06-13-2019, 06:59 AM
(06-12-2019, 08:07 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:(06-11-2019, 02:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(06-11-2019, 10:26 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: Do any of you think we will ever see that society of increased leisure we were, some half century ago, all bur promised?
We got the forty-hour workweek as the result of the Great Depression. There just wasn't enough work to go around with the fifty-hour workweeks of the 1920s.
With manufacturing and computer-organized clerical work we can work far fewer hours and achieve just as much.
Actually at least the eight-hour day concept was won toward the end of the 19th century with events such as the Haymarket and Pullman riots.
Left-leaning radicals were always ahead of the social curve in those days. Eight hours of heavy physical labor is more exhausting than eight hours of not-so-strenuous work.
Quote:Weekends though were a byproduct of the Great Depression as a cost-saving measure, but first it was a five and a half hour workweek with mostly half days on Saturdays. Full weekends didn't become commonplace until around the 1960s.
Cost-saving, sure... but revenue resulting from weekend work was not so readily available. In any event, the overtime premium made Saturday work less justifiable unless there was a boom in manufacturing demand (think of World War II requirements for military equipment).
Quote:Might be worth discussing why so many can't seem to try to stay grounded and find balance and calm in their lives.
Illiberal education grounded entirely in 'business' topics, or even in excessive specialization at the undergraduate level? Undergraduate education has become a watered-down grad school in most universities. The idea of college was to improve a youth, broaden his exposure to areas of intellectual curiosity, and give some respect for the slow progress of Humanity in making a better world. Since about 1980, college education has been mostly about preparing people for jobs. Youth rarely learn that there is more than pop culture, easily accessible and shrewdly marketed (yes, pop culture is as much a commodity as is rice or gasoline) with few alternatives readily available.
Pop culture, to put it tamely, is practically engineered for appreciation by people of low-normal intelligence -- whether in music, television, movies, or mass art. (I can say much the same about religion, politics, and advertising, which may explain why someone heavily involved in the creation of mass low culture could become President. No, I am not discussing Ronald Reagan, the peak of whose film career coincided with the Golden Age of American cinema, when the creative activity had to operate on several different levels of sophistication at once).
Pop culture is mere entertainment, and it does not enrich life. It is at most a pastime. The less that one thinks, the more one tolerates it. But today, thought is itself a subversive activity even if the objective is to simply enrich life and expand one's intellectual universe. Note that classical music that demands attention, learning, curiosity, and patience has practically disappeared from places that still sell recorded music. (OK, entities like Wal*Mart and Target are hardly intellectual paradises, and they have undercut the music retailer). It is far easier to market rock, country, or even religious music. An intelligent person can easily tire of mass culture, but if he has no idea of where to search for better, then what can he do? Buy more or 'better' stuff?
Quote:As far as the second line goes, we have clearly gone in the opposite direction despite increased productivity as a society-wide "I don't have time" syndrome kicked in during the mid-1980s and hasn't really let up since, hence increased demand for things such as food delivery.
We need to allocate time for humanizing our lives. We may not need the opera, but good reason exists for Turandot or Brahms' second piano concerto taking much more time than the latest pop tune. And that is only music. Sure, most people are lazy, and if they got more time off the job with similar pay they would wallow in mass low culture or even in such bilge as pornography. On the other side, more free time means more responsibility for entertaining oneself and filling a gap of structure that bosses impose. Work can be less scary, as one can do much work with little thinking.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.