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Ok, allow me to say it using my own words:
Roughly, human pursuits can be divided into "social games" such as gossip or conspiracies, which are usually zero-sum, or even negative-sum as they often compete in sacrificing to Moloch everything that does not provide immediate social value, and "games with nature" such as work, science, but also sports and that part of art which requires skill e.g. playing the piano (as opposed to "modern art" which is merely about who makes a media hype around you, so it requires allies instead of technical skills). The word "game" is used here as in "game theory", i.e. it may or may not refer to playful activities.
And there is a risk that when people climb the social ladder, they lose touch with "games with nature", because they delegate it to people lower than them on the social ladder. With the horrifying consequence that people who rule the world may actually understand it the least. I mean, they certainly understand the social aspects of the world, that's what they specialize at, so they are good at e.g. organizing a revolution; but they have no idea how to grow grain or cook bread, so the revolution is typically followed by bread shortage and lot of suffering.
Having upper-class people spend some time doing "games with nature" may keep them more sane, and as a result keep the whole society more sane. But, frankly, the "games with nature" are typically motivated, directly or indirectly, by survival (you grow grain and cook bread to avoid starvation, you learn science inter alie to achieve job safety which is to avoid starvation), and this motivation does not apply to the upper class. Having them do sports or (skill-based) art may be the only chance to get them in contact with non-social aspects of reality. Of these two, sports are more about body, and are quite repetitive, while art is more about mind and creativity.
Is this approximately right?
I still think that if someone is doing math or programming, they already have their dose of "games with nature" there. But if a rich programmer has a child that dislikes math and computing... I agree that skill-based art is better than most of the alternatives.
I update that if actual upper-class people want their child to play piano, there may be actually a very healthy instinct behind that. (Or may be just blindly copying what their neighbors do.)
Probably close enough for present purposes.
Of course, but these pursuits themselves are often described as artistic in character, especially by their most elite practitioners.
They probably are copying w... (read more)