![\"\"](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2022\/03\/pyramid4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
To use leisure intelligently and profitably is a final test of a civilization. \u2014 Jay B. Nash, Philosophy of Recreation and Leisure<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
For thousands of years, man largely got the doses of challenge, creativity, achievement, and satisfaction needed for psychic health from his work. Initially his work in hunting and gathering was directly connected to his survival; then as civilization, and in turn trade and commerce, began to expand, he remained connected to the final product of his labors.<\/p>\n
But after the dawn of industrialization, work became increasingly routinized, mechanized, and bureaucratized. Work was fragmented and more and more layers developed between a man\u2019s labor, and its results, fruits, and outcomes.<\/p>\n
After a day of work in the present age, many individuals cannot discern that the world is any different for their effort, and they themselves do not feel any different as a result of it.<\/p>\n
The more man is alienated from his work, the more he must look elsewhere for sources of growth, mastery, and fulfillment; the more he is alienated from his work, the more critical it becomes for him to cultivate his life outside of it \u2014 his leisure.<\/p>\n
The Critical Importance of Well-Used Leisure Time to the Individual, and to Society<\/span><\/h2>\n
Recreation [can] take on significance\u2014possibly spiritual significance. Recreation can and even may become a way of life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In 1953\u2019s Philosophy of Recreation and Leisure<\/em>, Dr. Jay B. Nash, professor of physical education, health, and recreation, argues that in a world where work is increasingly unsatisfying, leisure takes on an outsized importance; the way it is used can either exacerbate the malaise created by the shrinking significance of work, or act as a critical counterbalance to it.<\/p>\n
In the former case, the dynamic runs something like this: people feel tired from their work, and interpret this tiredness as mental\/physical fatigue caused by over-effort; they then seek rest in the form of mindless, passive amusements; these amusements, however, while they offer a temporary distraction in the short-term, leave people feeling more enervated in the long-term; this makes them seek more passive entertainments to feel better; and on the cycle goes. In this way, leisure time only deepens the malaise that can lead to garden-variety unhappiness, as well as contribute to clinical cases of depression and anxiety. It\u2019s a cycle, Nash observed, that leads modern individuals to \u201cgo to pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n
If, on the other hand, as is often the case, the seeming fatigue caused by work is not the result of too much engagement, but too little of it \u2014 is in fact a manifestation of boredom \u2014 then leisure, used wisely, can act as the reinvigorating antidote to the modern tendency towards psychic disintegration.<\/p>\n
Leisure, Nash says, can supply the interest, stimulation, and sense of accomplishment that is often lacking in paid work, would otherwise go missing from our lives, and is ultimately critical to psychological wholeness and the integration of character.<\/p>\n
Nash argues that it is \u201cin the practice of skills\u201d \u2014 real, concrete, progressively-developed skills that contrast with the typically abstract energies we moderns typically deal in \u2014 that man achieves what he calls \u201call-thereness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, he says that man possesses a \u201cskill hunger\u201d that must be fed if he is to thrive.<\/p>\n
The concept of the greatest number of skills for the greatest number of people is probably the best foundation for a democratic society. Greater skills mean greater eagerness for life and this in turn develops a joy of living. The true vocation of man in the universe is to exercise skill in one or another of its innumerable varieties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Nash further argues that active, creative recreation is not only critical to preserving the wholeness of the individual, it is critical in preserving the health of a democracy. Not only because a democracy has an interest in ensuring its citizens are psychologically sound, but because leisure pursuits can develop the kind of patience, critical thinking, and engaged orientations that are needed to facilitate a functioning political life.<\/p>\n
The death stage of a civilization is often marked by the rise of what Nash called \u201cspectatoritis\u201d \u2014 an epidemic retreat into predominantly passive amusements.<\/a> Think of the Romans and their gladiatorial games. When a people is satisfied with the pseudo sustenance of bread and circuses, it no longer recognizes the cultural and political decay happening around them, and is too surfeited by superficial entertainments to muster the will to do anything about the rot.<\/p>\n
The Wise Use of Leisure Does Not Happen Naturally<\/span><\/h2>\n
We are learning that the profitable use of leisure is an art in itself and not something that comes automatically.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There are myriads of books and podcasts and courses about how to manage your work time and be more productive.<\/p>\n
But there is comparatively little discussion of what to do with your free time.<\/p>\n
This is partly because we like to think of our leisure time as something freeform that should be utilized spontaneously. And certainly, much of the joy of our leisure is<\/em> that it is ours<\/em>, with no set rules, structures, or expectations. We figure we\u2019ll simply know how to use our free time as it arises.<\/p>\n
When, as it so commonly happens, our evenings and weekends pass by in an indistinct, underutilized, unsatisfying blur, we figure the problem isn’t caused by an untrained instinct, but a lack of time. If we had a little more of the latter, we think, we\u2019d have put our leisure to better use.<\/p>\n
Yet the data belies this belief.<\/p>\n
If it were the case that the more leisure time we possessed, the more we\u2019d use it for creative, constructive activities \u2014 socializing, reading, exercising, playing sports, engaging in hobbies, and so on \u2014 then, quite obviously, the more that leisure time increased, the more that participation in such activities would increase.<\/p>\n
And yet the very opposite has happened.<\/p>\n
In the midst of a typical workweek grind, it can seem like we\u2019re the busiest and most labor-laden humans that have ever existed, and it\u2019s easy to forget just how dramatically work hours have fallen over the past 150 years<\/a>. As researchers have pointed out, the amount we toil has been cut in half, meaning that \u201cBefore this revolution in working hours people worked as many hours between January and July as we work today in an entire year.\u201d Just between 2019 and 2020, people gained another half hour of leisure time<\/a> (partly due to an uptick in the number of folks who started working from home and got to drop their commute \u2014 a situation that for many will remain permanent, even post-pandemic).<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2022\/03\/pyramid5.jpg\")
<\/p>\n