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In America today, it seems that people do not understand the separation of work and leisure. Weekends present many choices regarding the potential use of leisure time. It is interesting that many Americans choose to pursue activities that ultimately require the most exertion. The intensive, demanding work environment that most people are subjected to for a dominant portion of their waking life has fueled Americans work mentality on and off the job.
The time that should be occupied by quiet restful activities are instead used to engage in vigorous recreational pursuits, and household chores. Americans also use their free time to buy material goods. Acquiring more work is vital to this consumption. The concept of leisure in the mind of a moderate American is firstly influenced by the education a person gets.
The educational system that we have come to know and suffer under in this modern day has been a topic of discussion and debate since its creation. Aside from the boundaries of language, culture, or the political spectrum, the development of modern education has been witnessed throughout the world over. While the methods and practices of education vary as much as the people who enjoy it, the historical flow of education have led most societies along a similar path: the refinement of the human worker. The educational system that we are presented with today has been a progression spanning several centuries of human development. It is true that perhaps the focus and means of education has manifested itself into forms that teachers and students of last century or even within the last decade would find absurd, but modern education has become the human standard, or perhaps more accurately, an industry standard. The ways and means of education has changed as quickly as the world around us, bending to the inertia of our societies.
And so it is of no great surprise that the modern educational system has adapted so well to the post-industrial society we have made for ourselves. The pursuit of education for the sake of knowledge or personal betterment now seems like a novel idea, but in todays world it is not your personal character that lies at the heart of the matter, but rather your future position in the job market. In Common Culture, Witold Rybczynski and Juliet Schor both agree that Americans work more for greater consumption power, while using their limited leisure time to create more work for themselves. They both agree that great thing could be accomplish if more leisure time was available to the public. For many, free time is viewed as an opportunity to consume materialistic products for entertainment purposes, recreational endeavors and self fulfillment. Time away from work that is intended for relaxation, is converted in consumption time.
Both authors contend that Americans have invested designated leisure time and hard earned cash into expensive forms of entertainment and recreation. Costly types of entertainment include luxurious vacations, movies, and habitual shopping trips to the mall. For recreational fulfillment most Americans resort to the most expensive pastimes such as skiing and canoeing. Schor suggested alternatives to expensive entertainment such as trips to the park or adult education. She believed that excessive spending is often used as a means of filling a void, or fulfilling an identity.
Rybczynski revealed that Americans spend over 13 billion dollars on sports clothing a year. It is apparent that many people use fashion as a means to create a, fantasy self or improve self esteem. In order to live life more simply one must change their expectations which involves, understanding the psychological and cultural functions that material goods fulfill. In order to break away from the misleading notion that possessions determine self-worth, one must obtain an identity that is independent from possessions and assets. If this can be accomplished, less time could be spent working to consume and more time can be used toward leisureliness. Americans spend leisure time consuming.
Because more consumption requires more work time, citizens are in effect defeating the purpose of leisure time and creating a paradox. In a frenzied rush to aquire more material possessions, Americans are working more leaving little time for simple leisurely activities. Rybczynski claims that if given a choice, most people would choose the ability to consume over an increase in free time. For example in the sixties many women traded their quiet leisurely home life from more spending power. Today families in which both parents work full time jobs are more common than ever. Schor contends that, escaping the trap of overwork will also entail stepping off the consumer treadmill.
In order to make time for leisure, one must cut back on working hours and settle for the fundamentals of living. In one case an environmental planner who lived a moderately comfortable life decided to cut back on working hours and make time for leisure. To successfully achieve this goal, he had to accept a life without credit cards and high car payments. He found that living more simply entailed acquiring a different perspective on the role money played in his life. Many Americans use the weekend away from their job to create more work for themselves.
While some Americans use designated leisure time to work overtime, others exert themselves by completing household chores. Schor contends that, work itself has been eroding the ability to benefit from leisure time. It seems Americans can no longer draw a solid line between leisure and work. Because the time away from work is spent on exerting activities, it is difficult to benefit from the rest and relaxation a leisurely weekends offers. If workers were given more leisure time Schor predicts that it would be spent on volunteer work or schooling. For example at California Company, workers who were given more time away from work spent a majority of their time on household chores and volunteering in the community.
Another statistic revealed at Boston Corporations 20 percent of full time employees used their time off to fulfill educational interests. Rybczynski believes that Americans work on their time off out of a personal determination to do well or as a way to escape problems at home. Most fulltime employees work fifty hours of more a week and evidence shows that there are more compulsive workers today than ever before. The fact that Americans work off the job may be to fill a void that cannot be filled at work. Americans strive to do well in recreational activities to compensate for a sense accomplishment that is not met in the work place.
Recreational hobbies such as wood working and sailing are more meaningful types of work than a 9 to 5 job in a cubical. Rybczynski contends that the rise of technology has killed the sense of personal fulfillment that was associated with craftsmanship. Jobs that once required manual skill and intelligence have been taken over by computers and assembly lines. Therefore, Americans resort to recreational activities during leisure time to achieve personal satisfaction.
Rybczynski claims that sports which were once used for entertainment purposes in the 1950 s are now used to, develop skill and proficiency. Great things could be achieved if Americans took better advantage of their leisure time. Most Americans fail to understand that leisure time is an opportunity to be free from the duties and obligations of work. It is a time for effortless relaxation. Rybczynski believes that leisure should be used as a time to do nothing but contemplation, a chance to look inward rather than outward.
Because Americans spend most of this designated time working, they neglect valuable time which could be used to meditate and cultivate new ideas. Throughout history it has been the rich leisurely classes who wrote famous literature, and invented new innovations in science. Schor believed that a decrease in working hours and increase in leisure time would improve communities. Time away from work would be utilized by assisting churches, coaching local sports teams, and focuses on the welfare of children. Both agree that the increase of leisure time would ultimately improve the quality of life. Although there are many options as to how to spend leisure time most Americans neglect the most obvious one which is, to slow down, unwind, and recover from the ordeal of labor.
The policies of economic growth and modernization in the 1980 s made it possible to blur certain stratification's and to put an official end to "class struggle." Economic growth demands a certain amount of privatization, free enterprise and an opening to foreign investment. These developments have had as a corollary the erosion of various traditional class markers, the rapid weakening of the work unit as a management and identity structure, and the emergence of a new urban middle class with new values. Although the "Mao-style" class struggle is no longer the order of the day, another form of struggle is nevertheless taking place on the blurred frontiers of social relations; it is the struggle to obtain a symbolic and material capital which is entirely new on the Chinese market. This struggle is embodied in the jungle of the worlds of business and work but also on the periphery of production activities, on the waste ground of play and leisure which then become symbols of success. The reduction of the working week by a half day (down to five and a half! ) on the 1 st of March 1994, and then by another half day on the 1 st of May 1995 (the five day week) produced an increase in free time and a mini revolution in leisure habits. The diversification, westernization and computerization of activities offered to the Chinese since the 1980 s have really created a "leisure market", allowing the individual to relax "a la carte", but also to make his leisure activity a "symbol of success" and a "status marker" (to use Roger Sue's expressions once again).
Therein lies another of the functions of play, which is fundamental in contemporary urban China. We should not, therefore, worry too much, as do many Chinese analysts of the new trends in leisure, that these leisure activities are becoming impoverished, that traditions are disappearing, and that pleasures are becoming commercialized. Wiki, as the calm ambassador of a nonetheless vibrant China, in a double process of democratization and refinement, seems to us likely to go on holding sway for a long time. Words: 1721 Bibliography: Rybczynski, Witold, and Schor, Juliet (1995). Common Culture: Problems of Leisure. New York: New York, 1998.
Hansel, Tim. (1999). When I Relax I Feel Guilty. Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Co. Hendrichsen, Walter A. (1997). "Work and Leisure." Kenneth S.
Kantzer, ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Norden, Rudolph F. (1995). The New Leisure. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.
Pieper, Joseph. (1984). Leisure, The Basis of Culture. New York: Pantheon Books. Ryan, Leland. (1997). Work and Leisure.
Portland: Multnomah. Roger Sue, " Contribution a une sociologie historique du loser " ("Contribution to a historical sociology of leisure"), in Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, Vol. XCI, 1991
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