The Play Ethic

Confidence Games

Compelling book from Mark C. Taylor, brilliant theologian and critical theorist, called Confidence Games, comparing religion and the market economy - both of them leaps of faith in the face of the complexity of life. Here's the blurb:

As money becomes virtual and markets more complex, the ways in which we talk about the economy increasingly resonate with religious overtones. Redemption, faith, worth, the invisible hand: these are but a few of the ideas that bind economics to religion and money to the sacred. But what do we make of markets when, like religion, they now rest on a foundation of faith? Ranging from John Calvin and Adam Smith to the abandonment of the gold standard and the dot-com boom, Confidence Games shows how religion and economics have, over the past several decades, become less and less distinguishable.

Mark C. Taylor first explores the historical and psychological origins of money, the importance of religious beliefs and practices for the emergence of markets, and the unexpected role of aesthetics in the classical understanding of economics. He then moves to an account of economic developments during the past four decades, exploring the growing virtuality of money and markets, and the complexity of the networks by which monetary value is now negotiated and conferred.

Returning full circle to a version of the market first proposed by Adam Smith when he used theology and aesthetics to rethink economics, Confidence Games closes with a plea for a conception of life that embraces uncertainty and insecurity as signs of the openness of the future. Like religion and economics, life is a confidence game in which the challenge is not to find redemption but to learn to live without it.

Well, there you go - a must read for this weblog. Interesting interview-let here. Also check out Taylor's own network initiative, Global Education Network.

Play ain't necessarily leisure (part 96)

Some great links from correspondants coming in. This one from Fergus Sheppard in at BBC Radio London - a press release from NOP, the polling organisation, with the headline "Work Hard? Play Hard? It's Not the Countries You Might Think ... NOP World Compares Work/Life Balance Across the Globe".

I know, I've written endlessly about about the many nuances of play - but the imprecision of language is stunning here. Their operating defintion of play - "Play activities are defined as watching TV, reading, socializing with friends and spending time with children and grandchildren" - is very leisure-defined (what about power play? Playing with risk and fate? Imaginative play?). Still, fascinating to see the countries that show the best balance between production and reproduction of labour (to use the old Marxist terms):

    Mean Weekly Hours Spent
                               At Work    Total at "Play"   Work/Life Index
    Sweden                  36.7           36.4              97
    China                      40.9           40.4              98
    Spain                      37.8           37.3              98
    Indonesia               42.9           42.2              98
    Egypt                      49.4           48.6              98

But let's not mistake this "play" for the range of voluntarily chosen multi-activities that play actually is. This is more like re-creation (of the worker) in the classic Puritan sense. All those polling resources, and so conceptually dumb!

Taking reality lightly...the Bush way

Like everyone else, coping badly with the Bush victory. But at least a defining 21st-century political quote came out of the middle of it. And in terms of the deepest implications of a playful view of the world, it's scarily relevant. The unattributed quote - and I'll bet there's a hunt on right now to find out exactly who said it - comes from Ron Suskind's article on religion and the Bush regime, in the New York Times:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

This extraordinary statement is framed by Suskind as an example of how religious faith, not political science, underpins the actions of the Bush presidency. But I think that's not necessarily the case. Indeed, if you're sensitive to the full range of play rhetorics - as my book urges - you see here a powerful, indeed lethal fusion of play-as-power, play-as-imagination, and play-as-freedom (or at  least, the freedom to act in an unfettered way). This is more like Machievelli Reloaded, than theocratic hubris. The imperial power literally 'takes reality lightly'  - ie, presumes that its force can define what we accept as true.

Yet do progressives need to stand our ground in the 'reality-based community', as many bloggers have started to do? Or do they, also, need to 'act to create their own realities'? I'm reminded of Negri's phrase from Empire, 'there is no outside' - meaning, there is nowhere in the network society that isn't amenable to influence or effect from any other part, however unpredictably. And one of those influences might well be on the level of values and ethics and way of life [play ethic?], as well as sheer brute force and intimidation. Our imaginings of a better world have never had so much potency: this is what it really means to live in a world of 'spiritual' politics, where the 'breath of life' animates all fixed positions.

So rather than wilting in the face of Bushite imperialism, what's clearly needed is a third demonstration that there is 'another reality' - what George Monbiot calls a 'metaphysical mutation' - than that of the clash of fundamentalisms between Georgism and Jihad. I'm encouraged by the response of netaphysicians like Rushkoff and Barlow to the election - that dualism and oppositionalism itself might be the problem. And that the best thing the 'left' could do would be to act and embody its vision of a different world, rather than agonise about those who live in their different world. An expressive democracy, in the Negrian sense, might mean just that.

A players' response to Bush, primally, has to be the generation of a variety of political possibilities - activism and creativity, rather than passivism and negativity. None of us should be confined to the 'reality-based community'. In being so explicit about the virtuality and rhetorical nature of their authority, the Bush regime may do us all some good.
 

Papa don't defeat

Notable factoid from The Telegraph today:

Children rate their fathers as among their least popular playmates because they are too competitive, according to research among more than 1,000 youngsters.
They "played to win", lacked imagination or were simply at a loss as to how to play games, said the Children's Play Council, which commissioned the survey with the Children's Society. Children up to the age of 12 would rather play with their friends, their mother or their brothers and sisters.

Only one in 16 chose their fathers as their ideal companion. Dads were rated slightly above grandparents (one in 33). One in 50 children said they would rather play on their own. Tim Gill, director of the Children's Play Council, said: "Dads have difficulty not being too competitive. Several fathers said they found it hard to get down to their children's level. And they don't find it easy to let children win.

"But children will get fed up if they lose all their time. It's frankly demoralising and not much fun."

Hmm. Strikes me that this is probably true, but also probably transitional. If men are committing more time to nurturance, they're still doing it in defiance of a competitive workplace culture - which will shape their parental play. As the workplace humanises, that will change. But maybe only up to a point. Anthony Clare wrote a good book on masculinity once, which had fascinating facts about biological masculinity and styles of parenting. And men, according to the science, do tend to be competitive obsessionals in their play... Perhaps a matter of playing to different strengths in the family of the future?

The Rabbit Hole of St. Louis

I always wondered how Wired magazine would finally get its bleeding-edge angle on the venerable institution of museumry. And heavens! They've gotten round to it:

Imagine what could happen if you free a museum's staff from endless legal red tape, stuffy attitudes about what is and isn't art, and fear of what visitors might do when confronted by dark chasms, scary slides or a puking pig.

Imagine instead a museum staff comprising engineer-artists, free to create whatever they want, be spontaneous, take risks and play. And imagine a museum that figures people won't mind getting really dirty or rather wet during their visits, and you have St. Louis' City Museum

To be fair, it sounds and looks amazing. And of course, we generally approve of the ethos outlined by the curator, Elizabeth Parker:

The museum is a happy hybrid of solid grown-up engineering skills and childlike raw creativity. Our staff of artist-engineers, welders and construction experts builds totally on impulse. They build whatever they want to build, whenever they want to build it. The museum changes on a daily basis due to the staff's spontaneous and constant bursts of creativity.

I'm fascinated to find out whether this museum implies an attitude to history, and its artefacts, that's similarly ludic and post-modern. Or whether it's really just a big arts lab?

Play Ethic review in 'The Independent'

Been a while coming, but happy to see James Harkin's review of The Play Ethicin the Uk's Independent (which was citing the PE in other articles last week too). A sample:

Underlying this enthusiasm for an ethic of play is the idea that we are at our most creative as children, and that by revisiting our childhood we can rediscover that creativity. Those claims, however, should be treated with caution. The innocent way children play may be enchanting, and may prompt us to reflect on our own approach to life. But there is no real evidence that a child-centred view of the world - limited to its immediate environment, and lacking any discipline - is of any use to adults. The creative urge that drives work is qualitatively different from that which allows a child to build sandcastles. No one would have dared suggest to William Shakespeare or James Joyce that their output could benefit from playing around with children's toys.

Again, I'm disappointed (though by now not surprised) that reviewers keep imagining that play means merely child's play, or anarchistic free experimentation - when it also implies a vision of social dynamism, a theory of power and contest, and a learning model, to say the least. And who said play couldn't be about effort or toil, if voluntarily chosen (ask a sportsman or hacker)? But as the director of the ICA talks department, I'm hoping James'll invite me to some event so that I can explain myself further...