Magic and mystery, heroic longings, the foreshadowings of music, sculpture and logic all seek form and expression in noble play. […] In play, therefore, the antithetical and agonistic basis of civilization is given from the start, for play is older and more original than civilization.
Quotes about culture
We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play like a baby detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.
Culture will, in a sense, always be played according to certain rules […]. Hence the cheat or the spoil-sport shatters culture itself.
The view we take […] is that culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning.
As artifacts of the culture that produced them, wargames do serve in the continual exercise of historical revision and socially useful amnesia.
