I am posting this here because I was talking to my students about the polarization in attitudes between work and play. I created a flippant, playful, neo-Calvinism based on Calvin and Hobbes to mark the contrast. In the age of industry of Calvin play is suspect. In the Ludic Age where neo-Calvinism is ascendant play is privileged.
I was trying to point out the challenges to the acceptance of a ludic approach to formal learning. The idea of rigor in extant educational practices cannot yet identify play as work. So we must investigate the work of play in the age of neo Calvinism.
“Jack Goldstone (1999) has said of revolutions, while initial opposition to the institutionalized order may be largely explicable in terms of narrow instrumental interests, the creation of an alternative order requires general ideological visions going beyond direct self-interest and presenting a plausible way of overcoming the existing crisis.
One classic example comes from Marxian and Weberian interpretations of the rise of Protestant capitalism. Marx stressed the rise of the bourgeoisie, a new class emerging interstitially from diverse backgrounds. Some began as prominent merchant families, others as gentry, yeomen or even peasant farmers, engaging in more capitalistic farming, others were traders and artisans taking goods between producers and consumers. Though their behaviour was converging, they did not initially conceive of themselves as being thes ame sort of people at all. Weber focused on the common problems of meaning they faced, making moral sense of lending and borrowing, establishing rational accountancy practices, and socializing labour discipline. He noted how the ideology of Calvinism gave religious meaning and virtue to these practices, though he recognized in principle that this was a two-way process, with capitalistic practices also encouraging Calvinism. Through this mixed transcendent–immanent process a new collective actor emerged: a self-conscious Protestant bourgeoisie, pioneering capitalism, fighting for its political rights, even fighting revolutions and civil wars. Often it had higher morale than its opponents, derived from religious commitment.
In ‘Sources’ I added geopolitics, adding the princes of Northwest Europe as interstitial power actors. They had been hitherto marginal, dependent actors in European geopolitics, yet their economic and naval power resources were growing. Removing religious legitimacy from Rome meant release from the power of France, Spain and Austria. This is why the moment that Luther nailed his defiant theses to the door of Wittenberg Church, the Elector of Saxony sprang to protect him – and the Thirty Years’ War became inevitable. Thus the Protestant/Catholic divide across Europe resulted as interstitial economic, political and military power resources were (originally unintentionally) mobilized by divines grown ideologically discontented within the Church – a brief example of my model in action.”—
Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power Resisted: a response to criticism