Leisure in Modern Existence

When we observe the demographics of today¡¦s society, we notice that there is quite a change in the average age, as well as life expectancy. In 1993, the average life expectancy rose to an amazing 75.5 years, with women living an average of 79 years and men living an average of 72 years (Hawkins, 1996, p. 4). With this gradual rise in age, the idea of therapeutic recreation for the aging population has taken on a significant role. Therapeutic recreation uses recreation and leisure activities to meet the needs of people in order to improve their quality of life. These needs include social, physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual. The experience of engaging in recreation is perceived to have therapeutic benefits. Engaging in

Epicurus was a hedonist, a materialist and a consequentialist who strongly believed that in order to attain the good life one must live a pleasant existence free of worry and pain. Through reflection of the concepts in Epicurus’s Letter to Menoeceus this paper will

Epicureanism is a philosophy developed the teachings and ideals of a man named Epicurus. Epicureanism is defined by Epicurus as the pleasure for the end of all morality and that real pleasure is attained through a life of prudence, honor, and justice. Epicurus introduced this philosophy around 322 B.C, and two schools established in Athens. Epicurus taught the ethics of his philosophy in his school, that a person should live by "the art of making life happy", and that "prudence is the noblest part of philosophy"(newadvent.org). Epicurus ideals for life intrigued people and they began to think that perhaps the ethics of Epicureanism had some truth behind it; a person should live his/her life to the fullest in order to become happy. Epicurus

The principal Doctrines, are written by Epicurus who lived from 341B.C. to 270 B.C. His theory is hedonism, which is rooted in pleasure. The book speaks of pain as being only temporary, and that it is only a pleasure over pain (V). This is a way of life to see the pleasures that life offers are what Epicurus is saying. And although, “no Pleasure is a bad thing in itself,” The results of obtaining the pleasure can bring greater displeasures (VIII). He is looking for the most pleasures one can get, and I suppose if he was not happy with his job, that he would quit. I can see Epicurus, avoiding a lot of things within his life because they would bring pain and frustration, like driving in rush hour. The idea sounds like he is living the simple life, or a hermit’s life.

The world of work and the world of wonder are two worlds that play a prominent role in the lives of humans. In that sense they are commensurable to one another, yet at the same there there is a clear distinction between how the two worlds worlds operate that make them incommensurable. The purpose of this paper is to to argue that the world of work is incommensurable with the world of wonder in certain senses, but commensurable in others. This will be done by providing evidence from Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and works of Plato.

Socioeconomic status can significantly influence leisure participation. This is because an individual from lower socioeconomic status faces significant financial barriers while accessing leisure (Scott, 2013). It is evident from recent literature that low neighborhood socioeconomic status is a powerful predictor of poor long-term physical activity uptake in Myocardial infarction survivors (Gerber et al., 2011). Hence, leisure practioners must focus on developing programs for individuals with myocardial infarction living in a neighborhood with low socioeconomic status. This is because they are a vulnerable population and multiple structural access barriers prevent them from engaging in physical activity. It is evident that positive

Almost everyone has some kind of leisure time whether it is a couple hours or a couple days. What varies is the type of recreational activities people choose to do during that time. Although leisure and recreation is chosen based on ones unique individual interests, there are many sociocultural factors that influence the type of recreational activities we do, when we do it and how often we do it. These factors include political,

The three main social domains in life are work, leisure and home. Coincidentally, people generally spend most of their daily routine activities in these three social domains. Further evidence is presented in Szalai’s article in 1972 as on average Americans spend 16.26 hours of time per day at home, 1.38 hours on the streets or parks and 6.36 in other places (e.g. work). However, it should be noted that the numbers exhibited are from the year 1972 and are most definitely out-dated. In addition, these activities were re-balanced in the post-World War II era, as the focus shifted from household activities to activities in leisure and work domains. More women entered or returned to the work force, travel became cheaper and people spent more time

To Epicurus happiness was the same as pleasure. And pleasure was freedom from bodily pain and mental anguish. He lived a simple life, owning only two cloaks and only eating bread and olives. With the occasional slice of cheese for a treat. He believed desire was a form of pain and therefore should be eliminated, and thus one should be satisfied with the bare minimum of what is needed to be happy. Therefore, while it was not a life of many desires, it was filled with the only pleasures you would need to be happy. There was a certain joy he found, in pure existence. Today’s society could learn a thing or two from this philosophy, most of which being living simply. It was better to take pleasure in simple things, rather than to chase pleasure.

Epicurus’ theory on the means to a good life revolves around the notion that pleasure is the highest and greatest of all goods, therefore, in order to live a good life, one must direct their actions to gain the most pleasure possible and the least amount of pain. The abundance of pleasure over pain equates to a good life. In that same sense, one cannot have a good life without pleasure. The whole point of living a life is to have more of the actions that will give one the most amount of pleasure and reduce the actions that will give one less pleasure. Further, the theory will go on to state that actions that give one pain are to be avoided as much as possible. A sustainable and moderate amount of pleasure that is free from fear and full of tranquility. This is achieved through understanding physics, or the workings of the world, and the limits of our desires. The emphasis of pleasure and pain in Epicurus’ theory is in regards to mental pleasure and mental pain rather than their physical counterparts. Thus, a good life emphasizes actions that will give one a greater amount of mental pleasure. It is important to note that mental and physical pleasures are not mutually exclusive, therefore, physical pleasures will often provide mental pleasure. However, the assumption is that “great mental pleasure or pain has more influence on whether our life is happy or miserable than does physical pleasure or pain of equal duration” (20). In other words, Epicurus’ theory puts a much greater

The Recreation and Wellness Intranet Project is assigning from Manage Your Health, Inc. (MYH). This intranet project provides an application on the current Intranet to help employees improve their health.

Social lives start and finish with leisure activity. Leisure activity starts social lives because it generates the time that can be spent to engage in recreational time or leisure time. Furthermore, an individual’s activity does not have to be a group activity it can be a solo activity because when the individual is not with friends or families the activity that their doing will be because of a certain socio-cultural factor. Therefore, an individual will workout because of the gender identity and the double bind of masculinity. The reason for this is because most men will workout to change their appearance to become more masculine and powerful but are not suppose to care about their appearance.

Society needs to work on becoming more inclusive in general by being more accepting and respectful, rather than discriminatory, especially towards marginalized groups such as members of the LGBTQ community, non-white racial groups, and females. Even though Canada itself can be viewed as a culturally diverse and inviting place, and there are mandates in place that prohibit discrimination, individuals still continue to ignore these laws. A main reason why leisure needs of marginalized groups cannot be efficiently met is due to an underlying fear of discrimination. Society as a whole needs to realize that there are always going to be different types of people and identity groups participating in leisure, and that discrimination is a major factor as to why individuals refrain from participating in leisure activities.

There are two kinds of people in the work force. There are laborers and there are workers. The difference between these two types of people is that a worker enjoys his or her job while a laborer does not. To the laborer, his or her life is almost equivalent to a wage slave. For those laborers, there only escape is leisure time. This is essentially the opposite of their lives, a time where there is freedom and compulsion. To the worker, leisure time consist of enough rest so that they can do their jobs effectively. In the two ways that these two types of people enjoy their free time, how do we know which person spends their time better? I believe that a worker often spends his of her leisure time more productively than

At the beginning of this course leisure was a topic I did not give much thought to and I felt like I did not have the time to spare to put much thought into. To me, all leisure meant was having free time to do whatever it is that I wanted to do. But after analyzing my life I noticed that I had surrounded my life with solely work and school and my “free time” was anytime I spent watching television and anytime I slept. However, after taking this course I learned that leisure meant more much than that. Now leisure to me means, as Richard Kraus states, leisure is “time which is not devoted to work or work-connected responsibilities or to other forms of discretionary or unobligated time,” (Olson et al., 2003, 12). The “time” in which Kraus