The culture where play is shameful (2012)

Papua New Guinea is endlessly studied. Jared Diamond speculates various reasons for why the people there didn&#x27;t develop into a post-hunter-gatherer civilization (or much beyond that). While much of his work has been disputed, I think it&#x27;s still an interesting question.<p>I can&#x27;t help sometimes when reading anthropological studies or videos of a pre-modern civilization that a terrible amount of time is spent on rituals and dances and other things and perhaps the key is that other, faster developing groups of people simply found a different balance between work and these non-productive activities.<p>However, the Baining seem to represent the opposite end, doing nothing <i>but</i> productive work, and yet they aren&#x27;t exactly the unusually advanced Atlanteans of PNG either.<p>So I was struck by this &quot;and exhibited little curiosity or enthusiasm&quot; and it kind of hits me how important imagination and enthusiasm are in the process of <i>advancing</i> things. Toil gets stuff done, but you&#x27;re just running in place. Imagination is a kind of play, and it&#x27;s necessary to move you forward as well.

Ugh, that culture sounds like hell on earth. I am amazed by the unique capability of humans to take our most ingrained needs and desires and turn them into shame. Whether it be sex, or food, or &quot;wasting time&quot;, or even just displays of emotion, we have somehow managed to turn these most central of human feelings into something bad. I&#x27;m not arguing that we should completely give ourselves over to our base urges, but acknowledging they exist, that everyone has them, and that they can be a wonderful thing would be a great start.

the comment thread is excellent, and a lot more insightful than the article (which was interesting, but seemed a bit simplified and superficial to me). note especially the comments from actual baining people.

It&#x27;s like an alien culture out of a Star Trek episode.<p>Play is not an anomaly, but the essence of personal and technological development. The fuel of progress is play and <i>Learning by example</i> is no substitute for <i>trial and error</i>. On top of that, a play-less culture is not resilient at all, and therefore prone to extinction.

There must be some confusion, at least with too abstract concepts. Every evolutionary psychologist will tell you that &quot;play&quot; is how humans and animals learn - by imitating and &quot;practising&quot;. It is related to social and especially matting &quot;skills&quot;, or, a more correct world - &quot;habits&quot;. Play is evolutionary way to develop useful habits. So-called &quot;mirror neurons&quot; meme explains social aspect of &quot;play&quot;. If this society isn&#x27;t extinguished yet, it means that observed phenomena is rather a product if imagination and wishful thinking.<p>But nowadays everything written without obscene words and spelling errors could be considered &quot; scientific&quot;.

&quot;She found, however, that she could study them by following them around and observing their daily activities and interactions.&quot; Are you f$%&quot;£ kidding me? This sounds like such a revelation but is so bleeding obvious. Of course you have to observe people in their natural habitat, WATCHING them, not just sending them a SurveyMonkey survey or asking a buncha questions. C&#x27;mon people. Get real!

While reading this article, I mentally replaced &quot;Baining&quot; with &quot;British&quot;. And sadly, it rang true.

I wonder how this culture would transform if it were subjected to facebook.

Sounds like Asian parents, especially &#x27;Tiger Moms&#x27;.

Reminds me of my in-laws who get this puzzled look on their face when I (rarely) mention my music.

I don&#x27;t see how the early anthropologists would be so bored with this tribe. They sound so different than anything else and fascinating.<p>This shows how important play is to develop imaginary things like gods, rituals, etc. however, I do wish American adults played a little less. Whenever I&#x27;m in the u.s. or when American friends visit me they&#x27;re constantly futzing around on their phone playing games. I mean constantly and nearly everyone.<p>Imagine how much you could accomplish if you used that time to for example learn a new language. And before you say that people need to take a break every now and then the people playing these games don&#x27;t seem to be taking it easy - they&#x27;re working really hard it!<p>So there probably is some value in shaming play, at least in adults.

Url changed from <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;io9.com&#x2F;5929918&#x2F;so-called-dullest-culture-on-earth-frowns-upon-sex-and-bans-play" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;io9.com&#x2F;5929918&#x2F;so-called-dullest-culture-on-earth-fr...</a>, which points to this.