A short note on the importance of fun [Homo ludens]

Tyler Cowen has just interviewed economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie on a variety of topics:

...the economic impacts of historical pandemics, the “happy story” of the Black Death and why it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, the history of variolation and how entrepreneurs created vaccination franchises in 18th-century England, why local communities typically managed epidemics better than central authorities, the dastardly nature of medieval guilds, the European marriage pattern and its disputed contribution to economic growth, when sustained economic growth truly began in England, why the Dutch Republic stagnated despite its early success, whether she agrees with Greg Clark’s social mobility hypothesis, her experience and conducting “anthropological fieldwork” on English social customs, the communitarian norms she encountered while living in Germany...

It's all interesting. But, given my current interests, this passage caught my eye:

COWEN: Let’s say an 18-year-old, highly intelligent young woman comes to you. She’s moving to England; she might want to be a professor. What advice do you give to her? From America, let’s say.

OGILVIE: [...] I would say, and this is actually not just England-specific, but changing cultures. When I was 20, I went to live in Germany. I lived there, actually, for quite a long time while I was doing research for my doctorate.

When you initially go to a foreign place, whether it’s Germany — or later, I lived in the Czech Republic for a year — you won’t figure out right away what people in this culture do to feel comfortable and have fun. But you have to have the faith that they do have things that they do, and you need to learn what those things are that they do in this culture to be comfortable with one another and to have a great time.

The sooner you learn that, the happier you’ll be fitting into a new culture. I think that would be my general life advice to anyone who is moving to a new country. Find out what people do for fun, and then start doing it.

I suspect that there is more to that advice than the fact that fun is, well, fun. There's something deeper going on. It is not just that fun is a better way to pass the time than boredom or even work, but that it puts you more fundamentally touch with the people.