Game Philosophy · Piece 5
People handle life’s complexities best when they’re playful. When we’re serious, we become tightly bound to our current perspectives on reality. But when we’re playful, we flit between perspectives. We see more. Our scope for effective action broadens.
Illustration · 4:3
Same image as this piece’s hub panel
Pure philosophy family
Playfulness requires the player to hold contradictory thoughts at the same time. They must be able to act as if nothing mattered but the elements of a particular game, while simultaneously knowing that it’s just a game; that other perspectives are important too. So it’s only creatures with sophisticated minds that are playful.
Seriousness removes the as if. The person’s thoughts become completely dominated by the demands of one particular game. Rules become commandments.
Playfulness breaks free from such constrictions.
Wittgenstein believed that philosophy was “a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language”.1
Our minds are always full of our mental representations of things. So it’s easy to mistake the ideal forms in our heads for the forms of life that make up our shared universe.
Buddhists warn against mistaking the finger that points at the moon for the moon itself.2 Serious people fall into this trap. They let their thoughts and actions be shaped by the fingers in their heads and not by the moons beyond.
When we’re playful, however, we use ideas without them ensnaring us. Our minds can jump to completely different perspectives. So we see and feel deeper into the body of reality. The palest of moons become visible.
Nietzsche knew the power of playfulness.
“I know of no other way of dealing with great tasks than that of play; this is, as a sign of greatness, an essential precondition.”
— Nietzsche3
Playful people sometimes glance out at the ultimate context of all play — the immense, ungraspable intelligence of this swiftly-moving universe.
They can take delight in nonsense and whimsy. They see subtleties that are impossible to fully grasp. And they see that life is odd beyond words; that it’s almost absurd.
Disciplines still make sense. But not strict constraints.
So there’s nothing to hold us back from doing what feels right to us personally. We don’t need permission to relax and savour the delights that can be found in the simplest of things. Or to build what we like. It would be a shame not to take pleasure when pleasure is there for the taking.