Smile, smile, smile

UNESCO Courier, May, 1991 by Marsi Paribatra

Strict observance of the rituals of politeness is the great parlour game of the Far East. The distinguished anthropologist Gregory Bateson said that play is the best form of communication between different species such as dog and monkey, man and dolphin, as well as the best form of communication between people of different generations, social classes and cultures. When a child and a cat play together, the unity of the universe, fragmented by human pride, is renewed.

Thai people are by no means ascetic, but they have in general assimilated the notion that life and death, freedom and constraint, sadness and joy, happiness and misfortune, go together and are indissociable from each other. And so they take life as it comes and enjoy the passing moment. The Thai expression sanuk dee ("it's very pleasant") is heard as frequently as mai pen arai ("never mind"), mentioned above. When something pleasant happens, Thais will say sanuk dee ("that goes down nicely"); in adversity, mai pen arai ("it's not so bad"). Aren't these the very principles life as a game?

MARSI PARIBATRA of Thailand has taught the history of European art at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, and Far Eastern culture at Complutense University, Madrid. She has published several books on Western and Eastern art, in Thai, French and Spanish, and since 1961 has worked exclusively as a painter.

A superficially miraculous phenomenon is the invention of play between members of contrasting mammalian species. I have watched this process in interaction between our keeshond and our tame gibbon....The gibbon would come suddenly out of the rafters of the porch roof and lightly attack. The dog would give chase, the gibbon would run away, and the whole system would move from the porch to our bedroom, which had a ceiling instead of exposed rafters and beams. Confined to the floor, the retreating gibbon would turn on the dog, who would retreat, running out onto the porch. The gibbon would then go up into the roof, and the whole sequence would start over again, to be repeated many times and evidently enjoyed by both players...

To describe cross-species play as an evolution of items of behaviour would be incorrect because no new items of behaviour are generated... The dog is still unchanged dog; the gibbon is still gibbon...and yet, clearly something bas happened. Patterns of interaction have been generated or discovered.

Gregory Bateson

Mind and Nature [Copywright] 1979 by Gregory Bateson