Learning to play — and to live — with little kids

When we look beyond the idea that the goal of the game is to win, we see that the game transforms the player; the relationship with the “opponent” transforms the player. When an escola de samba performs or during the Kuarup in Xingu, we can’t talk distinguish between the artist and the work of art or between the subject and the object she manipulates. Nor does this art really fall into the “I-Thou” dynamics so thoughtfully analyzed by mid-century Jewish thinkers like Buber and Levinas. We don’t really know if the Morena de Angola is shaking the shaker, or if the shaker is shaking her, as the classic samba lyrics insists.

With the help of little kids, toys, and farm animal, we learn how play can help us overcome the polarization of the zero sum game.