Deep Play/Free Play/Flow/Immediatism

--> “Letting go of the familiar requires mental and emotional risk” 107. Walt Whitman. Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” I challenge this Dichotomy to war. Geertz says it's a way to get out things they can't get out elsewhere. It is high drama. It is narrative, exemplified by his narrative.The reason that Geertz easily combines with the other small pieces from people that provide the fragments of definitions that we have to explain what Deep Play is is because his content contains the same essential definitional ingredients. It's not in how he uses Deep Play but how he is engolfed by it in his very apprehension of it. Think less about his own understanding of Bali culture. Ignore what you do or don't know and focus on what it was in his experience that broke through and makes the specificities irrelevant, as least insofar as we lay the paradigm over different scenarios. What Geertz did was actually show the power of the paradigm to dissolve. He spends so much time building up one aspect of the stranger. He's not defining the concept, he's applying the fucking paradigm! Of course! Geertz is a genius. How he enfolded... enmeshed the narrative process into everything he did and was and believed in; the process of articulating the language of real culture thru self-conscious engagement with the physical world in a meaning-making endeavor. It's not there until he gets there. It's not there until he articulates it. But when he does it works backwards in time and it has been there all along. Deep Play itself, when activated, exposes the answer to the riddle "why do people do what they do"! And what was it in Bali that transformed Geertz from a Stranger into a comrade? It was risk. It was deep play itself. And it was dissolving the Stranger in an act of Transgression. And the subsequent analysis that we know as "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cock Fight" is an indication of Transcendence. Story to story and life to life. As with the Stranger, I would like to introduce the concept of Deep Play first as it has been defined by others. At no point does anyone profess to have a true definition of deep play, nor one that can be essentialized and used in any exact sense across space and time. Its hitherto definitional basis is comprised of fragments from people that used it how they saw fit. At one point I exhausted myself searching out anything whatsoever related to Deep Play, and I say exhausted not because there is a vast amount of material but the opposite. This fact was greater inspiration for me to lay some kind of claim to the term and create a much expanded and detailed definition. In creating an expanded definition of Deep Play I intend to take it to its limits. It is, after all, a pillar of the new paradigm. Deep Play was coined by Jeremy Bentham who also developed utilitarianism. He perceived Deep Play negatively as a situation where people engage in behavior or activity that presents risks that far outweigh the possible benefits to be derived therefrom. He says it is "irrational" for "men" to partake in such activities. I thought this guy was bound to be a douche but it turns out he's famously quoted by animal rights activists ("'the question is not can they reason? not can they talk? But can they suffer".) Bentham did not say much more about Deep Play. He died in 1832 and the concept of Deep Play did not resurface for another century and a half. In 1973 Clifford Geertz wrote Notes on a Balinese Cockfight. In 2000 Diane Ackerman's Deep Play was published. There are other fragmented appearances alone the way but these two embrace DP the most, especially Geertz which may come as a surprise. He does not speak directly to the concept as Ackerman does but engages it on a much more anthropological (and therefore complicated) level. I will leave Geertz for last. I am less interested in the scholarly nature of the usages, or more often than not, lack there of, than the ways people have intuitively understood and used the term. Diane Ackerman found DP inspiring enough to write a book about it. Ackerman did not blow up Deep Play the way I hoped she would. It is easy read, to say the least, and a more poetic and detached treatment. Nevertheless, there are some gems in Deep Play, and as I said myself no one has yet laid claim to the term, each person seems to use it freely as they see fit, and ackerman opened up some useful areas. --> Deep. adj. 1. The most intense or extreme part. 2. Profoundly absorbed or immersed. 3. A distance estimated in fathoms. —The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, 3rd edition PLAY. It is an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action. —Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens A religious experience. Religion has become non-religious. (105 Ackerman). She discusses behavior or activities that people engage in that lead to transcendence of daily life. In Deep Play people may or may not be risking their actual safety but the most important thing, she seems to believe, is that Deep Play can be a form of self-acquisition for people. In moments of Deep Play a person can become both outside of time and self while at the same time being completely focused and in the moment. Mountain climbing is one example but sports are another and since psychological experiences are subjective there is no strict definition of what is or isn't technically Deep Play. -->Deep Play/Ackerman: “One’s scattered energy suddenly has a center… one is temporarily unshackled from life’s chains. The family ones, the work ones, the ones we wear as self.-imposed weights. “Who can drink from the cup when they can drink from the source”. --> “Letting go of the familiar requires mental and emotional risk” 107. --> In Deep Play, Diane Ackerman explains some of the details that characterize the concept. “For humans, play is a refuge from ordinary life, a sanctuary of the mind, where one is exempt from life’s customs, methods, and decrees” (Ackerman, 1999, p.6). She describes deep play as a transcendental activity where a person can experience rapture and “self-acquisition”. In this regard, deep play is informed by the notion of “flow” developed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), the author defines flow as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at a great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 5). Geertz. Introduction. --> In Notes on the Balinese Cockfight (1973), Clifford Geertz utilizes the notion of deep play to analyze Balinese culture. He describes the way in which villagers engage in cockfights as a way to psychologically and socially work out significant cultural sentiments that they cannot do elsewhere. In adhering to a specific kind of societal structure there are ideas or feelings that the Balinese can only express through this form of play. So are you saying that from the point of view of train riders, riding the trains is a way of working out certain cultural sentiments? And moreover, those who view them also see them as working out this cultural logic or trope? It’s easier to make this argument for a village and especially for a society not as diverse or complex as industrial capitalist America. Since the cockfight is an opportunity for people to sublimate deep psychological and social elements, it becomes an interpretive mechanism for the collective cultural dynamics of the community at large. Geertz explains, “In the cockfight, men and beast, good and evil, ego and id, the creative power of aroused masculinity and the destructive power of loosened animality fuse in a bloody drama of hatred, cruelty, violence, and death" (Geertz,1973. p. 420-1). Geertz argues that when the Balinese participate in illegal cockfights, they engage in a form of deep play that creates a temporary transgressive space where the cockfight itself becomes “a story they tell themselves about themselves” (ibid. p.448). --> In “steal this movie” he says Pirate Bay started with some people communicating online and doing “playful things” and that it arose from “playful impulses”. --> --> One of my subsidiary interests is how the notion of deep play factors into freight train riding. As the backgrounds, ages, and genders of riders span a broad spectrum, the major unifying factor I have found among riders is their sentiments about riding as a form of play that can be rather serious. Deep play, as described in detail by Ackerman in Deep Play, is a concept that matches very closely to the experience of riding freights, both in my personal experience and as reflected in my research. Riding trains is illegal, but still a minor offense. It is dangerous but the dangers are mediated with experience. Is this form of play a significant way for people to temporarily subvert the system or express themselves in relation to it? I ask pose these questions in hopes of understanding the role of the imagination in making meaning in the capitalist system. I believe that deep play is a powerful tool to understanding the articulation of romance and reality in freight train riding. As riders have predominately tended to occupy a lower class status, as well as reflect one demographic involved in class struggle or resistance to capitalist expansion, other questions follow from this; what are the possible implications of freight train culture for current struggles that resist corporate/neoliberal capitalism? how might ethnographic research on train riding change the way we theorize contributions to anti-globalization movements? how might this research inform our understanding of how personal and collective identities are constructed or maintained vis-á-vis social movements? how might this inform our understanding of transience and off-the-grid living, or related notions of necessity vs. choice? what ties the actions of riders to other social elements relevant to social movements? why do riders relate so strongly Ingrid says I am disclosing to a rational choice theory at the outside by saying they weight danger against comfort, etc. But it’s not true that the weighing is irrational because of the utilitarian stance on it. What is stood to be lost. The reasons usually offered by modern riders; adventure, excitement, freedom, scenery, or fascination with the trains could more easily be satisfied elsewhere at amusement parks or mountain climbing or train museums. In reflecting on my previous research pertaining to trains and train hoppers past and present, as well as drawing on over a decade of experience with riding them, I have discerned a few predominate themes that run throughout. These are; danger and risk, adventure, deviance, and romance. Particularly, one finds in both the literature and personal accounts the term ‘romantic’ repeatedly used to describe train hopping in such a way that infers the activity is somehow separate or distinct from a largely undefined or assumed ‘reality’ (George, 2003, Tobiasz 2004, et. al). Since train hopping is illegal, transience itself takes on an increasingly negative connotation (Cresswell, 2003). Taken together these elements support my claim that train-hopping fits into the realm of deep play. If you want to say that the railroads are a transgressive space do you need to do that by also saying that that space is a like a game? Although Geertz chooses one aspect of Balinese culture to explore in depth with the notion of deep play, I want to apply the concept to train riders in general as the activity itself is where riders become such become what? through their engagement with freight trains. This sentence doesn’t say anything explanatory. This engagement which engagement? informs an indirect relationship indirect? Relationship? between riders that can be understood through the notion of deep play. How is it understood through the notion of deep play? Unless you are only talking about the occasional riders, perhaps of a particular generational age or even class of persons, who treat train riding as a dare and a game. Then the idea of liminal and temporary game space might be useful. But what about all the other types of persons who participate in this activity in a non-occasional way? That is, how does play describe the society of the hobo/tramp/or train hopper? Is it just a thrill like sky-diving? A life choice for those who court danger and death? A reprieve from the ennui of the excesses of capitalism and certainty? It typically necessitates some aspect of risk and transgression. Over a century ago, in Tramping With Tramps (1890), Josiah Flynt notes that riders “fall from freight trains at night, or are found starved to death, locked fast in a box-car on some distant side-track” (p. 11). Speaking in the 21st century, Ben Ehrenreich writes that the train “can kill you without a thought, can leave you behind, maimed and bleeding, without a moment of remorse” (2002, p. 5). In light of interviews, stories, and people that I’ve met, I can only guess that most if not all riders anthropomorphize the train, but what is certain is that they all share similar risks on multiple levels. Deep play is therefore an invaluable tool for exploring why people endanger themselves financially, legally, physically, and psychologically in order to ride freight trains. In addition, any and all notions about romance v. reality must necessarily be collapsed in the actual experience of riding trains, for it is in those moments and the moments that surround it that subjective experience is the definition of the act; everything that follows is merely interpretation. If this is true for all experience, it is especially worth paying attention to here as trains, riders, and riding are often described by invoking the very same words such as ‘risk’ and ‘romance’ that define the core concept of deep play. How does risk and romance define the core concept of deep play? Consequently, as deep play, train hopping exemplifies a transgression of the very notions that reify a dichotomy between romance and reality. The dichotomy between risk and romance is different than reality and romance you began with so you blur the lines. Also, just because you have a dichotomy such as risk and romance doesn’t mean that we are talking about deep play. I have to say, I’m not convinced by the general utility of the deep play concept for this work. Re: “Deep Play”… I’m not sure why this idea is theoretically compelling in organizing your text. Theoretically deep play in anthropology at least is not a hugely important concept. One usually thinks of Geertz’ piece in regard to the issue of how one gains rapport with the “natives” to become a kind of insider. Or in the Geertzian mode again, is train hopping (like the cockfight) a story the hobo’s tell themselves about themselves? If you are approaching this from Jeremy Bentham’s theoretical approach I guess I can see the utility of drawing on the “deep play” idea… i.e., that the meaning of life has a significance that far outweighs the consequences of irrational economic decision making—in this case, to choose the life of the hobo or train hopper. But, is the choice to live as hobo/ anarchist --as the underbelly of capitalist (bourgeois) life --really best described as a high stakes game? Whose game? How much will the “deep play” concept allow you to encompass How does risk and romance define the core concept of deep play? The dichotomy between risk and romance is different than reality and romance you began with so you blur the lines. Also, just because you have a dichotomy such as risk and romance doesn’t mean that we are talking about deep play, I have to say, I’m not convinced by the general utility of the deep play concept for this work) Deep Play is about a lot of things, but perhaps above else it is about self-acquisition. It is not about an isolated incident, and the kind of experience one has in that incident. The play is deep when the game is deep. The play is deep when it is for keeps but this alone is not enough. If the definition of Deep Play has been somewhat vague, open-ended, and general in previous treatments that I use to introduce it, or whimsically and variously used to describe certain activities, I will not by any means be providing a short and concise definition that could be easily put in a dictionary, nor would it remotely suffice to hint at its definition using some tidbits from the previous sources. I will, however, take without hesitation from what has come before those pieces I find to be of use in taking Deep Play to another level and leaving behind all that is vague and general to give a very detailed treatment that I would consider in all respects to be definitional, albeit admittedly pretty complicated. As for what has been open-ended about describing what is or isn’t deep play, I think this remains by its nature to be true but on a much more consequential level. Deep Play is about risk, it’s true, and stepping outside of one’s daily routine, and experiencing transcendence, but it is doing so in a self-conscious act to make meaning thru engagement with the world. It requires transgression not for the sake of an isolated incident but in the quest to achieve transcendence beyond the moment. Deep Play is about process, and daring to be figuring out how to transition from processes that are punctutaed with transcndence thru process. The risk of deep play is, contrary to other examples, less about physicality than psychology. Bentham says that it is when what a person stands to gain cannot be justified in light of what they could lose. In the end I’d like to go back to Bentham, where it all began, and deal with the issue of how people chose to spin-off from this, rather quickly in a positive light, and how my definition and understanding does not even evolve from disagreeing interpretations that justify risking that kind of loss for the sake of what can be won. Instead, I agree with Bentham; there are those kinds of things where the potential loss does not justify what stands to be gained. Cool definition Bentham! And hey, you just came up with a cool term and I’m going to use it and talk about gain and loss in a different way. Deep Play is when the things you do not risk losing all amount to nothing anyways so you mine as well risk them to make meaning. Deep Play is no kind of guarantee, but rather it is actually move I find it very useful to employ in order for one, to demonstrate the lie of the “stranger”. It’s not the definition either, of deep play, that I am so concerned about. I admit, I probably expand and depart from what a standard definition, as if there was one, might be. I mold the concept to my own liking. I am loose with it in ways and strict with it in ways that are in no way indications that I am not being true to some definition but merely that I am being true to my own, which I think is a reasonable one and that I will lay out but not so strictly because as I’ve said, it’s merely a convention which I find useful and I think people should in turn adapt and utilize as they see fit, for their own reasons but I hope, also, and greatly, to combat the notion of ‘stranger’. In addition, and most importantly here, it’s not deep play in general as a convention, on it’s own, that I find useful. Truly, I think deep play has value apart from the ways in which I apply it, but the real gem of the idea for me is found when combining this notion with freight trains. It is at this point that what we have come to know as reality, as well as romance, is established through a particular history that I believe explains quite well the conundrum we find ourselves in. Risk is the third of the trinity I will be working with; Deep Play, Risk, and Stranger. I want to use this trinity to expose, analyze, and attack the notion of ‘stranger’ which I believe defines and enslaves our world with a historical lie that we continue to create in the so-called present. So-called strangers then, by avoiding certain so-called risks, constitute so-called reality, and segregate or bind it in world both of these were one and the same. We should not be deceived by the numbers, however, as if individualities were something contrary to One. The very notion that this is so is a result of the divisive notions that lead to belief and then to doubt. Belief is constituted from the lie. Doubt about this belief, however, is also constituted by the lie, and for this reason there is hope in doubt, and there is individuality in singleness. This last point is something I do not wish to treat now or perhaps ever. It’s irrelevant to the larger project aimed at dismantling the notion of stranger and toppling the whole existential systemic lie. Make sure to check other documents for direct comments on the stranger. I talk in brief about the oxymoron of getting to know the stranger within, or recognizing it; the minute there is recognition the stranger begins to dissolve. constituting ways with so-called romance. Deep Play is about risk but divorced from habit or sometimes even skill. If you are addicted to gambling, it is not deep play. If you are a skilled poker player, it’s not necessarily deep play. If you don’t feel a lot is really on the line, and you can afford to lose, it’s not deep play. If you go to the casino because you are desperate and it’s a last minute decision, and you feel that you must win, and a lot is riding on it, this could be deep play. Deep Play necessitates facing some kind of fear in you, either for the purpose of facing that fear, or more commonly, to gain something. This gain could be material, or it could be experiential. I expand the definition of deep play because I think it is more productive. Deep Play can be inner personal, inter-personal, or extra-personal in that it engages greater players in the world, or risks things beyond the self or a relationship with one other person. The idea is to make deep play a productive component of the Political economy of self. It can be used negatively or positively. My feeling is that it’s negative manifestations will manifest of their own accord, but that the positive use of Deep Play could be more consciously embraced to affect personal and social growth. I will elucidate and then build upon what Dianne Ackerman has written. She laid out many points which can be extended. The triangle of Deep Play, Risk, and Stranger is my paradigm. I explore the stranger through two approaches; one is the “stranger” as an “other” (anthropology!), a person that we “don’t know” and therefore stigmatize as being “unknown”. Sometimes we say “if only I had known!”. Sometimes we meet someone and say “I feel as if we already know each other” or whatever variation on this. The truth is that we do know them to the degree that we feel we do, because we share a certain percentage of what we are with them. Time is not completely irrelevant but it is extremely over-rated. We use time as an excuse for everything. Risk and Deep Play are deeply correlated but not the same thing. People take risks without engaging in Deep Play, but Deep Play always involves risk, in my application, however rote it might become. But to say “rote” is not the same as to say “habit”. If I climb rooftops every weekend and risk getting hurt or caught, I might get so used to it that I don’t hesitate to do it. Nevertheless, even if I capitulate to the possibility of getting caught, and don’t mind the results if I do, there is a good chance I still feel that the activity is risky in some sense. If there were a building made public for anyone to climb on top of the roof, would I do that? Probably, but I also would not visit the same rooftop night after night. If I do, out of comfort, out of habit, then it ceases to be deep play but may nevertheless be symbolic of my engagement with life on the level of deep play. Some characters in the world are engaged in deep play to such an extent that it becomes their life, or an expected element of how they engage with the world. Definition doesn’t have to be strict, as we could turn this situation about endlessly, but if somebody does engage deep play on a regular basis, not as a skydiver who goes every weekend, or a mountain climber who just has to climb that next mountain, but more, a conscious permanent quest for something greater, or something beyond, they are exemplary of how life is very much a video game that we fail to fully take advantage of. I want to lay out the video game analogy. “If you don’t live for something you die for nothing”. The most passionate people, whether we agree with their actions or not, are brave in that they begin to break down the wall that keeps Deep Play in a compartment of their life and lets it completely flow over. Still, there are stages between the two, and it’s not all or nothing. This is all to explain how life, more than a video game, is a movie in which we are the central character. The video game sets up the basic options and explains a certain kind of freedom. After that, the STORY, the movie, explains how we chose to live out our plots. The audience? Our own self, sitting in a theater, and how we react to the film we are watching. What would disappoint you? What would thrill you? What would move you? If you have self-love, you identify with the protagonist in the movie you are watching, and you don’t want them to do anything just because it will entertain you. You want to be entertained, but meaningfully so. So, the triangle: Deep Play, Risk, and Stranger- this is the tool that you apply to the Political Economy of Self. In the end, the protagonist must succeed. This requires courage to act when you feel fear, and a love of creativity that is deep enough to give your protagonist the license to try out what they instinctively feel just might or definitely will work. After all, life is all the license you need. Deep Play reaches to the end of the spectrum where you are living as if you are already dead. Risk is subjective. Risk is the wild card in the deck. Risk has a value which shares a direct relationship with your belief(s), psycho-structure. Risk: You take risks because self love is integral to self revolution. And even if the risk is not immediately physical it must when followed thru, be at least potentially life threatening. The implications of Story-Life are potentially dangerous as hell, to sanity, stability, security, in every sense. Risk is part of he defense mechanism of the enemy be it an army or a system or world as we individually or collectively see it. You risk not to risk, not at all, you risk because losing is preferable to not playing because playing is what matters. Losing is itself a lie. Walt Whitman. Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” Movement as virtue. “I tease that I belong to a special religious order: Our Sisters of Deep Play, and how this is a model/metaphor/lens to make sense of the activity of train hopping; a vein, a map, a road, a system where the frontier is preserved, timeless, a link between past and present, by contact of the hobo with the train, and how the play becomes deeper and takes on significance in difference ways in changing scenarios/thru time, and after 9/11, when movement/migration/immigration is still put in check but on an unprecedented level where the romance of frontier/adventure is eclipsed by the war on terror, in terms of national borders being permeated from without as well as system being threatened from within by domestic terrorists/eco/feminist/anarchist/, etc. How Deep Play in Geertz sense of the cockfight applied to train riding tells a story about society; tells the history of capitalism and its expansion and class . Deep play in terms of Pirate bay… playful impulse. He says “we don’t have a staff, an office, or a fixed location”. DEEP Play and time; time and transgression; transgression and transcendence, the relationship of time to the activities… of time to play. Of play in childhood v. play in adulthood. Of how children play adult and when they do they play adult in relation to themselves whereas we are adults and when we play games it is in relation to ourselves as adults. This changes everything in how we relate to the world. When children become aware of losing their ability to experience the world or just of not having the ability to experience play very easily perhaps they need to engage transgression. Some people rely on transgression to transcend. Now it is when that form of transgression to reach transcendence occurs in a particular historical trajectory. How am I going to describe this? It is the combination of factors. On the train the time is rendered in two ways; one by the train and the conductor. Time is money. There is no such thing, it might seem, as “free time”, because that time is easily understood to be bought time, which is why we can’t “afford” not to go back to work. Unless our money is working for us free time is the most expensive of all and we feel like queens and kings when we get worker’s comp or unemployed. Winning the lottery is as much a dream because of time as it is because of material objects; we could buy enough free time to last us life times! The funny thing about trains, and the factor comes in partially elsewhere, is that people set aside time or engage it in a way that challenges the fact that is ever cost anything or even how real it is. When you wait in a train yard and wait out in the middle of nowhere and risks all sorts of things you cannot possibly be worried about “enjoying your weekend off”. On the train there is the conductor and train who reify time in one way and the train hopper who’s transcendence of time or at least reconstitution of it happens within that reification. This is sheer business, and someone is having a blast with it. Is being transformed by it. The trajectory they ride on physically is simultaneously the trajectory that changed time and space itself. How train hoppers make meaning with freight trains describes critical elements for mobilization in the anarchist repertoire. The risks you do or don’t take have nothing to do with doing right. You do right because it is right. D Bentham does it with utilitarianism, Ackerman with poetry and prose, a dash of psychology, CZL with… psychology/psychotherapy, consciousness, a quaint website does it with spirituality and Geertz does it well in anthropology. M.J. Fischer on Geert’s deep play says… I am arguing for my own flexible definition of deep play based on its overwhelming utility to my project. I want to study///ethno and I dearly want to avoid journalistic accounts. Sarah George not as ANT but filmmaker, does a remarkable job capturing ethnographic details /aspects of riding and getting deeper going beyond what she’s done means moving deeper into the heart and shifting that captures psychological, social, and cultural and other phenomena as Geertz showed works rather well. I’m not riding because I am doing ANT, I’m doing ANT because I’m riding. Because I always do it. On Risk- Greg Madison hits on overlapping notions with Deep Play via me, Ackerman: “Self-direction (self-creation) in life prevails over the importance of belonging and security, in fact anything seems worth sacrificing in order to maintain the freedom to choose for oneself. Conformity to the conventional is avoided at all costs – life is meaningless unless it is self-directed. Independence and choice require space from impinging environmental demands. Physical space is a prerequisite for the reflective space within which self-direction manifests. Moving to a foreign place and international travel are archetypal situations for protecting and expressing the need for freedom and independence.”. Thus to quote myself: The extent to which we risk is the extent to which our lives are meaningful. Meaning is everything. This is another one of the inversions or inverse relationships, I think between giving away in one realm and gaining in another. The value that disappears on one side appears on the other. And this is why right now I AM: Meaning-making with Freight Trains: Deep Play in an Anarchist’s Repertoire. Deep Play is the focal point of a larger approach to living life which is living life increasingly as play, as much as one can, learning how to turn as many activities as possible into play, not just through actions but as a mental state, where what may look mundane from the outside is experienced as play to the actor. This is what it means to say “who can drink from the cup when they can drink from the source?” In life they want our play to be cordoned into certain times and places. In the right doses and forms. One insists on pushing the cup or their romance out of one’s face and saying instead, “I’ll take ALL of this”. -Taken out of my proposal when Deep Play was deducted- You have to risk via DP to confront problem of knowing and gain perspective on your world. Get outside of it with time to think. But you have to stay in your native world. You cannot go camping into “nature” for that nature has been pointedly criticized. Riders vary greatly in their politics or feelings about the system. What they have in common is riding and where they overlap in riding is the reasons they give for hopping trains and there experience in doing so. They all experience riding trains as a form of deep play. This is significant because they are engaging in a historical act that connects them through the activity to people who did the same thing in various circumstances, for various reasons. Some of these were by choice, and some by necessity. Our culture is fascinated by this deviant activity. It is the one thing that is illegal that you can talk to anybody about doing and they are interested. Why is this?