Brian-Sutton Smith's Seven Rhetorics of Play

Play as Progress: Play is a way of turning children into adults. Play is valuable because it educates and develops the cognitive capacities of human or animal youth. Examples: All forms of children's play and animal play Play as Fate: Human lives and play are controlled by fate in the form of destiny, gods, atoms, neurons, or luck, but not by free will. Examples: Gambling and games of chance Play as Power: Play is a form of conflict and a way to fortify the status of those who control the p...

 Oankali Crave Difference

Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once. “Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need them to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it. They need it to keep themselves from stagnation and overspecialization. If you don’t understand this, you will. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior.” And she had put her hand on his hair. “When you feel a conflict, try to go the ...

 Religious Children Less Capable of Distinguishing Fantasy...

In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion. C...

 The Similies

OF COURSE we were hardly all the similes the Ariekei spoke. Some were animal or inanimate: there was a house in Embassytown out of which, many years before, the Hosts had taken all the furniture, then put it back, to allow some figure of speech. The split stone, made so they could speak the thought, it’s like the stone that was split and put together again. Most, though, were Terre men and women: there was something in us that facilitated. Many similes, of course, were uninterested in thei...

 External VS Internal Hapiness

Many different competing theories of happiness have emerged from the field of positive psychology, but if there’s one thing virtually all positive psychologists agree on, it’s this: there are many ways to be happy, but we cannot find happiness. No object, no event, no outcome or life circumstance can deliver real happiness to us. We have to make our own happiness—by working hard at activities that provide their own reward.15 When we try to find happiness outside of ourselves, we’re f...

 Many Hypotheses Become Theories

The distinction between the two dictionary meanings of 'theory' is not an unbridgeable chasm, as many historical examples show. In the history of science, theorums often start off as 'mere' hypotheses. Like the theory of continental drift, an idea may even begin its career mired in ridicule, before progressing by painful steps to the status of a theorum or undisputed fact. This is not a philosophically difficult point. The fact that some widely held past beliefs have been conclusively proved ...