The title of this essay is “The Discipline of Leisure” for a reason. Leisure requires discipline precisely because it involves personal liberty, and undisciplined liberty is not freedom but indecision and dissipation. We are free most free with some constraints, because by accepting them we create and preserve a clean, well-lighted territory (see Marc Herman How the Scots Made the Modern World for a good discussion of how property and territory contribute to identity) wherein we can act decisively and meaningfully, banishing uncertainty to the hinterlands, the dark edges of the world. “Here be Dragons” we print on maps of globe and psyche alike.
Leisure is freedom within constraint, the chaos within a determinate system. Anarchy, like entropy, is the dark without, the disorder of boundlessness. (Boulding, Von Bertalanffy, and other early figures in systems theory recognize the need for boundary). Leisure is iterative simple construction that results self-similar structures of high complexity; anarchy is self-similar only in that it levels all to an equally low state.
This essay is a work of leisure. As such, it will build a complex structure out of many simpler ones. I can’t do otherwise. I am no mathematician, and am only social scientist and philosopher in the broadest senses of those terms. Further, when the scope of the work covers the breadth of human endeavor, I couldn’t possibly master every discipline, or even the handful I use most heavily. This forces me to use simple, basic principles. In turn, this keeps the theory simple. Nothing about leisure is difficult to understand – it’s just difficult to see through the fog of convention.
It also means that some of my insights are speculative: I can make synthetic connections, but lack the expertise to rigorously establish them: I can see how some high-powered math could be used to model these ideas, I can’t do those kinds of math. I can call attention to the need or opportunity for mathematical investigation, and can argue by analogy from known principles, but no more. In other words, I lack depth – and not just in mathematics, but in most every field I venture into. Instead, mine is the sideways depth of breadth. This always courts the charge of being dilettante, but this allegation is like half of an argument between a far-sighted man and a near-sighted one about who has the better vision. Johann Huzinga put my position best:
The reader of these pages should not look for detailed documentation of every word. In treating of the general problems of culture one is constantly obliged to undertake predatory incursions into provinces not sufficiently explored by the raider himself. To fill in all the gaps in my knowledge beforehand was out of the question for me. I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write.
To quote Vonnegut, “So it goes.” To paraphrase my favorite economist and virtual mentor Joan Robinson, I could either think or do math. And I prefer to think. By circumstance and habit I do so alone. As Keynes noted in the preface to his General Theory, this has its risks. It has costs too, one of which is the inefficiency of wheel-reinvention. As an undergraduate I “invented” the concept of evolutionary progress through the dialectic process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis (if memory serves my terms were premise-contradiction-reconciliation and I argued a latent misunderstanding of this explained the harmful concept of original sin). Some months later I learned that Hegel beat me to the punch by a century or so. This took some wind from my sails for a bit (and a good thing too, for I was insufferable, I’m sure) but it also gave me great confidence. If I could reason from first principles and arrive at the same conclusions as a historical figure, I had to have something on the ball. Since then, I’ve not been shy about thinking on my own.
I gladly bear the cost of duplicating the efforts of others independently for two reasons. First, doing so lets me bring my own vocabulary and grammar to an issue. This isn’t to celebrate ignorance, but to admit the power of both fresh perspective and vested interest: bridges, gaps, and barriers obscured by the shade of professional edifices simply aren’t noticed except by lone wanderer at ground level.
Second, when I run across a thinker who has anticipated me, it’s like running into an old friend – or sometimes first-sight infatuation. When I discover a predecessor-in-thought after the fact, I don’t it see so much as missed opportunity for labor savings as confirmation that I’m on the right track. For this lone thinker, such validation is nearly priceless. After all, when reconsidering staples of conventional understanding in isolation, a fellow wonders just how sane or silly his effort may be. In such an environment, even diametric opposition is valuable so long as it reputable, for it provides a logical connection to society at large. The more boundaries you break, the stronger this applies. Also, anything which has been profitably discussed once is likely to bear opposition well – Hegel would know.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Recreation Defined
What is recreation, as distinct from leisure?
Recreation is our tertiary human capital after investment, after our job (primary), and leisure (secondary). Recreation is third not because we invest less of our human capital in it, but because its rate of return is lower. Together, the subordinate investments of leisure and recreation diversify our human capital portfolio in the same way risky high-growth stocks and safe municipal bonds diversify the blue chip heart of the small investor’s financial portfolio. Like that investor, we diversify to minimize our risk exposure, while trying to maximize our gain within the constraints of a diversification strategy.
Safety comes at a cost -- we could get a higher return by putting all our eggs into one basket, but this risks bankruptcy should that investment fail. The recent Wall Street scandal provides numerous examples of what can happen when investors abandon prudence to chase high returns. When the investments are of human capital instead of financial capital, going bust means the loss of identity, which risks insanity. To the extent that social human capital is differentially invested in one activity instead of a healthy diversified range of vehicles (family, friends, organizations, causes, etc), this risk is realized. To avoid bankruptcy or even the perception of its risk, we bear the cost of searching out, making, and monitoring several separate investments rather than efficiently tending to one. This allows the constraints of diversification to be seen as necessary redundancy in human capital investment.
In turn, this raises the question of why we need to protect against the loss of human capital. After all, isn’t human capital just the knowledge, skill, and ability we bring to our job? In a word, no. Human capital is much more complex: we have biologic, social, and psychological human capital, all contributing to our sense of self. This is as true for the individual as for any size or level of organization. We protect that identity by diversifying our human capital portfolio. (This is important to a better understanding of leadership as structural leadership is diversified; personality-based leadership is not, making the identity of the organization dependent on that of the leader). Consider how much identity we invest in our job, how frequently define ourselves by job title. Consider the impact of job loss, and not to psyche alone, but to the social life of the unemployed, as well as to the body. If you don’t work, you don’t eat; if you don’t eat, you die. There are impoverished, famine-plagued nations where this happens all too often, but it happens in America too.
Some might say we bear the costs of diversification out of instinct – we are social animals and cannot help making recreational investments in friends and family, nor avoid the tax of subsistence activity (job) on our lifetime. This is part of the picture, but not all of it. While this view allows for biologic investigation of economic activity, it neglects both leisure and recreation, leaning too heavily on the determinate elements of existence at the expense of the indeterminate ones.
Safety comes at a cost -- we could get a higher return by putting all our eggs into one basket, but this risks bankruptcy should that investment fail. The recent Wall Street scandal provides numerous examples of what can happen when investors abandon prudence to chase high returns. When the investments are of human capital instead of financial capital, going bust means the loss of identity, which risks insanity. To the extent that social human capital is differentially invested in one activity instead of a healthy diversified range of vehicles (family, friends, organizations, causes, etc), this risk is realized. To avoid bankruptcy or even the perception of its risk, we bear the cost of searching out, making, and monitoring several separate investments rather than efficiently tending to one. This allows the constraints of diversification to be seen as necessary redundancy in human capital investment.
In turn, this raises the question of why we need to protect against the loss of human capital. After all, isn’t human capital just the knowledge, skill, and ability we bring to our job? In a word, no. Human capital is much more complex: we have biologic, social, and psychological human capital, all contributing to our sense of self. This is as true for the individual as for any size or level of organization. We protect that identity by diversifying our human capital portfolio. (This is important to a better understanding of leadership as structural leadership is diversified; personality-based leadership is not, making the identity of the organization dependent on that of the leader). Consider how much identity we invest in our job, how frequently define ourselves by job title. Consider the impact of job loss, and not to psyche alone, but to the social life of the unemployed, as well as to the body. If you don’t work, you don’t eat; if you don’t eat, you die. There are impoverished, famine-plagued nations where this happens all too often, but it happens in America too.
Some might say we bear the costs of diversification out of instinct – we are social animals and cannot help making recreational investments in friends and family, nor avoid the tax of subsistence activity (job) on our lifetime. This is part of the picture, but not all of it. While this view allows for biologic investigation of economic activity, it neglects both leisure and recreation, leaning too heavily on the determinate elements of existence at the expense of the indeterminate ones.
Functionally, recreation differs from leisure in that whereas leisure is about expanding the self, recreation is about consolidating it. Too much leisure, and we tend toward idiosyncrasy, through eccentricity, and finally to insanity. Too much recreation and we stagnate, stultify, and ossify. Recreation balances leisure while creating a basis for leisurely exploration. Leisure balances recreation while developing new skills that can be enjoyed repetitively for the simple pleasure of doing something well. Recreation is comfort ritual; leisure is discovery play. Each has its pleasures. In this, both are distinct from work, with which they share only inherent risk.
Leisure Defined
Leisure Defined
Leisure is evolutionary, iterative discovery play that functions as an alternative investment vehicle for human capital. Leisure investments are made according to personal utility, with the desired returns of excellence, power, and liberty.
What does that mean? First, leisure is play. This meets the tests of experience, common sense and everyday language. Second, leisure is particular type of play – discovery play – implying that learning occurs through this play, and that there is another type or class of play to which leisure doesn’t belong. We’ll call this other sort of play “recreation”, and define it to be comfort play. The difference is that the discovery play of leisure is daring, self-expansive learning, while the comfort play of recreation is safe, self-affirming ritual. Third, because it includes multiple rounds (iterations), leisure is a process, a means to achieve an outcome. Fourth, there is a feedback loop, or this sort of sequential play wouldn’t be evolutionary in the sense that something learned in one round is accounted for and used in the next. This meets a second test of common sense, as feedback is a necessary element for any learning process.
Next, this playful sort of learning represents human capital investment. We might inquire what human capital is precisely, but conceiving of education (i.e. the learning process) as an investment is no stretch. Learning to ride a bicycle is a simple example of how we invest human capital in the discovery play of leisure to achieve some degree of excellence, power, and freedom: excellence of balance, power of autonomy, freedom of movement. The idea of employing capital in an investment is clear, as is the prudence of a diversified portfolio. Leisure is a secondary or alternative investment because our job is our primary human capital investment. This meets another plain language test, as it says that leisure is what we do when we’re not working. It begs the question of what work is – but also implies that whatever work is, it isn’t play. As we’ll see, this is no trivial distinction, however common-sense it may seem.
With its opening phrase, the second sentence of the definition gives us that crucial piece of the puzzle so far as understanding leisure is concerned: investment in leisure is made on the basis of personal utility. As previously noted, this means what is leisure for me isn’t necessarily leisure for you, and that there is no category or class of activity that necessarily is or isn’t leisure. You may love travel and hate gardening, seeing digging as work, not play; I may have opposing views and we’re both still right about what is or isn’t leisurely behavior. But there is more to it still because what’s leisure is so at that moment only, as personal utility is subject to change. Tomorrow, the gloss worn off, what was leisure may be work; contrariwise, dreary practice may morph into to newfound leisure. You may love traveling until you’ve been on the road for several weeks; I may take that long get my sea legs before coming to appreciate the charms of living light and loose. These changes in perspective may occur over the course of seconds, days, weeks, months, or years. They can fluctuate on a short time scale, but be stable over the long haul, as this is the lowest level or fractal root of the economic cycles, the micro- basis for macro effects.
The back half of the second sentence packs leisure’s punch. This is what leisure, Aristotle’s arête, is all about: excellence, power, and freedom. Excellence in any endeavor brings power; freedom follows. It’s that simple. We hear and say it all the time: you get out of an activity in proportion to what you put into it. Commit to the practice, and you can succeed. We even celebrate this idea in a jazz lyric “Nice work if you can get it, and you can get if you try”. That lyric sums up this essay. Leisure is where we find it, even at work. If matching leisure with power seems odd, consider how many celebrities have traded on celebrity status to obtain liberties beyond those of the average citizen? Better, consider the number of movie stars – professional players -- who have excelled in their field, and traded on that excellence in the power-fields of politics and public opinion. Here is Aristotle’s eudemonia. Evidence of link between leisure and power through excellence is right before our eyes. We only need look.
Having seen what leisure is, next time we’ll look at recreation.
Leisure is evolutionary, iterative discovery play that functions as an alternative investment vehicle for human capital. Leisure investments are made according to personal utility, with the desired returns of excellence, power, and liberty.
What does that mean? First, leisure is play. This meets the tests of experience, common sense and everyday language. Second, leisure is particular type of play – discovery play – implying that learning occurs through this play, and that there is another type or class of play to which leisure doesn’t belong. We’ll call this other sort of play “recreation”, and define it to be comfort play. The difference is that the discovery play of leisure is daring, self-expansive learning, while the comfort play of recreation is safe, self-affirming ritual. Third, because it includes multiple rounds (iterations), leisure is a process, a means to achieve an outcome. Fourth, there is a feedback loop, or this sort of sequential play wouldn’t be evolutionary in the sense that something learned in one round is accounted for and used in the next. This meets a second test of common sense, as feedback is a necessary element for any learning process.
Next, this playful sort of learning represents human capital investment. We might inquire what human capital is precisely, but conceiving of education (i.e. the learning process) as an investment is no stretch. Learning to ride a bicycle is a simple example of how we invest human capital in the discovery play of leisure to achieve some degree of excellence, power, and freedom: excellence of balance, power of autonomy, freedom of movement. The idea of employing capital in an investment is clear, as is the prudence of a diversified portfolio. Leisure is a secondary or alternative investment because our job is our primary human capital investment. This meets another plain language test, as it says that leisure is what we do when we’re not working. It begs the question of what work is – but also implies that whatever work is, it isn’t play. As we’ll see, this is no trivial distinction, however common-sense it may seem.
With its opening phrase, the second sentence of the definition gives us that crucial piece of the puzzle so far as understanding leisure is concerned: investment in leisure is made on the basis of personal utility. As previously noted, this means what is leisure for me isn’t necessarily leisure for you, and that there is no category or class of activity that necessarily is or isn’t leisure. You may love travel and hate gardening, seeing digging as work, not play; I may have opposing views and we’re both still right about what is or isn’t leisurely behavior. But there is more to it still because what’s leisure is so at that moment only, as personal utility is subject to change. Tomorrow, the gloss worn off, what was leisure may be work; contrariwise, dreary practice may morph into to newfound leisure. You may love traveling until you’ve been on the road for several weeks; I may take that long get my sea legs before coming to appreciate the charms of living light and loose. These changes in perspective may occur over the course of seconds, days, weeks, months, or years. They can fluctuate on a short time scale, but be stable over the long haul, as this is the lowest level or fractal root of the economic cycles, the micro- basis for macro effects.
The back half of the second sentence packs leisure’s punch. This is what leisure, Aristotle’s arête, is all about: excellence, power, and freedom. Excellence in any endeavor brings power; freedom follows. It’s that simple. We hear and say it all the time: you get out of an activity in proportion to what you put into it. Commit to the practice, and you can succeed. We even celebrate this idea in a jazz lyric “Nice work if you can get it, and you can get if you try”. That lyric sums up this essay. Leisure is where we find it, even at work. If matching leisure with power seems odd, consider how many celebrities have traded on celebrity status to obtain liberties beyond those of the average citizen? Better, consider the number of movie stars – professional players -- who have excelled in their field, and traded on that excellence in the power-fields of politics and public opinion. Here is Aristotle’s eudemonia. Evidence of link between leisure and power through excellence is right before our eyes. We only need look.
Having seen what leisure is, next time we’ll look at recreation.
What Is Leisure, Really?
What is leisure? The answer seems obvious: it’s what you do when you’re not working. But that’s a negative definition. What is leisure, really? What are its essential characteristics?
An initial response might be that leisure is like rest, something quiet and sedate, like lounging in a hammock, reading or working a crossword puzzle. Maybe leisure is more to do with pace than type of activity, so it could be unhurried activity like gardening too. But what about faster paced pursuits like jogging or water-skiing -- surely those are leisure? If so, why not a trip to the bowling alley, the ballpark, or the racetrack? If so, so much for quiet and sedate.
Further, does the kind of racetrack matter – horse track or NASCAR? How is playing baseball or the piano different for the little leaguer or amateur than it is for the professional major-league player or musician? Which is more leisurely, playing music or listening to it? Is bowling alone (see Putnam, Bowling Alone) leisure, or are teams and leagues required? Were Aristotle and Veblen right to introduce the idea of class into the discussion of leisure, and if so, how does it affect our thoughts? Is the jazz I prefer at low volume on my screen porch any more leisurely than the hard rock my neighbor blasts in his back yard? Though we drink the same brand of beer, is there a leisurely difference between the one I sip on my porch, and the twelve or more my neighbor pounds every weekend? Does brand or expense matter – is my single malt Scotch more or less leisurely than his cheap whiskey? Is a mixed drink more leisurely than a shot? Is drinking wine innately more leisurely than drinking beer or spirits? If so, where does box wine fit in?
The error here – and there is a grievous error – lies in the initial question: what is the essence of leisure. There is no such essence. Leisure is not a category of activity or a particular quality of action or existence. Leisure is where you find it, even at work. It is utility-based; material does not affect it, nor does the nature of the pursuit. What’s leisure for you may not be for me, and vice-versa. It’s that simple. This means that leisure is not the province of any socio-economic class. It is accessible to anyone. Your wine and my beer are equivalent – as they should be, for they are physical substances, and how either one of us appreciates either one of them is decided individually. You don’t get to decide for me, nor I for you. The rub, here, is that we still don’t know what leisure is. In the next post, we’ll define it.
An initial response might be that leisure is like rest, something quiet and sedate, like lounging in a hammock, reading or working a crossword puzzle. Maybe leisure is more to do with pace than type of activity, so it could be unhurried activity like gardening too. But what about faster paced pursuits like jogging or water-skiing -- surely those are leisure? If so, why not a trip to the bowling alley, the ballpark, or the racetrack? If so, so much for quiet and sedate.
Further, does the kind of racetrack matter – horse track or NASCAR? How is playing baseball or the piano different for the little leaguer or amateur than it is for the professional major-league player or musician? Which is more leisurely, playing music or listening to it? Is bowling alone (see Putnam, Bowling Alone) leisure, or are teams and leagues required? Were Aristotle and Veblen right to introduce the idea of class into the discussion of leisure, and if so, how does it affect our thoughts? Is the jazz I prefer at low volume on my screen porch any more leisurely than the hard rock my neighbor blasts in his back yard? Though we drink the same brand of beer, is there a leisurely difference between the one I sip on my porch, and the twelve or more my neighbor pounds every weekend? Does brand or expense matter – is my single malt Scotch more or less leisurely than his cheap whiskey? Is a mixed drink more leisurely than a shot? Is drinking wine innately more leisurely than drinking beer or spirits? If so, where does box wine fit in?
The error here – and there is a grievous error – lies in the initial question: what is the essence of leisure. There is no such essence. Leisure is not a category of activity or a particular quality of action or existence. Leisure is where you find it, even at work. It is utility-based; material does not affect it, nor does the nature of the pursuit. What’s leisure for you may not be for me, and vice-versa. It’s that simple. This means that leisure is not the province of any socio-economic class. It is accessible to anyone. Your wine and my beer are equivalent – as they should be, for they are physical substances, and how either one of us appreciates either one of them is decided individually. You don’t get to decide for me, nor I for you. The rub, here, is that we still don’t know what leisure is. In the next post, we’ll define it.
Why Listen to Me?
Who am I to hold forth on leisure, especially if it as fundamental as I insist? I am not any sort of scientist, in or out of academia, nor do I have an advanced degree. With a master’s degree in human resource management and a blue-collar job, I like to call myself an applied philosopher, though most would identify me by my job title: firefighter. What’s important, however, is not my label, but my actions. I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to live a philosophy, pursuing an integrated life where actions are consistent with ideals.
If this blog is worth reading, it’s because I’ve bet my whole life on its contents. I just haven’t thought through some of the problems that conventional ideas of leisure contain, I’ve lived them. In fact, I’m still living out the consequences of some earlier, not-so-wise decisions. Change is possible, but the costs are too high for the moment, especially the moral costs. Among other things, this book is an attempt to save others the trouble of repeating my mistakes.
Also, I don’t come to leisure unprepared. I graduated from a leading program at the top of my class. As an older, full-time graduate student, I was working a 56 hour/week job, leading contract negotiations as union president, and filling the roles of husband, father of three toddlers, and home-remodeler. When I completed graduate school, I was ready for a break and I took one. I hung the hammock my girls gave me for father’s day on the porch I’d just built, cracked a beer, and started contemplating the idea of leisure with my feet in the breeze. I started reading about leisure, and the more I read, the less I was satisfied with proffered explanations. I took a stab at a definition, didn’t like where it lead, and tried again. Time and again I tried and failed to live up to my own words, and this is how I arrived at the idea of pathologies of leisure – ideas that lead to undesirable social outcomes.
I didn’t usually walk these blind alleys all the way to their end – after a point I could make out the wall in the distance, but even if I learned to avoid breaking my nose by walking fast around blind corners, each false start had real costs in time and energy. It had emotional costs too: I learned through long practice to sacrifice comfortable assumptions with dispatch, and get on with productive thinking and living. The process changed me. I think and hope it can change you too, because improving our understanding of leisure opens whole new avenues for its appreciation, and so the enjoyment and productive use of life. If that appeals, listen to me. If not, this isn’t the book for you, at least not now. Either way, fare thee well.
If this blog is worth reading, it’s because I’ve bet my whole life on its contents. I just haven’t thought through some of the problems that conventional ideas of leisure contain, I’ve lived them. In fact, I’m still living out the consequences of some earlier, not-so-wise decisions. Change is possible, but the costs are too high for the moment, especially the moral costs. Among other things, this book is an attempt to save others the trouble of repeating my mistakes.
Also, I don’t come to leisure unprepared. I graduated from a leading program at the top of my class. As an older, full-time graduate student, I was working a 56 hour/week job, leading contract negotiations as union president, and filling the roles of husband, father of three toddlers, and home-remodeler. When I completed graduate school, I was ready for a break and I took one. I hung the hammock my girls gave me for father’s day on the porch I’d just built, cracked a beer, and started contemplating the idea of leisure with my feet in the breeze. I started reading about leisure, and the more I read, the less I was satisfied with proffered explanations. I took a stab at a definition, didn’t like where it lead, and tried again. Time and again I tried and failed to live up to my own words, and this is how I arrived at the idea of pathologies of leisure – ideas that lead to undesirable social outcomes.
I didn’t usually walk these blind alleys all the way to their end – after a point I could make out the wall in the distance, but even if I learned to avoid breaking my nose by walking fast around blind corners, each false start had real costs in time and energy. It had emotional costs too: I learned through long practice to sacrifice comfortable assumptions with dispatch, and get on with productive thinking and living. The process changed me. I think and hope it can change you too, because improving our understanding of leisure opens whole new avenues for its appreciation, and so the enjoyment and productive use of life. If that appeals, listen to me. If not, this isn’t the book for you, at least not now. Either way, fare thee well.
Why Study Leisure?
The story of leisure is the history of civilization. As the basis of culture (see Pieper), leisure underlies all philosophy, art, and science. Its understanding therefore requires a systems approach capable of linking philosophy, economics, biology, psychology, anthropology, mathematics, and more. It also means that leisure’s application touches every human endeavor. This doesn’t mean we need to be experts in every field to improve our appreciation of leisure, only that we be willing to radically reconsider of our everyday notions of work and leisure, and therefore of reality.
Content with the world as it is, the reader may ask, “Why bother?” There are two good reasons. First, understanding leisure in an interdisciplinary way can help us frame the problems of any single discipline more constructively, relating them to other branches of study, and so helping find innovative solutions to the problems of the world as it is. Second, if people better understand the rules of the economic game they are playing, they may make better decisions, live better lives, and so create a better world. As this sounds rather pie-in-the-sky, like something out of a Miss America speech, let me be provocative: all of economics is but part of leisure’s compass. Homo ludens (see Huzinga) plays with economic ideas until they make enough sense for Homo economis to buy and employ. Marxism is pathology of leisure, both economically and philosophically. Between Aristotle and Dewey, to the small extent it addresses leisure, most philosophy is pathology too; since Dewey, the same. Veblen noted the illness, but little more. We can no longer afford these misunderstandings, as poor human capital management puts civilization itself at risk. We study leisure to save ourselves.
What do I mean by all that? How exactly is civilization at risk? How can those other assertions be true, and who am I to say? Answering those questions is the point of this book – and it’s a long book. It’s long because there is more packed into the idea of leisure than meets the eye. Unpacking it will require lots of simple steps: take the item out of the pack, turn and put it neatly on the shelf, turn back and repeat. That’s more or less the plan of this book.
My appreciation of leisure came through a step-by-step process -- many of them backwards – that led me a bit off the beaten path. My goal is to walk the reader through that process with minimal back-tracking. Like a guide who works day-hikers up a mountain so that they can appreciate the view, I’ll save the scenic byways for the trip down. There will plenty of necessary switchbacks on the path up, and plenty of tempting side trails too, but those must wait or like most aspirants, we’ll never summit. Such is the discipline of leisure. As for the fog-shrouded summit that’s our goal, it’s easily approached by this common-sense route: leisure is where you find it. But to scale the final promontory we have to defy the gravity of seeming contradiction: even if you find it at work. How that can be, what it implies, and what it reveals – including unexpected threats to civilization – we'll explore in this blog.
Content with the world as it is, the reader may ask, “Why bother?” There are two good reasons. First, understanding leisure in an interdisciplinary way can help us frame the problems of any single discipline more constructively, relating them to other branches of study, and so helping find innovative solutions to the problems of the world as it is. Second, if people better understand the rules of the economic game they are playing, they may make better decisions, live better lives, and so create a better world. As this sounds rather pie-in-the-sky, like something out of a Miss America speech, let me be provocative: all of economics is but part of leisure’s compass. Homo ludens (see Huzinga) plays with economic ideas until they make enough sense for Homo economis to buy and employ. Marxism is pathology of leisure, both economically and philosophically. Between Aristotle and Dewey, to the small extent it addresses leisure, most philosophy is pathology too; since Dewey, the same. Veblen noted the illness, but little more. We can no longer afford these misunderstandings, as poor human capital management puts civilization itself at risk. We study leisure to save ourselves.
What do I mean by all that? How exactly is civilization at risk? How can those other assertions be true, and who am I to say? Answering those questions is the point of this book – and it’s a long book. It’s long because there is more packed into the idea of leisure than meets the eye. Unpacking it will require lots of simple steps: take the item out of the pack, turn and put it neatly on the shelf, turn back and repeat. That’s more or less the plan of this book.
My appreciation of leisure came through a step-by-step process -- many of them backwards – that led me a bit off the beaten path. My goal is to walk the reader through that process with minimal back-tracking. Like a guide who works day-hikers up a mountain so that they can appreciate the view, I’ll save the scenic byways for the trip down. There will plenty of necessary switchbacks on the path up, and plenty of tempting side trails too, but those must wait or like most aspirants, we’ll never summit. Such is the discipline of leisure. As for the fog-shrouded summit that’s our goal, it’s easily approached by this common-sense route: leisure is where you find it. But to scale the final promontory we have to defy the gravity of seeming contradiction: even if you find it at work. How that can be, what it implies, and what it reveals – including unexpected threats to civilization – we'll explore in this blog.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Before we get started, buyer beware. This blog is explores a theory of leisure. My other blog, The View from Bogota, is about applied leisure, and is a bunch of essays and observations on diverse topics, from blackberry picking to poetry. This blog, on the hand, delivers a theory of leisure based on human capital economics and investment strategy. I think its terribly interesting stuff. You may not. Invest your time and human capital accordingly.
A note on footnotes: there aren't any. This began as an effort to reconcile Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class" with Huzinga's "Homo Ludens" and Pieper's "Leisure, Basis of Culture". Along the way I found memes, evolutionary biology & sociobiology, fractals, systems theory, all sorts of things, most of which were necessary to . A life time worth of reading contributed to my theory, and like Huzinga, I'd rather write than cite. I haven't found anything like this in the literature on leisure, though Steffens and his serious play comes close. Like Joan Robinson (another hero of mine), I'd rather think than do math, so this a work of conceptual, not mathematical economics.
I continue to learn. I've read some Fouccault and know I need to read more. But its always like that. Read a little, reveal some ignorance, read to solve that, reveal a little more. Makes a guy wonder about education. In any case, if I waited to write until I'd done all the reading I should, I'd never write a word. This was Huzinga's point too. So for better or worse, off we go. Before we go any further, I need to take a nap. That's applied leisure, so I deal with it elsewhere. More later.
A note on footnotes: there aren't any. This began as an effort to reconcile Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class" with Huzinga's "Homo Ludens" and Pieper's "Leisure, Basis of Culture". Along the way I found memes, evolutionary biology & sociobiology, fractals, systems theory, all sorts of things, most of which were necessary to . A life time worth of reading contributed to my theory, and like Huzinga, I'd rather write than cite. I haven't found anything like this in the literature on leisure, though Steffens and his serious play comes close. Like Joan Robinson (another hero of mine), I'd rather think than do math, so this a work of conceptual, not mathematical economics.
I continue to learn. I've read some Fouccault and know I need to read more. But its always like that. Read a little, reveal some ignorance, read to solve that, reveal a little more. Makes a guy wonder about education. In any case, if I waited to write until I'd done all the reading I should, I'd never write a word. This was Huzinga's point too. So for better or worse, off we go. Before we go any further, I need to take a nap. That's applied leisure, so I deal with it elsewhere. More later.
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