Why Did We All Have the Same Childhood?

Play can easily be dismissed as childish, irresponsible and unbecoming of the seriousness required of us modern achievement-subjects. But the demand for playful living is really a demand to reject the conditions of the achievement society. Embracing play is a bold defiance against the relentless productivity mantra of the achievement society. But w

He believed that from the earliest age humans build mental models to explain the phenomena—a speeding car, a cat’s raspy tongue—that surround us. As we grow older our experiences collide with these models, forcing us to adjust the models to accommodate our ever-changing reality. As such, child’s play is the act of a child inventing and reinventing

The failure of adult culture, both its physical architecture and its social institutions, has impoverished children’s culture. And in return, children no longer avidly train, in their play, to take over the burden of preserving and remaking adult culture.

As a result, children’s society has less and less to do with the land around them – land which, anyway, they are unlikely to occupy when they become adults in our hypermobile society. Children’s society exists on the internet if at all, with raids in video games and chat rooms replacing geographically colocated monster hunts.