Anon10/19/25, 17:47No.215347509
SERGEI EISENSTEINED
>>“Geographical” escapism has been rendered ineffective by the spread of air routes. What remains is “evolutionary” escapism — a downward course in one's development, back to the ideas and amotions of “golden childhood,” which may well be defined as “regress towards infantilism,” escape to a personal world of childish ideas. In a strictly-regulated society, where life follows strictly-defined canons, the urge to escape from the chains of things “established once and for all” must be felt particularly strongly. Why should one be proud of being playful? For a double reason. First, playfulness connotes childhood and youth. If one can be playful, one still possesses something of the vigour and the joy of young life. If one has ceased to be playful, one writes oneself as rigidly old. And who wishes to confess to himself that, rheumatic as are his joints, his mind and spirit are really aged? So the old man is proud of the playful joke which assures him that he is still friskily young. But there is a deeper implication. To be playful is, in a sense, to be free. When a person is playful, he momentarily disregards the binding necessities which compel him, in business and morals, in domestic and community life. Life is largely compulsion. But in play we are free! We do what we please... Apparently there is no dearer human wish than to be free. But this is not simply a wish to be free from; it is also, and more deeply, a wish to be free to. What, galls us is that the binding necessities do not permit us to shape our world as we please. . . . What we most deeply desire, however, is to create our world for ourselves. Whenever we can do that, even in the slightest degree, we are happy. Now in play we create our own world. To imply, therefore, that a person has a fine sense of humour is to imply that he has still in him the spirit of play, which implies even more deeply the spirit of freedom and of creative spontaneity.”
