Meet
the Baining, an indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea who has the unusual
claim of being the most boring people on Earth:
According to [anthropologist Jane Fajans], the Baining eschew everything
that they see as “natural” and value activities and products
that come from “work,” which they view as the opposite of
play. Work, to them, is effort expended to overcome or resist the natural.
To behave naturally is to them tantamount to behaving as an animal.
The Baining say, “We are human because we work.” The tasks
that make them human, in their view, are those of turning natural products
(plants, animals, and babies) into human products (crops, livestock,
and civilized human beings) through effortful work (cultivation, domestication,
and disciplined childrearing).
The Baining believe, quite correctly, that play is the natural
activity of children, and precisely for that reason they do what they
can to discourage or prevent it. They refer to children’s play
as “splashing in the mud,” an activity of pigs, not appropriate
for humans. They do not allow infants to crawl and explore on their
own. When one tries to do so an adult picks it up and restrains it.
Beyond infancy, children are encouraged or coerced to spend their days
working and are often punished—sometimes by such harsh means as
shoving the child’s hand into the fire—for playing. On those
occasions when Fajans did get an adult to talk about his or her childhood,
the narrative was typically about the challenge of embracing work and
overcoming the shameful desire to play. Part of the reason the Baining
are reluctant to talk about themselves, apparently, derives from their
strong sense of shame about their natural drives and desires.
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