Desegregating Learning & Working & Playing

Whatever else you may think of my anti-civilization approach to understanding humanity, well they did know something about learning and working & playing.  They knew if any are to be fulfilling they must be practiced in unison and not at prescribed times.  When the infant begins to move he begins to learn and he begins to learn through play and to fashion his learning and playing into participation in the work of the community.  

When they gather for stories they learn of themselves and develop strategies through the play of storytelling to conceive of working together more harmoniously.  They exhilarate themselves through rituals of song and dance to prepare themselves for work or battle.  To suggest to them that no one can learn till a certain age or that during work times that can’t play in competitive endeavors and challenge each other as playmates to work harder, or that in times of play that the only purpose is the freedom from work; or that learning is limited to defining a role you will play in a hierarchy…well the came in and told them to stop learning and stop playing and be productive.  See our civilized schedule surpasses because we conquered you.  See you’re not as smart as us because we have toys and tools we made and our toys and tools can conquer yours.  And just to prove our lazy you are, if we outlaw your hallucinogens that you use to learn and play and work and give you ours, see you just stop working.

So if we look at technology, the tools of primitive people.  Well it seems when they needed better tools they invented them and shared them with each other while us civilized people often invent unnecessary tools and toys and then advertise their need to sell them and if one can’t afford them, well, no need to share because then everyone could have access and no one would profit from their invention. 

And my feeling probably does conjoin more closely with the primitive.  If something is a benefit then it is only a benefit if it is shared, and gratitude for sharing is a better reward than profit from not sharing.

And  so the end result of civilization is the time to learn which is done before you work and a time to play which cannot be a time to learn or work.  Of course if you work more or play less you can have more toys to play with but fewer opportunities to use.  But maybe you can get a bigger house with more rooms than you need.  Maybe you can have a bigger or faster or prettier that accomplishes the same thing as a smaller or slower or less attractive car.  

And if you can convince people that the world revolves around learning enough to become productive enough that you can buy what you might not really need, the you have opened the door to segregating what learning is more productive learning, what work is worth more benefits and more extravagances in your play based on your worth measured by your work determined by the certification of your knowledge.

Segregating learning and working and playing that leads to segregated neighborhoods to support the segregated learning with better schooling for more productive (i.e. profitable) workers and segregated playgrounds for playing.  

And segregated neighborhoods lead to further segregating by church or race or what have you, and that leads to…

Look around and make up your own mind.