Fun & Games
The role of play, games, and hobbies in Stoicism
I had the privilege of meeting StoicDan a few months before he tragically passed away. I started this blog by his encouragement, and while he’s not physically present with us anymore, he’s still present with us through the memory his words and deeds that we take with us and pass on – which is why it’s so important that we actually succeed what he created, otherwise they’ll fade and be forgotten, dishonoring the presence he had. Hence I’ll honor the effect he had on me, like all the Stoics who came before, by carrying the torch and continuing the line of succession.
However, that’s not the topic of this article. When I spoke with him, one of the first things he asked me was which ancient Stoic was my favorite. I told him that for actual Stoics it’d be Epictetus, but my actual favorite is someone adjacent to the Stoic tradition: Crates of Thebes. He was surprised to hear that but, as I explained to him, while Zeno’s mentor did give advice that’s definitely very proto-Stoic, the reason I find inspiring how Plutarch recounts him as someone who was always laughing and jesting and “lived his life as if it was a permanent festival”. In Plutarch’s account, he’s even supposed to become revered as a household deity, by entering people’s home – but rather than being met with scorn and anger, he was welcomed with honor and affection, because he came to symbolize the philosopher working as a doctor to cure people’s ailments, earning him the nickname “door-opener”.
As I discuss a bit in my book, I consider him an alternative model for the Stoic, when engaging in the nested Cynic pedagogy I developed. However, upon additional consideration, I don’t just consider him an alternative model when engaging in the Cynic pedagogy; my intuition tells me he’s a viable model to emulate for Stoics as a whole. Because, not too dissimilar to Diogenes of Sinope, Stoics have an ostensible presentation as serious, asocial, and aloof – and I’m convinced there’s an alternative viable path in our pursuit of virtue in the character that Crates embodies. As I discussed in my previous article, we model ourselves off others and let them imprint on one’s psyche; and given how Crates was exemplarily virtuous in his time, the Stoic, in his principal striving to be virtuous, ostensibly has an aesthetically alternative path that he can walk. While it’s not a well-tread path by avowed Stoics, that doesn’t mean it’s not feasible for a committed Stoic to service virtue just as well through jovial and gregarious means, as it is through ascetic means.
I doubt such a task can be accomplished through merely a single article, and will thus be a topic to return to, and be a model that’s gradually fleshed out. And the place to start would in conjunction with exploring a topic that is quite foreign to Stoicism: Play and games1. I’ve been contemplating for a while what the role and place for these are in the Stoics ethos, and given not only Crates’ general attitude toward life, but also that he literally wrote series of (now lost) poems called “Games”, this is the perfect opportunity to explore the topic – and while intuition isn’t reason, it wouldn’t be reasonable to ignore my intuition that tells me something very valuable to Stoicism could lie buried here.
Instrumental play
Colloquially the quickest way to distinguish “play” would be by contrasting it with the notion of “work” as they are often considered opposites; where work is serious and burdensome, play is fun and carefree. Playing is generally associated with children, and as a child grows older the typical expectation is it gradually phases out play in favor of “serious” activities like studying, work, and increasingly shouldering various societal burdens and responsibilities. However, even adults will still engage in games of various sorts, whether they’re playing sports, board- or video games, among other things, so it’s not an activity exclusive to the developing human. Furthermore, even when at work on might still be considered to “playing around” with some task or problem, suggesting that act of playing can also be a nested element within work activities.
Beyond human confines, animals are likewise anthropomorphized as playing. Equivalent to human children, adolescent animals are too considered playful, with puppies and kittens being fan favorites. The scientific view of these activities is that playing is a way for the young animal to learn the skills they’ll need when fully grown and on their own; whether that’s hunting, working together with others, fighting for dominance, or whichever skills they’ll need to learn to survive. Even then, fully grown adults still tend to play from time to time – particularly in the companionship of humans. Those who own adult dogs can attest to the fact that they’ll play with no less fervor than they did as puppies; though those with cats will likely see a decrease in propensity of willingness to play as it ages.
That play serves to bond social actors together is explored well in Kevin Simler and Robert Hanson’s book “The Elephant in the Brain” when they review human propensity for laughter. They explain that laughter is a form of expression that is only found in five other species of great apes (but not other primates), yet it’s instinctive to us given how infants know how to do it, as well as those born blind and deaf who have no opportunity to imitate it. It’s an involuntary social behavior, and they make a point of emphasizing that it’s not an involuntary psychological behavior (whence they list breathing, blinking, flinching, hiccuping, shivering, and vomiting). Despite laughter being a response to social cues, completely enveloped in “interpersonal significance” – which I take to mean that it’s more or less completely contingent on the mimetic – and yet our consciousness, system 2 we might now say, isn’t in control of when we do it2.
They also take note of laughter being a vocalization, and across the animal kingdom sounds are purposed for communication; and the message of laughter is to regulate social interaction. They surmise that the function is twofold: It signals that our own intentions are playful, or that we perceive another social actor as being playful. They equate it to the “play bow” of dogs which signals it isn’t a danger; and humans likewise signal that there isn’t real danger. But for humans, it has less to do with physical danger – though laughing during e.g. play fighting is definitely a thing among humans too – and more to do with social norms (i.e. nomos). The two authors distinctly note how playing with danger (in the form of social norms) “tickles our funny-bone”; how social norms that’d otherwise be “socially dangerous” to violate becomes flames to be toyed with, and how we can they can be violated within the playful social scene – which I find fascinating.
Either way, reciprocated laughter and playfulness seemingly precipitates skirting or (temporarily) obviating social norms; e.g. there’s all sorts of ethical rules on when it’s appropriate to touch one another, where, and how - but when reassuring one another everyone involved are just playing, quite a bit more can become allowed. Or alternatively, commonly transgressing social taboos builds trust with one another. Coupled with my own experiences, it does seem like the more you can laugh, i.e. play with, someone, the closer one another becomes, and that it’s this playing that ultimately builds the social bonds that aren’t based on some other instrumental goal. For example, I’ve attended school or worked with innumerous people, yet those that evolved into relationships beyond the serious, practical, context were those who I could laugh and play with within (and eventually beyond) those contexts. And that’s despite those often not being the people I do the best practical work with; whereas I haven’t given a thought to many of those I did seriously good work with.
So far it can be surmised that some of the features of play are: 1) a space for practice where one can develop one’s skills in advance of employing them in serious situations; 2) as a way to bond social actors, which for humans involve a complex interplay between laughter, that straddles the line between danger and play, and human social norms that provides the dangerous raw material for said laughter. Returning to Crates a picture begins to emerge of how a Cynic like Crates could’ve been so effective in wielding the power of play and laughter for the Cynic cause. Rather than chastising people into behaving “according to nature”3 like Diogenes of Sinope, Crates would instead lead people by play and from having bonded and gained people’s trust, he’d then be able to disregard and dissolve social norms – as is the Cynic creed – with willing participants.
The implication for the Stoic is that rather than always being serious, and bring a somber and reserved attitude to (potential) newcomers, the Stoic may make his way of life compelling by actually displaying the “joy” part of “Stoic Joy”. It bears reminding that one’s attitude is always up to oneself, hence one’s judgment of life could just as well be to approach it as one giant play, game, or festival, as it could be to approach it with indifferent detachment, or something else. The Stoic ethos dictates an uncompromising commitment to virtue, but whichever way the Stoic goes about being relentlessly virtuous is up to his choosing – Classical Stoic philosophy just generally leans into a specific path to servicing the Stoic telos.
Hence the laughing and joking his way through life could potentially be just as effectively Stoic – and I think Chrysippus dying in a fit of laughter is just as befitting any Stoic, as it is to die alone in meditation on a mountaintop like a Buddhist sage. But, other than when specifically engaging in the Cynic pedagogy detailed in my book, the Stoic isn’t going to use it try to disassemble the nomos as a whole, but rather to:
Enable interested observers and newcomers to play around with the various Stoic techniques and advice in space without stakes, and can thus safely mix, match, and try on all the various pieces on for size – I’ve myself advised newcomers that just because an ancient Stoic said something, doesn’t necessarily mean they have to do it, and rather they should try and figure out what works for them, and then gradually add more on top as it becomes familiarized and comfortable (and it makes sense).
Use play to make light of passion and vice, illuminating the folly of being beholden to such things. As Simler and Hanson notes, teasing is a way to play that causes pain, but is received well when the overall affection is higher than the pain it causes; consequently, the Stoic can use play, through e.g. teasing and joking, to gesture people to cause correct without hurting them like e.g. chastising would (and not erecting them same kind of mental defenses and aversions in those we’re attempting to aid). Alternatively, the Stoic can tackle more deep-seated societal issues that’s otherwise difficult to address, similar to how a court jester of old were often the only one’s who could speak the plain truth to the king.
Creative play
Yet humans still play beyond the instrumental goal of play as practice, and beyond what’s ostensibly needed for bonding. What I have in mind is for example the difference between playing guitar to rehearse for some goal, e.g. a concert, and just “fooling around” with the guitar – for many, the former is an undertaking that often drains the enjoyment out of what was once fun: When play turns serious. Activities like playing some sport, a musical instrument, or e.g. playing around with programming, would be something one could spend hours doing tirelessly; but when they turn from play to work, it somehow switches to an exhausting burden. What we might tentatively say is that attempting to keep the mindset that one’s playing, even when there’s now an imperative behind it, could be an approach to reducing the mental overhead of one’s work.
In my daily life I consider avenues of engaging in playfulness, whether it’s during professional work, mundane tasks such as cooking and cleaning, or even when doing this form of journaling. And I perceive that play is a space for exploration, where the building blocks of whatever is being played with can be moved around and interchanged at will – like when a guitar player is just jamming, playing around with the chords, until something meaningful eventually falls in place. Hence my view is that play is an essential (if not principal) basis for creativity, and any creative endeavor will inevitably originate in some form of play – I can personally attest to this, given the work that eventually became my book saw it’s very beginnings when I was playing around with the concepts and theories of Generative Anthropology and thought to try them on Stoicism, and for fun see if I could “generate new Stoicism”… which the keen reader knows had remarkable results.
Hence the Stoic ought not reflexively shrug at play, though one might imagine that “serious” endeavors is always going to take up most of the Stoic’s time. Rather, it may do the Stoic well to reserve a space which essentially doesn’t have any strings attached, where they can just be and do whatever they please – because no one knows what may come from it. And it would stand to reason that pursuing varied engagement, trying things one hasn’t done before, would provide one with multitude of opportunities for the unexpected to blossom (reminiscent of the “portfolio of (complementary) practices” I detail in my book). That’s to say, that the Stoic shouldn’t dismiss chances for new experiences out of hand, just because they ostensibly aren’t rational, have any practical purpose, or contribute to virtue. Having a wide collection of practices and knowledge to play around with may result in otherwise unanticipated connections being made between seemingly unrelated things.
Though obviously playing around with an object (e.g. a philosophy) that one’s deeply immersed in is the zone where one’s bound to yield those profound inventions. By having a deep grasp of something one can often perceive the individual moving parts, and thus take them apart, rearrange, replace, or add to them. Personally, that’s where I am with Stoicism, given I have 10 years of experience with it, and for the first couple of years I studied and practiced it intensely; then I moved away from it and onto other philosophies and disciplines, where I eventually encountered and immersed myself in Generative Anthropology in particular. Hence my project of creating an “Originary” Stoicism is a result of both a deep immersion into two unrelated disciplines, as a result of a very wide exploration4 (and obviously I also include other salient things I found in my search, like how I recast the Stoic notion of the psyche with Daniel Kanheman’s theories of mind in my previous article).
Either way, one shouldn’t go in with the expectation that one’s going to discover or invent something, and rather consider it an opportunity for opportunities to present themselves.
Games we play
Having read Bernard Suits’ book “The Grasshopper” I’d remiss not to contemplate the area of “games”. While games are often considered a type of play, Bernard Suits’ considers them separate, and not even overlapping that often. In Suits’ conception of games, they must have the following three elements: 1) A prelusory goal; 2) a set of rules that forbids the most efficient attainment of said goal; 3) participants with a lusory attitude who are willing to accept said stipulations. Conventionally wisdom considers games a waste of time, diametrically opposed to work which is valuable; conversely, Suits’ emphasized that games of utmost importance with respect to accomplishing higher order ends.
By electing to restrict our available actions and options, we’re forced to come up with alternatives to achieve the goal of the game, which leads us to develop alternative skills and thought patterns. And these can in turn spur on alternative considerations for established solutions in more “serious” realms. However, they can also aid the maintenance of skillsets that aren’t exercised often – one need only look at how the Grecians of antiquity created the Olympic games to keep their warriors and citizenry refining their fighting skills (e.g. spear throwing). This worldview is one that considers overcoming obstacles necessary to achieving greatness, and by voluntarily electing to face and overcome obstacles, we not only strengthen ourselves, we simultaneously show ourselves as strong to others.
In my book I obviously go on at great length to showcase the benefits of choosing adversity and hardships of comfort and expediency, as to strengthen ourselves and trivialize what was once challenging. However, development in Suits’ line of theories since then consider most things we do to be a game to some extent: For example, to obtain money, we go to work instead of just taking it; to become president, we have to be elected first, which itself requires a whole host of skills like working people, networking, raising funds, giving speeches, thinking quick on one’s feet, etc.; to have children we have to go through many social hoops of courtship before it becomes permissible, rather than just going out kidnapping someone.
While I can understand why something like courtship, or the various bee dances one has to do to get promoted in a company, may be regarded as “games”, it seems to muddle the social functions – rather, we may combine the two notions in Generative Anthropology’s theory of rituals, which I laid out in my book. To very briefly explain, the social function of rituals is provide an “after is the same as before” effect, ensuring the community remains the same after the ritual, as it was before – best exemplified by an outsider joining a community, and become a full member they have to go through a ritual; ensuring the community remains the same community. That’s why we have social rituals for when children graduate into becoming adults; why we have the ritual of marriage; and even our educational institutions are one giant ritual, to ensure the disciplinary spaces one’s joining “remains the same” as before one entered.
Though the overall ritual, as a whole, serves such social function, within the ritual there can be innumerous performative checks that ensure one’s fitness, to felicitously complete the ritual. And that’s where the connection to Suits’ tradition of games converges, as we design and partake in these rituals that gauges and demonstrates our fitness on the salient parameters. For example, the more complex a courtship ritual is, the more the participants must overcome, thus the more they are tested and the “stronger” or “fitter” they’ll have to be to pass. And conversely, the stricter or more demanding a ritual is, the greater extent it’ll filter out those who are “weak” or “unfit”. It’s simple to imagine a something from a story or movie, of a father who won’t marry his daughter away to someone who can’t do or show “…”; but it becomes clear why it’s necessary when we consider critical high-profile jobs, like an architect, who has to demonstrate they can get through the education before they’re allowed to design real buildings (it goes without saying that the better the elements of the ritual tests for salient qualities, the better the ritual is as a whole).
Though a dedicated inquiry may we warranted, my intuition is that games don’t serve any purpose other than for itself (in line with Suits’ argumentation), being entirely voluntary or optional. On the other hand, rituals must be engaged in in the pursuit of the social status, -recognition, or -standing that’s needed to felicitously obtain whatever one’s pining for.
What’s notable is that Stoic philosophy already contains elements of games in it5. For example, intermittently depriving oneself of conveniences reminds us of the value they provide, increasing the gratefulness of what we already possess – and it can likewise be an occasion to find alternative ways to accomplish the same (or perhaps accomplishing something different – was the thing accomplished, perhaps out of habit, really necessary?). Or, when in a trying situation, considering it a test of one’s Stoic practice. Either way, Stoics could with advantage design games that tests various aspects of Stoic practice, as a way to train and gauge them in an environment where “failure” carries no consequential stakes. And likewise, should Stoic organizations or polities begin to form – as I detailed in my book – then various social rituals that ensures the participant’s felicitous inclusion will need to be established.
Hobbies
Rounding out the inquiry into this topic, I thought it’d be prudent to dedicate a thought or two to “hobbies”. These are things people get enjoyment out of doing, and is considered neither (professional) work nor play (or game). Though the Stoic is committed to always being virtuous, in my book I deliberate how this isn’t supposed to mean that one’s supposed to be serious and working 100% of the time – because that’s not sustainable. The qualifier to virtue being the ideal human nature, is that we must be consistent in our efforts – and few can be consistently perform at 100%. Most will need a bit of respite and restitution, beyond just sleeping, which is the Stoic’s space for playing, games, and hobbies. And like games, hobbies that may ostensibly be indifferent can, in their private or amateur pursuit, potentially yield something that becomes quite consequential – like how many modern technology companies started as hobby hardware or software project, and became central to progress (not that the Stoic is by fiat worshippers of progress, but contemporary society does to a large extent, dictating what’s considered virtuous).
As with anything in Stoicism, it’s an issue of moderation, and in my view the average Stoic will be able to service virtue better if they’re allocated a space for discrete action, i.e. where they’re sanctioned to pursue whatever they deem best of their own accord (to issue their own imperatives). This’ll allow the Stoic to bring back to the community, to the center, at their own leisure and dictates, and thus contribute in ways the community weren’t able to think of themselves. Otherwise, Stoicism essentially becomes strict command structure, where members can only virtuously contribute according to the dictates of the superior or community6. And as I also argue in my book, while it’s okay for the Stoic to engage in some passive leisurely consumption, like watching a movie, the Stoic ought still bias towards active, creative, activities. E.g. preferring to play the guitar rather than watching a video of someone playing the guitar.
Hence there’s ample of room for the things that other philosophies consider as making “life worth living”. Central to the Stoic ethos, at its very core – and thus not something that can be changed and still considered Stoicism – lies an unyielding commitment to virtue, in the attainment of human flourishing (eudaimonia). Which means that the Stoic must not confuse play, games, or hobbies as delivering flourishing in itself, but only in alignment with virtue – for example, when other tasks in the service of virtue are done and there thus some space for indifferents like play, games and hobbies; of if the indifferents of play, games, and hobbies is intended to eventually amount to something that’ll help oneself service virtue even better. Therefore, Stoicism doesn’t become a variant of hedonism, which it would if play, games and hobbies were treated as ends to the good life in themselves. And personally, I’ve also had periods of my life where I was in a sort of “idle” position, and I can attest to play and games being much more enjoyable when one’s conscious is clean, and when it’s a distraction from shirking one’s duties.
Foreign in the sense that they haven’t really been seriously contemplated in Stoic literature, at least from what survives.
Though I might point to how we may be able to contain it to a limited extent by holding back laughter in inappropriate situations. However, the point still stands that our system 2 isn’t responsible for the impulse for laughter.
Indeed, Generative Anthropology is so niche you’ll have to read very widely to even find hints of it.
And we know the Olympic games were respected, as Epictetus compared walking the Cynic path to becoming an Olympic athelete.
To the Stoic, money is the resources that he’s been granted to autonomously pursue discrete ends, of his own accord.