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265 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1998
the reason play is such an important dividing line between stasists and dynamists: A playful society is, of necessity, dynamic, and a dynamic society rewards, or at least tolerates, people who play. Among its many goods are ever more fields of play, from beach volleyball to cancer research to assembly lines that encourage workers to solve problems themselves.
Humans, by contrast, play all our lives, and adults do most of the inventing. For a human being not to be creative and curious is a sign of senility, not maturity.
In a stable environment, in which all necessary skills can be mastered during childhood, adults do not need to play in order to survive. But the world sometimes demands new patterns. The environment, natural as well as human, is not stable. The evolutionary advantage of play, then, seems to be that it fosters resilience. One possibility is that play, in animals or humans, simply allows an individual to accumulate lots of different experiences on which to draw when faced with a challenge. It pulls more alternatives into the realm of the familiar. An animal that played as a child will therefore be more adaptable as an adult.
But—the human advantage—an adult who continues to play will be more adaptable still, able to draw not only on old experiences but on the desire for new ones.