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God and Games in Modern Culture
| Article
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14908 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
4,303 Words |
| Author
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Lonnie D. Kliever
Lonnie D. Kliever is professor of religious studies at
Southern Methodist University. He conducted the
investigation of the recent football scandal at SMU on behalf
of the university and in cooperation with the NCAA. |
Our culture seems bent on becoming one gigantic playground. Play in all its forms has a high priority in the lives of most North Americans. How else can we explain the spectacle of the Winter Olympics, the fervor of contract bridge, the wealth of movie stars? How else can we explain the energy and enthusiasm, the resources and ingenuity invested in the leisure-time activities of sports, games, and entertainment? We are becoming, in the words of Michael Novak's parody of the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, "One nation under play, with sports and games and entertainment for all."
Commentators on the North American scene are divided over what to make of this preoccupation with play. Some pundits see today's culture at play as the decisive sign of our moral and spiritual decay. For them, the old ideals of thrift and work have disappeared in a land grown fat with indolence and abundance. Other commentators see our unrelenting pursuit of play as a necessary "safety valve" for handling the drudgery and boredom of living in a superindustrialized and superurbanized society. Like the "bread and circuses" of imperial Rome, our leisure time distractions help compensate for the regimented labor and life we must otherwise endure. Still other interpreters take an even more positive view. They contend that play has its own place alongside of work in a life rightly ordered. Indeed, they believe that play has a crucial place in every era and area of human life--from infancy to old age, from religion to recreation.
My sympathies lie with those who see a close connection between human well-being and play, including those forms of play we call professional and amateur sports. Those who regard play at worst as a distortion or at best as a distraction from the serious business of living have little appreciation for the significance of play in human affairs. Scholarly studies in a variety of fields have shown that the play of children and of adults must be taken seriously because these experiences have a vital place in personal and social life. Not only have these scholars studied play itself but they have also applied the insights derived from studying play to other areas of thought and life with impressive results. Every thing from the stock market to funeral rites is seen in a new way when viewed from the standpoint of play. Indeed, the increasing use of "game" and "play" metaphors by a variety of original thinkers suggests that a whole new understanding of human beings may be emerging. We may be neither Homo sapiens ("humankind the thinker"), nor Homo faber ("humankind the maker") but Homo ludens ("humankind the player"). In short, the "play element" looms large in all human experience, though how that element is
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