#by popular demand...

Other fashions, perhaps rendered unfashionable...

In the absence of any bureaucratic progress, I've started branching off some readings; Thus far, I've sought out explanations of what constitutes a game, as well as some alternate media readings, mainly TV and comics related. The problem is that while these have tended to explain peripheral issues, defining certain aspects with greater clarity, they do not give a clear picture as to why my preferred hobby should be so vilified. How are Mass Hysterias generated, media stampedes whipped up and dodgy decisions made legislation?

I stray from topic though.

I'd like to discuss a book I've been slowly tunneling through during loo and lunch breaks, on busses and bedtimes. it's simply called "Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul" by Dr Stuart Brown (2009). 

Before I launch into that though, I should explain how I came to Brown's work. Generally speaking, his work as a psychologist and doctor would mean his books would be filed under "self help" or something like that... but I came looking for works like this via reading Roger Caillois (specifically his 1958 book "Les Jeux et les Hommes").

Caillois, like Huizinga before him, found his native language inadequate when it cames to discussing the nuances of games and play. Indeed most languages are ambiguous about the notions of specific forms of play; it's as vexing a translation / interpretation problem as finding the right nuance to explain... for example, the concept of 'Smoking'.

We may for example say that one "smokes" a cigarette in English or French, while others may describe the act as "taking" or "doing" a cigarette. Meanwhile an Arab will say he "eats / consumes" one, which as you may imagine causes much consternation at Ramadan as Imams, Mullahs and Islamic scholars scramble to untangle the business of "Eating only when the sun has set" to include or disclude tobacco, something that logically has nothing to do with digestion and was invented a long time after the passing of the Prophet Muhammad.

So too it is with Caillois' categorisation of games. On page 36 of Jeux et Hommes, he includes a handy table categorising games as either

Agon (in the strictest sense, a pure contest)

Alea (randomness, games of chance)

Mimicry (make believe, etc)

Ilinx (e.g., vertigo, horse riding, rollercoasters and other sensory pleasure / overloads)

but he then further divides them along a spectrum between Paidia (kids games, largely unstructured fun) and Ludus (heavily structured situations we'd recognise as games). Paidia seems a strange choice though - it apparently suggests that these harmless mostly unstructured gambols are part of a larger process of acquiring civilising traits, leading to adulthood Arete. The point is though that I sought to get a wider understanding of where the concepts of FUN and PLAY stood in the modern age.

Well, according to Brown's research over the better part of a decade, we've been looking at play all wrong. He begins his chapters with case studies of friends and patients he's known, giving a potted history of their lives, their highs and lows, using them as examples for some of his conclusions. On page 126 he pretty much sums up both the central point of his book and the great dilemma of the modern westernised age

"Each of these people, Barbara, Jason and Mark is an example of the critical fact that the opposite of play is not work - the opposite of play is depression." (my emphasis)

Using examples for his time as a clinician as well as research drawn from numerous animal behaviour sources, he outlines some basic theories as to why we need and crave play, even though it apparently offers nothing in the way of short term gain. It rarely fills our bellies, usually isn't restful, doesn't fulfil those basic criteria we often look for when trying to explain the evolutionary functions of play... or does it?

Current theories regarding the purpose of fun range from the traditional "its training for excellence in life skills" through to the more modern "like dreaming, play is designed to help cement and encode memories and learnt skills in the brain, pruning older, less efficient connections and generating new patterns" . The tricky part is that the by-products of fun can be described at a molecular and cellular level but they're no real help when it comes to explaining the WHY or the HOW of fun without turning into a drug maker's recipe.

The Training argument is most often applied to juvenile animals, usually mammals; strangely enough, this may apply to some animals more than others. Brown notes for example that among dogs, there are levels of playfulness that can be arranged on a spectrum; the twist is that wolves, the common ancestor of all dogs abandons almost all play behaviours once it reaches sexual maturity.

Wolves may play if cued by their cubs, but they appear not to be generally interested in spontaneous play like most domesticated dog breeds. Adult wolves focus most of their intra-species interactions on sorting out who's above and below them in the dominance hierarchy; they also become more predictable, more fixed in their range of responses to unfamiliar stimuli.

The implication is that human involvement in selective breeding and the incorporation of dogs into our societal structures has meant in a permanently retarded mental development - they're trapped in a perpetual childhood or teenage state. What's interesting about this late onset maturity is that it's literally what enables the proverbial Old Dog To Learn New Tricks.

This phenomenon, this extended state of creative, mental elasticity is known as Neoteny.

The drop off in neoteny with the onset of maturity doesn't seem to be an iron clad rule for all mammals though - Brown then recounts (pg 24) the tale of an Inuit hunter who in 2006 witnessed a strange encounter between one of his huskies and a starving polar bear.  

He'd been waiting for about a week for the sea ice to solidify enough for him to proceed in his journey when the bear arrived. He was wary of the animal at first - the bear was more than capable (even in its weakened state) of killing and devouring his dogs or mortally wounding him. Previous experience suggested the bear too was waiting for the ice to solidify so it could continue its journey north to hunt seals; clearly, they'd both be stuck for a few days until then.

But then something magical happened. One of his dogs ran right up to the bear, and bowed down in the classic "play with me!" gesture, hopping to and fro, barking in short bursts while wagging its tail madly. At first, he was perplexed, worried that the huge bear would just swat the dog down and eat it; instead, the bear accepted the dog's invitation. Soon, they were charging about through the snow, sliding down short hills of icy rocks, chasing then one another, then swapping roles. 

Dumbfounded, the hunter decided not to interfere; sure enough, some hours later the bear tired of the game and ambled off across the tundra. The next day though, the bear returned to play, leaving when it felt it had had enough. This continued for several days until the ice thickened, after which the bear simply didn't show; the hunter packed up and continued his journey. 

What the hell that was all about? What was the impulse that would compel an otherwise highly effective and dangerous predator to play with a creature that by all other measures would be considered a food item? Neoteny.

Brown recounts going to see an old friend, zoologist Bob Fagen and observing Bears at play in an Alaskan stream; when conventional scientific wisdom from a few decades ago would have us believe that bears do not play - there is no purpose for it in an environment when the animals must work hard to store up fat for the winter. Had anyone suggested play, chances are they might have been written off as a hopeless romantic anthropomorphising these creatures.

and yet here they were playing. When asked why they play, Dr Fagen eventually replied that...

"In a world continually presenting unique challenges and ambiguity, play prepares these bears for an evolving planet" (pg 29)

"I believe that play teaches young animals to make sound judgements. For instance, play fighting may let a bear learn when it can trust another bear, and if things get too violent, when it needs to defend itself or flee. Play allows "pretend" rehearsal for the challenges and ambiguities of life, a rehearsal where life and death are not at stake." (pg 32)

Essentially, this proposes a new possibility. There seems to be some evidence to suggest that Neoteny is an evolutionary advantage - the ability to see a problem and try out a wild range of divergent approaches to problem solving is at the heart of what has made humankind such a success.

Dr John Byers made a series of interesting observations on animal play correlating to brain size and structure - the larger the frontal cortex, the more capable a creature is of play. The ability to foresee consequences of actions, to simulate and extrapolate future conditions is at the heart of play and dependent on the development of many cognitive processes.

Another part of the brain intimately involved in this process is the cerebellum - the rearmost part of the brain. Once thought to be only useful as a junction box to the rest of the body, we now realise its vital to cognition, sensing musical rhythms, language processing and many others. Byers' research led him to conclude that play is a mechanism which re-sculpts the brain's shape and structure! The Cerebellum for example, is refashioned at the neuron level - old or inadequate connections are pruned and new ones are constructed to improve the speed and facility with which we perform every day actions.  

By most animal standards, we have a prolonged childhood - we seem to have sacrificed instinct-based and inbuilt controls like the "post-partum Automated stand up" and "self-feeding" behaviours most newborn animals have in favour of prolonged socially based learning processes. Neoteny has immediate evolutionary drawbacks, but yields bigger dividends in the short to medium term. Despite the extended period of helplessness, we are able to rewire ourselves almost at will - and play provides a safer venue for that sort of 'self-upgrading' than rushing into things willy-nilly.