The Play Ethic – creative ways of being: www.theplayethic.

com

Principles of The Play ethic

The Dysfunction of Traditional Work Theory

 “Work will make you behave”

 When the whole man is actively engaged – the

notion of work – evaporates! Work begins with the
division of labour.

Why do so many Western politicians and academics still

hold so tightly to the work ethic?

One answer is obvious – to maintain power.

The basis for this hold on power asserts a limit to the creative possibilities of
human nature, exemplified by the saying: “The soul’s play day is the devil’s work
day”.

The Dysfunction of Practice

This belief, when translated into practice, means that:
 Single mothers need to be patrolled
 Young unemployed men need to be coerced into the workplace
 And the rest of us endure a regime that is more and more suspicious of us
exercising our free choice in whatever ways do not generate financial
return for those in traditional authority.

The Future
For many young people, the prospect of working
life offers a fast-food counter, or machine-watching
in a factory – until production is moved to cheaper
sources of labour in Eastern Europe or the Far
East.

Our choices
If we want not to create a generation of suspicious,
disillusioned youngsters then work, and the
prospect of work, will need to earn its place in our
lives. We cannot live for work in ways that
exacerbate our dysfunction as citizens, parents,
families and individuals. Instead we must take control of our lives.
The choice is not for the government to make, it is ours to take.

Choosing Play
The desired state is the opposite of the work ethic. It is this: being ready and
feeling capable. This is not choosing work: This is Choosing Play.

“All forms of life, such as the cultivation of land, the planning of human
habitations, the building of theatres, the methods of education, science, the arts,
culture, and the creation of new styles should, one day, vitally engage all and
everybody”.

Education
The question for most parents and teachers is: “how to defend play against the
increasing prescriptions of a national curriculum with its obsessive audit culture of
assessing performance of children against centralised standards?”
Might a curriculum, scoured of play, be the very opposite of what children really
need in the network society?

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The Play Ethic – creative ways of being: www.theplayethic.com

Perhaps, one of the greatest attributes of play is the opportunity it affords to

learning to flourish and adapt successfully without fixed views. It is readily
recognised that we all learn more effectively on our own terms, by trial and error.
Play is a non-threatening way to cope with new learning, while retaining self-
esteem and integrity.
In a world of constant change and unpredictable outcomes learning to live
without fixed views, begins to seem more and more like a master skill.

Why does Play work?

 Play is special: if it’s routine it’s not play.

 Play is voluntary: it can’t be coerced or

mandated.

 Play is imaginative: you can suspend the

rules of the real world.

 Play is not explicitly productive: direct

consequences don’t matter.

 Play is unlimited and delimited: play exists for its own sake and is different
from work.

 Play happens at an agreed-upon location: but it can be anywhere.

 Play has its own rules: it is not constrained by the rules of work.

The work ethic vs. the play-ethic

We earn the compensation of leisure when we

submit to the alienation of work. That is the
ethical deal that the workplace society offers us.

The play society offers us an alternative ethical

contract. We can only experience the wondrous
creative possibilities of play if we also make time
for care and understanding.

In the proper spirit of play, there is just an

exhilarating freedom and a thick web of
consequences and challenges. The need to be
ethical about one’s play – to give it dignity and
meaning – presses strongly here.

A play society that puts the emphasis on living

creatively, while rewarding the creative response,
will be an exciting place to be.
But there will be those who are not able to keep
up with the pace of the mainstream.

There is a condition attached to the work ethic, which reproduces the labourers
through the dualism of work and leisure.
The sustainable play ethic reproduces its living creators through the continuum of
play, namely care.

Introducing: www.transitionculture.org and Resurgence Foundation: www.resurgence.org

The Play Ethic – creative ways of being: www.theplayethic.com

Principles of Play

Time spent away from work can be not just occasion for
more leisure, but a re-thinking of human purposefulness.
It could mean the revival of an amateur spirit of doing
things for love or passion, which can fuel social renaissance
rather than mere re-creation for return to ”the daily grind”.

There is a search for an existence which making meaning

surpasses mere money making, especially where that
meaning reinforces one’s capability to adapt and respond as
a social creature. It is “socially civilising enterprise” we are
talking about, not just private enterprise.

The really powerful education experience is the chance to

discover who we are and how we see the world and the
really life changing moments are the realisation that what
we do matters to others and that others matter to us.
Surely, a curriculum obsessed with narrow targets and
examination and results means that this kind of thinking
never really has chance to take root, blossom and flourish?

The task of education is not simply to provide fodder for the jobs market – it is to
notice young people and their potential – success is as much about the emotional
which reserves the right not to be always examinable.

Putting Play into Practice

What are teachers to be?

Should they aim to develop full spectrum and creative, deeply inquisitive human
beings or grade obsessed drones ready to slot into place in the labour market
where their worth is measured by statistical results
by auditors with clipboards?

Can the school be a place where children gain the

strength and support to be free and creative rather
than a place to receive the training to be
productive and functional?

Creative Age schools need to reproduce creativity

in the way that Industrial Age schools reproduced
labour. An education for creative play respects the
intensive and open-ended nature of children’s
development through social and individual play.

New methodologies can build the competencies for freedom in people

This approach implies a major deconstruction of the exam and results driven
culture that characterises Western free market capitalistic countries:

 To be prepared against surprise is to be trained

 To be prepared for surprise is to be educated

 Education discovers an increasing richness in the past, because it sees

what is unfinished

Introducing: www.transitionculture.org and Resurgence Foundation: www.resurgence.org

The Play Ethic – creative ways of being: www.theplayethic.com

 Training regards the past as finished and the future to

be finished

 Education leads to a continuing self-discovery

 Training leads to a fresh self-definition

 Training requires a completed task in the future

 Education continues an unfinished past into the future.

 A work ethic that requires its adherents to be trained

marks children useful for an economy whose division of
labour are a means of maintaining social order

 A play ethic requires that its subjects are highly educated – prepared for
surprise and aims at continual self-discovery and open to all the promise
of effective adaptation and peaceful living

The Creative Classes – creating the conditions for prosperity

The Creative classes are people who engage in work whose future creates not
just new forms but also those who produce new forms or designs that are ready
and functional and highly useful.

The Creative classes are bound by a value ethos that values creativity and
individuality difference and merit.

Prosperity depends on the ability to provide creative classes within an engaging

environment.

A congenial environment implies one that is not just open and fair, but
environmentally aware and socially responsible.

This translates into an atmosphere to create

inward investment and urban regeneration,
creating a positive self-reinforcing spiral of
excellence for the street or neighbourhood that
wants to enable opportunity for all on the basis
that each develops his or her latent creative
potential.

Innovation of community can occur through

reference to education, health and welfare.

Pushing back the dominion of work

As automation and acceleration of material

processes impact on our daily experience we can
realise the chance to explore our playful identities
becomes ever more pressing.

There has started a silent attentive withdrawal from the necessity of work, which
we do not so much out of conscious choice, but through a growing exasperation,
or dissatisfaction, without always identifying the root cause of our discontent.

Introducing: www.transitionculture.org and Resurgence Foundation: www.resurgence.org

The Play Ethic – creative ways of being: www.theplayethic.com

When those in traditional authority realise the potential for advance by actively
sponsoring and supporting the conditions for prosperity, namely, realising the
potential of each individual, starting from their desk, within their own office, then
the chance appears for potential social transformation.

See: “The Individualised Corporation”, by Sumantra Ghoshal former Chair of

Strategic Leadership at London Business School.

“Both creativity and critique are necessary in a society of

players, whose activities become simultaneously more
rewarding to themselves, and more beneficial for others to
join in.
If you start looking at life in this way – as play – then you’re
freed up to do a lot of truly meaningful stuff. Let’s say you’re
worried about people starving in Rwanda and you decide
you’re going to travel down there and work with them. Well,
for them it’s survival, but for you it’s “play” because you don’t
have to go down there at all. Anyone who does that kind of
charity work is doing it because they find it rewarding on the
level of self-actualisation. When you’re not worried about your
survival as an individual – or as a nation – you have the
luxury to behave ethically because it’s more fun to live that way.”

The Call for a Different Way of Living – adapted to the needs of our times

The Practice of Transition Culture

Peak Oil extraction heralds an age of sky-rocketing oil prices – exacerbated by

ever-diminishing supply and increasing demand from China and India.

The only way for our economy to become

sustainable is to shift the focus from an
industrialised global economy towards a
more localised community-oriented one,
that will, by necessity be more reliant on
human input and make best use of skills
and labour.

At the core of any Transition Initiative is an Energy Descent Plan (EDP). This
involves identifying all aspects of life that a community needs to sustain itself and
prosper: for example, food, housing, transport, energy, local economy, the
psychology of change, education, welfare and local government.

Introducing: www.transitionculture.org and Resurgence Foundation: www.resurgence.org

The Play Ethic – creative ways of being: www.theplayethic.com

A successful launch, called an “unleashing” usually creates enough support to

form working groups to address these areas. Unlike
carbon reduction plans which usually just focus on
transport and energy, an EDP covers all aspects of our
lifestyles, as they are all dependent on ready access to
cheap oil”.
However, Western society will need to rediscover
practical skills our grandparents took for granted, such
as gardening, carpentry and making your own clothes.
So another important component of an EDP is “The
Great Re-skilling”, providing learning activities and
resources to facilitate rediscovering practical abilities
in ways that are rewarding and enjoyable.

“It is the business of governments to prepare for foreseeable catastrophes. Peak

Oil is inevitable”.

They are not talking about Peak Oil in No.10

Downing Street, because they have no ready
solutions for it. Without a clear vision, policy makers
are unable to make useful decisions. They are not
going to create policies that are going to remove
gas-guzzling cars overnight, which some voters
perceive as their symbols of status. Encouraging
citizens to live more sustainable lives would go
against the current ideology of globalisation policy
and ever-increasing economic aggrandisement.

Although the Transition Movement is grassroots, it is not subversive. It shows

local government solutions that they can embrace, because they already see
them happening in the community. Transition Initiatives, in Kinsale, Totnes,
Stroud and Bristol, have all been endorsed by local councils. By creating a
positive vision for the future and a practical, achievable Energy Descent
Programme, Transition Towns show both central and local government how it
could be done.

To read more: see: www.transitiontwowns.org and www.transitionculture.org

See also: www.earth-is-community.org.uk and www.bethechange.org.uk

The Principles of Profitable Organisation

The shift to more adapted ways of organising requires

that enterprise realise ways to maximum the skills of
their workforce, and make best use of physical and
intangible assets:

See: Creating Partnerships: “Unleashing Collaborative

Power in the Workplace”, by Cynthia King.

See also: “Freedom from Command and Control”, by

John Seddon.
The Principles of Brand Management for 21st Century

Making best use of intangible assets requires cultivation of Goodwill, best use of
brand and customer relations, Buyer-Centric-Marketing, community participation
and social and environmentally responsible branding that goes beyond “green-
washing”.

Introducing: www.transitionculture.org and Resurgence Foundation: www.resurgence.org

The Play Ethic – creative ways of being: www.theplayethic.com

See: “Juicing the Orange: How to turn Creativity into a Powerful Business
Advantage”, by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn. www.juicingtheorange.com
See also: www.culturalcreatives.org.

Support for Social Entrepreneurs engaging in Transition Culture

At Eco-Campus, The Spirit of Life Centre,

Mani, Greece we provide fund-raising and
revenue streams for charities and Social
Entrepreneurs that want to work with us.

Our values include:

 Human-scale education
 Eco-learning
 Eco-living
 Creative living
 Human-scale agriculture
 Social Enterprise
 Fair Trade and Right Livelihood
 Whole Person Development
 Dispute settlement and nvc
 Interfaith understanding

1. We provide grant aid and support for Social Enterprise start-ups,

Fair Trade and Right Livelihood enterprises.

2. We provide a schools service and publishing service for those

promoting Whole Person Development, human scale education and
eco-living.

3. We enable language learning and leadership programmes at Eco-

Campus, Mani, Greece. We provide Career Support for all eco-
graduates who complete studies with us.

4. We enable English as a Foreign Language and

overseas study opportunities for those committed
to sustainable business development.

5. For those who want a career in food production,

food preparation, food distribution or hospitality
services on a co-operative basis, we offer training
and career support or Enterprise Support for
those who want to set up their own Food and
Drink Co-op.

6. For those who want to set up their own Fair Trade co-op on a Right
Livelihood basis we have Café and Juice Bar opportunities for those
who want to set up their own Internet Café.

7. We have openings for Right Livelihood practitioners to set up

Business and Language Schools (centres of learning) to provide
enterprise orientation and career support. This is designed for
students who want to learn the language and culture in order to
live and work in the country of choice.

Introducing: www.transitionculture.org and Resurgence Foundation: www.resurgence.org

The Play Ethic – creative ways of being: www.theplayethic.com

We welcome applicants to Eco-Campus @ The Spirit of Life Centre, Mani, Greece

who want to combine a yoga, meditation and walking holiday retreat in Greece
with enterprise orientation.

We welcome SOL Community members who share our commitment to working on

a Sangha basis in the fields of: Fair Trade, Social Enterprise or Right Livelihood.
Applicants can choose to work on a Co-venture or independent basis.

Introducing: www.transitionculture.org and Resurgence Foundation: www.resurgence.org