Another keeper on the topic of play, from another of the Baffler’s notable contributors:
Rationalists tend to frown upon group activities that seem to serve no evident biological or political purpose, like the drumming and masking so often indulged in by protest movements like Occupy Wall Street. Or, for a more historically venerable example, consider the reaction of European conquerors and missionaries to the shocking spectacles they encountered during the “age of exploration.” Almost everywhere they went—from Africa to the Western plains of America, from Polynesia to the Indian subcontinent—Europeans came across native peoples engaged in ecstatic rituals involving dancing, drumming, body-painting, masks, costumes, and feasting. Failing to notice the parallels between these exuberant native rituals and the traditional carnivals of Europe, missionaries tended to explain them as outbreaks of demonic possession, or as proof that the natives were not human at all, only “savages.” Continue reading
Organikos 