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For the classical Greeks, "[t]he distinction between man and animal [ran] right through the human species itself" (Arendt, 1958, p. 19). Q: Are people who are not wide awake, such as wokies, "dummies", "hollow men" and others who seem to be like unanswered telephones or when when you ring them up you just get a pre-recorded message☏, human or not? In what sense are they awake?[1] Some seem to be offended by such questions, maybe because they afraid of looking in the mirror and finding out what they are? But why should that upset them, since if they recognize that they are not, i.e.: if they genuinely undertand language, cannot they use their minds to improve themselves to raise themselves above what they find they are, i.e.: by using the mind that recognized their concern about the problem? Can they not try saying something like: "I am not a thing! Cogito ergo sum, dammit!" If a person is truly just a biochemical process like a stromatolite, they are not capable of thinking anything, including that they are not thinking. What's in it for them to try to pretend some living beings are not what they are? Are they ashamed of having born them or somehow scared to check out the status of their friends and family of just of "other people"? It's not their fault if some live births are amented? Or maybe "There but for the grace of God go I", due to their childhood conditioning to think they are not worth much? Then they need to get on with trying to say: "It ain't me you're talkin' to!", and strive to stop that misfortunate eventuality, yes? What your parents and/or teachers and/or preachers, et al. were or are is not a reflection in you, but just a fact of Fate. And anybody who just is what they are just is what they are; we don't need to do anything except to watch out for what they do in case it might hurt somebody, e.g.: one's own self.
A fluffy kitten plays. A varsity lacrosse gladiator with a steel cage protecting his face from being mutilated by a violently swung cudgel (a "lacrosse stick") plays. Do they thereby do the same thing? A Nigerean Internet phisher plays a maga. Fellows of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies play a weekly poker game. A small child plays with blocks. Sir Lawrence Olivier plays Hamlet. Is there eanything cmmon to all these uses of the word, or is it like: "star" whih can refer to an ongoing celestial nuclear fusion process which may run for billions of years or to a human being on earth who has not yet died but will do so in less than 150 years?
Not only was what the head-butters were doing not playful, it was not play at all: it was goal directed activity: to Beat Gilman! Goal directed in two senses: both to accomplish something (a victory) and also to "score goals". The latter could have been called anything but the use of the same word for the two things does seem to fit. The goal was the goal[s]; Goals were the goal. To accumulate more of them within a rigidly predetmined span of wallclock (not "lived") time than the other team accumulated. Of course, if pushed into a corner, the peolpe who scripted the "game" would not admit it was so serious, but something like that it was "good sportmanship" to "build the players' character"; and as if to prove this, a Gilman graduate would one day become Head of School of St. Paul's, whereas, in really real thermonuclear weapons reality (where both sides "played war games", but not with the other side), a former soldier in The Red Army☭ would not likely become President of the United States of America 
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Footnotes
- ↑ Associate Justice of The United States Supreme Court, Mrs. Amy Coney Barret, has asserted that having a mentally retarded child is a blessing. Is this ever or always true for the person themself and/or for others, such as their caregivers? Would she try to forcibly impose her opinion in this matter on other persons, for instance by preventing a woman from aborting a defective foetus? Be that as it may, what would she feel about and do with/to a gifted child, or would Mrs. Barret deny there can be any such thing as a gifted child? ~ In addition: To what extent is "mentally retarded" an accurate diagnosis: How many of these children are just delayed in achieving full mental maturity, and how many never do nor ever could?
Invenit et fecit