Work!
Huh!
What is it good for?
Well, earning my keep, paying the bills. But apart from that, I don’t really see much benefit to it.
I’m more of a play person. I’m the sort of person for whom the phrase "protestant work ethic" can induce physical illness. In all honestly, I look at the sort of things most of the companies I’ve worked at do from day to day, and I still don’t see the benefit of work.
I’m starting to think that most people have actually forgotten about play, and what it is, and how you do it.
And to back this argument up, I shall use one of the "games" commonly played by people who do a lot of work.
Which is Golf.
Now, to me play is an enjoyable activity with clear goals, and good feedback loops which doesn’t overly punish mistakes but does reward good playing. Crucially in play, it is the taking part which counts, the game is inherently rewarding to play. Winning is a benefit you get from being good at the game, but the game is entertaining in and of itself.
Golf looks to me like a game invented by people who entirely forgot what play was, and instead created a form of work which gets them out of the office and into a beautifully manicured garden. Where, I ask in all seriousness, is the fun in golf? Perhaps it is derived from the simple satisfaction of wacking things with sticks. Well, it could be, except – and here’s where I think golf really departs from play – if you do it even slightly wrong you get punished quite severely. There’s no leeway in golf for really letting rip and smashing the ball, so you have to be under complete control the whole time. Now that doesn’t sound like fun to me, so where else can you derive the fun? The environment? Golf courses are beautiful in the way a vacant bimbo is beautiful, really appealing to look at, but once you try to have a conversation the appeal evaporates faster than neat alcohol on a hot day. There’s only so much grass I can take.
Instead of play you have a very punishing scoring system, a "game" which requires considerable work just to be bad at, and very little to recommend it. Once you start taking into account the ridiculous rules that golf clubs start introducing about appearance, dress, gender and racial traits you get a game which is so far from fun that it belongs in a different dictionary. And then you have caddies. Here’s the thing, the game requires so much gear that it’s more effort to lug the gear around than it is to play the game, so much so that you essentially recruit a servant to do the lugging for you. Once you have to recruit servants to take the pain out of playing, you must have realised that the game has gone horribly wrong.
Seriously, try to explain to a 8 year old kid why golf is a great game. They’ll probably look at you patiently. Perhaps sigh a little and maybe even shake their heads; and go back to playing hide and seek.
Crazy golf on the other hand makes perfect sense, in fact I’d say it’s not crazy enough – and I’ve devised my own full on version of crazy golf which includes all the joys of really smashing a ball, but that’s for another post.
In fact, I would humbly suggest that adults go back to playing hide and seek all over again, because they’ve obviously forgotten why it was they were playing it in the first place. This, I suppose, is where the inspiration for paintball came from, it’s hide and seek dressed up in a way as to make it acceptably complicated for adults to play. The simple tenet of hiding for the sake of it is far too simple, and without marshal combat, silly costumes and health and safety rules have to be added in otherwise it’s simply too childish for grown ups to play.
Back to the subject, which was work. How much of the time people spend at work is involved in actually producing whatever it is that the company makes its money from (or directly supporting the process)? Too much time is spent informing people who’ve forgotten what it was their company does about how well it is doing. To the extent that there are vast swathes of people working for any medium to large business whose entire job is writing reports and attending meetings all about how efficiency has dropped and could be improved if only everyone could be persuaded to use less toilet paper. These tasks are not only pointless and futile – but also mind-numbingly boring and stressful.
I’m entirely against work, and firmly believe that we can have a thriving economy while still firing half the population. Which kinda leaves the question what the unemployed half should now do.
May I introduce the concept of play?
Everyone else is doing it 
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