Play Journal

Play Ethic @ Cambridge Word Fest

A small heads-up to a public event I'm doing at the Cambridge Word Fest next month, Sunday 24th April. It's with Carl Honore, the author of the excellent quality-of-life manifesto (my, there seems to be a lot of them round here) In Praise of Slow. See you there, or you can buy tickets here.

"Touchy-feely network spiritualism" (bring it on)

Tart and salty coverage of the Play Ethic, and its umbrella consultancy New Integrity, from an excellent leftist web-magazine called Seven Oaks.

The problem with the Kanes and the Leadbeaters of this world is their zealous insistence on an online, open source technological, networked cyber-utopia which confuses familiarity with the fads of the day with serious critical enquiry. The result of which is a drunken misalliance of Chicken Soup for the Soul touchy-feely network spiritualism and the crass market genuflecting offered up in books like New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s best-selling business bible The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

It really needn’t be said that the dedicated players and Pro-Ams (“…climbing says more about who I am than my job. Journalism is my job but climbing is my passion.”) who best typify this dawning age are noticeable by their absence from the coal face of the information economy. The new media age has yet to produce the shorter working hours that Kane yearns for, nor has it produced a new generation of players: for every ad agency creative loitering at the water cooler, for every down-with-it pro-am actor slacking off from the PR company, there are too many McJob workers taking Leadbetter’s “Living on Thin Air” slogan to dangerously literal extremes.

As the precarity post below shows, I (nor my colleagues at Demos) don't underestimate the scale of the reform and activism required to build a social settlement that could cope with players and pro-ams as our mainstream identity, as meaningfully active people.

Much to respond to here, but not enough time in my play-and-care days. Let me do so obliquely by pointing you to a piece I've just had published in the Learning Teaching Scotland magazine Connected, about the relationship between ICT, Play and Education. In short, it's not just about training people for a market-future, but about composing a life-narrative of a creative society worth living in:

The challenges of techno-mobility might also be opportunities to think again about our institutional frameworks for learning. We could even profitably return to notions of the 'learning web', first proposed in the 1970s by educational radical Ivan Illich in his provocative book Deschooling Society, which saw the whole city and environment as a scene for ubiquitous learning and understanding. 'Playing around on street corners', with wireless capability, could take on a whole new dimension.

Yet the wider societal context to this is important. This new techno-literacy – which kids are assembling by themselves in their own largely unregulated time and space – is an honest response to a fundamental shift in the structures of post-modern life: the life of flows and networks, the power of culture and ideas, summed up by the 'information age'. Almost entirely autonomously, children are using play to make themselves imaginatively capable for this new world.

And a methodological note: the good player feels, and then she touches.

More Oz coverage for Play Ethic

Two great pieces about the Play Ethic book in Australia have come to me - one a review from the Melbourne Age (in extended post below), from an educational psychologist who's captured the energy of it:

For Kane, play has many forms. It is about progress, imagination and self-mastery. It is also about power (who outperforms who), identity (what I learn about myself), and fate and chaos, as in winning in chance games such as lotteries. The play of childhood features as a vehicle of pleasure and learning from Rousseau's Emile, to Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron and Maria Montessori. Then there are the contemporary players such as Trotsky, Richard Neville (playfully referred to as the "Wizard of Oz"), Frank Sinatra, Robbie Williams and Victoria Beckham to name just a few.

And the other is a feature piece from the Sydney Sun-Herald, by an energetic and sharp writer called David Astle (who's kindly sent it to me as a PDF download ). Here he gets the 'childness' - not childishness - of a play-ethical lifestyle:

Lego block by Lego block, my hallway is turning into the Lost City ofAlakazoo. I made that name up but the kids don’t care. The city is theirs – they made it, that’s enough. My children – aged nine and seven – are knocking skulls with their cousins of roughly the same age, raking the Lego bucket in search of that perfect piece. Click.

Patterns emerge but that’s an adult talking. This is play, after all, not Urban Design 101. Let Alakazoo sprawl where it will. If the city’s rocket depot is pink, let it be pink. In play, there are no rules from above. The make-believe city develops ad hoc.

Game theorists would call it engagement, a style of play given to interaction rather than outcome. Kids are brilliant at it – they mix as equals. They co-operate, experiment, adapt. They improvise and imagine. They allow the game to shape itself. And, ideally, they pack up before dinnertime.

As adults, we lose sight of play in so many ways. Maybe you nurse an Xbox vice or go for a spot of pub trivia on a Wednesday night but the days of spontaneous play seem to evaporate after 25. Travel might be seen as one big hide-and-seek across three continents but once the backpack is stowed, it’s work and mortgage for so many Australians.

We narrow our lives along fixed paths and neglect the art of fun, of freely engaging with each other. In short, we play less. And guess who loses out?

This is not a story about throwing a Frisbee at lunchtime or face-painting with the kids. It’s deeper than that. Play is more a state of mind, a joyous state of readiness, an appetite for new challenges. Think of play not as the opposite of work but the opposite of depression and inaction.

A serious search for the playful life
Erica Frydenberg
24/12/2004
The Age

THE PLAY ETHIC, By Pat Kane, Macmillan, $40

THE title of this lengthy book is a play on words. It is not about ethics of play but rather about play itself. The origin of the title comes from a conversation with one of Pat Kane's band members - the author was one half of Hue and Cry - who proudly declares that while he has no work ethic, he certainly has a play ethic.

Kane tries to convince us that a play ethic is both possible and desirable. He says his book "shows how a more playful society would revolutionise and liberate our daily lives". So the primary goal appears to be an awareness raising about the many forms of play and the many players that are already part of our lives. He identifies the barriers to appreciating what is already there in our lives and what is possible.

It is a good read. But whether it is a manifesto for a different way of living - "a survival guide for those who seek to break the shackles of work-dominated society" - I am not so sure.

But there is certainly an entertaining mix of history, personal perspectives, metaphor and colourful language. With a litany of sociological-philosophical-psychological and historical perspectives, it is at times heavy going, a book one may periodically dip into rather than read in one session. At times it seems serious and at others appropriately playful.

For Kane, play has many forms. It is about progress, imagination and self-mastery. It is also about power (who outperforms who), identity (what I learn about myself), and fate and chaos, as in winning in chance games such as lotteries. The play of childhood features as a vehicle of pleasure and learning from Rousseau's Emile, to Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron and Maria Montessori. Then there are the contemporary players such as Trotsky, Richard Neville (playfully referred to as the "Wizard of Oz"), Frank Sinatra, Robbie Williams and Victoria Beckham to name just a few.

The book is replete with lots of good personal stories from Kane that take us into the realm of play such as his first experiences with Bill Devlin, the son of his "nana", who was a professional dancer. Add to this a colourful mix of ideas such as the image of workers with a play ethic who are at the heart of the "new economy" and are not the proletarians but the "soulitarians" beginning to realise their collective power.

The Play Ethic is scattered with metaphors and insights from Kane and his friends. There is the metaphor of the consultant in an organisation being a transitional object, an object that one plays with to increase a sense of mastery or improve one's relationship with the physical world. The analogy is then made to an organisation where the consultant is used as a "security blanket" when trying to achieve organisational change.

Kane gets you thinking about everyday events and circumstances in different ways. The Play Ethic is thought-provoking and instructive.

But how we define play must surely have an impact on how we understand the term. In its simplest form, it is akin to pleasure and as such we should all pursue it in every aspect of our lives, be it work, family or leisure, rather than seeing play as part of a work-leisure duality. We generally underestimate how much we all play; whether we are conscious of the benefits or not, it meets a need in society.

Australians in the workforce spend more time at work than most, but they also know how to play. We love our sport and many young people are choosing lifestyle over career or family.

What this book doesn't do is present any data to support its many philosophical and sociological claims about how we play and with whom we play.

That aside, it is written by someone who clearly enjoys the art of writing and indicates that he neglected his own children while writing the book. Perhaps he is like many of us who sometimes blur the boundaries between work and play.

Associate professor Erica Frydenberg is head of the educational psychology unit at the University of Melbourne.

Players or Dole Bludgers?

An intriguing Australian review of the Play Ethic book, picked up from Google Alert, from a slick website called Sydney Anglicans - a portal for, well, Anglicans in Sydney. I'm fascinated by this paragraph:

Kane makes the case that we have denigrated play for far to long in Western culture such that we have limited the potential for human creativity and enjoyment. For us, work is the serious business. Serious people work hard; and it is morally good to embrace hard work. Both Labor and Coalition politicians appealed to the ethic of hard work in Australia’s recent election. A dole bludger is one of the most shameful people in our culture. Think of the way we speak of “wasting time” as if it is morally wrong.

When I was in Australia in 2002, doing some consultancy for educationalists, I remember this term 'dole bludger' coming up regularly in conversations - usually with people shaking their heads at the prospect of playful values having any purchase in Howard-era Australian society. Strange, in that aboriginal culture is surely one of the most profoundly playful - meaning mobile and imaginative - lifestyles imaginable. Yet this nexus of issues - how Australians cope with aboriginality, combined with their residual Britishness, and the immigrant multicutlure of its big cities - means that I'm always fascinated to see how my own little idea-virus might survive and thrive there.

Any Oz correspondants, I'd like to hear from you. How does play survive the spectre of the dole-bludger?

The Play Ethic in Adbusters & Guardian Online

Some excellent coverage of the Play Ethic book, both coming from the key-tapping of one man - Jim McClellan, who I remember as the Beard/McLellan duo that used to enrich style mags like the Face, Arena and ID with their feelthy French theorising.

Jim's now writing for the Guardian Online, where he's filed a TalkTime interview piece with me about the PE - delighted to be able to take to the soulitariat directly. But he's also a correspondant with Adbusters, no less - the world-renowned anti-corporate mag - and used the interview to file a typically concise piece titled 'Life As Play' for their new 'Big Ideas 2005' issue. 

The Play Ethic in Oz

To herald the launch of the Play Ethic in Australia (buy it here), I was delighted to speak with James Hall of the Australian Business Review the other day, who writes on management and organisational matters for that paper (it's like the FT, only more...southern). James is articulate and interested in what lies beyond the work-life balance - see this archive of his work - and asked some great questions about the relevance of the Play Ethic to business:

When Kane talks about ‘play’ in The Play Ethic (Macmillan 2004), and he does so at length, he doesn't mean sports and games. He means that society needs to reconsider how clinging to an industrial-age work ethic limits innovation and creativity in knowledge-driven economies.

“People are realising they're in irrelevant and faulty organisational structures", Kane says. “[The work ethic] needs to be unearthed as a cultural and ideological mind-set which at the very least is not necessary. There are other ways to presume humans can add value.”

Kane believes business is the ideal testing ground for his ideas. Moreover, he says business leaders must act to keep in step with the desires, hopes and lifestyles of disengaged workers.

It's about helping staff reconcile the personal with the professional and play is a major motivator.

When we play, we explore the world around us, make mistakes and learn. Play is never wasted.

Kane believes that this can be translated to the way we work through allowing workers more freedom in the way they express themselves, communicate with others and perform tasks. “A profound attitude towards play keeps a company adaptive and healthy”, he says.

The full review is reproduced in the extended post below. More of this to come, I hope...

Australian Financial Review

Playing around with the office ethic

23/11/2004

A number of thinkers are putting 'play' ahead of work as the means to creative
business thinking, says James Hall.

Manuel Castells would be chuffed. At the end of the past decade, the University of California
sociologist asked in The Information Age trilogy (Blackwell Publishers 1996, 1997, 1998) how we could redefine work.

The Protestant work ethic (which essentially espoused working hard to acquire wealth) as defined by 19th century sociologist Max Weber had become outdated, he argued, but what would replace it?

Pat Kane, former British pop star, founding editor of Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper and self-appointed laureate of that country's digital revolution, has come to Castells's aid. The answer, he argues in a book to be released in Australia
in December, is play.

When Kane talks about ‘play’ in The Play Ethic (Macmillan 2004), and he does so at length, he doesn't mean sports and games. He means that society needs to reconsider how clinging to an industrial-age work ethic limits innovation and creativity in knowledge-driven economies.

“People are realising they're in irrelevant and faulty organisational structures", Kane says. “[The work ethic] needs to be unearthed as a cultural and ideological mind-set which at the very least is not necessary. There are other ways to presume humans can add value.”

Kane believes business is the ideal testing ground for his ideas. Moreover, he says business leaders must act to keep in step with the desires, hopes and lifestyles of disengaged workers.

It's about helping staff reconcile the personal with the professional and play is a major motivator.

When we play, we explore the world around us, make mistakes and learn. Play is never wasted.

Kane believes that this can be translated to the way we work through allowing workers more freedom in the way they express themselves, communicate with others and perform tasks. “A profound attitude towards play keeps a company adaptive and healthy”, he says.

The so-called New Economy, which embraced the idea of work as play, didn't quite deliver the goods. Many companies were so playful and irreverent, they forgot to develop products. But companies that succeeded Hotmail, Amazon, Google, eBay broke new ground in service delivery.

“One of the things we have to say constantly is 'look beyond your boundaries and borders'”, says Kane, who works with companies through a consultancy called New Integrity.

Fortunes may have been lost on playful dotcoms, but the people who drove them are having as much, if not more, impact on the way the workforce interacts with the world through blogging, open-source software and peer-to-peer networks.

Harvard Business Press has recently published a book in the US called Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever, which claims this generation's attitudes will turn companies inside out. They have experienced technology as a first-person phenomenon through video games and the internet, not as passive television viewers.

This leads to self-awareness and a desire for self-actualisation that lends itself more to play than work. Rightly or wrongly, they're all about meaning and engagement. Kane says this will engender a culture of “playing around to get a result rather than planning it to death”.

Kane is by no means the first person to suggest that a looser attitude to the way we organise ourselves at work can have a positive effect on business. Brazilian author Ricardo Semler's two popular books, Maverick (Warner Books 1995) and The Seven-Day Weekend (Random House 2003), espouse the positive influence of freedom and informality in engendering a creative and fulfilling workplace.

Kane says that Semler, chairman of Brazilian engineering firm Semco Group, is a leading player. Many managers would find Semco's approach shocking. For example, every important board meeting includes two random members of staff from any level or area of the company, who get equal voting rights to permanent board members.

The emphasis is on informality and equality. "To the outside, it can seem like chaos",Kane says. "But the employee culture allows people to co-operate as they wish and set their own targets . . . Being a player means being able to be part of a group but also be individually creative."

Richard Neville, pioneering editor of Oz magazine in London in the 1960s and author of Playpower (Paladin 1970), which predicted an information age in which machines did the hard work, says Kane's ideas are a continuation of his own.

Neville, now a Sydney-based futurist and business consultant, says the principle of playfulness is “not something that can be quarantined off as a separate part of business”; and is crucial to both innovation and breaking down the “pathological workaholism”; he believes has gripped the western world. But he also points out that Enron was heralded for its innovation and playfulness. “So you do need the solid mathematical things as well”; he says.

Kane admits his play ethic is a model for an economy that barely exists yet, but he is convinced it will have its day, and radically change the way businesses provide services to customers, jobs to staff and wealth to society.

To sceptics, he points out how recently creativity has risen to the fore as a key business driver when it was previously seen as something best left to advertising departments.

“The play ethic connects to wider social, political and ethical concerns” he says. But companies could be a lot better about the way they allow people to feel good about their own explicit creativity.

“McKinsey talked years ago about the war for talent; this is part of that. If you want the brightest and best, you have to pitch for them in a different way.”

But even Kane admits he has written his book five years too early.

“There's a gap between what's happening in the private sector and what I'm proposing”, he says.

ends

Play Ethic review in 'The Independent'

Been a while coming, but happy to see James Harkin's review of The Play Ethicin the Uk's Independent (which was citing the PE in other articles last week too). A sample:

Underlying this enthusiasm for an ethic of play is the idea that we are at our most creative as children, and that by revisiting our childhood we can rediscover that creativity. Those claims, however, should be treated with caution. The innocent way children play may be enchanting, and may prompt us to reflect on our own approach to life. But there is no real evidence that a child-centred view of the world - limited to its immediate environment, and lacking any discipline - is of any use to adults. The creative urge that drives work is qualitatively different from that which allows a child to build sandcastles. No one would have dared suggest to William Shakespeare or James Joyce that their output could benefit from playing around with children's toys.

Again, I'm disappointed (though by now not surprised) that reviewers keep imagining that play means merely child's play, or anarchistic free experimentation - when it also implies a vision of social dynamism, a theory of power and contest, and a learning model, to say the least. And who said play couldn't be about effort or toil, if voluntarily chosen (ask a sportsman or hacker)? But as the director of the ICA talks department, I'm hoping James'll invite me to some event so that I can explain myself further...

Play Ethic in The Scotsman

Late review of the Play Ethic book in from The Scotsman. Some familiar parochial criticisms of my style - what, am I the only person to have used the phrase 'cognitive dissonance' in contemporary English? - but there are some consistent points, both positive and negative, that appear across the reviews, which I'm going to deal with in a response here (as soon as time permits). Again, if this is criticism, I'm happy with it:

Nothing if not radical, [Kane] goes beyond liberal bleatings about work-life balance and paternity leave to call for a complete abandonment of the work ethic itself. It’s not just, he argues, that we need leisure to recharge our batteries, but that the experimental and exploratory elements of play make it such an inexhaustible source of creativity. Matthew Arnold is one of the few authorities not referred to here, but Kane’s schema recalls the Victorian sage’s contrast between that dogged conscientiousness he described as "Hebraism" and what he called "Hellenism" - a term for giving our consciousness free play and enlarging its range.

The Scotsman

Sat 25 Sep 2004

The play's the thing

Book Review by MICHAEL KERRIGAN

THE PLAY ETHIC: A MANIFESTO FOR A DIFFERENT WAY OF LIVING
BY PAT KANE
Macmillan, £12.99

THE FUTURE THAT MANY OF US were brought up to expect never actually materialised: no shimmering to work through skyscraper-cities by monorail. Much of our urban environment still looks much as it did in Victorian times; the outward accoutrements of life, in many respects, have hardly changed.

There has, of course, been a "digital revolution", even though most of us are vague about what that actually means. It might be fun to look at the Los Angeles Times online, swap sporting wisdom on message boards or catch up with old classmates, but such things in themselves hardly add up to an overall "paradigm shift". And if the advent of e-mail and video-conferencing have had a profound impact on the old-fashioned world of work, they certainly haven’t abolished it altogether. Many sorts of manual work remain much the same as ever; and white-collar workers often feel they’re becoming technoserfs.

When the option of working flexible hours or from home slides so easily into an obligation to be on standby 24/7, where exactly is the benefit for the employee? Is a mobile phone or modem really an empowering thing, or just an infinitely extendable tether tying the individual to their place of work?

They could indeed be the instruments of our liberation, if Pat Kane is to be believed, but it will require a complete overhaul of our attitudes and values. Nothing if not radical, he goes beyond liberal bleatings about work-life balance and paternity leave to call for a complete abandonment of the work ethic itself. It’s not just, he argues, that we need leisure to recharge our batteries, but that the experimental and exploratory elements of play make it such an inexhaustible source of creativity. Matthew Arnold is one of the few authorities not referred to here, but Kane’s schema recalls the Victorian sage’s contrast between that dogged conscientiousness he described as "Hebraism" and what he called "Hellenism" - a term for giving our consciousness free play and enlarging its range.

With its 20-a-page allusion habit - they’re all here, from Adorno to Zygotsky - this book is hard to take entirely seriously. There are naff neologisms ("soulitarians") and moments of cringeworthy self-congratulation ("On my last invitation to the Cabinet Office..."). At one point, Kane confides that he left the one real full-time job he’s ever had because it caused him too much "cognitive dissonance". Everything is presented in a style that seems quite spectacularly pleased with itself. With its "playful" reluctance to get to any point, this book is neither brief nor clear enough to be the ‘manifesto’ it purports to be.

But in the end, ironically, the values of the much-maligned work ethic come to Kane’s rescue: readers who persevere will find the effort exasperating but by no means unrewarding. If Kane can offer only hints of insight rather than some grand overarching plan, that’s at least in part the nature of the problem. The issues addressed are genuine and increasingly urgent, yet the ideas involved are still fantastically elusive. Most of us are only just beginning to sense the scope of a revolution that could involve our most seemingly solid social structures and assumptions.

Whether Kane’s frankly acknowledged Utopianism is justified, who can say? It’s one of those glass-half-full, glass-half-empty judgments. But, whatever his weakness for a soundbite or a laboured wordplay, Kane has read widely and thought intelligently about a subject of the most immediate importance. There’s as much here to stimulate as there is to irritate and provoke.

Gonna post to Amazon.co.uk?

Happy to see the Play Ethic book doing quite well on Amazon.co.uk. But it'd be great to see some reader postings - raves, critiques, or bemusement, I don't care. Anyone out there feel the urge?

Who Cares? Event at ICA

A mention for an event organised by the creative consultancy I'm associated with, New Integrity, entitled Who Cares? It's a very relevant debate in terms of the Play Ethic book - in the 'Lifestyle Militants' chapter, I talk about the play-care continuum, with the rights of play implying the responsibility to care. The question of how a society of connected individualists can find a language in which to express its social commitments is urgent - and one I've explored in my consultancy engagements. Here's the blurb:

Who Cares?

ICA, Pall Mall, London
Tue 21 Sep @ 19:00
Brandon Room
Full Price : £8.
Concession : £7.
ICA Members : £6.

We are told the ethic of public service has been eroded in the UK, leading to the demise of civitas, and the dwindling of a willing workforce for the public services. What motivates the public servant? And what exactly is it that we have reportedly lost? Shouldn't we welcome a work market where people are paid - and valued - for their labour, and not expected to work out of good will? Can public services survive in a culture which focuses on individual fulfilment? Speakers: Charlie Leadbeater, author of Civic Spirit: The Big Idea for a New Political Era; Bill Jordan, author of Social Work and the Third Way: Tough Love and Social Policy; Heather Wakefield, national secretary at Unison; David Bell, psychoanalyst and psychiatrist at the Tavistock, editor of Psychoanalysis and Culture; Ruth Lea, Director, the Centre for Policy Studies.

Hosted by New Integrity

I'll be introducing the event, so it'd be great to see some of you there.

Play Ethic: Teachers, Ireland and the New World Disorder

More reviews, pieces and interviews from the most recent round of Play Ethic book promotion. Delighted to write a piece straight for teachers in the Times Educational Supplement (see continued post below for full article), calling on them to 'become players in the toughest sense of the world'. I also did an interview with the Sunday Business Post in Ireland, which was notable for one of my best/worst ever flyers - 'instead of the Celtic Tiger, why not the Celtic Dolphin?' - and the interviewer's description of my 'compassionate brown eyes'. And finally, just to demonstrate some range, here's an interview I did with Canadian online 'journal of fringe culture' New World Disorder. I even learned things about myself here... and I do like Phil Leggiere's sum-up line:

The book powerfully lays out a scenario in which the dominant science of the 20th century, economics, the science of the miserable, is retired in favour of a new science of pleasure, play and creativity-ludology.

Now there's a small ambition...

Times Educational Supplement - Opinion

Another Voice : Play’s the thing to catch new teachers

Pat Kane
17/09/2004

I’m sure it must seem funny to teachers when they hear their profession being dragged through the ‘work/life balance’ debate. Wasn’t it always the homework/no-life imbalance for them?

Yet like any other occupation in the information age, education has to deal with the growing dissatisfaction of ever smarter, ever more worldly employees, increasingly chafing under employment regimes that don’t express their full selves. And in the public sector, as evidenced by its endemic staffing crises, everyone knows that vocationalism isn’t enough anymore to maintain the commitment to care (let alone educare).

There is a particular problem around bringing in the next wave of teachers from the career-sceptical, media-savvy Generations X and Y. Indeed, the coming advertising blitz from the Teacher Training Agency has had to pitch the teaching of children as being about humour, innovation and unpredictability - and way better than ‘working in an office with boring people’, says the TTA. David Brent, it seems, is the goateed spectre haunting all recruitment campaigns these days.

Yet it strikes me, as an outsider from the world of creative consultancy, that there is an amazingly underused resource in education culture. A tradition and expertise, with a centuries-old legitimacy, which could both attract people to the profession, and help existing professionals to re-imagine the nature of their labours and commitments. In short: do teachers truly realise the power and potential of play?

Of course we do, might come the reply - more vociferously from primary teachers, and accompanied by a riffling of old lecture notes from secondary teachers. From Rousseau to Montessori to Reggio Emilia, there is a wonderful tradition of valuing child’s play, its explorations and immersions, as a learning method.

But play often gets downgraded as the educational residue of those ‘progressive sixties values’ that exercise the PM at the moment. How does play get kids ready for the ‘labour markets of the future’?

Rather well, actually. In my experience, the most hard-nosed commercial organisations are literally obsessed with play. Most enterprises these days aim to become ‘learning’ organisations - responsive, self-aware and brimming over with ideas. Much of this learning comes through staff development exercises that are forms of play: theatre, visualisation, music, mind games, adventure trips, scenario planning.

If Unilever and Microsoft believe that their very profits and market share depend on the quality of their internal ‘players’, isn’t that enough credibility to allow teachers to develop those playful instincts in their children? Perhaps a ‘teacher of players’ might also attract those who would otherwise deploy their innovative urges in a more commercial setting.

This partly depends on whether teaching itself can de-romanticise play. For play is more than merely freedom and anarchic self-expression. The Indo-European root of play, -dlegh, means ‘to engage, to exercise oneself’ - almost the polar opposite of the idle triviality imputed to it by over 200 years of the Puritan work ethic.

The other definition I love comes from Friedrich von Schiller - pal of Goethe, author of the ‘Ode to Joy’ - who said play was about ‘taking reality lightly’. This doesn’t mean living in fantasy, but seeing the world as open to change and chance - and being inspired by that mentality.

Engaged, energetic children, who see a world teeming with possibilities and opportunities: if these are players, what teacher wouldn’t want to unfold their talents? From enterprise to citizenship to creativity, it seems to me that play - properly and profoundly understood - can provide some degree of underlying coherence to these often scattered and piecemeal initiatives.

As complex mammals, we begin our lives as players, in order to survive and develop. Our current generation, in its embrace of Playstation and Google, thumb-texting and CGI movies, thrill sports and karaoke pop, job-hopping and cheap travelling, seems to have made a collective decision to just keep on playing - and at the very least, be sceptical about the automatic virtues of the work ethic. Teachers can either dragoon these ‘soulitarians’ (as I call them in my book) into line. Or they can try to make the most of their evident capacities.

Again, from the outside, it seems as if the current tumult about the workload agreement in England and Wales might be as much a self-development opportunity for teachers, as it is a crisis of resources and structures. Released from the traditional chores of teaching, teachers could begin to unleash their pedagogical imaginations, as well as get a life beyond the classroom.

Might I suggest that one challenge could be a vision of an education for players rather than workers? For the moment, going by reports on creativity in primary teaching with titles like Expecting the Unexpected and Excellence and Enjoyment, there would seem to be fair wind for experiment.

What teachers might need to realise is that their long-standing commitment to play - using the child’s own creative energies and instincts to bring out their potential - isn’t some sixties-hippy embarrassment to hide from the Ofsted inspectors. Instead, it might be the tissue that connects them to the most vital social, cultural and technological dynamics of our times. It’s time for teachers to think of themselves as players, in the toughest sense of the word.

Pat Kane’s The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living, is out now on Macmillan, price £12.99. For more information, please visit http://www.theplayethic.com

Play Ethic on the Radio in UK and Ireland

Such an amazing response to the Johnnie Walker's drivetime show I did last week in the UK, on BBC Radio Two. Johnnie was by turns tough-minded and sympathetic, and I've had scores of e-mails from listeners -one woman almost crashing the car because she was taking so many notes. Here's a link to a clip of the show - don't know how long it'll be up, but it's about the last half an hour.

The highlight of a breakneck day in Dublin last week was an interview with Pat Kenny, who's taken over from Gay Byrne as voice of the nation there (at least on radio). He was well-informed, critical but also responsive. (I appear about 1hr 37 in). There's quite a few pieces to appear in the Irish press - post 'em here when they appear.

Play Ethic @ IoS, PanMac, The Times

More press on the Play Ethic. I got the chance to summarise the book for the Independent on Sunday - see continued post link below - and there's also a semi-serious 10-step guide to playerhood which you might enjoy. Posted there is also a review from the Times Educational Supplement - which is happily positive. My publisher, Macmillan, has also built a site for the Play Ethic, which contains a good explanatory interview about the book from me. And the Times did a little blurb also, pointing out the parallel with Richard Neville's Playpower manifesto. Some more pieces to come over the next few weeks - will keep building up the archive here.

Independent on Sunday

12th September, 2004

State of Play

By Pat Kane

They seem like the most obvious and unambiguous pair of words in the language: work and play. What one is, the other is not. The first is the necessary, duteous labour that maintains our society’s wealth and stability. The second is the messy, trivial indulgence that we allow ourselves (and our children) when our labours cease. Isn’t this obvious?

Not at all. The truth is that, in the UK and Europe at least, our attitudes towards work - how we define, regulate and endure it - are in a state of acute crisis. Meanwhile, we downgrade and disregard our elemental human capacity for play - a capacity which, if properly understood, could provide us with a powerful new ethics: a way to revive our enthusiasm for the active life.

At the moment, work seems to be more about the inactive life. Recently, the Bank of England reported that half a million men had left their jobs in the nineties because of ‘generous long-term sickness benefits’. A Newsweek cover in August depicted a giant thumb squashing a office drone; the story related how business and governments are getting tough on Europe’s work-shy workers, whose long holidays and short daily labours are being blamed for the drift of jobs to more toil-friendly territories, like Eastern Europe and Asia.

Even when they’re in work, they’re slacking, if the recent French bestseller Bonjour Paresse! - Hello Laziness! - is any evidence. Its subtitle is ‘The Art and Importance of Doing As Little As Possible in the Workplace’.

The historian Niall Ferguson has recently been peddling the notion that Europe has an ‘atheist sloth ethic’, compared to god-fearing, work-loving Americans, who still retain the ‘Protestant work ethic’ of their Puritan forefathers. As we all know, our Presbyter General, Gordon Brown MP, has been conducting a seven-year war against sloth and for the work ethic (remember his recent, eye-popping assault on the ‘sickie’ culture in the public sector, and his consistent animus against the work-shy poor).

Yet what always startles me about this government is the sheer incoherence, even schizophrenia, of its vision for what motivates modern men and women. They call for ‘a renewed work ethic’ – but aren’t these the legislators who decriminalised dope and propose 24-hour drinking laws, who enable the digital transmission of a thousand trashy lifestyle channels, who loosen the gaming laws so that every community can potentially have its own casino?

In railing against the ‘permissive society’ and ‘yob culture’, did Fr. Blair notice that unleashing a nation of consumerist, hedonist, screen-watching leisureholics hardly helps his case? No wonder the Bank of England report on sick leave noted a ‘large increase’ in numbers citing ‘mental and behavioural disorders’. These schizophrenics are driving us crazy.

Confused politicians? That’s hardly news. But we should try to do better. The problem is that too many of us are happy to accept a crippling dualism in our lives. Our willingness to come together to make objects or services that enhance and improve our society shouldn’t be confined to the term ‘work’. And our inexhaustible human urge to express ourselves, to dream of different worlds and futures, to seek out new experiences and relationships - all this shouldn’t be confined to the realm of ‘leisure’ or ‘recreation’. How can we integrate these two human impulses - that is, our ability to produce, and our capacity to imagine?

I believe that play, and particularly the notion of the player, can be a new and unifying force in our lives. The first thing we need to do is to make our understanding of the term much more profound. We need to shrug off the Puritan legacy - ‘the soul’s play-day is the devil’s work-day’ – that has confined play to childishness at best, and deviance at worst.

The word ‘play’ itself has a surprising etymology. It comes from the Indo-European term -dlegh, meaning ‘to engage, to exercise oneself’. Play is essentially about active and energetic individuals, existing in a dynamic relationship with others. Hardly a trivial or silly definition.

Look at biology and psychology, and we can see how play is as essential to human development as work - arguably more so. It is through early play that we complex mammals build up the essential skills for survival and flourishing. And as our societies move further and further away from scarcity and into affluence, these core skills of play - communicating, interacting, imagining, experimenting - become more central and vital to our adult lives, not more marginal.

As much as we can look around us and see a work ethic in crisis, I think we can equally see a play ethic emerging before our eyes. Information technology is crucial in this. We are in the midst of a digital generation - I call them ‘soulitarians’ - whose attitude to technology is the opposite of ‘alienated’ and ‘oppressed’.

Unlike the old workers, these new players presume that the interactive machines in their lives - e-mail or mobile, Playstation or iPod, weblog or search engine - exist to connect them with others, or to enrich their experience, or to collaboratively create, not to serve someone’s strategic goal or bottom line. Business and organisations are struggling to harness the potential of these digital players - but when they do, the landscape of how we create products and services will be completely changed.

If play means ‘imaginative engagement with others’, then players can be found in many more places than the tech-sector. A play ethic could provide a positive case for the reduction of working hours, rather than the negative and defensive arguments that protect ‘life’, ‘family’ and ‘relationships’ from ‘work’.

A player with free time from production is a different prospect from a worker with free time. Rather than wearily plug themsevles into the ‘feelies’ of leisure and entertainment (so thoughtfully enabled by the current government), the player’s mentality is to be in the world, testing out possible schemes and initiatives with others, literally ‘playing their part’ in the drama of a community or city.

Forging your play ethic is very much about taking your own decisions, and making your own mind up, about your future direction as a productive and creative person (see ‘How to be a Player’) - which many people, as my book shows, are already doing.

But wouldn’t it be great if we had a government which really ‘joined-up’ its thinking about how to maximise the potential of its citizens? Rather than harangue them into work, and then befuddle them with leisure?

Then again, maybe a nation of active players isn’t exactly what a bunch of confused politicians would welcome.

Pat Kane’s The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living is out on Macmillan, for more see http://www.theplayethic.com. Pat Kane is appearing in Borders in Glasgow on 16th September, 0141 222 7700

HOW TO BE A PLAYER: A TEN-STEP GUIDE

1. Take reality lightly. This was the definition of the play attitude given in 1794 by Friedrich von Schiller, author of the ‘Ode to Joy’ – and it’s still right. This doesn’t mean living in a fantasyland. But it does mean striving to see all the fixed structures in your life – whether work, school, family, relationships, technology – as potentially changeable, rather than grimly determined. Literally, seeing things ‘in play’ and ‘at play’.

2. Have children, or be around them, at various ages and stages. Kids today are thriving in an environment of speed, interactivity and cultural change that their elders never imagined. Respect their strivings, and learn from their playful energies.

3. Play the lottery…and plan your future. A play mentality is about staying coherent in the face of incessant change – so it’s healthy to sample some of the extremes forms that play can take. Gambling is about allowing the gods of chance to play with you: scenario planning is about playing God (or at least simulating him/her) over your own life. Do one directly after the other, and you’ll definitely be living a play ethic.

4. Take this job… and rise above it. Confucius said that ‘the man who finds a job he loves never works another day in his life’. If you haven’t found it yet, at least keep imagining that productive and creative future you want for yourself, even in the midst of the most oppressive tedium. No matter what situation they find themselves in, players are always internally prepared for things to change – and because their mentality is open and searching, they’re able to see change where others can’t.

5. Build your networks – as many as you can. Players don’t (or shouldn’t) depend on static structures to support their activities – not just the company, not just the state, not just the family, not just the community. Use the internet, and as much free-time as you can manage, to connect yourself to people who are passionately interested in specific things that are relevant to your life-journey. Treat your desires with respect, not contempt.

6. Never pass up the chance to experience something crazy or challenging. It’s a big globalised world out there – and the more you can play with your basic terms of reference, the better prepared you’ll be for the next big shift or change in society. Try a new religion or theory, ponder the quantum or the Mobius strip, take up an underground sport, sample an unfamiliar drug. But always try and do it in good, convivial company.

7. Get broadband, become wireless. What the town square and the shop floor was to the worker, so the broadband terminal and the wireless hotspot is to the player – both open spaces which enable people to connect and commune. Except players can connect to the world, at almost any point in the world. The web is your global playground – use it.

8. Be an unashamed amateur at something. Amateur means ‘doing something for the love of it’. That childish moment of ‘playing around’ is such an essential energy source for us – and we downgrade it at our peril. Esteem your hobbies: be a Jill or Jack of all the trades you’d like to try. (Music is particularly good for the health of a player’s synapses).

9. Extend the playground. Being a player is fine and dandy – but having a play ethic is about realising that politics might stand in the way of everyone getting a change to play. Support campaigns, parties and politicians that look at reducing working hours, extending parental and sabbatical leave, supplying free grants for education and the arts. And be intelligent and innovative about your own lifestyle – hopefully with a partner who wants to play and care.

10. Attend to your resources. Play creates energy, but it also requires it. So burn off as much as you ingest; deploy whatever mind-therapies are required to keep eternal sunshine on your spotless mind; laugh and flirt and have as much sex as you can. And that’s an order!

Times Educational Supplement, Sept 10, 2004

Plea For Play Hits All The Right Notes

Review by Gerald Haigh

THE PLAY ETHIC: A MANIFESTO FOR A DIFFERENT WAY OF LIVING. By Pat Kane. Macmillan Pounds 12.99

CULTIVATING CREATIVITY IN BABIES, TODDLERS AND YOUNG CHILDREN. By Tina Bruce. Hodder & Stoughton Pounds 14.99

A WELL-TEMPERED MIND: USING MUSIC TO HELP CHILDREN LISTEN AND LEARN. By Peter Perret and Janet Fox. Dana Press Pounds 16.50

In the film The Sound of Music, Maria (Julie Andrews) famously takes down the nursery curtains to make play clothes for the stern captain's seven children. It's a subversive act for, as the housekeeper tells her: "Von Trapp children do not play -they march!"

It's surprising that Pat Kane doesn't invoke Maria -the ultimate playful adult ("a flibbertigibbet, a will o' the wisp, a clown") -in support of his thesis, for he drags in just about everyone else. His richly exotic index, in fact, reads like one of those knowingly clever songs by Noel Coward; the Ds alone include Bobby Darin, Rene Descartes, Dilbert, the Dixie Chicks and Greg Dyke.

Kane's entertaining roller-coaster ride of a book strives to define a counter to the "work ethic", and to give it a philosophical underpinning, illustrated by reference to people and groups who are reaching for, or have achieved, a playful life of unbridled creativity. Take Sarah, for example, "a tall, chin-forward woman in her early thirties".

"'Of course,' she announced, cigarette already aloft, 'you have a slightly wobbly moment about whether you'll get the next gig -whoops, hold on.' Her mobile phone rang: it was a London product designer." (No wonder Julie Andrews hasn't made it into Kane's universe. What chance does she have against the cool Sarah with her "gel-flipped hair"?) To the teacher who reads them, some of Kane's ideas are already received wisdom, but it's still good to see them reiterated. "Education has always prepared children for 'society'," he writes. "Yet 'society' has never been prepared for truly educated children."

Kane detects real hope in the way educators strive to inject passion and vision into the nuts and bolts of their work. He finds The TES (which he read over six months as part of his research) "inspiring". It has "human capaciousness". There are "so many experts straining to translate their findings into useable tools for pressured teachers".

Kane knows there are too many people out there who really do think life is a serious business that's not workin' if it ain't hurtin'. The scary thought (which he avoids) is that it just might be their seriousness that gives the rest of us the playful freedom he's so passionate about.

Kane, you imagine, would approve of the current drive to get more creativity into the curriculum. He'd certainly nod at Tina Bruce's notion in Cultivating Creativity of the child's right to play. "Whilst they play, children prepare, simmer and illuminate ideas."

There are always doubts about any earnest attempt to corral and closely define a concept such as creativity. Nevertheless, it's an area where teachers -especially those trained in the grey 1990s -need lots of practical help, and that's what Professor Bruce sets out to provide.

She begins by demolishing some myths -creativity isn't necessarily about genius, or just to do with the arts, or only displayed in performance. She goes on to give guidance about nurturing individual children, about building a creative environment and about the crucial role of adults. (How many parents worry that their child has a teacher who's not picking up on obvious signs of creativity?) There are good photographs that illustrate points in the text. Professor Bruce is strong on the idea that creativity isn't just about painting and singing.

In A Well-Tempered Mind (a reference to Bach's ground-breaking "Well-Tempered Clavier"), the authors put flesh on the feeling shared by all music teachers that the experience of music enhances thought and learning in unexpected directions, well beyond the simple act of enjoying the sound.

The book describes work in the United States: the Bolton Project, in which a group of musicians regularly visited Bolton elementary, an under-performing school in North Carolina. They played music to the children and encouraged responses that improved thinking skills, abstract reasoning and communication. Over two years, test scores improved and the school moved out of its "at risk" status.

The book describes the project and many of the individual lessons and children's reactions in detail. It's exciting stuff and necessary reading for all who are battling to ensure the place of music in the school curriculum.

Play Ethic review in Guardian, FT

Delighted & intrigued by the continuing coverage given to the Play Ethic book. Two reviews here from UK business commentators - one truly engaged with the thesis, the other essentialy (though instructively) dismissive.

Will Hutton will need no introduction to some, as the author of the best-selling stakeholder manifestos The State We're In, and The World We're In, Observer columnist, and director of the Work Foundation. His review in the Guardian Review puts the Play Ethic in context with a slew of other anti- and counter-work ethic books out at the moment, like Hodgkinson's How to Be Idle, Carl Honore's In Praise of Slow - and happily, Hutton thinks mine is the "most arresting, fresh and insightful". He really gets my point about how play is at least a legitmate framework for action and understanding as work (maybe a fruit of the seminar we had last year).

But I'm most intrigued by the point he develops from the closing chapters of the Play Ethic, about how these post-work values might be a way to increase the global peace, by projecting an image of a less punitive, more embracing West (what Joseph Nye calls 'soft power'). It's a genuinely new insight, and one I'm going to muse on.

Not so impressed by Stefan Stern's review of the book in the Financial Times last week (see post continuation link below) - by turns inaccurate and abusive. Indeed, Hutton's point about the global impact of play values -which I talk about in the book by saying that, 'after 9/11, the relationship between work, play and spirituality are almost unbearably pertinent' - Stern dismisses like a schoolyard bully. 'No, they aren't'. Um, yes, they are...

But I'll concede that the economics of the play ethic anticipate a kind of 'busyness model' which is only beginning to be assembled. The thinker to watch on the notion of an 'economy for players' (or as she calls them, 'psychological sovereigns') is Shoshana Zuboff - her interview in the current edition of Strategy and Business (registration. req.), outlining her commitment to a support economy, is a great place to start. One of my major research topics in the coming year.

Financial Times, September 9, 2004 Play's the thing for the new economy's child

Pat Kane's conviction that having fun is the best way to work is superficially attractive but not necessarily true, writes STEFAN STERN

We are encouraged from an early age to distinguish between fun and the serious stuff. At school, when the bell rings, playtime is over and it is back to lessons.

But ever since Rousseau first challenged the idea that children needed to be rigidly programmed, there has been a suspicion that repressing our playful instincts might not just be misguided, but could actually be harmful. Does creativity not feel a bit like play? Are we not more productive when we are having fun?

A playful spirit animated many of the "new economy" pioneers. And at the height of the boom in mid-1999 the US magazine Psychology Today chose "the power of play" as its cover story.

Play, the magazine argued, makes you live longer. Play helps women select a reliable mate (men who are playful, or who like playing with children, are less likely to be violent). Play makes adults happier and improves their memory. The psychologist Brian Sutton-Smith commented in the same issue: "The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression."

Even if the pool tables and scooters which symbolised some of the sillier tendencies of the dotcom boom have now been put away, the modish concept of "play" as a creative force has survived. Now Pat Kane - British pop star, journalist, player - has produced a fat book to support his contention that what the world needs now is a "play ethic".

In Kane's view this play ethic could become "the conceptual bridge that links the needs of organisations to function and develop in a market democracy with the needs of individuals to make their labour as unalienated as possible".

By which he means -I think - that play can save us from the drudgery of work, while magically allowing us to meet the demands of our employers. If you find all this a bit paradoxical, Kane has an answer: "Living as a player is precisely about embracing ambiguity, revelling in paradox, yet being energised by that knowledge . . . An ethic of play is, in effect, an ethic which makes a virtue, even a passion, out of uncertainty."

Kane is nothing if not playful in this book. He hurls concepts and assertions at us, rarely pausing for breath, sprawling all over and around his subject. Almost nowhere in the book does Kane discuss competition, deadlines, emerging markets, limited resources, and all the other sober realities of business and economic life. He dismisses the "work ethic" without showing how necessary work will get done. This is playtime, and such matters can be left to others.

In this way Kane keeps the "new economy" torch burning. But, of course, that was the problem with the "new economy" - it did not really exist: it was all supply and no demand.

Perhaps we would temporarily have more fun at work if playtime could be extended, but what would we actually achieve? How many sales would we make? And how creative, in the true sense, would we be?

We would be far too busy playing "outside the box" to do the hard work which creativity and innovation demand.

Kane's play ethic has no answers to the important questions. Instead, the closest we get to a justification is the grandiloquent: "The productivity of a playful society rests upon individuals pursuing their creative agendas in unity and tension with others . . . but crucially, this does not mean some kind of bucolic, peaceful equilibrium. People will still be committing themselves to exacting, demanding tasks and labour, as well as pursuing various forms of bliss, self-transcendence and boundary crossing."

He writes: "In the aftermath of 9/11, the relationships between work, play and spirituality have become almost unbearably pertinent." No, they have not. He also observes: "Thrusting the values of play into the heart of a deeply work-oriented situation is to risk derision and defensiveness." Yes, it is. "A deeply work-oriented situation"? Could he possibly mean an office?

Indeed, our author is so consumed with the need for play it seems a miracle he ever got round to producing over 350 pages of text. Still, he has. There are also nearly 70 pages of footnotes. And along with a host of quotations and references he finds room for his fellow-countryman Robert Burns, quoting his two most famous lines: O wad some power the giftie gie us, Tae see oursels as ithers see us!
Kane sees this as an example of the "play of the imagination", an act of creative sympathy. Readers might be more sympathetic to Kane's cause if had read and reflected on the next two lines of the same poem: It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion.

THE PLAY ETHIC
A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living
Macmillan, £12.99

Players and Idlers on BBC Radio Scotland

Here's a nice radio promo spot for the Play Ethic that I did with Tom Hodgkinson of The Idler and How To Be Idle fame. As I expected, we agree on most things - we're both trying to define a different model of activity and creativity from that defined by work culture. But I think he's the bohemian, and I'm the futurist...

Play Ethic on 'Heaven and Earth'

Welcome to those who've seen me on BBC1's Heaven and Earth show, talking about players, workers and idlers. If you're interested in the book, you can buy it here, and find out more here. There are some recent reviews also available.

Play Ethic review in The Herald

Another thoughtful and challenging review of the Play Ethic book by the Scottish critic Colin Donald in the Herald. No live link, so most of it is in the rest of this post (see link below), but I'm happy to take these summations:

The Play Ethic is an outrageously ambitious grab bag of ideas, personal histories and exhortations, requiring a leap of faith in the mind of the reader...Ultimately only the grimmest of Scottish mindsets would hold back from embracing Pat Kane and his gospel of "soulitarianism". The heat and scope of his furiously synthesizing, allusive intellect adds up to an enormous, shouted Why Not?...The Play Ethic is short on prescriptions of what we can do - beyond being aware - to initiate a culture where we identify ourselves through our playing personae rather than our office selves, but even articulating the shift in emphasis makes a big difference. Kane has his head over the parapet, scanning the horizon. For his energy, his openness, his connectedness and his greed for the new, he gets the credit as well as the flak.

You can read the more negative points for yourself - and when I get time I'm going to respond briefly in the comment box to each of these review postings. But excited to be stimulating minds in this way. More to come.

The Herald, August 28, 2004

Playtime Bell Has Rung

Pat Kane toils over the history of the Protestant work ethic and finds the inner player has a vital role. By Colin Donald

Pat Kane believes that Protestant-derived western capitalism has crippled our souls as hideously as the bound feet of ancient Chinese woman, and that only by prioritising fun over grind can we realise ourselves. Reading his work, crammed with dense theory, is a tough session in the gym rather than a Frisbee on the beach, but with the same invigorating effects as the workout.

The Play Ethic is an outrageously ambitious grab-bag of ideas, personal histories and exhortations, requiring a leap of faith in the mind of the reader. Discourse studded with those celebrated Kane-isms make that leap more formidable sometimes; how about “I’ve always gloried in the democratic energies of the public park” or “The experience of work at the Sunday Herald created too much cognitive dissonance for me”. Snort if you must, but ultimately only the grimmest of Scottish mindsets would hold back from embracing Pat Kane and his gospel of “soulitarianism”. The heat and scope of his furiously synthesizing, allusive intellect adds up to an enormous, shouted Why Not?

The Play Ethic is short on prescriptions on what we can do – beyond being aware – to initiate a culture where we identify ourselves through our playing personae, rather than our office selves, but even articulating the shift in emphasis makes a big difference. Kane has his head over the parapet, scanning the horizon. For his energy, his openness, his connectedness, and his greed for the new, he gets the credit as well as the flak.

The point of this book is to explore why the Protestant work ethic, adumbrated from everyone from nineteenth-century mill owners to Gordon Brown, has failed to keep its promises of human happiness, and how it no longer suffices as a template for a post-industrial, technologically enabled society. It celebrates the achievements to be gained by liberating the inner player, and charts the success of those who have tapped into this new spirit, from the Lego corporation to Linux. “We need”, he asserts, “to become more conscious of the players we already are”. Kane’s thesis is strengthened by the enormous negatives it opposes. The first is personal-historical: the experience of his father, a British Rail clerk who “sang like a Hoboken angel” but who sacrificed his personality to tedious (and eventually redundant) clerical routine, transferring his own soulful dreams to his talented sons. By doing so he defied the deadening workplace culture of West Central Scotland, and imbued the young Pat with a Hamlet-lie thirst for revenge against the corporate Claudius.

The second is the shadow of 9/11, which Kane presents as slowing down the momentum towards a more play-oriented future, “closing down the play of counter capitalist possibilities that had been bubbling since [the anti-globalisation protests of] 1999.” Al Qaeda has easy familiarity with communications technology that “neophiliacs” used to consider as benign to the point of hippiedom. They have spoiled the easy evolution of ever-more-playful technological fraternisation, and by doing so have increased the stakes for bringing the play ethic into the realm of politics and work.

The book is strong on lively examples of individuals and corporations who have embraced the play ethic – an infinitely expandable concepts – weaker on economic analysis of how a “ludic civilisation” might work or what political leadership or us players can do to expedite it.

Kane talks non-pejoratively about the “sickie” culture that loses more labour days than the strikes of the 1970s, seen not as shirking but as exercising their rights. The underlines a weakness of the book, that among the rhetorics of play (play as progress, play as imagination, play as power, etc), he fails to acknowledge any downside to play as sitting on your arse all day and hijacking virtual cars on Game Boy. You don’t have to be Samuel Smiles to ask if Kane’s utopianism could engage less dismissively with uncool concepts such as productivity.

As a manifesto, The Play Ethic shares some of the militant vagueness and selectivity, as well as the righteousness of the anti-capitalist protest movement, whose pranksterism he applauds. Unsurprisingly, he is for the individual against the command-and-control society, while acknowledging that the play ethic depends on a secure and well-protected society that is necessarily a firmly-controlled one. Another example of a flashy vagueness in the politics is his invocation of Trotsky’s writings on what a socialist future would look like. These days, the glamour of a Trotsky reference needs to be offset by reference to his far more significant writings about how such a society must be achieved by deliberate terror.

Because of the human terror tendency, achieving the utopia of a play-centered culture through peaceful means still remains in the domain of the poets and dreamers. Kane has constructed a massive and elaborate conceptual bridge to that domain. Burns sums up the passion and the far-futurism of the Play Ethic in his Letter to William Smellie (1835), the most affecting of the book’s epigraphs: “In some future eccentric planet: Where Wit may sparkle all its rays,/Uncurst with Caution’s fears:/And Pleasure, basking in the blaze,/Rejoice for endless years!”

The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living by Pat Kane (Macmillan, £12.99).

Play Ethic review in Management Today

From Management Today, no less, a positive and (for me) educational review of the Play Ethic book, by the comic-improviser-meets-management-consultant Neil Mullarkey. A sample:

This is not an anti-capitalist tract: far from it. The play ethic is right at home in the 'networked world of informational capitalism'. Look at all those '60s hippies now atop the entrepreneurial ladder. How can we talk of a work ethic when so much is available for free on the net - whether it be Linux software, music or writing?

I used to get frustrated with my economics tutor, who always made us assume 'perfect competition' to make the graphs work. Human beings are not rational economic actors: the reasons for this are more interesting than indifference curves. Human systems are complex; their overall behaviour cannot be predicted, but a spirit of play can cope with this uncertainty.

Emergence and extinction live side by side with competition and co-operation, altruism and selfishness. But it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. In improvisation, if you look good, I look good.

Happy to see these points made - I'm interested in all forms of human interplay and reciprocation, markets included (though my political position on market reciprocation is probably closest to that of Geoffrey Miller).

'The Play's the Thing' (Sunday Herald Profile)

I was chuckling away at my profile in the Sunday Herald this week, tied to the release of the Play Ethic book and the event at the Edinburgh Books Festival. Peter Ross is far and away the most witty and perceptive of profile writers in the UK - and as Robin Williams said in Good Will Hunting, 'boy, does he have the goods on me'. But I'm also happy with it as a more-or-less accurate picture of the personal context around the book. The opening is a scream:

There is both less and more to Pat Kane than there used to be. First the less part. He walks into the restaurant on a stormy-then-sunny Glasgow Tuesday looking toned and tanned, wearing the well-chuffed expression of the born-again slim and a jacket he last had on a decade ago. Pinching the left lapel, he announces: “You see before you the raiment of self-actualisation.” This is his uniquely Kaneish way of saying that he has lost loads of weight and is much happier for it. Unconvinced by the deprivations of Atkins (the man loves all forms of complexity, which presumably includes complex carbs), he shed the pounds by examining his consciousness in order to work out why he associated sugar with a sense of well-being, then severing that connection. “The only way I could go on a diet,” he chuckles, “was to do it conceptually.”
That’s so Pat Kane. Once famous as half of cerebral jazz-pop duo Hue and Cry, he has become better known as the man with the pointiest head in Scotland, always ready to paint newspaper pages and television screens purple with discussions of dialectics and semiotics.

It gets both harsher and kinder after that. More to come in the next few weeks.

The Play Ethic Book - Public Events

Two more confirmed bookshop dates for the promotion of The Play Ethic book on Macmillan, in addition to the Edinburgh Book Festival event on 25th August:

15th September: Ottakar's Bookshop, Aberdeen

16th September: Borders Bookshop, Glasgow.

More to come on radio, tv and elsewhere, will keep you (literally) posted.

The Play Ethic @ NeoFiles

Been waiting for this one... A few months back I did an e-mail interview with one of my long-time digital heroes - the perfectly named R.U.Sirius, who was (in my view) one of the smartest and most visionary minds in the mid-to-late nineties cyberboom (see this 1996 interview for just how smart). I got a mail out of the blue requesting an interview for his latest project, an occasional online mag called The NeoFiles. If there's any more inexhaustible euphoric than the recognition of one's peers, send it round in a box...

Anyway, here's the published interview, which will be useful for anyone who wants an update on where my thinking is heading after the Play Ethic book. And in order that R.U.'s patrons can be kept happy, read their fascinating account of what a 'life-enhancing product' could be.

Play Ethic @ Edinburgh Book Festival

Very pleased to announce that my event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival is now available for online booking and perusing:

Pat Kane: Work and Society
Location: Studio Theatre
Date: Wed 25 Aug, 8:30 PM
Ticket Price: £8.00
Concession Ticket Price: £6.00

Boldly rejecting the work ethic, which keeps British workers chained to their desks for ever-increasing swathes of their lives, Pat Kane, musician, journalist and thinker, proposes a Play Ethic instead. In his manifesto for a different way of living, he urges us to become players, seeking pleasure in all aspects of our lives.

Erm, don't think I'm quite that hedonistic, but I know what they mean. There will be piles of the book to buy there, I am assured. Much else being prepared in the way of promotion, I'll keep you posted. Be great to see some of you there at Edinburgh.

The Play Ethic in the FT

An early showing of interest in the coming Play Ethic book from the Financial Times, no less - a slot in their 'Guru of the Week' section in the FT magazine. (The writer, James Harkin, has written well on mobilisation in all its resonances, wireless or otherwise). The link is here, though you'll have to pay from Monday on. In the spirit of fair usage, I'll reproduce it below.

FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE - OF ALL THINGS:
Guru of the Week - Big Thoughts in Brief: Pat Kane
By James Harkin
Financial Times; Apr 03, 2004

For someone so keen to demolish the work ethic, Pat Kane has been hawking his ideas around with quite some industry. In recent years, this Scottish pop singer-turned-cultural commentator has taken his message about the power of play to the media, think-tanks and even the Cabinet Office, where he has been advising on creativity and human potential. Now, in The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living, he plans to convert the rest of us.

Kane says much of the work we do today is intrinsically playful. We should stop thinking of playing as a distraction and start celebrating its benefits, such as added creativity, flexibility and dynamism. We should also redefine the way we think of ourselves and label ourselves "players" not "workers". In a jittery economic climate ridden with short-term contracts, Kane says it is folly to rely on one's job for character and identity. He identifies a new type of worker - the "soulitarians", who, if and when they work, shun high salaries in favour of "meaningful" work, are keen to experiment with technology and happily flit between start-up and corporation, self-employment and job-sharing. They are capable of hard work in the right endeavour and their creativity and technological skills make them increasingly sought-after. But they are militant about putting work in its place so they can have time for travel, personal growth and new experiences.

To bring his plans to life, Kane advocates moving from a welfare system based around social security to a guaranteed citizens' income, a reduction of the working day and investment in public amenities. Once that is done, we can get down to the serious business of fooling around.