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The Spirit Of Playful Competition Is, As A Social Impulse, Older Than Culture Itself And Pervades All Life Like A Veritable Ferment. Ritual Grew Up In Sacred Play; Poetry Was Born In Play And Nourished On Play; Music And Dancing Were Pure Play....we Have To Conclude, Therefore, That Civilization Is, In Its Earliest Phases, Played. It Does Not Come From Play...it Arises In And As Play, And Never Leaves It.

-Johan Huizinga

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The Spirit Of Playful

Johan Huizinga

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The Spirit Of Playful Competition Is, As A Social Impulse, Older Than Culture Itself And Pervades All Life Like A Veritable Ferment. Ritual Grew Up In Sacred Play; Poetry Was Born In Play And Nourished On Play; Music And Dancing Were Pure Play....we Have To Conclude, Therefore, That Civilization Is, In Its Earliest Phases, Played. It Does Not Come From Play...it Arises In And As Play, And Never Leaves It.

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These Are Strange Times. Reason, Which Once Combatted Faith And Seemed To Have Conquered It, Now Has To Look To Faith To Save It From Dissolution.

Most Thoughtful Americans Of Today Seem To Have Forgotten How Strongly Their Own And Immediate Predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne And Whitman, Were Still Preoccupied With The Essence Behind Things.

Under Weak Government, In A Wide, Thinly Populated Country, In The Struggle Against The Raw Natural Environment And With The Freeplay Of Economic Forces, Unified Social Groups Become The Transmitters Of Culture.

The Eternal Gulf Between Being And Idea Can Only Be Bridged By The Rainbow Of Imagination.

If, Then, This Civilization Is To Be Saved, If It Is Not To Be Submerged By Centuries Of Barbarism, But To Secure The Treasures Ofits Inheritance On New And More Stable Foundations, There Is Indeed Need For Those Now Living Fully To Realize How Far The Decay Has Already Progressed.

Do You Know Anything That In All Its Innocence Is More Humiliating Than The Funny Pages Of A Sunday Newspaper In America?

Without Metaphor The Handling Of General Concepts Such As Culture And Civilization Becomes Impossible, And That Of Disease And Disorder Is The Obvious One For The Case In Point. Is Not Crisis Itself A Concept We Owe To Hippocrates? In The Social And Cultural Domain No Metaphor Is More Apt Than The Pathological One.

Life Is Made Too Easy. Mankind's Moral Fibre Is Giving Way Under The Softening Influence Of Luxury.

A Crude Mind Could Easily Think: Something Is Valid, Therefore It Is True.

Whatever Our Creed Or Belief, We All Know That There Is No Way Back, That We Must Fight Our Way Through.

He Who Wishes To Maintain That The Past Of Mankind No Longer Has Any Absolute Value In Lifemust Also Be Ready To Deny His Ownlife Until The Present Moment, Indeed In Advance Until The Last Moment, As Worthless. He Who Realizes That Culture Is The Giving Of Form Will Also See That The Highest Forms That It Is Given To The Human Spirit To Recognize Have Always Been, Psychologically Considered, Such Evasions From The Present. Considerations Such As These Do Not At All Square With The Direction Of America's Mind.

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History Can Predict Nothing Except That Great Changes In Human Relationships Will Never Come About In The Form In Which They Have Been Anticipated.

Physical Nature Lies At Our Feet Shackled With A Hundred Chains. What Of The Control Of Human Nature? Do Not Point To The Triumphsof Psychiatry, Social Services Or The War Against Crime. Domination Of Human Nature Can Only Mean The Domination Of Every Man By Himself.

Systematic Philosophical And Practical Anti-intellectualism Such As We Are Witnessing Appears To Be Something Truly Novel In The History Of Human Culture.

Every Work Of History Constructs Contexts And Designs, Forms In Which Past Reality Can Be Comprehended. History Creates Comprehensibility Primarily By Arranging Facts Meaningfully And Only In A Very Limited Sense By Establishing Strict Causal Connections.

Quite Apart From Any Conscious Program, The Great Cultural Historians Have Always Been Historical Morphologists: Seekers After Theforms Of Life, Thought, Custom, Knowledge, Art.

History, As The Study Of The Past, Makes The Coherence Of What Happened Comprehensible By Reducing Events To A Dramatic Pattern And Seeming Them In A Simple Form.

The Content Of The Ideal Is A Desire To Return To The Perfection Of An Imaginary Past.

But One Sound Always Rose Above The Clamor Of Busy Life And, No Matter How Much Of A Tintinnabulation, Was Never Confused And, Fora Moment Lifted Everything Into An Ordered Sphere: That Of The Bells.

What The Study Of History And Artistic Creation Have In Common Is A Mode Of Forming Images.

The More The Specific Feelings Of Being Under Obligation Range Themselves Under A Supreme Principle Of Human Dependence The Clearer And More Fertile Will Be The Realization Of The Concept, Indispensable To All True Culture, Of Service; From The Service Of God Down To The Simple Social Relationship As Between Employer And Employee.

The Things Which Can Make Life Enjoyable Remain The Same. They Are, Now As Before, Reading, Music, Fine Arts, Travel, The Enjoyment Of Nature, Sports, Fashion, Social Vanity (knightly Orders, Honorary Offices, Gatherings) And The Intoxication Of The Senses.

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Barbarisation May Be Defined As A Cultural Process Whereby An Attained Condition Of High Value Is Gradually Overrun And Supersededby Elements Of Lower Quality.

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The Spirit Of Playful Competition Is, As A Social Impulse, Older Than Culture Itself And Pervades All Life Like A Veritable Ferment. Ritual Grew Up In Sacred Play; Poetry Was Born In Play And Nourished On Play; Music And Dancing Were Pure Play....we Have To Conclude, Therefore, That Civilization Is, In Its Earliest Phases, Played. It Does Not Come From Play...it Arises In And As Play, And Never Leaves It.

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Original Thought

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