This essay was written in the spirit of encouraging self-care and rest, not to retreat from society but to keep the calm disposition and clear-sightedness we need to act effectively in the world.
Once in a while I should just read and absorb the message. But, I have to comment on this essay. Thank you, first of all.
Early in my career I had what at the time seemed like a terrifying chance to leave a job I loved for a job with less pay. As a single parent, if I left my FT university career and worked for School Based Health Centers, I would be able to be present for my then 12 y/o daughter, a time when she needed me most. My supervisor, mentor and friend encouraged me to take the job. I was really reluctant. She knew my story and gave me the most life changing advice that has shaped me and the rest of my career. She said, "playing with children helps you reconnect with your inner child. It will also heal you". I was scared for what I saw as an enormous responsibility for a child's wellbeing and mental health.
One of my first referrals was probably one of the most complicated and tragic in my career. A young child was horrifically abused by its family and foster family. The first session I simply observed as they clearly played moving around the room as different characters and asking me to guess who they were. Their play was revealing. It reflected horrific trauma. But, from that day on, as I helped children who were abused, neglected and struggling with early childhood, what I was able to take from those experiences changed me and helped minimize the fear that consumed me as a child.
Sometimes we observe children playing, who with first impressions appear to have no inhibitions leading us to conclude that they are living a protected and safe life. Many times I'm sure that is true. But, children who play or learn to play in safe spaces having experienced trauma also heal through their play.
Often, when I observe adults who seem like the most unlikely to support Trump or MAGA or authoritarians as well as the authoritarian themselves, I think about that early lesson for me where children reminded me how to play. I believe those adults either never played or forgot how to. They are stuck in anger, fear, and self absorption. Had they had nurturing and healing caregivers along the way, perhaps things would be different. As the children I worked with healed, I did too.
Wonderful. Not exactly the same thing, but reminds me of what a psychic (who was really good) said to me when I asked her how long I might live. She said 'You could live to be 98, but only if your having fun.' Play and fun.
Your essay also reminds me of a book (really, a collection of thoughts and essays) I recently read called Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown. The central thesis is that by experiencing pleasure, we necessarily oppose tyranny. Pleasure, joy, play: these are transgressive political acts in and of themselves.
I am a recently retired professional, and have spent these past 3 years refining my answer to the inevitable question: so what are you doing now with all your free time? “I am living my life, more slowly, with eyes wide open to the daily humdrum of the idiosyncrasies of people and nature”
Granted, too wordy and to pretentious but it ends the conversation and maybe gives them something to think about
I'm an avid pickleball player, and it's ironic that the majority of men I play with play with determined seriousness, rarely smile, often cuss themselves out during the game, constantly hit the ball out with uncontrolled smashes, and rarely make jokes or quips. In general, the women play with far less seriousness. Wish all the guys could read this enlightening article--and LIGHTEN up.
Playing. Relaxing. Doing nothing. All of that helps us to stay human, to BE human in aa most basic way. Then we can restart and refocus on what must be done. You can learn from silence just by listening.
Recommend a delightful book by Pico Iyer called “The Art of Stillness.” Which tells the reader about adventures in going nowhere. When things get too busy and out of control, this book will bring your feet back to earth! Highly recommend!
This brings to mind Kamala’s radiant and relentless smile while she is speaking, she projects in telling the truth that’s it’s FUN ! Quite unlike MR Scowl !!!
Thank you for this! Authoritarians would also hate play because it encourages divergent thinking instead of only convergent thinking They don't want us to think for ourselves Creativity also encourages this and they certainly don't want that We all need continual Sabbaths in anyway we can "unplug" Appreciate you more than you can ever know for being with us during this time
Thank you, Ruth, for reminding us we still have several sources of respite from the battles we must face against tyranny, autocrats, and unchecked greed as we propel our democratic institutions and visions forward. Perhaps the fall season is also a reminder of the need to store things away for the winter months, a necessary diversion from a headlong assault on political disinformation, lest we become too fanatical in the fight for truth.
One of RBG’s finest and wisest pieces—eloquent, dense, finely detailed, and gently moving.
If I may add an observation—
The most highly sublimated form of play is art—whether we are creating, performing, hearing, observing, watching, reading, living in, talking about, or interpreting it. As RBG observes of play, art exists not to accomplish anything, but simply for its own sake. Its classic characterization, repeated in various formulations over the centuries, is that it simultaneously delights and instructs: we simultaneously enjoy or have fun with it, and learn from it (a unique and truly remarkable characteristic). Art is infinite in its variety, and is available, if we make the effort to look for them, in forms that suit virtually any mental or external conditions we may be in at a particular moment.
Properly understood, art is not an object of commerce, nor a marker of social, cultural, or intellectual status, though it is commonly perverted into these forms. Rather, it is the common living possession of an ideal egalitarian commonwealth, one that does not exist in reality but that we can and need to bring into mental existence, individually and collectively, so that ultimately we may bring it into existence in reality. In such a world, work and its products would be transformed from their present condition of drudgery, want, and misery for the many, and mindless luxury for the few, into the means and products of individual self-development for all, while at the same time being labor and goods of genuine social usefulness. For in the broadest sense, art is simply everything that is worth doing and is done well, and it remains based on the child’s delight in play, make-believe, and even nonsense.
The inhumane, immoral, and ultimately nihilistic form of work and production to which the world has been enslaving itself during the past half-century (often referred to as “neo-liberal capitalism”) perverts both the worker and the products of work into commodities. This is precisely the negation of true art. The hideous and meretricious nature of this economic order has become manifest in its abysmal failure to live up to any of his promises; in the flagrant dysfunctionality of the social, educational, political, and economic order around the world; and in the global paroxysms of primitive emotions, and their concomitant psychotic withdrawal from reality, that are currently terrifying us. This economic order annihilates the human significance of work, of the products of work, and of everything meaningful in human life, for the sake of replacing it not with anything that is real, but with the measure of money, money being a thing that, understood even in the terms of the field of economics itself, does not exist, but is merely an abstraction.
Thus the system to which we are enslaved, regardless of what it thinks or persuades us it is doing, and regardless of the endlessly proliferating hall of mirrors into which it is remaking the world, in reality annihilates everything in life that is humanly meaningful, in order to replace it with—a void. Its hall of mirrors comprises the false arts of propaganda, advertising, and commercial entertainment, whose purpose is to indoctrinate us in the further false arts of our monstrous over-production and over-consumption of useless and often destructive goods and services, whose production in reality impoverishes us while immiserating most of the human race, and will before long destroy the planet. This is the triumph of nihilism, of the death instinct that endures at the lowest depth of the psyche in all of us, and that rules in many or most of those who rule over us. It is the perennial adversary of the human imagination that delights in the divine play that we call art.
We do not need to live this way.
Thank you, Professor Ben-Ghiat, for once again helping me to remain sane.
Yusuf (Cat Stevens) in 1970 sang WHERE DO THE CHILDREN PLAY from his Tea for the Tillerman album… recent remaster with video artistically metaphors your numerous insights, Alexander
i was a play therapist and can attest to the power of play in adult life - as does Andreas Weber here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIFYJLb2qE0
Once in a while I should just read and absorb the message. But, I have to comment on this essay. Thank you, first of all.
Early in my career I had what at the time seemed like a terrifying chance to leave a job I loved for a job with less pay. As a single parent, if I left my FT university career and worked for School Based Health Centers, I would be able to be present for my then 12 y/o daughter, a time when she needed me most. My supervisor, mentor and friend encouraged me to take the job. I was really reluctant. She knew my story and gave me the most life changing advice that has shaped me and the rest of my career. She said, "playing with children helps you reconnect with your inner child. It will also heal you". I was scared for what I saw as an enormous responsibility for a child's wellbeing and mental health.
One of my first referrals was probably one of the most complicated and tragic in my career. A young child was horrifically abused by its family and foster family. The first session I simply observed as they clearly played moving around the room as different characters and asking me to guess who they were. Their play was revealing. It reflected horrific trauma. But, from that day on, as I helped children who were abused, neglected and struggling with early childhood, what I was able to take from those experiences changed me and helped minimize the fear that consumed me as a child.
Sometimes we observe children playing, who with first impressions appear to have no inhibitions leading us to conclude that they are living a protected and safe life. Many times I'm sure that is true. But, children who play or learn to play in safe spaces having experienced trauma also heal through their play.
Often, when I observe adults who seem like the most unlikely to support Trump or MAGA or authoritarians as well as the authoritarian themselves, I think about that early lesson for me where children reminded me how to play. I believe those adults either never played or forgot how to. They are stuck in anger, fear, and self absorption. Had they had nurturing and healing caregivers along the way, perhaps things would be different. As the children I worked with healed, I did too.
Wonderful. Not exactly the same thing, but reminds me of what a psychic (who was really good) said to me when I asked her how long I might live. She said 'You could live to be 98, but only if your having fun.' Play and fun.
I seem unable to find a link to sign up for August 16 presentation. Will you be sending a link for registration?
Your essay also reminds me of a book (really, a collection of thoughts and essays) I recently read called Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown. The central thesis is that by experiencing pleasure, we necessarily oppose tyranny. Pleasure, joy, play: these are transgressive political acts in and of themselves.
I am a recently retired professional, and have spent these past 3 years refining my answer to the inevitable question: so what are you doing now with all your free time? “I am living my life, more slowly, with eyes wide open to the daily humdrum of the idiosyncrasies of people and nature”
Granted, too wordy and to pretentious but it ends the conversation and maybe gives them something to think about
I'm an avid pickleball player, and it's ironic that the majority of men I play with play with determined seriousness, rarely smile, often cuss themselves out during the game, constantly hit the ball out with uncontrolled smashes, and rarely make jokes or quips. In general, the women play with far less seriousness. Wish all the guys could read this enlightening article--and LIGHTEN up.
Beautiful.
Playing. Relaxing. Doing nothing. All of that helps us to stay human, to BE human in aa most basic way. Then we can restart and refocus on what must be done. You can learn from silence just by listening.
Recommend a delightful book by Pico Iyer called “The Art of Stillness.” Which tells the reader about adventures in going nowhere. When things get too busy and out of control, this book will bring your feet back to earth! Highly recommend!
This brings to mind Kamala’s radiant and relentless smile while she is speaking, she projects in telling the truth that’s it’s FUN ! Quite unlike MR Scowl !!!
Mr. Grump has no joy in his life, and he has forgotten how to smile! Trump has even lost his focus! He is a waste of space!
Thank you for this! Authoritarians would also hate play because it encourages divergent thinking instead of only convergent thinking They don't want us to think for ourselves Creativity also encourages this and they certainly don't want that We all need continual Sabbaths in anyway we can "unplug" Appreciate you more than you can ever know for being with us during this time
Enjoy your day
What a wonderful story. Thank you for posting.
Absolutely wonderful essay! Thank you!
Thank you, Ruth, for reminding us we still have several sources of respite from the battles we must face against tyranny, autocrats, and unchecked greed as we propel our democratic institutions and visions forward. Perhaps the fall season is also a reminder of the need to store things away for the winter months, a necessary diversion from a headlong assault on political disinformation, lest we become too fanatical in the fight for truth.
Agree, taking stock as winter approaches
One of RBG’s finest and wisest pieces—eloquent, dense, finely detailed, and gently moving.
If I may add an observation—
The most highly sublimated form of play is art—whether we are creating, performing, hearing, observing, watching, reading, living in, talking about, or interpreting it. As RBG observes of play, art exists not to accomplish anything, but simply for its own sake. Its classic characterization, repeated in various formulations over the centuries, is that it simultaneously delights and instructs: we simultaneously enjoy or have fun with it, and learn from it (a unique and truly remarkable characteristic). Art is infinite in its variety, and is available, if we make the effort to look for them, in forms that suit virtually any mental or external conditions we may be in at a particular moment.
Properly understood, art is not an object of commerce, nor a marker of social, cultural, or intellectual status, though it is commonly perverted into these forms. Rather, it is the common living possession of an ideal egalitarian commonwealth, one that does not exist in reality but that we can and need to bring into mental existence, individually and collectively, so that ultimately we may bring it into existence in reality. In such a world, work and its products would be transformed from their present condition of drudgery, want, and misery for the many, and mindless luxury for the few, into the means and products of individual self-development for all, while at the same time being labor and goods of genuine social usefulness. For in the broadest sense, art is simply everything that is worth doing and is done well, and it remains based on the child’s delight in play, make-believe, and even nonsense.
The inhumane, immoral, and ultimately nihilistic form of work and production to which the world has been enslaving itself during the past half-century (often referred to as “neo-liberal capitalism”) perverts both the worker and the products of work into commodities. This is precisely the negation of true art. The hideous and meretricious nature of this economic order has become manifest in its abysmal failure to live up to any of his promises; in the flagrant dysfunctionality of the social, educational, political, and economic order around the world; and in the global paroxysms of primitive emotions, and their concomitant psychotic withdrawal from reality, that are currently terrifying us. This economic order annihilates the human significance of work, of the products of work, and of everything meaningful in human life, for the sake of replacing it not with anything that is real, but with the measure of money, money being a thing that, understood even in the terms of the field of economics itself, does not exist, but is merely an abstraction.
Thus the system to which we are enslaved, regardless of what it thinks or persuades us it is doing, and regardless of the endlessly proliferating hall of mirrors into which it is remaking the world, in reality annihilates everything in life that is humanly meaningful, in order to replace it with—a void. Its hall of mirrors comprises the false arts of propaganda, advertising, and commercial entertainment, whose purpose is to indoctrinate us in the further false arts of our monstrous over-production and over-consumption of useless and often destructive goods and services, whose production in reality impoverishes us while immiserating most of the human race, and will before long destroy the planet. This is the triumph of nihilism, of the death instinct that endures at the lowest depth of the psyche in all of us, and that rules in many or most of those who rule over us. It is the perennial adversary of the human imagination that delights in the divine play that we call art.
We do not need to live this way.
Thank you, Professor Ben-Ghiat, for once again helping me to remain sane.
Thank you for these important thoughts. We do not need to live this way is right!
Yusuf (Cat Stevens) in 1970 sang WHERE DO THE CHILDREN PLAY from his Tea for the Tillerman album… recent remaster with video artistically metaphors your numerous insights, Alexander
Yes … we do not need to live this way