2018.06.07 - Day 85

Thanks for the links Eliza. Lovely songs.
I must try to bring some Eckhart videos up on my bedroom TV. It’s hard to buy his talks from Amazon now – I think you have to buy them from his own publishers.

Your daughter got on the right side of the music industry anyway Storm. Everyone makes money except the musicians, it seems, unless you get into the top tier.
I try a lot of different chord progressions and certainly must have used some others have used. Lawyers only get interested if you start making big money from a song though, and I think I am safe 

Alma: I wake up feeling bad some mornings too and for no apparent reason. Sometimes just from a bad dream.
Yes, I think it’s good to just sit with the feeling – it might even reveal its source. Awareness can see through the stories. Tolle has a down-to-earth way of seeing the humorous side of our exaggerating, catastrophizing minds, that I love 

Feeling bad 'may be' a sign that practice is reaching deep, too.

Long email with a friend today, about how it is a good thing his daughter feels secure enough to take him to task for not being there for her growing up. It is hard for him not to push back, "I'm doing everything now, have said I'm sorry, can't go back", but he is wise enough to let it be about her pain right now. Eventually it may be felt by her as one chapter in their relationship and time together. She may come to see how hard it is not to give up when one has made a big mistake that seems unrecoverable from, how hard it can be to apologize and take responsibility, continue to be open with the way things are.

Storming here today, and I have so much to hunker down with and get done, but I'm glad to have made the time for that conversation. Helped me too. edited 17:38, 7 Jun 2018

Remember 'Imagined Future Self'? I made that the first part of my 99 day project. And it still continues, but perhaps more of that later.

I came across the attached picture of a sign placed in a public park on this wonderful tumblr of private-in-public art installations around Sydney.
http://miguelmarquezoutside.com/

Huizinga is looking at the Play-Element in Modern (1930s) Civilization. And while considering card games (vis-à-vis board games) he mentions the game of Contract Bridge, commenting how "The paraphernalia of handbooks and systems and professional training has made bridge a deadly earnest business," which doesn't necessarily sound very playful!

You might anticipate Huizinga would see a lot of play potential in Bridge. But not so. "Society as a whole is neither benefited nor damaged by this futile activity. It seems difficult to speak of it as an elevating recreation in the sense of Aristotle's diagoge. Proficiency at bridge is a sterile excellence, sharpening the mental faculties very one-sidedly without enriching the soul in any way, fixing and consuming a quantity of intellectual energy that might have been better applied. The most we can say, I think, is that it might have been applied worse."

Ouch! And then he sums up by saying, "The status of bridge in modern society would indicate, to all appearances, an immense increase in the play-element to-day. But appearances are deceptive. Really to play, a man must play like a child."

Play by Huizinga's definition, may not always be the appropriate benchmark to measure activity. But still, it does makes me think about the other 'non-work' things I do. What I am doing them for? Do they actually fulfill whatever purpose I've assigned to them or expect from them?

I think maybe Huizinga's main (if unstated) point here is that just because something or some activity is dressed up by others as 'A' or 'B', doesn't necessarily make it so. If therefore, you do an activity, and it's promulgated as having such-and-such a benefit, and yet you don't feel that benefit, the problem may not be you, as is often the tendency to think. The activity may have been misclassified, maybe even deliberately, but more likely it's due to sloppy analysis by others or even wishful thinking.

With only a few pages to go in Homo Ludens, I'm wondering whether to recommend the book. It's interesting. If you're into social history or game design, it's required reading. And in the context of Huizinga's time and culture it was probably a much needed jog out of societal complacency (though that would come anyway the following year). But I wouldn't say most people, even friends in Play as Being, would necessarily benefit from reading it (as opposed to spending the same time doing something else).

Great sign! The whole page is pretty entertaining. :)

I'm looking forward to reading Homo Ludens, but will take it very lightly when I do re-begin, probably skimming a few sections. I like thinking in these ways, and what I've read so far is enough to keep going with for a while.