In comparison to the past, with the help of modern machines and automation we do eight hours of work in four hours’ time; but, where have the other four hours gone?
I love sitting idle. At times a tea break runs into a couple of hours. It is not uncommon that my colleagues, seeing me sitting idle at the table after meals, out of courtesy, ask me, if you are done you may proceed. But I feel no hurry.
Engaging in work perhaps was the first sign of civilisation. People early on had already realised that work leads the world to progress; and makes them rich. Their just wealth was proportionate to the work that they had done. Work, of course, is the most tangible agent, of transformation. Perhaps, we also need other forces like, sound thinking and just practices. Consider any civilisation, community, society, family or individual who have transformed themselves; it’s undeniably through work -hard work. A lazy society or individual reaches nowhere.
The speed of work has increased with industrial development, mechanisation and automation. Comparing to the past, we do eight hours of work in four hours’ time with the help of machines; but where have the other four hours gone? Capitalism has robbed it away. Humans’ thirst for wealth has kept us slave to work. With the industrial development, mechanisation and automation one need not work so long as earlier. Every person working for four hours would be enough for the entire world to live contented.
People must have more time for leisure, thinking, reflection, and examining one’s life. People must have enough time to enjoy aesthetics. Aesthetics comes from the opposite word of anaesthesia (putting one’s senses to sleep). Aesthsia means to keep one’s senses open.
Institutions -religious, political and social- keep people busy with one activity after another, lest the followers begin to think by themselves. Proverbs like, Idle mind is the workshop of the devil, are the inventions of the ruling class. Thou shall not remain idle is a rule for the machines; and not for humans. Dignity of labour is a ploy by the privileged who have enough time to stare at the sky, sea, and contemplate. Capitalism and glorified institutions rob people of their leisure.
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| A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte |
French post-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat, with his pointillism art technique, has many works highlighting people in leisure. The most important of them all is, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, a 10-foot-wide canvas full of people by a water- front staring at the sky and water; and engaging in various leisure activities. His works of art lays stress on humans’ right to leisure.
What Is Leisure?
The line between work and leisure is fuzzy and problematic. Don’t some works provide leisure, and aren’t some leisure work? We may need more categories to figure out what leisure truly is. There is work which may be remunerated or non-remunerated and are laborious and tiring. There are non-laborious activities like, social gatherings, visits, spending time with one’s family, etc. though not laborious, are social obligations to fulfill, and therefore place stress on individuals. Leisure is beyond working for a living or fulfilling social obligations to fit into a social fabric. Leisure is a non-obligatory activity or non-activity. It is to maintain or stabilize in some way the physical or psychological state of the individual. Leisure has to be something that the individual chooses to do, without the burden of getting a result or fulfilling a societal obligation. Some do it by cutting themselves off from the outer world and withdraw to the solitude of one’s house. Others do it by leaving their houses and wandering away to distant places.
We are afraid of the idea of leisure because we only teach our young how to work and not how to practice leisure. Leisure is a personal thing, it is beyond the authoritarian laws and regulations. Leisure takes one away from the scrutiny of the taskmasters and leaders. That perhaps makes the ruling class afraid.
As individuals, we are often happy to masquerade ourselves with works that we do, make a show of the long hours of work we do, and prove ourselves socially adequate and acceptable. We make people value us high by our public activities. In fact what shapes us is not what we do when we are in a social group at a work place or worship place, but what we do when we are alone. It is not so much what we do when we are at work that makes us what we are, but what we do when we are at leisure.
Traveling Perhaps Is a Good Leisure
Humanity’s impulse to move, wander, travel out, kept them guessing and inventing ways; and the result was the wheel. Discovery of wheel has given wheels to the human dream to travel.
Move around from where we are, wander about from our ghettos: moving or wandering need not only be geographical, though that is important too, move, and wander away from our spiritual, intellectual stagnation points. That is where we meet the other. As Rosa Luxemburg, Polish activist and philosopher says, “Those who do not move do not notice their chains.” For the kind attention of the non-passengers, you are missing out on life.
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