Human passion for mere games: is it ethically defensible?

Introduction

Human beings have had a particularly close relationship with games. It is difficult to find a culture, whether primitive, modern, or post-modern, that does not make plenty of room for lusory activity. In some cases, such involvement seems to violate the boundaries of propriety. Games take on a kind of life and death significance that would not appear, at first glance, to be warranted by their gratuitous structure. They are, after all, merely games-that is, only artificial problems that we deploy when we have temporary respite from the far more consequential challenges of survival and work.

Method

I employ traditional reflective techniques common to philosophy. However, I favor two methodologies that tend to bring philosophy down to earth, approaches that give it a practical flavor. First, I use philosophical anthropology. For example, I muse about our evolutionary journey, our embodied and kinetic heritage, the genetically-tethered tendencies and appetites we now possess, and then attempt to gain insights on the significance of games from this very earthy, human background. I also employ pragmatic analyses in attempting to determine how games work. This stands in contrast, for instance, to more analytic approaches that would cleanly distinguish such categories of activity as games, sport, play, and exercise and their functions. Games, I believe, are messy phenomena that do somewhat different jobs in different places, in different cultures, and at different times in our evolutionary heritage.

Results/Conclusions

I answer the question about the moral defensibility of expending passion, time, and energy on "mere" games in a cautious affirmative way. It is cautious, because games are not panaceas for the good life. Nevertheless, games are very fundamental human endeavors. While Huizinga argued that culture developed in play, I will claim that human beings (and much of their culture) developed in and through gamewrighting and participation. To care about such events as the Olympic games is very human in ways that we often do not appreciate.

References:

Huizinga, Johan. (1950). Homo ludens. Boston: The Beacon Press.
Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. (1999). The primacy of movement.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Suits, Bernard. (1978). The grasshopper: Games, life, and utopia. Toronto/Buffalo:
University of Toronto.