Why you seriously need to play more
Monthly Issue: The neuroscience and philosophy of play.
Hi readers,
When I was 16, I strapped on a red apron and started slinging pizza in the mall food court. Taking this after-school job meant I would no longer have time for softball — a game I had been playing since the ball balanced on a tee — but how else was I going to pay for all the CDs I wanted at Sam Goody?
We treat this tradeoff — play for work — as an inevitable part of growing up, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it shouldn’t be. Play might not pay the bills (pro athletes excluded), but it still has value well into adulthood.
We explore that value in our latest monthly issue, The Power of Play, which is out today. Below, you’ll find a taste of what’s in it, including a look at why animals play, how the playground reimagined childhood in America, and the cognitive theory that could explain why play feels so rewarding — and why we shouldn’t leave it behind once we’re old enough to clock in.
Read on,
Kristin
If you’re wondering why you’re receiving this message, Freethink has merged with its sister site, Big Think, and I’m now Big Think’s Managing Editor — I hope you’ll join me at Big Think by subscribing for free below.
Why play brings us pleasure
By Alex Hutchinson
The desire to play as children serves an evolutionary purpose, giving us a low-stakes way to practice skills we may need as adults. But not everything that helps us survive is fun (see: eating our veggies). So what makes play so rewarding? In this article, science journalist Alex Hutchinson digs into a theory that the pleasure we get from play is the brain’s way of rewarding us for exceeding certain expectations — and that there are valuable reasons to keep chasing the feeling as we age.
How playgrounds reinvented childhood
By Frank Jacobs
Labyrinthine caves. Overgrown graveyards. (Mostly) uninhabited islands. Mark Twain’s young protagonists, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, roamed all over their fictional hometown of St. Petersburg, Missouri, in search of adventure. Until the late 1800s, that kind of unsupervised wandering was commonplace for real kids in most parts of the U.S. But then came the playground. In this edition of Strange Maps, Frank Jacobs looks at the conditions that convinced society to confine play to a set location — and how that decision changed what it meant to grow up in America.
Animal play may be about more than survival
By Jason Bittel
Play is often practice for young animals, just like it is for young humans — when lion cubs wrestle, they’re rehearsing the moves they might later use to take down prey. But some playful activities seem to serve no obvious purpose. Could animals be doing them simply for fun? In this article, science journalist Jason Bittel talks to biologists about the stranger, less understood reasons animals make time for play.
More Articles
The hidden cost of taking yourself too seriously by Francesca Tighinean
From Pong to 18 quintillion planets: The evolution of our digital play spaces by Kevin Dickinson
Kristin Houser is the managing editor at Big Think.
There’s some real gold in here, and some of it overlaps with what I am teaching in my free webinar, you are most welcomed to attend Save your FREE seat: Learn What Most Can't Do — The Art of Conscious Decision Making" (Tina's THINK Model) https://live.zoho.eu/naha-ato-eik
well done.