So, I have been bogged down with class, as one will, and have bene unable to write as much as I would have liked. Old devils and burdens seem to appear whenever we just aren't strong enough to keep being who we want to be. Anyway, i've been working on the book, Homo Ludens. Stories and history are interesting things. After reading the language chapter, I wrote this down:
So play appears in the fringes of society as it is the result of the playful things people would do when the material conditions of the world around them was far too hostile for them. They needed the fun and over time, the fun things they did managed to make their way into society. The games and rites of passage that began as fun within hunter tribes ended up becoming the rules of that society which in turn changed over the years and became the rules that that society instituted as their law.
I've been trying to think what I meant by this. Huizinga believes that while there are universal beliefs on what play is, we didn't really start thinking about them until very recently. To me, his chapter and inferences lead to a strange sort of premise that the bulk of society is the result of (and this is an overly overly simplified version) games hunters would play to take their minds off of the harshness of the world around them. Those rules became rites and those rites inevitably came to become the backbone of the system of beliefs that formed what would become the modern societies that exist today. Sure, there is the series of events that happened after the establishment of the first cities, but that doesn't matter too much.
Think about how house rules in some games can end up as a totally different game? Rather, I think about this. And will continue to do so!
