Whatever happened to the leisure society?

Obviously, Schumacher's projections of resource depletion have not come true just yet, but many still believe that peak oil is just around the corner, with all the scary consequences it will bring. The fundamental message, that we have to live within our planetary means, still holds true.

Other projections of the future have not aged so well, particularly the predicted leisure society, where automation would mean fewer working hours and more, cheap-to-participate activities for our own time. Few people are content to work less than a full week and no-one would call the theatre, cinema or going to a football match "cheap".

So, what went wrong?

Socialists will say, no doubt, that market forces have kept wages low through competition (both in the same region and against poorer regions of the world). And they would be right. Incomes have grown when compared to some basic commodities like bread or beer, but other living expenses have kept disposable income in check. Most notably, the price of property, which homeowners were so overjoyed about until recently, has meant that the cost of accommodation is now over half of many people's income.

Social pressure has multiplied "ordinary" living expenses too. We expect to be able to buy take-away food, eat out, buy new clothes, and go out to bars, the cinema and clubs more often than we did 20, 30 or 40 years ago. In the last 40 years, the home telephone, television, video, games console, home computer, personal music player and mobile phone have all become considered as possessions for all. No wonder we need to work every hour our new-found legal limits will allow.

None of the above is exactly insighful. Yet, where would we be if we abandoned the luxuries we have grown used to? If we did the same job, lived in a modest flat, travelled infrequently, bought clothes out of necessity alone, and got our entertainment from books and the radio. We might be able to save money more effectively (or give more to charity), but what else would we achieve? Would we be any happier, or would our anachronistic lifestyle just feel like being deprived?

Perhaps this is looking at things the wrong way. The leisure society was supposed to make us happier: perhaps it's the fact that we aren't significantly more contented that is more important and interesting.

Like incomes, my guess is that people are generally more happy with what live brings than they were in, say the 50s. More room, better clothes and furniture, tastier food, and a broad choice of types of entertainment all make life more enjoyable. But like incomes, it feels like the gains are marginal and are somewhat eroded by other changes.

Most notably, couples find it increasingly difficult to live, let alone raise children, on a single income. It feels as if the cost of getting women into the workplace was a hike in the cost of child-rearing to make taking those jobs almost compulsary.

Now, bear with me if I return to the limits to working hours that I mentioned earlier. These were introduced, in the parlance of the day, to guarantee some kind of "work-life balance". Certainly, anyone who has worked a 12-hour shift pattern (worse if it alternates between days and nights), will tell you that there is no room left for a life. But way work drains you is not simply a matter of the number of hours worked. Miners and mill workers would find it hard to contemplate running or cycling in their spare time, but many read extensively and were deeply involved with trade unions and politics. After a day of intensive editing, I find it hard to choose a book or writing over the tv.

What I'm trying to say is: the same market forces that keep wages in check have also optimised the effort demanded by employees. Legendarily relaxed workplaces such as newspapers have gone. That was time and, therefore, effort that was going to waste.

We are left mentally exhausted at the end of the week, if not every day, with little appetite for leisure activities that take mental or physical effort. Even if we do sport in our spare time, or write, of join a political party, there are few of us who can get involved with running clubs, developing and promoting our writing or standing in elections.

The expression "things that are worth doing are difficult" has been in my mind lately (perhaps because Andrew Motion said something similar about poetry), but the way we have organised ourselves makes everything harder than it has to be. We're not lazy: we're just tired.

Ecology of ideology

Google any combination of words and it’s likely that the combination has been used before. Originality was a scarce commodity before the internet, but the internet can prove to you just how scarce it is.

I had an idea for a Third Testament: The Book of the Spirit. It seemed like the natural progression from The Old (Father) and New (Son). I thought I might write the book as a work of fiction (sort of) or as a fictitious element in something else. But I did a web search first and discovered several Third Testaments, and most of them centred around the Holy Spirit. Oh well.

So I should have known that the concept of an “ecology of ideology” would not be a new one. It’s not, although there aren’t many ideological ecologists out there. And what I can glean from their abstracts is that it’s at proof-of-concept stage at this point.

Well, if the good professors at Carnegie Mellon have proved the principle (by studying moshav and kibbutz) then let the concept take flight—what does it mean to have an ecology of ideology/ies?

Ecology is the study of interaction between entities and between entities and their environment. When biological ecology is extended to human culture, the environment is usually understood by its conventional definition: trees, rivers, bunnies and stuff. Hence the “green” movement, and its focus on how we exist within the world.

But sometimes the dominant interactions aren’t with the planet, but with similar human entities and the environment they create. That’s not to forget the bunnies and their effect on us, but it is possible to extend ecological thinking into areas that are not specifically green.

So it is with ideology. An ideology is a comprehensive set of ideas to encapsulate a particular world view. Usually, an ideology forms from the sum of the beliefs and actions of a group of people. It can then be codified and used as a reference against potential progress or against other ideologies.

Species classification, from what little I know, isn’t easy, but the principles are quite clear. Ideology classification is similarly easy in principle but very difficult in practice. The process is made more difficult by the human tendency to bend the definition of what they say they agree with to what they believe in.

That said, it is possible to classify ideologies, and the most straightforward way to do so is by their proponent’s principles. A survey of a large number of self-described Marxists, anarchists, socialists, conservatives, liberals, neo-liberals, fascists, neo-fascists, etc., etc., could provide a map of priorities.

What I picked up from the abstracts of the Carnegie Mellon group is that ideologies can affect one another in their evolution, but principles are immutable. That’s not to say that individual’s principles and priorities cannot change, but that ideologies never die.

That is a great source of hope for me—clinging to principles that are commonly seen as subservient to pragmatic powerplay—hope that a kernel of writing and activism that places non-violence, self-determination and sustainability at or near the top of the priority list will always survive. And, more faintly, that it will be in ascendancy some day.