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Step 6 of 6~8 min read
Reflection: Your Magic Circle
Reflect on where genuine play still lives in your world.
Prompts to consider
- Huizinga defines play as free, disinterested, bounded, ordered, and absorbed. Think of an activity in your own life that meets all five criteria. Is it genuinely different from your 'serious' life, and what does that difference feel like from the inside?
- The spoil-sport, Huizinga says, shatters civilization by refusing to acknowledge the reality of the play-world. Have you experienced someone playing this role, in a game, a conversation, a creative project? What was lost when the circle was broken?
- Huizinga diagnoses modernity as suffering from puerilism, play's excitement without play's spirit. Look at one form of contemporary popular culture (a sport, a social media platform, a reality TV show, a political movement). Does it meet Huizinga's criteria for genuine play, or is it puerilistic? What would it take to restore the genuine play-element?
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