Second, this a unique case turn – the corruption of the principle of play fuels endless global warfare thru the justified destruction of all limits.

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 inordinately 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 instincts 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.