Work And Play

Q: aren't you fighting a losing battle, expanding (or apparently wanting to expand) the definition of 'work' to include 'play', other activities... wouldn't it be easier to introduce a different terminology?

Yes-- I don't want "work" to include "play"-- I agree with Johan Huizinga:

In our Puritan society, the word "work" implies "importance"-- that is, "work" is good-- in fact, sacrosanct ("don't bother me, I'm working."-- how about "don't bother me, I'm playing"). My CD project addresses the self-evident, how bad "work" (commodity labor) can be.

On the other hand, I was also thinking of what Otto Rank said, "Compared with the average man, the artist has, so to say, a hundred-per-cent vocational psychology." Added to what Vincent Van Gogh said, "an artist is a man with his work to do."

That is, to a writer for instance, all experience is "material"-- it's all material, and if the "data-collection" stage of the process is "work," then one is working.

I agree with new terminology-- I like the word "play" a lot. And it is too joyful a word in most cases to cover the "serious" activity of breadwinning, which one often doesn't really feel like doing at those times. It is this very working against resistance, thus suffering, that the god of Calvin and Luther affirm: their God loves suffering.

So I think you're right. Instead of saying "Me too" when someone says "I'm at work" or "I'm working," I could say "I'm at play." This would be less reactive/defensive. So your question has made me realize that what I was trying to say was "what I do is as valuable as what you do." The defense should rest!