It is this essential fluidity of our humanness that is irreconcilable with the seriousness of finite play. It is, therefore, this fluidity that presents us with an unavoidable challenge: how to contain the serious within the truly playful; that is, how to keep all our finite games in infinite play. This challenge is commonly misunderstood as the need to find room for playfulness within finite games. This is what was referred to above as playing at, or perhaps playing around, a kind of play that has no consequence. This is the sort of playfulness implied in the ordinary sense of such terms as
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