ABSTRACT

This chapter gives reassuring evidence of the continuance of concerted international efforts to promote play in human settlements. It is a significant follow-up to the advance accomplished at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. On the one hand, severe restrictions impose a most thoughtful ordering of priorities: each choice demands cautious weighing of the renunciations it exacts. On the other hand, actual participation in diverse systems favours a more objective assessment of human pursuits: personally experienced contrasts highlight ever-present cravings. Empty, machine-like hours, devoid of an ultimate concern, threaten man's self-concept, the core of his personality, his most precious trait, the fundamental quality which sets him apart from the other nearly two million species on earth. Once reinstated in the dignity of human condition, mankind would realize that its best resources are children, and would dedicate itself to them as assiduously as it does to others.