Work for Leisure, or Leisure for Work?

Please answer the question:

Do you (a) work to allow yourself leisure time, or (b) take leisure time in order to work?

Here's some background on Time, Leisure, Work and a whole lot else....

Many experts believe that until we become more conscious of the pace at which we live, we will never be able to slow down and control our pace. The first step in awareness begins with the realization that clocks, and their mechanical approach to organizing time, are a relatively recent experience in the human story. The first clocks appeared in the 13th century medieval towers and only had one hand. These clock towers were simply used as signaling devices, primarily calling people to work and special events. With only an hour hand or the position of the sun, people regulated their affairs by more organic cycles such as the sun, moon, seasons, or their own personal events.

The widespread use of clocks coincided with the emergence of industrial society and its need for precision timing. Suddenly, officials of the new order challenged the leisurely pace which began with the Greek's adoration of leisure and play and extended to the idyllic and festival filled life of the Medieval peasant and townspeople. Plato and Aristotle saw work as a means and play as the end. They felt you could learn more about a person in an hour of play than an entire lifetime of work. The Greek word schole became our word school, and it represents the enlightenment one achieves through play or leisure.

The Middle Ages was a time of subsistence farming. When you earned enough you simply stopped working, went off on a hunt, headed for the tavern, or sat idle before a hearth or pasture.

But the new class of factory owners had a different agenda. The early industrialists and manufacturers tried to keep machines busy twenty four hours a day, they equated time with money. A whole new work force had to be created and disciplined to clock time. The notion of a fixed amount of time for work and alternate time for non-work or free time emerged.

http://www.tms.com.au/kimeldorf.html

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Personally, I do (a).

Of course (a).

I am clearly with Ram and my Greek friends here. In our society work is only necessary so that you can afford the commodities which will make your leisure time more enjoyable. If you decided not to work and went on the dole you'd still get enough to survive, but you wouldn't be able to afford many of the things that make life enjoyable. That's why everyone who can chooses to work.

Remember though that when Plato and Aristotle praise leisure they were only able to do so because slaves did all the menial labour. This was clearly a less efficient method of organising labour forces, but meant that a substantial part of the population had a very easy-going life (and could concentrate on important things like politics and fighting). Nowadays through our competitive labour market the situation has become entirely different and no one can afford not to work.

Totally A, personally I don't have to work, I choose to. I am in a positive financial position and if I decide not to work for 6 months or the rest of my life, I don't have to. Definate A.

Both and my work time is my leisure time, and other way around too.

I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself.
Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know.
- Joseph Conrad

Good on you Mambo and good comment there Ciceronian.

Here's another interesting passage from the linked page relating to "Balancing Your Work and Play Ethics" By Martin Kimeldorf.

The Art Of Doing Nothing

Some people say the highest or purest enjoyment of leisure is the experience of doing nothing. Yet, many people in our busy culture find this experience terrifying. Perhaps this is due to inheriting a Puritanical guilt about leisure: "Idleness is the Devil's playground."

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C~G: I disagree with your view of work and point to this line in the OP's quote box:

"[Plato and Aristotle] felt you could learn more about a person in an hour of play than an entire lifetime of work."

What is this "work" you speak of?

Rambuchan said:

C~G: I disagree with your view of work and point to this line in the OP's quote box:

"[Plato and Aristotle] felt you could learn more about a person in an hour of play than an entire lifetime of work."

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If I recall correctly the greek society was full of slaves.

Sure they know their play time (not the slaves though) and I wouldn't quote Plato or Aristotle since they were probably spoiled aristocratic rats anyway.

There have been always slavery and always will be. Only thing invididual can do is to find job that fits his character and enjoy it as much as his time off the work, that is my view.

MamboJoel said:

Of course (a).

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Yup. I work so that I can afford leisure time.

Yep, but it also true some people need their work to keep a social contact they would lost if they stopped, sometimes it keeps them alive and they're sad when they're asked to stop. I saw a documentary one of these nights on
TV showing an old postman in Corsica that delivered mail in the mountains, going from one village to another. It looked like for this guy, retirement was the end of his social life. Well, it's an an exception...
Personally, if I work currently, it's only to get money to travel more and more, so for free time indeed.

Work can never be the most the most "personally stimulating" activity, because if you are working for money, then your job is always geared towards and catering for the needs and requirements of others. So even if you really enjoy writing books about Classical Rome and you make a lot of money from their sale to a large audience, you will still be writing the book in such a way as to satisfy your audience and not yourself. However, if you do something purely because of the satisfaction and pleasure it gives you personally (say writing an article about the history of fireworks and then posting it online), it will always be the highest form of personal enjoyment. But this is a trade-off which one cannot afford not to make nowadays.
Doing things which couldn't be considered work even in the broadest sense of the word like philosophising and exploring the world we live in (together with other people) can bring you forward personally a great deal more than any kind of work though.

C~G: More specifically, I simply disagree with Conrad's quote and view that one can find themself in work. Play provides the best opportunities to do that.

I work to survive, and I work to thrive. They are two different goals pursued at the same time.

I have to work to survive now. I get to work to thrive later. My goal is to maximize my total survival and my total thriving. If this means I have to work forever, and invest part of my paycheque forever, so be it.

El_Machinae: What do you mean when you say "thriving"?

Ciceronian: With post#11 you really hit it nicely. Wise words mate

Mainly (though loosely) that the quality of my life (as I measure it) improves over time. So, maybe not paycheque-to-paycheque, but certainly over time.

Over time, my work has gotten more satisfying. Over time, my 'comfort level' regarding my emergency funds has gotten more satisfying. Over time, the quality of my 'play' has improved. Etc.

It's not just a function of 'more and better' consumption. It's a function of not only being more satisfied with what I can afford, but being able to look forward to continued improvement.

Rambuchan said:

C~G: More specifically, I simply disagree with Conrad's quote and view that one can find themself in work. Play provides the best opportunities to do that.

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IMO it just points out one way of finding yourself, it doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you.

I think the whole issue is rather polarized into some kind of hippyish thinking if it's slavery of serving others vs. the satisfaction of free time doing what you want.

Which is kind of strange from the point of view that isn't the idea of serving others being the highest good that one can achieve?

I believe in order to feel complete to be ourselves, we need both.
And I agree with El_Machinae, it's different in which state we are and what we thrive for.

I think work should be more than something you do so you can do something else. That's a pretty crummy way to live.

I consider myself very lucky for the job I just got (after school chess teacher).

Personally, I think the best leisure activities shouldn't cost much. Chess, chatting on CFC (computer = $450, high speed net connection $12.50 a month), other board games, good conversation, walks, bike riding ($300 should last me ten years or more), long walks, etc.

And the best leisure activities should net a profit. I just picked up candlemaking (using soy wax to appeal to the natural market) and hope to make a extra hundred or two a month with that. I like bike riding but am often lazy so sometimes when I go for a walk I'll snag a couple bucks worth of plastic bottles from the recycle bin and bike down the hill to the supermarket where I recycle them.

I find it very hard to relax when I don't feel productive. Probably from the sting of being broke and on and off unemployeed for many years.

Leisure that just kills time doesn't appeal to me. I want my mind, body and bank account positively stimulated (ideally all at the same time! ). If I have nothing to do I try to daydream productively, about things I want in my life to come. Either that or stop and really try to appreciate the present moment for what it is. Ideally my life would be spent bouncing from appreciating the present to daydreaming (productively) about the future and then back again (I know the "spiritually correct" goal is to only pay attention to the now but I like my daydreaming and planning, and anyway, my daydreaming is in the moment too! ).

Talking of time, a timeless soceity sounds kind of nice. I could do that, live by the sun and moon, take care of my crops and my goats, practice martial arts with my homies by the moonlight and then crash in my cabin with my woman and younguns' and do it all again.

If we couldn't afford electric lights and bottled water from France, f*** it. We got each other, our sustainable lifestyle (tomsnowman will be there of course) and no one holding a dangling carrot over us trying to make us sad we don't have it.

Don't worry everyone, we'll still have high speed wireless Internet and solar topped computers so you won't lose my forever.

Work to survive.

I'm a slave.

The question is simplistic, almost to the level of a Mom's Apple Pie query. Of course Leisure time has a higher utility value to most people than Work time, so the answer is (a). But there are such a wide range of work experiences that while I can sympathize with someone having to serve fast food and understand they feel they would never develop as a person in such a job, many of us have jobs which challenge and tax us, and which do let us develop and learn more about ourselves.

"you could learn more about a person in an hour of play than an entire lifetime of work" - sorry, but this is just nonsense. Whilst working with people, I have seen how people respond to stress, defeat, victory, embarassment, humiliation, aggression, friendship, surprise and a whole host of other experiences. Of course I've learned about them from this. Could an hour of leisure time with them cover all of those ? Maybe (say, watching Scotland play football... ), but unlikely.

C~G said:

IMO it just points out one way of finding yourself, it doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you.

I think the whole issue is rather polarized into some kind of hippyish thinking if it's slavery of serving others vs. the satisfaction of free time doing what you want.

Which is kind of strange from the point of view that isn't the idea of serving others being the highest good that one can achieve?

I believe in order to feel complete to be ourselves, we need both.
And I agree with El_Machinae, it's different in which state we are and what we thrive for.

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Let me just clear a few things up:

When I say play allows the best opportunity 'to find oneself', I am not discounting the fact that work can do this for some also. I just happen to think, and find from experience, that work doesn't bring nearly as much value as play does in this regard. I think Ciceronian's post indicates why work has its shortcomings pretty damn well.

The polarisation is important. If we consider how notions of 'time is money' and 'the Puritan work ethic' have encroached on our lives, and continue to do so with gathering pace, then we should be aware of the polarisation thrust upon us since industrialisation and what it does to us as people. I also happen to think that the slavery lines are not misplaced. Many people in Britain for example work all year round and have only two or three weeks off. Well, that's pretty much the schedule that slaves working the cotton fields used to follow. They, like modern day Brits, took to getting blind drunk to escape the horror of those schedules. The leisure time provided just enough time to get away from it all, to process the horror, ready to return for another year's work.

Now, as for serving others, yes, I totally agree that this is one of the highest forms of good that one can achieve. True selflessness is an exalted state of consciousness. However, it's pretty hard to achieve this state if one does not know oneself and one's motivations for being so selfless. It's important to be sure of who we are and what we are about before we go around trying to help others. As I've said, play time is crucial for that. If not, you end up with a blind leading the blind situation.

Finally, yes, we need both. We need to survive in order to thrive and we need that space to find and know ourselves. I'm not advocating living in a cave and doing absolutely nothing all one's life. But I am advocating an awareness of when work (and all those who bring us into such a situation) dictate the game and hence our very being.