Where Has True Leisure Gone? Essay

Present-day American society is fast-paced and constantly moving forward. With so many things to do in such little time, busyness and stress seem to take over our lives. In “The ‘Busy Trap,’” Tim Kreider’s position as to why the audience should strive to avoid busyness is very well thought out, however, some of the points in the essay have faulty reasoning.

Leisure at the turn of the twentieth century was a new found type of freedom and entertainment, not only for the children, but for the entire family. It was a way for numerous families to spend quality time together but in a more modern and convenient way. Entertainment before the twentieth century consisted of household entertainment, such as board games, and “backyard games” like tennis, and football amongst others. When compared to leisure in the twentieth century, many of these activities were seen as “outdated”, as more and more people started to adopt the new ways of entertainment. Some examples were the openings of catalogs, sports, cinemas, amusement parks.

Pieper describes work and leisure from a unique perspective. He believes that work is a necessary part of life, but one that should not consume our every waking moment. Piper challenges our modern definition of work to show us that time away can be beneficial. The leisure that he references is not a period of just not doing anything. He argues that our time not consumed by our work should be devoted to philosophy and theology that enriches our lives. What the modern world uses as leisure, which is not thinking at all, is what Pieper would call being sloth. The time away from work is meant for personal and spiritual growth. Idleness robs our time as much as work, but leisure allows us to expand our horizons. Comparing Huxley's Brave NEw World

In the article “ The Busy Trap” Kreider tries to convince readers to chose time over money. He makes numerous points including how boasting about busyness takes the form of a complaint. He insults those who voluntarily take on obligations by remarking that they are obsessed with always being occupied. However, the basis for such a conclusion is founded on only a few examples of individuals who were negatively affected by the burden of work. In Kreider’s opinion it is wasteful to be busy all the time because life is too short to work more than 5 hours per day and not spend enough time in one’s happy place. What is your happy place? Picture it and stay there for a while letting your thoughts flow. Notice that your thinking becomes more positive and somewhat out of reach. Next, imagine a life with minimal stress that includes little to no work and much enjoyment; now you 're floating back to reality because that type of life is not in the grasps of most. Similarly, Kreider writes his article as if most people have plenty of time to waste, and to enjoy themselves, as he has. Kreider’s overall point that people keep themselves busy to escape the feelings of emptiness is both ignorant and a reflection of his narrow perspective of the world. His opinion that people feel apprehensive when not working, along with the fact that most people wouldn’t be content living the lifestyle Kreider is promoting, plus his support towards the propositions of full unemployment and a

To gain a better understanding of contemporary leisure, it helps to take a look at its origins during the

The table presents how many hours of leisure is invested yearly in Someland by some criteria as Watching TV/Videos, Socializing with 4 or less people, Socializing with 4 or more people, Individual exercise, Group exercise/sports and Cinema. Additionally, on the rows is possible to observe the evolution from Teens through decades until seniors age.

The social atmosphere surrounding the idea of work and the lack of leisure time is attributing a large unkindness to the society in which holds the values. That society is the American Society. Hamrick would explain that Americans have psychologically been trained to accept a growing need to be busy, and where once the word stress was foreign, now it is a part of every American’s vocabulary.

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,

When employed labor is involved, productivity in terms of time becomes important, because the employer generally pays the worker in terms of time. For many jobs, then a shift from task-orientation to timed labor occurs, as the laborer’s time becomes the employer’s money. Thus, a separation between work and leisure occurs, as

In Ian Frazier’s article called “In Praise of Margins,” the author argues that the whole world is “jammed” up, and that people need “Marginal” spaces and activities to gain relief from our hectic lives. People have to work to earn money, as said money, is used to pay for bills, food, and sometimes to earn even more money. It seems like people never have time to have fun or to be care-free. Frazier says that ”Marginal” activities are things that have no reason behind them like taking a stroll in the woods, or stepping on pieces of ice on the ground just to hear the crack beneath your feet. ”Marginal” activities are something that everyone should consider for their own daily lives because Frazier values both the creativity and the relief that come from “Marginal” activities. I must agree with Frazier, especially because “Marginal” activities can help people relax from their hectic lives. In my own experience, “Marginal” activities help me when I was still going to high school, it wasn’t tough, but I was overwhelmed at the large amount of work I had to do.

How does work and leisure correspond to the “good life?” Is there a formula, which if we follow, will lead us towards our own Atlantis? I believe there is. Aristotle’s view, that humans can shape their own habits, to create virtues, gives us a clear understanding of what is required to arrive at our desired destination. Virtues, particularly temperance, combined with hard work, innovation, and determination should shape how we think about work and leisure, in our pursuit of the “good life.”

What is exactly is leisure? My one and only question when I decided to enroll in a class dedicated to leisure, recreation, parks, and tourism. According to Chapter one in the book Pastimes: The Context of Contemporary Leisure, leisure is an intricate and dynamic concept with different meanings depending on the context. My initial reaction to reading the books definition of leisure was one of confusion. Looking deeper into the course reading, I saw the author dive deeper into the very broad and unexplained answer of what the definition of leisure was. One thing that clarified the definition and at the same time pushed myself further from a specific answer was what was stated in the first chapter. “Leisure is a complex concept that has

Work and leisure, these are two integral parts of human life, however there is much debate about which of them is more important as well as what the proper balance between them should be. Those such as Mike Rose and Nicholas Carr, in their articles “Blue Collar Brilliance” and “World and Screen” respectively, emphasis how the benefits of working, physically as well as mentally, are often forgotten. On the other side, however, Tim Freider in his work “The Busy Trap” contends that leisure is just as neglected in our fast paced world. Despite these seemingly different statements, these works share quite a lot on when looks just below the surface.

There are many reasons that this is considered to be a cause for concern. For example many societies consider leisure time as the most important time because they have the ability to unwind and do things that they need to get done in regards to their personal life. That’s why leisure activity is considered very important to most people. In the text book there is an example of what could possibly happen if leisure time was taken away and how that might increase the GDP because there would be more production of goods and services, but it would be offset by the loss from reduced leisure in regards to production and consumption. This is one primary example of the importance of leisure time when attempting to measure the economic well-being of a society or a nation. If leisure is not considered then some of the fundamental reasons a nation might be considered having more well-being than another nation is

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