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Popular Culture Review
often “prey to feelings of inauthenticity.” Conventionally defined as an activity
that acts as complementary to the vocational endeavor, as Rojen^ puts it, leisure
lets us “get in touch with ourselves” and makes “status statements about
ourselves to others . . . placing us culturally in relation to others.” As we move
toward a post-work society, the ethical framework to deal with this transition
has yet to be fully explored and accepted by our culture. “The main challenge
facing students of leisure is to devise ethical principles of private well-being and
public responsibility which are compatible with post-work society.”
If leisure is a way of spending “useful” time as a “surplus” away from
work, we also now need to examine the role of play, which at a fundamental
level, is seen to provide a diversion from the occupational routine, a deviation or
respite from the continuum of the work treadmill. We seek to engage in leisure
time play pursuits to refresh our vigour. It gives the player a way to detach from
daily transactionary intimidations, the hazards of vocational proceedings and
decision-making, a respite from the exchanges and dealings in our hectic
working lives. In its many forms, we play games that exploit our otherwise
under utilised physical selves—aerobics, competition sports, chess and other
board games, bush exploration, water adventures, car rallies, a game of cards.
We choose these activities for their ability to distance us from the
mechanical aspects of work. This distancing may provide the individual
alternate perspectives of life and life- strategies by the active sharing of leisure
interests with other individuals. Play is a “free” activity outside “serious”
ordinary life—“outside the sphere of necessity and material utility.”^
[It is] an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time
and space, in visible order, according to rules freely accepted,
and outside the sphere of necessity and material utility. The
play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or
festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of
exaltation and tension accompanies the action.^
There are also significant purposes for play quite apart from its
therapeutic and recreational functions. Play is necessary for development. Ideas
are playful reverberations of the mind. Language is the playing of words until
they can impersonate physical objects and abstract ideas. Play is an open-ended
willingness to explore the unknown.
Animals play when they are yoimg as rehearsals for their later adult
functions: “. . . it invites problem-solving, allowing a creature to test its limits
and develop strategies; survival belongs to the agile not the idle.”^ In human
education, one of the most effective styles of learning is that of discovery, the
linking of information with its possible applications. For experiments in the
science labs, making art in its exploratory moves has its essence in play.