 What, were you expecting some sort of word play? A couple weeks ago, Disney announced the construction of a Star Wars themed hotel at Walt Disney World, styled pitch perfect to the franchise. The lobby and all guest rooms will have LED displays which act as windows to deep space. Every nut and bolt will appear as though it came from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, but they're planning something else that's even more immersive for Star Wars fans. For what I'm sure will be an extortionate fee, every hotel guest will receive a storyline, a fictional narrative in which they will play a key role which Disney claims will occupy every minute of their day from the moment they walk in. The hotel staff will all be in character. You get an appropriate costume and for the entire duration of your stay you get to be in Star Wars. Sorry, I'm back. What's interesting about this potentially awesome activity is that although we all have some experience with it as children, it's relatively rare that adults get to participate in this sort of play, what might be termed make-believe, without some sort of social stigma attached. There are some types of play that are generally more acceptable for adults to participate in. Sports, gambling, maybe Sudoku or crossword puzzles. Although the geek revolution of the 90s and 2000s has definitely broadened the scope of what's considered okay, there's still a pervasive attitude that grownups are only supposed to play or want to play grown-up games, if at all. That attitude doesn't just come from one place, but few would dispute its intimate historical relationship with the Puritan or Calvinist work ethic, which has been more or less a part of American culture since its inception, and frowned sternly on most activities that aren't labor or prayer. After all, idle hands are supposedly the Devil's workshop. Most of us are supposed to be too busy tilling the soil and reading the good book to engage in frivolities. Most of us don't feel too bad about a little frivolous Netflix or Reddit surfing these days, but there remains a strong sense of recreational propriety. In general, if your chosen form of entertainment can't make you money, teach you practical skills, or provide passive entertainment for when you can't do anything else, there's likely to be some grown-up who thinks that you're wasting time and energy that should be spent elsewhere. And yet, evolution, which is one of the harshest critics of wasted time and energy, has included play-like activities in the behavior of most mammals, especially the most intelligent ones. If you think about it, play doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of survival. Whether it's wrestling or chasing or tug-of-war or whatever, it's costly. It requires nutrients. It can cause fatigue or injury, and it's distracting. In an environment with cougars, frolicking seems like it would be a bad idea for baby deer. It only seems to happen in low-stress environments, and disappears as soon as going gets rough, so it's clear that survival needs still take precedence. But for some reason, play still appears in several creatures' behaviors. More than that, we find play-like behavior on distant branches of the evolutionary tree, implying that it's a point of convergent evolution. Evolutionary pressures are some of the most brutal selection criteria for survival, real Game of Thrones-type stuff. They routinely term away everything that isn't absolutely necessary, even potentially useful stuff like eyes or gills to save on resources. But, playful behavior seems to arise independently across multiple phyla. Ravens, fish, and otters play with each other and with objects in their environment, despite the apparent survival costs for individuals. Clearly, there's something advantageous about it that's worth keeping, even when something is potentially trying to eat you. A growing body of research suggests that it's actually doing a bunch of useful stuff for animals and people. Synaptic pruning, cognitive flexibility, development of social and problem-solving and motor skills. There are a large number of measurable benefits to goofing around. For example, in rats, there's a direct correlation between physical play and the development of the medial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that's used for social behavior and memory and a lot of other things. You can let rats hang out and socialize and groom each other all day long, but if they don't play with each other, their medial prefrontal courtesies just don't develop as well. We can't get as finely detailed a picture on human brains for obvious reasons, but along with motor skills, play seems to facilitate quicker linguistic, social, and cognitive development in children. Maintaining a playful attitude is also correlated with several desirable psychological traits in adults as well, creativity, optimism, confidence, stress management. So the anti-lutic or anti-play culture we inherited from our Puritan predecessors is missing something important. Play isn't just idle amusement. It's apparently a useful tool of health and development, both physical and mental. No wonder evolution keeps it around. In the light of that research, several organizations have been created to evangelize the benefits of play, and honestly, who can blame them? It seems that we've been collectively duped into trying to stamp it out in the name of productivity or responsibility, despite the fact that all work and no play isn't as productive, and avoiding activities with proven psychological, cognitive, and physical benefits so that you look more like a grown-up isn't really responsible. But before we all go full Pixar, ripping out conference rooms everywhere and replacing them with ball pits, let's put on our skeptics caps and look at this research with a critical eye. The measures these scientists have to use to try and quantify playful behavior are fickle, and sometimes seem like they don't really capture the essence of it, which is, unfortunately, fairly subjective. I can have moments of whimsical fun while I'm hard at work, or feel like a game that I'm playing is a total slog. The only way an experimenter would be able to detect that shift would be to ask me at just the right moment, and nothing really kills fun like asking, are you having fun yet? That makes it hard to create sensible interpretations, let alone policy from this research. I mean, we know that certain kinds of play can be beneficial in certain contexts, but that doesn't mean that all play is necessarily good, or that more play is better, or that the demonstrated benefits of play can't be achieved by other, more efficacious means. Still, it's hard to shake the feeling that the austere, no-nonsense workaholic might soon be replaced by a more playful ideal. Someone who can work hard to make stuff happen without losing the childlike abandon of goofing around when the mood takes them. The advantages garnered by such activities might be hard to pin down, and it might be difficult to predict the exact types and amounts of each, which are necessary to maximize those advantages. But evolution put play in here for a reason, and it probably behooves us to take better advantage of it. Plus, it's fun! Why not? Considering just how many adults are willing to put up with being labeled weirdos for their hobbies, from cosplayers to larpers to fanfiction writers, maybe it's time to put away the childish stigma of play. I mean, Disney figured it out. They're spending millions of dollars building a massive, Star Wars-themed playground for grown-ups, and it's not like they won't make their money back. Probably from me. I'm gonna need to take out some loans or something. What sorts of play do you think should be more accepted in society? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe while I share, and don't stop thunking.