Sacrum & the choice of a supreme end

INTERNALIZATION OF THE SACRED

With the rise of civilization, with the beginning of the division of labor, still more with the rise of the city and the state, festivals lose importance. They symbolize less and less the magnitude and total character that made the ancient efferves­ cences a complete suspension of institutional interaction and a basic challenge to the universal order. A more complex so­ ciety does not tolerate such a break in the continuity of its functioning. It insists upon the gradual abandonment of the alternation between phases of debility and paroxysm, of dis­persion and concentration, of regulated and unrestrained ac­tivity, which is the rhythm of development at a time when collective life is less differentiated. Individual labor can be interrupted, but public services must not be stopped. General disorder is no longer admissible. At best, only a facsmile is tolerated.

Social life in its entirety tends toward uniformity. More and more, flood and draught are channelized into a regular and even flow. The multiple needs of profane life tolerate less and less the simultaneous reservation of the same time for the sacred by everyone. Also, the sacred becomes fragmented, be­comes the specialty of a sect that leads a semi-clandestine exist­ence, or in the majority of cases, becomes the concern of a specialized group that celebrates its rites in a remote place and remains in office for a long time. Sooner or later, its divorce from the state is consecrated by the separation of the spiritual from the temporal. Then the church no longer coincides with the city, and religious and national boundaries no longer are the same.

Religion soon becomes dependent upon man, no longer upon the collectivity. It becomes universalistic, but also, in correlative fashion, personalistic. It tends to isolate the indi­vidual by confronting him with a God that he then knows less through rites than through a diffusion of personalized inti­macy. The sacred becomes internalized and no longer attracts only the mind. The importance of the mystical increases and that of the cult diminishes. Any external criterion seems in­adequate, from the moment that the sacred becomes less an objective manifestation than a pure attitude of mind, less a ceremony than a profound sensation. It is with reason under these conditions that the word "sacred’' is used outside the properly religious domain to designate that to which each de­votes the better part of himself, that which is of utmost value and is venerated, that for which he sacrificed his life.

Such is, in fact, the decisive touchstone that permits the unbeliever to distinguish between the sacred and the profane.

That being, object, or idea is sacred for which man departs from routine, that he does not allow to be discussed, scoffed at, or joked about, that which he would not deny or surrender at any price. For the lover, it is the woman he loves; for the artist or scholar, the work that he pursues; for the miser, the gold that he amasses; for the patriot, the welfare of the state, the security of the nation, and the defense of its territory; and for the revolutionist, the revolution.

It is absolutely impossible to distinguish these attitudes from those of the believer, except in the way they are applied. They demand the same self-denial, and they presuppose the same unconditional personal involvement, a similar asceticism and spirit of sacrifice. Without doubt, it is convenient to at­tribute different values to them, but that is an entirely separate problem. It is sufficient to note that they imply the recognition of a sacred element surrounded by fervor and devotion, of which one must avoid speaking, and which one must try to conceal, for fear of exposing it to some sacrilege (insult, ridi­cule, or merely a critical attitude) on the part of the indiffer­ent, or one’s enemies, who would not respect it.

The presence of such an element entails a certain number of sacrifices in the ordinary course of life, and, in the event of a crisis, the sacrifice of life itself is agreed to in advance. Every­ thing else is considered profane, is used without excessive scruples, is evaluated, judged, doubted, and treated not as an end but as a means. Some subordinate everything to the pres­ervation of life and property, and thus seem to regard every­ thing as profane, taking the greatest liberties they can with them. Of course, self-interest or the pleasure of the moment governs them. For them alone, it is clear that the sacred exists in no other form.

THE CHOICE OF A SUPREME END

On the contrary, those who rule their conduct by com­plete devotion to some principle tend to re-establish about them a kind of sacred environment, which excites violent emotions of a special kind that are capable of assuming a char­acteristically religious, ecstatic, fanatical, or mystical quality. On the social level, these emotions give rise directly or indi­rectly to dogmas and ritual, to mythology and worship. If con­temporary examples must be cited, it would be sufficient to point out as a type of secular liturgy, the ceremony of the eter­nal light at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe, and as a model of secular mysticism, the char­acteristic attitudes of party militants, which demand unquali­fied obedience of their members.

In a general way, the different values that elicit total dedication and that are basic to every issue have their partisans and martyrs, who serve as models for the believers. Real or legendary, most often drawn from history and exemplifying rather than engendering a mystical theme, they furnish precept and example. Stories of their lives and deaths inspire everyone and impel one to identify with them privately and, if need arises, to imitate them.

It is impossible either to trace the major trends in the history of the sacred or to analyze the forms that it assumes in contemporary civilization. At best, it can be noted that it seems to become abstract, internalized, and subjective, attached less to beings than to concepts, less to acts than to intentions, and less to external manifestations than to spiritual tendencies. This evolution is manifestly tied to the most important phe­nomena in the history of humanity—such as the emancipation of the individual, the development of his intellectual and moral autonomy, and the final triumph of the scientific ideal.

The latter is an attitude hostile to mystery, demanding sys­tematic skepticism, a deliberate lack of respect. In considering everything as an object of knowledge or a matter of experience, it leads to everything being regarded as profane, and conse­quently viewed as knowable, with the possible exception of the passion for knowledge itself. In addition, it is certain that these new conditions of the sacred have led to its assuming new forms. Thus, it invades ethics and transforms such concepts as honesty, fidelity, jus­tice, and respect for truth and promises, into absolutes. Bas­ically, everything happens as if it sufficed to make an object, being, or cause sacred, that it be dedicated and consecrated to a supreme end. One’ s time, energy, interests, and ambitions are devoted and sacrificed to its demands. One publicly attrib­utes great prestige to it and shows that he renounces the most commonly esteemed goods in its favor, those most greedily pursued and conserved. In this situation, the dichotomy of sacred and profane no longer seems bound to the concept of the order of the universe, to the rhythm of its aging and regeneration, and to the opposition between neutral or inert objects, energies that animate or destroy them, that inherently attract or repel.

It has not been able to resist the transformation of social life that has brought about the increasing independence of the individual, freeing him from every psychic constraint and protecting him from others. Moreover, the sacred persists to the degree that this liberation is incomplete, that is to say, whenever a value is imposed as a reason for being upon a com­munity and even an individual. The sacred is now revealed as a source of power and contagion.

The sacred remains whatever stimulates respect, fear, and trust. It is imbued with power yet involves existence. It always appears as that which separates man from his fellow-men, re­ moves him from vulgar preoccupations, makes him win out over the obstacles and dangers that most beset him. It intro­ duces him into a harsh world. His instinct is to flee the sacred, even while attracted to it. In that world, the rule is no longer to preserve achieved status or to keep any status permanent. Stability is no longer regarded as the highest good, nor are moderation, prudence, or conformity to established usage re­garded as among the highest virtues. Security, comfort, a good reputation, and honor are no longer deemed as most desirable advantages.

In fact, the profane attitude always implies a kind of ab­dication. It restrains man from the wanton gratification of his desires. It diverts him from using his mind wastefully, and places him on guard against perilous and ruinous instincts that incite him to countless expenditures. At the same time, it surrounds such insatiable heroes as Faust or Don Juan— who dared to assume these decisive risks, braving the infernal powers, or entering into a pact with them—with a halo of prestige.

These mythical figures, exemplars of destiny, live in the imagination as concrete symbols of the kind of grandeur and perdition reserved for those who violate taboos and are im­ moderate in feeling, intelligence, and desire. These damned ones have been lost by their very intrepidity. Theirs is the glory of not having accepted any divine or human limitation when it was a question of satisfying one of the unquenchable appetites of feeling, knowing, and dominating. These were condemned by Saint Paul, who referred to them as libido sentiendi, libido sciendi, and libido dominandi.

To these three lusts, there are no comparably opposing taboos. The latter are only an obstacle, a kind of challenge that exists only as a function of the courage that sets it off. What makes these ambitions their true and worthy counter­part are the inverted ambitions, such as the renunciation of sanctity, the joyous acceptance of chastity, ignorance, and obe­dience, the desire to feel nothing, to have nothing, to acquire nothing, even to desire nothing, and the taste for giving in place of the taste for taking. Thus, everywhere in the profane environment of conservation and economy, outside of every rite and every external manifestation, the fundamental am­biguity of the sacred is rediscovered. The dreaded world of sacrilegious conquests and the blessed world of sanctifying abandon are both consecrated by an equal disdain for the common condition, by a similar basic dissatisfaction, to which beatitude or damnation alone can put an end.

TIME AND DESTINY

Without doubt, it is out of place to outline the meta­physics of the sacred in ending this work, but at least, it can be indicated at what point the antagonism of the sacred and the profane is identified with the cosmic interaction that, in order to form future or past, to give life to being, comprises stability and variation, inertia and movement, mass and force, matter and energy. The nature of these oppositions involves more than their content. The relationships of solidarity and collaboration that they establish between the terms they simul­taneously dissociate and associate are more significant than the way in which they are or are not conceived. Through the diversity of appearances, the continuity of the universe seems to result from the combination of the poles of obstacle and ef­fort that can never be perfectly isolated. It is impossible to last without wear and tear or loss, and impossible to become motionless. To be so, it would be necessary not to live but to be as the “sleepers” in stories, deep in a magic sleep during which others grow old and are transformed, but from which they awaken, identically as they were, to a world they no longer recognize. They are no longer part of a world of meta­morphosis, simple expenditures, and total activity. This can not occur without lassitude, scars, or nostalgia for annihila­tion, this taste of fatigue and death that victory and the exalta­tion of triumph convey.

It would not be difficult to find, in the organic, and even the inorganic world, this solidarity of death and life, of the resistance seeking to paralyze all effort and the effort seeking to annihilate all resistance. However, it becomes exhausted by its very success, by the fact that in evolving action it also develops a force that checks it. The laws of biology, chemistry, and physics offer as many examples as desired of this mech­anism on all levels of existence. Under these conditions, it is remarkable that it can be utilized as a key for the comprehen­sion of the principal problems concerning the statics and dy­namics of the sacred that have been formulated and examined in the course of this work.

The profane must be defined as the constant search for a balanced or just environment that permits living in fear and moderation without exceeding the limits of the allowable. One is content with a gilded mediocrity, which manifests the precarious collaboration of the two antithetical forces that as­ sure the perpetuation of the universe through reciprocally neutralizing each other. The departure from this tranquillity, from this place of relative calm in which stability and security are greater than elsewhere, is equivalent to the entrance of the sacred into the world. Then man is abandoned to the pursuit of the only tyrannical component that in all life calls for concerted action. That is to say, he has now already con­ sented to its loss as he takes the divine path of renunciation to the magical path of conquest, as he wishes to be saint or sor­cerer, and as he unreservedly devotes himself to these activities.

In seeking for the principles of life, the energies of the sacred, which sustains and interferes with him, the being (ob­ ject, organism, mind, or society) approaches it yet remains at a distance. The pages in which Saint Theresa of Avila de­scribes her ecstasy must be read, in this regard. If one is care­ful to ignore the expressions that are too parochially Christian, it will be seen how the confidences of the saint illustrate this paradox, how contact with the sacred inaugurates a sorrowful conflict between the intoxicating hope of definitely falling into a deep abyss and the kind of sluggishness with which the pro­fane weighs down every movement toward the sacred. Saint Theresa herself attributes this to the instinct for self-preserva­tion. Returning the being that dies to life, so that it should not die, this sluggishness seems like the exact counterpart of the ascendancy exercised by the sacred upon the profane. It always tries, for its part, to renounce time in favor of a leap to ephemeral and extravagant glory.

The sacred is what gives life and takes it away, it is the source from which it flows, and the estuary in which it is lost. But the sacred is also that which one would not know how to possess simultaneously with life. Life is wear and tear, and waste. It vainly strives to persevere and to refuse every ex­penditure so as to be preserved. Death lies in wait for it.

There is no artifice that is as good. Everything living be­ing knows or senses it. It knows the choice remaining to it. It dreads giving of itself, sacrificing itself, and is aware of thus wasting its very being. But to retain its gifts, energies, and re­sources, to use them prudently for all practical and selfish goals—as a consequence, profane—saves no one in the final analysis from decrepitude and the tomb. Everything that is not consumed rots away. Furthermore, the abiding truth of the sacred resides simultaneously in the fascination of flame and the horror of putrefaction.

From the book Man and the Sacred by Roger Caillois 

The Circus

The circus is a natural part of the traveling fair. This is a segregated society with its own costumes, pride, and laws. It comprises a population jealous of its special character, proud of its isolation, and endogamous. Its professional secrets are transmitted from father to son. As far as possible, it settles its own differences without resorting to the courts.

Lion tamers, jugglers, equestriennes, clowns, and acrobats are subjected to a rigorous discipline from infancy. All dream of perfecting their numbers to the least detail in order to assure success and— in an emergency— safety.

This closed and rigorous universe constitutes the austere side of the fair. The decisive sanction of death is necessarily present, for the lion tamer just as for the acrobat. It forms part of the tacit agreement that binds the performers and the spectators. It enters into the rules of a game that anticipates a total risk. The unanimity of circus people in refusing the net or cable that would protect them from a tragic fall speaks for itself. It is necessary  for the state to impose such safety devices against their stubborn resistance, but this falsifies the totality of the wager.

For circus people the big top represents not merely a profes­sion but a way of life, not really comparable to sports, casino, or stage for champions, gamblers, or professional actors. In the circus there is added a kind of hereditary fatalism and a much sharper break with ordinary life. Because of this, circus life, strictly speaking, cannot be regarded as synonymous with play.

And yet, two of its traditional activities are literally and sig­ nificantly associated with ilinx and mimicry. I allude to the tightrope and the universality of certain kinds of clowning.

The Tightrope

Sports is the profession corresponding to agon; a special way of courting chance is the profession or rather the denial of a profession associated with alea; and the theater is comparable to mimicry. The tightrope is the profession corresponding to ilinx. In fact, vertigo is not merely an obstacle, difficulty, or danger on the tightrope. The flying trapeze goes beyond mountain climbing, forced recourse to parachute jumping, and those oc­ cupations requiring the worker to do his job high over the earth. On the high wire, the very heart of prowess and the only aim is to master vertigo. The game consists expressly in moving through space as if the void were not fascinating, and as if no danger were involved.

An ascetic existence is necessary to obtain this supreme skill. It involves a regime of severe privation and strict continence, ceaseless exercise, continuous repetition of the same movements, and the acquisition of impeccable reflexes and faultless re­sponses. Somersaults are performed in a state bordering upon hypnosis. Supple and strong muscles and imperturbable self-control are necessary conditions. To be sure, the acrobat must calculate the effort, time, distance, and trajectory of the trapeze.

But he lives in terror of thinking of it at the decisive moment, when it nearly always has fatal consequences. It paralyzes in­ stead of aiding, at a moment when the least hesitation is dis­astrous. Consciousness is the killer. It is disturbing to his som­nambulistic infallibility and compromises the functioning of a mechanism whose extreme precision cannot tolerate doubts or regrets. The tightrope walker only succeeds if he is hypnotized by the rope, the acrobat only if he is sure enough of himself to rely upon vertigo instead of trying to resist it. Vertigo is an integral part of nature, and one controls it only in obeying it.

These games are always comparable to the exploits of the Mexi­can voladores, affirming and exemplifying the natural creativity involved in mastering ilinx. Aberrant disciplines, heroic feats accomplished to no purpose or profit, disinterested, mortally dangerous and useless, they are of merit in furnishing admirable witness, even if not generally recognized, to human perseverance, ambition, and hardiness.

Quote from the book Man, Play and Games (Roger Caillois)

Roger Caillois - The Corruption of Games

Where the problem is to enu­merate the characteristics that define the nature of play, it ap­pears to be an activity that is (1) free, (2) separate, (3) uncertain, (4) unproductive, (5) regulated, and (6) fictive, it being understood that the last two characteristics tend to ex­clude one another.

These six purely formal qualities are not clearly related to the various psychological attitudes that govern play. In strongly opposing the world of play to that of reality, and in stressing that play is essentially a side activity, the inference is drawn that any contamination by ordinary life runs the risk of corrupting and destroying its very nature.

At this point, it may be of interest to ask what becomes of games when the sharp line dividing their ideal rules from the diffuse and insidious laws of daily life is blurred. They certainly cannot spread beyond the playing field (chess- or checkerboard, arena, racetrack, stadium, or stage) or time that is reserved for them, and which ends as inexorably as the closing of a parenthe­sis. They will necessarily have to take quite different, and on occasion doubtlessly unexpected, forms.

In addition, a strict and absolute code governs amateur players, whose prior assent seems like the very condition of their participation in an isolated and entirely conventional activity. 

But what if the convention is no longer accepted or regarded as applicable? Suppose the isolation is no longer respected? The forms or the freedom of play surely can no longer survive. All that remains is the tyrannical and compelling psychological atti­ tude that selects one kind of game to play rather than another. 

It should be recalled that these distinctive attitudes are four in number: the desire to win by one’s merit in regulated competi­tion (agon), the submission of one’s will in favor of anxious and passive anticipation of where the wheel will stop (alea), the desire to assume a strange personality (mimicry), and, finally, the pursuit of vertigo (ilinx). In agon, the player relies only upon himself and his utmost efforts; in alea, he counts on every­ thing except himself, submitting to the powers that elude him; in mimicry, he imagines that he is someone else, and he invents an imaginary universe; in ilinx, he gratifies the desire to temporarily destroy his bodily equilibrium, escape the tyranny of his ordinary perception, and provoke the abdication of conscience.

If play consists in providing formal, ideal, limited, and escapist satisfaction for these powerful drives, what happens when every convention is rejected? When the universe of play is no longer tightly closed? When it is contaminated by the real world in which every act has inescapable consequences? Corresponding to each of the basic categories there is a specific perversion which results from the absence of both restraint and protection.
The rule of instinct again becoming absolute, the tendency to interfere with the isolated, sheltered, and neutralized kind of play spreads to daily life and tends to subordinate it to its own needs, as much as possible. What used to be a pleasure becomes an obsession. What was an escape becomes an obligation, and what was a pastime is now a passion, compulsion, and source of anxiety.

The principle of play has become corrupted. It is now neces­ sary to take precautions against cheats and professional players, a unique product of the contagion of reality. Basically, it is not a perversion of play, but a sidetracking derived from one of the four primary impulses governing play. The situation is not unique. It occurs whenever the specified instinct does not en­ counter, in an appropriate game, the discipline and refuge that anchor it, or whenever it does not find gratification in the game.

The cheat is still inside the universe of play. If he violates the rules of the game, he at least pretends to respect them. He tries to influence them. He is dishonest, but hypocritical. He thus, by his attitude, safeguards and proclaims the validity of the conven­tions he violates, because he is dependent upon others obeying the rules. If he is caught, he is thrown out. The universe of play remains intact. Neither does the professional player change the nature of the game in any way. To be sure, he himself does not play, but merely practices a profession. The nature of competi­tion or the performance is hardly modified if the athletes or comedians are professionals who play for money rather than amateurs who play for pleasure. The difference concerns only the players.

For professional boxers, bicycle riders, or actors, agon or mimicry has ceased being a recreation intended as a relaxation from fatigue or a relief from the monotony of oppressive and exhausting work. It is their very work, necessary to their sub­sistence, a constant and absorbing activity, replete with obstacles and problems, from which they properly find relaxation by play­ ing at a game to which they are not contracted.
For the actor also, a theatrical performance is mere simula­tion. He puts on make-up and costume, plays and recites. But when the curtain falls, and the lights go on, he returns to reality. 

The separation of the two universes remains absolute. For the professional bicycle rider, tennis or football player also, the con­test, match, and track remain regulated and formal competition. 

As soon as the contest ends, the audience runs for the exit. The champion returns to his routine responsibilities, where he must protect his interests, devise and apply a strategy that will assure him a successful future. As soon as he leaves the stadium, velodrome, or ring, the perfect and precise rivalries in which he has pitted his strength under conditions as artificial as possi­ble give way to rivalries that are formidable in quite another way. The latter are insidious, incessant, and implacable, and permeate all of life. Life, the comedian off the stage, is now again part of the common lot, removed from the closed-off space and the privileged time ruled by the strict, gratuitous, and indisputable laws of play.

Outside of the arena, after the gong strikes, begins the true perversion of agon, the most pervasive of all the categories. It appears in every conflict untempered by the rigor or spirit of play. Now competition is nothing but a law of nature. In society it resumes its original brutality, as soon as it finds a loophole in the system of moral, social, and legal constraints, which have limits and conventions comparable to those of play. That is why mad, obsessive ambition, applied to any domain in which the rules of the game and free play are not respected, must be de­ nounced as a clear deviation which in this case restores the original situation. There is no better example of the civilizing role of play than the inhibitions it usually places upon natural avidity. A good player must be able to contemplate with ob­jectivity, detachment, and at least an appearance of calm, the unlucky results of even the most sustained effort or the loss of large sums. The referee’s decision is accepted in principle even if unjust. The corruption of agon begins at the point where no referee or decision is recognized.

In games of chance, there is a comparable corruption of the principle as soon as the player ceases to respect chance, that is, when he no longer views the laws of chance as impersonal neutral power, without heart or memory, a purely mechanical effect. With superstition, the corruption of alea is born. It is indeed tempting for one who submits to fate to try to predict the outcome, or at least influence it in his favor. The player finds special significance in all kinds of phenomena, encounters, and omens, which he imagines to be forebodings of good or bad luck. He looks for talismans that will protect him most effica­ciously. He abstains from anything unlucky, as revealed by dreams, forebodings, or presentiments. Finally, in order to be rid of unlucky influences, he indulges in various magical prac­tices.

Such an attitude is only aggravated by games of chance. It is found to be quite prevalent, even if subconscious. It is not re­stricted to the habitues of casinos or racetracks and the pur­chasers of lottery tickets. The regular publication of horoscopes by daily and weekly newspapers transforms each day and each week into a kind of promise or menace for their readers, who are thus kept in suspense by the heavens and the dark powers of the stars. These horoscopes most often reveal the daily lucky num­ber for readers born under the different signs of the Zodiac. Each one can then buy the lottery tickets corresponding to these num­bers: some ending with that number, some in which that number is contained several times, and some with a succession of numbers that add up to it— thus applicable to all to some degree.1 0 It is significant that the most popular and most obvious superstition of this type is directly associated with games of chance. And yet it must be admitted that it is not limited to games of chance.

Upon waking up in the morning, everyone is supposed to find himself winning or losing in a gigantic, ceaseless, gratuitous, and inevitable lottery which will determine his general coefficient of success or failure for the next twenty-four hours. Decisions, new enterprises, and love affairs are all considered. The astrologer is careful to point out that the influence of the stars is exerted within quite variable limits, so that the oversimplified prophecy could scarcely turn out to be entirely false. To be sure, the reac­tion of the majority of the public is to smile at such puerile pre­dictions. But it still reads them. And more important, it keeps on reading them. At this point, many begin reading the astrological section of their newspaper. It seems that newspapers with large circulations do not readily risk depriving their readers of this satisfaction, the importance or prevalence of which should not be underestimated.

The more credulous are not content with the summary articles in papers and general magazines. They have recourse to special­ized periodicals. In Paris, one of these has a circulation of more than 100,000. The adept often visit a fortuneteller with some regularity. The figures are quite revealing: 100,000 Parisians consult 6,000 diviners, seers, or fortunetellers daily. According to the Institut national de Statistique, 34 billion francs are spent annually in France on astrologers, magicians, and other frauds. 

In the United States, for astrology alone, a 1953 investigation counted 30,000 professional establishments, twenty specialized magazines with a circulation of 500,000 readers, and 2,000 periodicals that publish horoscopes. It was estimated that $200 million are spent annually for no other purpose than seeking answers from the stars— this not including other methods of divination.

Numerous indications of the association between games of chance and divination are easily found. One of the most con­ spicuous and immediate is that the very same cards used by players in trying their luck may also be used by prophets to pre­dict the future. Seers only use special games in order to enhance their prestige. Ordinary dinner plates may be used, newly in­ scribed with naive legends, impressive illustrations, or traditional allegories. At every point there is a quite natural transition from chance to superstition.
As for the avarice today observed in the pursuit of good for­tune, it probably compensates for the continuous tension in­volved in modern competition. Whoever despairs of his own resources is led to trust in destiny. Excessively rigorous com­petition discourages the timid and tempts them to rely on ex­ternal powers. By studying and utilizing heavenly powers over chance, they try to get the reward they doubt can be won by their own qualities, by hard work and steady application. Rather than persist in thankless labor, they ask the cards or the stars to warn them of the propitious moment for the success of their enterprises.

Superstition therefore seems to be a perversion, i.e. the appli­cation to reality of one of the principles of play, alea, which causes one to expect nothing of himself and leaves all to chance. 

The corruption of mimicry follows a parallel course. It is pro­duced when simulation is no longer accepted as such, when the one who is disguised believes that his role, travesty, or mask is real. He no longer plays another. Persuaded that he is the other, he behaves as if he were, forgetting his own self. The loss of his real identity is a punishment for his inability to be content with merely playing a strange personality. It is properly called aliena­tion.

Here, too, play is a protection from danger. The actor’s role is sharply defined by the dimensions of the stage and the dura­tion of the spectacle. Once he leaves the magic area, the fantasy ends and the most vainglorious histrionics and the most eloquent performances are brutally constrained by the very necessity of passing from the dressing-room of the theater to the resumption of his own personality. Applause is not merely approval and re­ward. It marks the end of illusion and play. The masked ball ends at dawn and the carnival is only for a short time. The costume is returned to the store or the wardrobe. The old per­sonality is restored. The sharp limits of play prevent alienation.
Alienation occurs toward the end of profound and continuous labor. It takes place when there is no sharp dividing line between fantasy and reality, when the subject has gradually donned a second, chimerical, and all-pervasive personality which claims exorbitant rights with respect to a reality with which it is of necessity incompatible. The time arrives when the alienated one — who has become another— tries desperately to deny, subdue, or destroy this new self, which strongly resists, and which he regards as inadmissible, inconceivable, and irksome.

It is remarkable that in agon, alea, and mimicry, the intensity of play may be the cause of the fatal deviation. The latter always results from contamination by ordinary life. It is produced when the instinct that rules play spreads beyond the strict limits of time and place, without previously agreed-to rules. It is permissi­ble to play as seriously as desired, to be extremely extravagant, to risk an entire fortune, even life itself, but the game must stop at a preordained time so that the player may resume ordinary responsibilities, where the liberating and isolating rules of play no longer are applicable.

Competition is a law of modem life. Taking risks is no longer contradictory to reality. Simulation also has a role, as in the case of confidence men, spies, and fugitives. As a compensation, vertigo is almost absent except for those rare professions in which the task is to control it. The risk of sudden death is also present. At fairs, special precautions are taken to avoid acci­dents on the various rides that stimulate vertigo artificially. Acci­dents nevertheless happen even on equipment designed and con­structed to assure complete safety to the users, through having undergone careful periodic checks. Physical vertigo, an extreme condition depriving the patient of protection, is as difficult to attain as it is dangerous to experience. That is why the search for unconsciousness and distortion of perception, in order to spread into daily life, must assume forms very different from those ob­served on contraptions that gyrate, speed, fall, or propel and which were devised to stimulate vertigo in the closed and pro­tected world of play.

 These costly, complex, cumbersome installations are scarce except for amusement parks in capitals or when erected periodi­cally by traveling carnivals. In their very atmosphere, they be­long to the universe of play. In addition, the thrills they provide correspond point for point to the definition of play: they are brief, intermittent, calculated, and as discrete as games or suc­cessive encounters. And finally, they remain independent of the real world. Their influence is limited to the duration of the ride.

It stops as soon as the machine stops and leaves no trace in the rider except for his being fleetingly stunned until his usual equi­ librium is restored.

To adapt vertigo to daily life, it is necessary to substitute am­biguous chemical power for clear-cut physical effects. The de­sired stimulus or sensuous panic, which is brutally and brusquely provided by the amusements at a fair, is now sought in drugs or alcohol. But this time the whirling is no longer outside or separate from reality. It is imbedded and generated there. If this intoxication and euphoria can temporarily destroy clarity of vision and motor coordination, free one from the burden of memory and from the terrors of social responsibilities and pressures, just as in the case of physical vertigo, nevertheless its influence does not cease with the passing of the seizure. The organism is slowly but permanently changed. Given a permanent need, there is created an unbearable anxiety. This is in complete contrast to play, which is always contingent and gratuituous activity. Through intoxication, the pursuit of vertigo makes increasing inroads into reality, all the more extensive and per­nicious in that it creates a dependency which constantly presses against the threshold across which the desired disorder is found.

Even on this point, the case of insects is instructive. They find a source of pleasure in games of vertigo, illustrated by the whirling mania of whirligig-beetles which transform the surface of the quietest pond into a silvery carousel, if not by moths flitting about a flame. Yet insects, especially the social insects, also exhibit the “corruption of vertigo” in the form of an intoxi­cation that has disastrous consequences.

Thus, one of the most prevalent types of ant, Formica sanguinea, greedily licks up the fragrant exudates of rich ether secreted by the abdominal glands of a small coleopterous insect called Lochemusa strumosa. The ants place its larvae into their nests, feeding them so meticulously that they neglect their own young. Soon the larvae of Lochemusa devour the ants’ offspring. 

The ant queens, badly cared for, will no longer give birth to any but sterile females. The anthill dies and disappears. Formica fusca, which in a free state kills the Lochemusae, spares them when it is enslaved by Formica sanguinea. To indulge its taste for fragrant grease, it permits Atemeles emarginatus, which is no less a peril to its safety, to enter its hive. Moreover, it will de­stroy this parasite if it is enslaved by Formica rufa, which does not tolerate the parasite. Thus, it is not a case of irresistible attraction, but of a kind of vice that can disappear under certain circumstances. Servitude, in particular, sometimes stimulates it, and sometimes makes it resistible. The masters impose their habits upon the slaves.20 These are not isolated cases of voluntary intoxication. An­ other species of ant, lridomyrmex sanguineus of Queensland, seeks the caterpillars of a small grey moth in order to drink the intoxicating liquid they exude. The ants press the juice flesh of these larvae with their mandibles in order to extract the liquid. 

When they have drained one caterpillar, they move on to an­ other. It is unfortunate that the larvae devour the eggs of lridomyrmex. Sometimes the insect that produces the fragrant exudate “is aware of” its power and entices the ant to its vice. 

The caterpillar of Lycaena arion, studied by Chapman and Frohawk, is provided with a sac of honey. When it encounters a worker of the species Myrmica laevinodis, it raises the anterior segments of its body, inviting the ant to transport it to its nest. 

There it feeds on the larvae of Myrmica. The latter has no inter­est in the caterpillar during the periods in which it does not produce any honey. Lastly, a Javanese hemipter, Ptilocerus ochraceus, described by Kirkaldy and Jacobson, has in the middle of its ventral side a gland containing a toxic liquid which it offers to ants that are partial to it. They hasten to lick it up at once. The liquid paralyzes them, and they thus become an easy prey for Ptilocerus.' The aberrant behavior of ants does not prove the existence of instincts harmful to the species, as has been maintained. It proves rather that the irresistible attraction for a paralyzing sub­stance may neutralize the most powerful instincts, particularly the instinct for self-preservation which causes the individual ant to guard its safety and directs it to protect and feed its offspring.

The ants, so to speak, “forget” everything because of the drug. They behave most disastrously, submitting themselves or aban­ doning their eggs and larvae to the enemy.
In an oddly analogous way, the stupidity and drunkenness produced by alcohol lead man down a road where he is insidi­ously and irrevocably destroyed. In the end, deprived of the freedom to desire anything but his poison, he is left a prey to chronic organic disorder, far more dangerous than the physical vertigo which at least only momentarily compromises his ca­pacity to resist the fascination of oblivion.

As for ludus and paidia, which are not categories of play but ways of playing, they pass into ordinary life as invariable op­posites, e.g. the preference for cacaphony over a symphony, scribbling over the wise application of the laws of perspective. 

Their continuous opposition arises from the fact that a con­certed enterprise, in which various expendable resources are well utilized, has nothing in common with purely disordered move­ment for the sake of paroxysm.

What we set out to analyze was the corruption of the princi­ples of play, or preferably, their free expansion without check or convention. It was shown that such corruption is produced in identical ways. It entails consequences which seem to be in­ ordinately serious. Madness or intoxication may be sanctions that are disproportionate to the simple overflow of one of the play instincts out of the domain in which it can spread without irreparable harm. In contrast, the superstitions engendered by deviation from alea seem benign. Even more, when the spirit of competition freed from rules of equilibrium and loyalty is added to unchecked ambition, it seems to be profitable for the daring one who is abandoned to it. Moreover, the temptation to guide one’s behavior by resort to remote powers and magic symbols in automatically applying a system of imaginary correspondences does not aid man to exploit his basic abilities more efficiently.
He becomes fatalistic. He becomes incapable of deep appreci­ation of relationships between phenomena. Perseverance and trying to succeed despite unfavorable circumstances are dis­couraged.

Transposed to reality, the only goal of agon is success. The rules of courteous rivalry are forgotten and scorned. They seem merely irksome and hypocritical conventions. Implacable com­petition becomes the rule. Winning even justifies foul blows. If the individual remains inhibited by fear of the law or public opinion, it nonetheless seems permissible, if not meritorious, for nations to wage unlimited ruthless warfare.

Various restrictions on violence fall into disuse. Operations are no longer limited to frontier provinces, strongholds, and military objectives. They are no longer conducted according to a strategy that once made war itself resemble a game. War is far removed from the tournament or duel, i.e. from regulated combat in an enclosure, and now finds its fulfillment in massive destruction and the massacre of entire populations.

Any corruption of the principles of play means the abandon­ment of those precarious and doubtful conventions that it is always permissible, if not profitable, to deny, but the arduous adoption of which is a milestone in the development of civiliza­tion. If the principles of play in effect correspond to powerful instincts (competition, chance, simulation, vertigo), it is readily understood that they can be positively and creatively gratified only under ideal and circumscribed conditions, which in every case prevail in the rules of play. Left to themselves, destructive and frantic as are all instincts, these basic impulses can hardly lead to any but disastrous consequences. Games discipline in­ stincts and institutionalize them. For the time that they afford formal and limited satisfaction, they educate, enrich, and im­munize the mind against their virulence. At the same time, they are made fit to contribute usefully to the enrichment and the establishment of various patterns of culture.

from the book Man, Play and Games by Roger Caillois