On numerous occasions we have talked about the importance of the game for the little ones, and we have also listed the different ways of playing. Free and cooperative play is fundamental to our society, but our children are forgetting this way of playing.
According to Peter Gray, a psychologist at Boston College in the United States, the use of play in ancient humans would have helped overcome the aggression and dominance tendencies that would have made a cooperative society impossible.
Since then, the game has remained in our species as a tool for social cohesion, but it is a habit that is currently disappearing.
It is not that today's children do not play or do not have free time, it is that they dedicate it to other non-cooperative games such as video games or activities such as watching television.
At present, the recreational activities that allow counteracting greed or arrogance, and that promote empathy have been largely lost, and I attest that putting oneself in the place of the other is a quality that is not easily observed in the Boys and girls today.
The researcher points out in his essay that
The game and humor are not only ways to have fun but also serve to promote egalitarian attitudes, intensify co-participation, and at the time helped human hunter-gatherers to achieve the social peace on which they depended to survive.
In his article in the specialized magazine "American Journal of Play", Gray points out that the humans of that time used humor, deliberately, to maintain equality and avoid altercations. Even their laws and rituals had qualities similar to those of the game.
Our ancestors deliberately used humor to maintain equality and avoid conflict, and their ways of sharing presented qualities similar to those of the games.
But this researcher goes further, and moving this interpretation to the current world situation, he points out that this change in attitude towards the game is at the bottom of the current economic crises.
And, according to him, the fruit of the abandonment of the game is seen in the selfish actions that have led to an economic collapse, which would be a symptom of a society that has forgotten how to play and learn to put themselves in the place of others.
Leaving aside this interpretation, what seems undeniable are the benefits of the game in a social environment, and what Peter Gray is saying in his theory about early adaptations of humans is very plausible.
Maybe it would be good for us to promote in our little ones the freely chosen games that mix ages, that are not organized by adults and that are not competitive. And also that we had more sense of humor!
Because probably our ancestors developed the ability to play to promote the development of a very cooperative way of life, and with more sense of humor than we ...
