Todd Suomela's Library tagged play →  View Popular, Search in Google

There are three (very large) groups to whom one cannot usefully or comfortably (or sometimes even safely) tell these truths:

 
 
1. The incredulous: Those who either know so little or haven’t had the opportunity to think about what they know, that they find the idea of collapse preposterous, unimaginable, and/or unthinkable.
2. The hopeful: Those who believe that collapse is not inevitable or can be significantly mitigated, or believe that even if it is inevitable and can’t be significantly mitigated, we should try anyway.
3. The deniers: Those who are intimidated or offended by, or overwhelmed with anger and/or guilt at, the very idea of collapse.
 
 

I have always found that, when in a crowd that I know contains members of one or more of these groups, or whose members I don’t know well, it’s usually unwise to talk about what’s really going on in our world. For the first group it’s a conversation-stopper, for the second it’s either disappointing or annoying, and for the third it’s an invitation to a hostile debate or a fight, neither of which serves any purpose.

As I write this there are a dozen violet-green swallows flitting outside my window, soaring over my hilltop home and down into the valleys all around. Swallows are very adept at turning in mid-air, in a way that looks a bit clumsy but is actually ideally suited to catching insects in mid-air. They will also fly near larger birds in the hope of catching their moulting feathers in mid-air. The two pictures above depict this.

But I also know that swallows will perform these acrobatic feats, including catching and releasing feathers blowing in the wind over and over again, for no apparent reason. Just for fun. The fact that doing this is good practice for more serious pursuits is not the point — most wild creatures play as their principal means of learning new skills, but clearly take great pleasure in doing so for its own sake, just because it’s fun. [If you're a skeptic, look at this bird behaviour, or this one, and tell me this isn't pure, calculated, play].

Maybe the birds are telling us something. Their story, their way of coping with reality, is to play, to take joy in every moment. Maybe that is the story of all wild creatures: That life is play, delight, pleasure, laughter, living in Now Time. Maybe that should be our story, too, those of us who can no longer believe the invented stories of our culture, and who can no longer bear the story of grief and shame and anger and sadness and fear for our future that we have told ourselves about this terrible, real world.

• Unoccupied play: the child is relatively stationary and appears to be performing random movements with no apparent purpose. A relatively infrequent style of play.
• Solitary play: the child is are completely engrossed in playing and does not seem to notice other children. Most often seen in children between 2 and 3 years-old.
• Onlooker play: child takes an interest in other children's play but does not join in. May ask questions or just talk to other children, but the main activity is simply to watch.
• Parallel play: the child mimics other children's play but doesn't actively engage with them. For example they may use the same toy.
• Associative play: now more interested in each other than the toys they are using. This is the first category that involves strong social interaction between the children while they play.
• Cooperative play: some organisation enters children's play, for example the playing has some goal and children often adopt roles and act as a group.