This is Serious Play
Posted on May 4, 2011 | posted by:
A still image from the film Brazil
How we trigger memories through ritual and play to create the starting points for future action…
The creation and recreation of our histories is the foundation for transformation and future action – to own our future we must access our past. The drama of life gives us the emotional and social structures to determine how we interpret and behave in the world. It is through ritual that we are able to see this ‘noise’, a glimpse at the chaotic blueprint of socially interconnected life. It is then through play that we are able to order this world and see through the noise to reach a (temporary) perfection, the groundwork for change.
When we make decisions, when we act or don’t act, by accessing our memories – filtering our response. Our memories spark reaction in us before we know we have made a decision, our bias leading the way to action or apathy. Will we act out of immediate self interest or will we be given the tools to see through the noise of our constructed world and act on behalf of our future? The key to changing behavior may be to change our memories, adding and shifting them to serve as our well trained guide to an intentional future.
To understand how we might target our memories for ‘future work’ we must understand how memories can be triggered for action. For a memory to ‘stick’ it requires a measure of unique and notable elements combined with emotional force. This type of memory is called episodic memory and relies on emotional resonance to reinforce and to trigger remembrance. We weigh these memories against our beliefs of the life we wish we had or believe we deserve. Marketing takes advantage of both our episodic memories as well as our constructed fantasies of what aught to have been or should be. Images of happy children are meant to both trigger a feeling of what might have been and what could be. In this scenario we play both the role of the child in memory and of potential parent (or guardian) of happy children in a future world. We can re-write our own histories through layers of memories, manufactured and real. Marketing would have you believe that buying ‘in’ would give you a chance at a new future or perhaps simply a longer look into the fantasy – a time capsule for you to access the past and dream of a world that could be.
In order to envision a future world or an alternate past you must be able to access your memories. The tricky part is that each time you access a memory, every time a commercial makes you think of a ‘better’ time in your life, you change that memory. What you remember is shaped by the context it is recalled through (a fast commercial or a long conversation with an old friend). When you rewrite that memory the context again becomes crucial. With time to reflect on your past you might result in a firmer remembrance accompanied by new insight, but if you are interrupted as you rewrite the memory (jarred by an event, or maybe the end of the commercial break) both your memory’s hold as well as its contents may be significantly altered. This leaves us vulnerable to implanted details or the removal of important connections, leaving you with less than you had before your act of remembering. On the other hand, if your remembrance is framed in a contained activity space your memories could be further reinforced with new insights and connections made.
Our memories are both unique and a social construction – it is social context, such as who draws a memory out from us, that defines much of what we remember – this built history often deceives us. It frames and constructs remembrances, triggering behaviors such as nationalism, bias, and manipulated rationality. Our realities are derived from these social constructions, our memories are filtered through this to define context and meaning. What happens when these social paradigms shift and reveal a critical falsity or omission? Will we have the memories to construct a new paradigm and then to build a new future path?
Ritual:
Ritual draws upon collective memory to establish legitimacy and resonance forming the context and structure of our world. At times ritual uses myth as a substitute for memory, using narrative as an entry point into participation and belief. Through this manufacturing of memory ritual is able to not only reflect the known world, but to also ‘create the world’. This ability to recreate an unknown past or project into the future a new world creates an unusual relationship between the unknown and the to-be-known. It creates a foundation for constructed social memory and a shared future view. Churches, governments, and schools do this as organized rule based institutions. There is also potential for emerging social movements to utilize these principals to create a common understanding and momentum for future vision. The Tea Party has attempted, and in some ways successfully done this. As one example they have perpetuated the myth of the illegitimate ‘king’, a president with no ‘known’ origins. Where this group has had difficulty is two fold, first a diverse group cannot rely on a consistent single voice and secondly their momentum is directly tied to a structured institution independent of them, American politics. Theirs is not a movement so much as a political tool.
Part of the power of ritual is to articulate change and create acceptance through familiarity and a (sometimes false) sense of establishment. In this case we use ritual to create normalcy, as we do in our daily routines, patterned rituals. This is a powerful force that can re-write history through augmenting acts of tradition or through mimicry. For example ‘One nation under God’ in the pledge of allegiance is an add-on inserted in 1954. As a nation we chose to promote a christian ideology, mingling church and state, and used ritual to mask and embed the shift. Ritual allows us to ignore the noise around us creating a shared understanding, a rule set that defines our past present and future ways of knowing and being.
Play:
Ritual can drown out the outside world where play requires the creation of a new world, a magic circle, to see through the noise of the outside world. Both ritual and play create order, they are order. Ritual often relies on consistency where play can more readily be used to introduce novelty and flexibility. Play is fundamentally outside normal life. This gives play the unique ability to test and shape new ways of thinking. By being able to gain knowledge and ‘play out’ scenarios we are able to prototype futures and perfect ourselves. We remove risk and fear of the unknown by defining it as ‘just’ play. Brainstorming is an example of this. In order to come up with exceptional ideas you must remove yourself of the burden to create a working ‘real world’ proposal. This is a risk free space, turning off the endless constraints that say no to all things new.
Deep play is characterized by peak experiences and transcendent states, creating episodic memories. It is in these states that deep play reveals truths – new discoveries of capabilities and limits. In this case we are not simply ‘playing’ an ideal version of ourselves – we become that ideal. This is serious play, a training for life – training by living. This is where activities like brainstorming turn a corner from playing with the world to full immersion in living – a transcending experience where life is not mirrored it is amplified.
In play there is a tension that is the driving force to compel ‘players’ to continue with full focus. This tension is built by the balance of challenge and breakthroughs enabled through rules and the maintaining of the ‘magic circle’. The tension is created by the focus and skill needed to negotiate the rules, to ‘decide the issue’, and in doing this to end it (the game circumstances). What will be key in applying this to developing futures will be to transform the players at the point of ‘ending it’ so that when tension is released there can be ‘no returning to the ‘real’ world’ (- the past) .
To create a method of future building through deep play we need to create ways to break from the current ‘game’ to a new system view, a permanent change. We need mechanisms that allow us to withdraw from the current world so that we can form our visions around not what is, but what could be. How do we get to a place where we become better versions of ourselves? How do we acquire seriousness – a calling to develop a new culture, a new blueprint for living?
This is serious play.
References
Ackerman, D. (2000). Deep Play. Vintage Press.
Bell, C. (1997). Ritual: perspectives and dimensions, Volume 1996. Oxford University Press.
Breen, J. (2005). Yasukuni Shrine: Ritual and Memory. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.japanfocus.org/-John-Breen/2060
Dreyfus, H. L. (1993). Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Technology and Politics. (C. B. Guignon, Ed.)The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, 54, 345-372. Cambridge University Press.
Goethals, G. (1981). “Ritual: Ceremony and Super-Sunday” Readings in Ritual Studies, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Huizinga, J. (1971). Homo Ludens. Beacon Press.
McGowan, K. (2010). Past Imperfect. Discover Presents the Brain, Fall 2010
Whitehouse, H. and Laidlaw, J. (2004). Ritual and memory: toward a comparative anthropology of religion.
Wikipedia. Pledge of Allegiance. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance
Wikipedia. Tea Party movement Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
Wikipedia. Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birther