industry we’ve moved back to, and even past, forager levels of play. In the future, the...
View ArticleSilly Is Serious
One of humanity’s biggest mental blocks is a reluctance to admit the functions of fun. Since we are intricately designed highly adapted and successful creatures, all of our major long-established...
View ArticleGrace-Hanson Podcast
Robin and I have a new podcast on the subject of play (mp3, wav, m4a). Older ones are here. Don’t be thrown by a bit of silence at the start of the m4a one. We also don’t have the time right now to...
View ArticleOn Play Hell
Our activities split into work and play. And positive and negative extremes are described as heavens and hells. So there are four possible work-play extremes: work heaven, work hell, play heaven, and...
View ArticleMeaning Via Work Or Play?
Our culture celebrates variety and change. People who move from small towns to big cities often go on and on about how those small towns were hells where nothing happened and the ignorant locals liked...
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Play Will Persist
We live in the third human era, industry, which followed the farming and foraging eras. Each era introduced innovations that we expect will persist into future eras. Yet some are skeptical. They...
View ArticlePlay Blindness
I’ve recently come to see play as a powerful concept for analyzing our behaviors. As I explained recently, play is a very old and robust capacity in many kinds of animals, apparently rediscovered...
View ArticleMy Play
In social play, an animal again waits until safe and satisfied, and feels pleasure from a large variety of safe behavior within a distinct space and time. The difference is that now they explore...
View ArticleBoard Games As Policy Arguments
When we want to convince others to support our policy positions, we often tell stories. We tell people about things that happened to us, to people we know, and to people we’ve heard of. Journalists...
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