Man, don't get angry
Today I discovered my new favourite game title: the German children's game Mensch ärgere dich nicht, which translates roughly as Person, don't get angry. Strictly speaking it's Man, don't get angry, but let's not overthink grammatical gender systems. Apparently the Czech (Člověče, nezlob se), Slovenian (Človek, ne jezi se) and Dutch (Mens erger je niet) versions are basically the same. They're all variants of the English board game Ludo, with minor rule alterations.
I didn't have a particularly earth-shattering revelation about this — I just thought it was funny. Having spent Easter with my young nephews, it made me wonder about how and when play tips over into something else — something to get genuinely upset about; something that is somehow more than a simple game. Not so much serious play, as Geertz's notion of deep play. When we play seriously enough that we get genuinely angry — as the Balinese do in Geertz's Notes from a Balinese Cockfight — are we truly playing? For the Balinese, and for my nephews, there's an implication that playing (and perhaps more importantly, winning or losing) says something not just about their place in the game, but about them as a person. Cue sibling squabbling.
Perhaps the question isn't are we playing, but how we're playing. Are we playing in ways that feel good, that attempt to elicit positivity — are we playing playfully?
The more I read and write, the less interested in play and the more interested in playfulness I become. Taken as an attitude, an approach, a how, a playful disposition opens up opportunities for what we may or may not call play; it affects not only the activity itself, but the whole world around us.[1] Playfulness might be the driving force that allows us to embrace losing as part of the joyful experience of playing, rather than something to get angry about. How's this for a very bloggable, "give me a TED talk please" last line: perhaps Mensch ärgere dich nicht isn't just the name of a game — it's the name of the game. BOOM. Full circle.
- That's partly what we're trying to design into the research on Medicine Without Doctors — it's what makes Playful Research different from other kinds of research. But that's a different blog post (or journal paper).
References
GEERTZ, C. 1972. Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. Daedalus, 101**,** 1-37.