Serop :Ludere (Serious Play)

Sam:  I'm wondering what your sense is of Serio Ludere.

I'm thinking of it in terms of mode or genre, I guess, rather than 
a rhetorical/logical game of crossing  opposites. 

So, the model, I think, is Apuleius and Metamorphoses,  where all
the debased zany violent antics of the transformed  man/donkey 
ultimately lead to the sacred/divine. I take it  that Renaissance
Platonists were interested in this mode. 

Any thoughts or associations?

       

Dear Carol,

Serio Ludere: serious play, to play seriously
[the wisdom of foolishness &  fooling around:
wit, joke, aHA! Gotcha!
I Got IT (eureka),
I get it....]

I've been thinking more about this "sabbatical"  (fallowship)
idea you  are playing-with as maybe representing an actual
frame- of-mind  beyond mere genre, game, Renaissance rhetoric,
wit etc. -- maybe even characterizing a school-environment that
shapes  an aspect of  our always seriously SACS Sphinxed
institutional higher educational atmosphere

Consider a portion (if not the whole) of  Gen Ed where the
relationship between GetRDone and Fooling Around is turned
up and explored as  Applied Disciplinary and Cross Disciplinary
Serio Ludere, 

Call it our Stalwart  Pioneering Process   Seriously.

SPP  guarantees no outcome, measurable or immeasurable. 
Outcome: sure—but  not necessarily as planned in accord
with  aims and goals.   Frontiers yet and still always unknown,
 
SPP Serio Ludere :  an attitude which engages any  particular
content or subject matter (of which there is always good  and 
plenty) so as  to antagonize, diametrically oppose and provide
antithesis -- countering our evolving serious professionalism with
what might be left of our amateur standing.  Fooling with it.
Seriously.
 
What ever you assume to be the relationship, there’s a radical
and  incommensurate difference between the 2 value-sets:  
       
      amateur  (play)           &          professional (seriously!)
      for the love of it:                            delayed gratuity
       it’s own reward &                      external motivation:
      Immediate gratification.                      pay
 
AND:  untended, unregulated, ungoverned,  the values of serious
professionalism naturally  dominate and obscure  if not prevent  the
values of playful amateurism. True? Need we argue? 

Serio Ludere: a means of salvation: rescuing our curriculum from
 it's dominant serious one-hand-clapping professionalism and putting
us all in play--seriously.  The Ludic Frame.

Seriously: I don't expect any of you to take me seriously in these
matters but maybe you can at least see & acknowledge how
foolish I am.  In play.   A good thing.

xxxooo, Sam