The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’
Dont Retire, Kid – Try Parkour!
❗️62% of kids quit organized team sports by age 11 according to a recent study conducted by the Aspen Institute Project Play with the Utah State University Families in Sports Lab.
The Aspen Institute Project Play is running a new campaign called Don’t Retire, Kid. On their launch page they wonder aloud as to why kids are really leaving sports.
Are we really wondering why?
A quick read of Until it Hurts or The Most Expensive Game In Town, two books by Mark Hyman, reveal just how expensive sport participation is… and I’m not just talking $$$.
Maybe we need to start looking at alternatives to traditional competitive team sports? Maybe we need to start calling out the toxic competitive environments, overemphasis on athletic elitism, and soaring costs for participating? Maybe we need to value more highly healthy self expression, civic participation, and community engagement in our practice?
This is just one reason I love Parkour and play. They are fundamentally non competitive, focused on the development of individual identity and community relationship. There is a low barrier to access–financially, physically, personally. In our programs at Parkour Visions we encourage students to develop their own style and pursue movement that feels healthy, we support collaborative learning and gameplay, and encourage leadership, responsibility, and environmental stewardship. Children or adults–there is another way.
Sports can be more than besting your opponent, earning a college scholarship, or losing that next 10 pounds. If you want to see more people (of ALL AGES) stay and play, we need to be looking to play an infinite game–one where ‘winning’ is being healthy, happy, and engaged.
On Playgrounds, Violence, and Shame
“Playground experiences can mold a lifetime.” – Jon Ronson
I recently got to read the book Playground by James Mollison, which is a photography project to capture the diversity of play experiences children had in different countries. He described his motivation for the project at the very end: “When I conceived this series of pictures, I was thinking about my time at school. I realized that most of my memories were from the playground. It had been a space of excitement, games, bullying, laughing, tears, teasing, fun, and fear.”
More interesting is the forward written by Jon Ronson who reflected deeply on his own childhood experiences on the playground which were distinctly coloured by bullying, violence, and shame.
When we engage in play, we suspend reality and can give ourselves space to try on new identities, explore repressed emotions, and self-express in new ways that might otherwise feel risk in ‘normal’ life. It can be as innocent as dressing up in ways that in ‘normal’ life would leave us with a fear of social rejection or on a darker note role playing the villians in our bedtime stories. Our playgrounds are not only places of joy and creativity but also laboratories for experiments with anger, violence, aggression, and our ‘shadow’ selves.
Jon Ronson wrote that “Playgrounds can mold a lifetime”. As I look at all these photos, I can’t help but think that while we absolutely should be thinking about how we shape our play spaces physically perhaps we should be spending more time on how to shape them politically. Who makes the rules and who referees? How far are we allowed to go in our self-experiments one way or another? How do we handle conflict, address violence, and support communication?
As adults, teachers, designers, leaders–we sometimes think we know best. We forge ahead laying out rules, regulations, expectations, we facilitate and supervise, we start to box in play and public activity according to what we think is the most safe. We consult books, best practices, and professionals…. and often forget to ask the one group that matters most–our users. When things go even a little bit array, we jump in to fix, and the opportunity to have a direct experience cultivating skills in negotiation, temperance, independence and personal responsibility is greatly diminished.
What I’m getting at is: when we alienate the users of our playspaces (whether children or adults) from the creation of the rules that govern it and the decisions that physically shape it, we lose the opportunity to come together as a whole community. We loose a chance to have a group dialogue about how we want to live together. To understand collectively our standards for integrity in our interactions. We perpetuate power structures, stereotypes, and personal fears.
I don’t have a strong concluding point except to say that we should, whenever possible, engage in collaborative playcemaking. Engage all stakeholders. Seek out the smallest voices, those disenfranchised and unheard or undervalued. Our playgrounds can be more than just recreation sites… they can be places of deep healing too.
You can see more of his photography online on his website.
Play and sports can be incredible spaces for peacemaking, community building, and personal development.
From Humiliation to Violence
American psychiatrist James Gilligan spent decades interviewing violent prisoners and his concluding core belief was that the deep underlying motivating force that drove people to violent behavior was the hope of suppressing or relieving feelings of shame and humiliation.
These feelings of shame can originate in so many different ways — Being insulted, teased or rejected, subjected to some form of perceived or real indignity or unfairness–even simply experiencing feeling weak, unattractive, or incompetent. We all can likely point to a time, if not many times, in our lives where the seeds of shame took hold and manifested in anger and hurt.
Sometimes we are brave enough to reach out into our communities or turning to our partners, therapists, or online platforms for healing and help. Moreoften we keep our feelings hidden. If someone was to see or confront our shame and subsequent unworthiness, surely that would destroy us?
But there is a far more awesome, destructive power in secret shame. In fact it underpins most anger and hurt in the world and, when unchecked, can push us over the threshold into violence.
Violent Bodies, Violent Words
You might think to yourself that you’ve never been violent before. And that’s fair.
When we think of violence, we often think of the violence imparted with our bodies–physical blows and altercations against either yourself or another. However, more common is violence imparted with words. Degrading and belittling self talk, unkind and aggressive communication with others. We all can likely find a time we are guilty of it.
When secret shame takes hold we are at greatest risk of hurting not just those around us but also ourselves.
Practice
When you catch yourself being unkind or hurtful in conversation–whether in self talk or with another human–try to take pause, step back, and find the true cause. What shame are you experiencing that is driving you to anger and hurt?
Read – A good follow up book would be Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.
Selections from Phaedrus by Plato on Love, Rhetoric, and the Soul
This is a conversation that Plato recorded between Socrates and Phaedrus. Though it dwells mostly on love, it does delve in to the art of rhetoric. In regards to love, they discuss the soul, madness, and divinity. The story is broken up in to three speeches.
The first speech, given through Phaedrus, states that it is better to give your attentions (sexual relations) to a non-lover (aka, someone you are not in love with that you extract physical pleasure from). The reasoning is that jealousy will never be a factor, and that you are acting with cool and cold logic, and that if you were to give your attentions to a person ‘sick with the madness of love’ that irrationality may occur.
The second speech is the first response by Socrates. Socrates states that human beings have two inherent needs – first, their desire for pleasure and second, their desire to exercise sound judgment in order to obtain happiness. Seeking purely pleasure is something seen as derived from madness while utilizing one’s judgment is a sign of being ‘right in the mind.’ When you have fallen in to the madness, you no longer are looking out for the best in your lover. You will shape and form them to your needs as you need them and you will have them fulfill roles that perhaps they were not meant to step in to. A sound minded person would never betray their non-lover. In essence, Socrates is in a way agreeing with the first speech but in a more coherent and examined manner.
The final speech, given by Socrates, in a response to both the speeches, goes in the complete opposite direction and is, perhaps, the most important dialogue in all of this slim volume. He talks on several things: madness, the soul, madness in the context of love, and then finally a discourse on rhetoric. First he states that madness is a gift from the gods and that madness can be a good thing. He then speaks on the soul and how it is in a state of motion and thus is immortal. After, he speaks on the madness induced by love. He explains that if excessive physical contact can be supressed and the company can still be enjoyed that then both self control and madness can be present and in balance in a beautiful relationship. “A lover’s friendship is divine, Socrates concludes, while that of a non-lover offers only cheap, human dividends, and tosses the soul about on earth” Finally, he speaks on the art of rhetoric, though i will not go on to explain this part of the logoi because I take less interest in it.
I think this story is a very unique approach to the ailment of love. Clearly this story is revolving around Eros, the type of love that is mainly grounded in the romantic relationship between two people. However, towards the end, I believe Socrates is arguing for a form of Philos (not Agape, mind you), intimate and physical philos. (for the rationality of a person is still in place. I believe once you transcend eros and philos and step in to agape with a person, then all things become irrational for it is an irrational emotion in many many ways. though, it is also perhaps one of the most beautiful.)
Excerpts:
First speech
“those in love repent of whatever services tehy do at the point they cease from their desires; for the others [non-lovers], there is no time appropriate for repentence. For it is not under compulsion but ta their choosing… that they render their services.” – p 7
“…whereas those not in love, because they are in control of themsleves, will choose what is best rather than to have people think highly of them.” – p 8
“Moreover, many of those in love desire a person’s body before they know his ways and before they have experience the other aspects belonging to him, so that it is unclear to them if they will still want to be friends with him when they cease to desire him…” – p 9
“…judgment is weakened as a result of their desire.” – p 9
“…the man in love is more sick than the man not in love…” – p 13
Second Speech:
“…in each of us there are two kinds of thing which rule and lead us, which we follow wherever they may lead, the one an inborn desire for pleasures, the other an aquired judgment that aims at the best.” – p 15
“..the man who is ruled by desire and enslaved to pleasure will make the one he loves as pleasing to himself as possible.” – p 17
Third Spech
“…but as it is, the greatest of goods come to us through madness.” – p 23
“All soul is immortal. For that which is always in movement is immortal; that which moves something else, and is moved by something else, in ceasing movement ceases from living. So, only that which moves itself, because it does not abandon itself, never stops moving.” – p 25
“…one must be bold enough to say what is true, especially when speaking about truth.” – p 27
“For the soul that has never seen the truth shall not enter this shape of ours.” – p 29
Pieces of the speech on the Art of Rhetoric
“Well then, for things that are going to be said well, and beautifully, mustn’t there be knowledge in the mind of the speaker of the truth about whatever he means to speak of?” -p 42
“unless he engaged in philosophy sufficiently well, neither will he ever be a sufficiently good speaker about anything.” – 43
“Does deception occur more in the case of things that are widely different or in those that differ little?” -p 45
“Until a person knows the truth about each of the things about which he speaks or writes, and becomes capable of defining the whole by itself, and, having defined it, knows how to cut it up again acccording to its forms until it can no longer be cut; and until he has reached an understanding of the nature of soul along hte same lines, discovering the form of speech that fits each nature, and so arranges and orders what he says, offering a complex soul complex speeches containing all the modes, and simple speeches to a simple soul: not until then will he be capable of pursuing the making of speeches as a whole in a scientific way (persuasive way.).” – p 65