A future age of leisure?

[Dionysius]

The unfulfilled feeling is ultimately philosophical/spiritual matter. A higher standard of living does make people happier, but in a way which is quite limited. I do think people (in the USA) work too hard, and would be happier with more free time and lower standard of living. Besides that, I suspect the unfulfilled feeling has nothing to do with economics.

what is this unfulfilled feeling exactly? try to pin it down in words.
anyway, have you considered it has always been there? that feeling i mean.

 

[Urederra]

Here is a good article about sleep debt

Although I think the hunter-gatherers that lived 10.000 years ago had less time for leisure, I also believe that some of us have a pretty busy timetable, which includes programmed leisure time.

I mean, you don't pay $1500 - $2000 for a one week trip to Hawaii just to lay on the beach all the time, You have to do something else to feel that you are not wasting your money, don't you?

 

[warpus]

I still disagree with the thread's premise.

I would say that around 30% of my income covers my basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing.

I work 35 hours a week.

The remaining 70% of my income & the rest of my free time are devoted to leisure & luxurious pursuits.

I don't even pull in huge amounts of money...

You are right about one thing though - people are working longer and longer hours - spending more time @ work and less time relaxing.. But they don't really need to be doing this. If I can lead a fairly leisurly lifestyle on my salary (which is good, but not amazing), then most other professionals can too.

The thing is that people want more, more, more of everything. Cars, boats, planes, entertainment systems, etc.

The average north american/western european could easily find plenty of time for leisure - the problem is that people are greedy

 

[Gladi]

what is this unfulfilled feeling exactly? try to pin it down in words.
anyway, have you considered it has always been there? that feeling i mean.

Not enough creative work and social sports.

 

[Gladi]

I still disagree with the thread's premise.

I would say that around 30% of my income covers my basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing.

I work 35 hours a week.

The remaining 70% of my income & the rest of my free time are devoted to leisure & luxurious pursuits.

So can you start working 15 hours a week? From poor to higher middle class you get more money than you need but you cannot reasonably conver it to free time.

 

[Masquerouge]

Technology was supposed to make everything easier and yet now people are working as hard as ever and often just as unfulfilled. Do you think technology will ever bring us increased quality of life thru reducing the amount of drudgery man has to go thru simply in order to survive or is it just a pipe dream, a carrot on a stick? What do you think?

I totally disagree with that.
How did people manage to look busy before they had computers? What would I do while I'm at work if I could not post on CFC?

I think that since we started working in offices, we've managed to maintain a roughly equivalent level of productivity. We might do more difficult tasks, but it is faster to complete them. So all in all not much have changed.

Today everybody has access to the Office suite at work: can you imagine setting up a meeting where you would present slides with pivot table data on them, without a computer?
Simply writing a nice-looking document is now 10 times easier: I think with dread of the times when people had to use a typewriter...

And yet I'm pretty sure we, on average , work just as much as our fathers did.

 

[Urederra]

I would say that around 30% of my income covers my basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing.

WOW, where are you living?

I am still paying my house mortgage, and that takes out 33 % of my income, then i have to pay utilities and stuff, food and chlothing... so i'd say 45 % of my income. Ummmm. on second thoughts, not too bad.

But you have to think about retirement and healtcare as well. Did you take that into account?

 

[Arcadian83]

what is this unfulfilled feeling exactly? try to pin it down in words.
anyway, have you considered it has always been there? that feeling i mean.

I suspect the unfulfilled feeling has been there for as long as civilization.

Being a spiritual matter, I think what it is exactly varies from person to person, although people of similar culture are like to express it in similar ways. I advocate deep thought to help discover what it is for yourself. I think reflection is critical to combatting the void within us.

Many people become depressed when they retire, the sudden influx of free time is more than they know how to deal with. People speak of 'keeping busy' as though having free time is unhealthy. I suspect that, in the absense of work and distraction, people find themselves reflecting and don't like it. It can be a unsettling thing, and indeed one can despair from it. Humans often have their priorities all screwed up (I know I do). Reflection can help one figure out what actions are truely fulfilling. Then one can go out and do and become fulfilled.

A non-answer and easier said than done, I know.

 

[Simon Darkshade]

I already live in an age of leisure, and with advances in many respects, and careers going onwards, it is just going to get better.

 

[Dionysius]

I suspect the unfulfilled feeling has been there for as long as civilization.

Being a spiritual matter, I think what it is exactly varies from person to person, although people of similar culture are like to express it in similar ways. I advocate deep thought to help discover what it is for yourself. I think reflection is critical to combatting the void within us.

Many people become depressed when they retire, the sudden influx of free time is more than they know how to deal with. People speak of 'keeping busy' as though having free time is unhealthy. I suspect that, in the absense of work and distraction, people find themselves reflecting and don't like it. It can be a unsettling thing, and indeed one can despair from it. Humans often have their priorities all screwed up (I know I do). Reflection can help one figure out what actions are truely fulfilling. Then one can go out and do and become fulfilled.

A non-answer and easier said than done, I know.

ah well. non-answer is better than no answer.
i find the deeper i reflect the less content i am.
although i find myself thinking quite deeply regularly,
i try to avoid it knowing the result...
wow, this is getting really philisophical .

 

[Veritass]

This is the perfect tie-in to the original post. Please consult Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. You will notice that only after you have taken care of your survival needs and security can you even start to worry about such things as fulfillment. Keep on exploring life.

 

[JerichoHill]

I wouldn't say I was working, Bob.

 

[warpus]

So can you start working 15 hours a week? From poor to higher middle class you get more money than you need but you cannot reasonably conver it to free time.

I can't, but 24*7=168 hours a week - 35 hrswrk - ~50 hours sleep = 80 or so hours of leisure time a week sn't enough? it is, for me

 

[JerichoHill]

warpus,

take off 2 hours per day (10 hours per week) for commuting, which we all know isn't fun.

But yeah, 70 hours is still too much time
course we gotta eat, take out the trash, walk the dog, mow the lawn...

so maybe 50 hours a week of free time.

 

[Solver]

Yeah, people definitely have it relatively easier now, as long as we're speaking about the advanced countries, and since the thread mentions technology...

You don't need that much money for the basic stuff - food, drink, clothing, shelter. Let's say that, if you own a house, that's more than the basic needs - living in an apartment quite certainly covers the basic need for shelter. A tent wouldn't do it in the modern time, no, but an appartment does.

The rest of people's income will go to their car, garden, cable TV and Internet bill, movie tickets, travel, etc. These are beyond the basic necessities. This certainly seems better than hunter-gatherers, who spent the majority of their waking time doing things to provide those basic necessities.

 

[Gladi]

I can't, but 24*7=168 hours a week - 35 hrswrk - ~50 hours sleep = 80 or so hours of leisure time a week sn't enough? it is, for me

No, because it is for most part not your productive time. Lot of leisure time is geared around getting you to ready for another lap in eternal wheel that is non-bottomed economy.

 

[Veritass]

The rest of people's income will go to their car, garden, cable TV and Internet bill, movie tickets, travel, etc. These are beyond the basic necessities.

I second this motion. These same issues come up when discussing "poverty" in the United States versus "poverty" in other countries. We have programs to make sure the "necessities" are handled: that the homeless have cell phones, people in poverty have computers, etc. Few things frost me like news reports on people who are supposedly living in poverty and they're on the report smoking cigarettes, with the kid on an XBox in the background.

The same issue comes up for me every Christmas when my church "adopts" a couple of poor families to help, and they provide us the list of each family's 5-6 children and what they could use. Perhaps, just perhaps, if they didn't have 5-6 children, they would live better?

It all comes down to choices.

 

[Solver]

I second this motion. These same issues come up when discussing "poverty" in the United States versus "poverty" in other countries. We have programs to make sure the "necessities" are handled: that the homeless have cell phones, people in poverty have computers, etc. Few things frost me like news reports on people who are supposedly living in poverty and they're on the report smoking cigarettes, with the kid on an XBox in the background.

Wow... seriously? I am not in a third world country but the poverty here is certainly fairly different. Heck, then again, the money the unemployed in the US get is probably at least on part with what's a good salary over here.

But cell phones for the homeless... wow.

 

[El_Machinae]

That was a bit of an exaggeration.

No, I cannot work only 2.5 hours, if I chose to. But a lot of people don't work very hard at work these days.

As well, if people invested their leisure money, then their income will grow as a result, and they will have more resources later.

 

[Solver]

It's possible to find a job, though, where you really have a lot of control over how much you work. And work, say, 6 hours in one day, once per week, providing yourself with the very basics...

Then again, if you only have the basic necessities, there isn't much point to having free time. The enjoyment during free time comes from things other than the basic necessities - be it Internet, books, TV, movies, etc.