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The official working week is being reduced to 35 hours a week. In most countries in the world, it is limited to 45 hours a week. The trend during the last century seems to be unequivocal : less work, more play.
Yet, what may be true for blue collar workers or state employees – is not necessarily so for white collar members of the liberal professions. It is not rare for these people – lawyers, accountants, consultants, managers, academics – to put in 80 hour weeks. The phenomenon is so widespread and its social consequences so damaging that it acquired the unflattering nickname workaholism, a combination of the words “work” and “alcoholism”. Family life is disrupted, intellectual horizons narrow, the consequences to the workaholic’s health are severe : fat, lack of exercise, stress take their toll. Classified as “alpha” types, workaholics suffer three times as many heart attacks as their peers.
But what are the social and economic roots of this phenomenon ?
Put succinctly, it is the result of the blurring borders and differences between work and leisure. The distinction between these two types of time – the one dedicated to labour and the one spent in the pursuit of one’s interests – was so clear for thousands of years that its gradual disappearance is one of the most important and profound social changes in human history.
A host of other shifts in the character of the work and domestic environments of humans converged to produce this momentous change.
Arguably the most important was the increase in labour mobility and the fluid nature of the very concept of work and the workplace. The transitions from agricultural to industrial, then to the services and now to the information and knowledge societies, each, in turn, increased the mobility of the workforce. A farmer is the least mobile. His means of production are fixed, his produce was mostly consumed locally because of lack of proper refrigeration, preservation and transportation methods. A marginal group of people became nomad-traders. This group exploded in size with the advent of the industrial revolution. True, the bulk of the workforce was still immobile and affixed to the production floor. But raw materials and the finished products travelled long distances ...
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...eneurs, the managers, the businessmen. They are the movers, the shakers, the pushers, the energy. Without them, we have socialist economies, where everything belongs to everyone and, actually to none. In these economies of “collective ownership” people go to work because they have to, they try to avoid it, to sabotage the workplace, they harbour negative feelings. Slowly, they wither and die (professionally) – because no one can live long in hatred and deceit. Joy is an essential ingredient.
And this is the true meaning of capitalism : the abolition of work and leisure and the pursuit of both with the same zeal and satisfaction. Above all, the (increasing) liberty to do it whenever, wherever, with whomever you choose. Unless and until the Homo East Europeansis changes his set of mind – there will be no real transition. Because transition happens in the human mind much before it takes form in reality. It is no use to dictate, to legislate, to finance, to cajole, to offer – the human being must change first. It was Marx (a devout non-capitalist) who said : it is consciousness that determines reality. How right was he. Witness the USA and witness the miserable failure of communism.
My own personal philosophy of leisure has been shaped by past and present activities I do for leisure and why I do them. To me, leisure is the sense of being free from external stressors that I face in my life such as school or work. The positive outcomes from partaking in leisure are generally overlooked and often underestimated. Leisure affects our emotions, our physical and mental health, and aids in the creation of relationships. In my own personal life, I have done and still participate in leisure as a way to sooth myself or unwind from the stress of school or work. The release of pent up emotions and energy for individuals helps their relationships with others and their overall health as well. When stress is released, an individual is
“In the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily. Each year the change is small, amounting to about nine hours, or slightly more than one additional day of work (Schor, 1). Juliet B. Schor’s The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure explores the decline of leisure time in American professionals and laborers as a result of an increase in working time. In comparison to our European counterparts, American workers are now working close to 320 more hours yearly. Schor highlights the fact that American workers are choosing to work multiple jobs contributing to less leisure time due to longer working hours. In conclusion the book depicts the idea that the materialistic nature of Americans results in them choosing to work more so that they can spend more.
First let us talk about a notable difference between these workweeks their income. Having the high-paying job earns you much more money per hour giving you much greater financial freedom. This allows you to help pay for the important things in life such as your kids, better house, and much more. Then with a low-paying workweek your restricted more on what you can spend your money. Hal Niedzviecki stated “Despite his decad...
My research connects to the stimulus readings “A World Without Work”, written by Derek Thompson, and “Long Working Hours and Cancer Risk: A Multi-Cohort Study”, written for the British Journal of Cancer. Initially, when reading “A World Without Work” I became interested in the idea that “Americans work so hard because their culture has conditioned them to feel guilty when they are not being productive” (Thompson). This concept, of work equaling reward, led me to question if teens felt the same need to work outside of high school. Then, when reading “Long Working Hours”, I discovered that “Extended working hours have been reported as being associated with… high prevalence of anxiety, depression, sleeping difficulties and accidental injuries
Prior to the industrial revolution people rarely experienced change. It was an extremely different place than it is now. During the industrial revolution there was a radical change in the socioeconomic and cultural conditions. People in majority were farmers since they didn’t have any technology everybody had to grow their own food. They were interdependent in maintaining all their necessities, mainly in their local communities because of the difficulty in distant transportation because they had no motorized vehicles.
The work week had dropped from 60 to 48 hours. For the first time, the Americans considered play as important as work. The weekend family outing and vacation had become things workers expected it. Huge numbers of people had radios went to the movies and owned a car.
Many individuals would define leisure as time free from paid work, domestic responsibilities, and just about anything that one would not do as part of their daily routine. Time for leisure and time for work are both two separate spheres. The activities which people choose to do on their spare time benefit their own personal interests as well as their satisfactions. While some people may enjoy one activity, others pay not. Leisure is all about personal interests and what people constitute having a good time is all about. Some may say that the process of working class leisure can be seen to contribute their own subordination as well as the reproduction of capitalist class relations. Self-produced patterns of working class leisure can lead to resistance to such reproduction. This leads to social class relations and inequalities, and the fact that it they can never be completely reproduced in the leisure sphere. This film Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community, gives some examples of the role of leisure within a capitalist society dealing with issues such as class inequalities, and how they are different among various societies.
More people are migrating to bigger cities to have a better chance of finding a job. Every aspect of life was bouncing off of each other, with the growth of transportation led to the growth of food production, population, urban living, communication, and industrial agriculture. Utilitarianism was coming into play to maximize pleasure for all people. All of these aspects during the industrial movement helped progress Western civilization life. Progress thrived the 19th century and the industrial revolution helped further along the
The Industrial Revolution was a time of great change and increased efficiency. No more would be goods be produced by sole means of farming and agriculture, but now by the use of machinery and factories. Technology was beginning to increase along with the food supply as well as the population. However, this increase in population would greatly impact the social aspect of that time. Urbanization was becoming much more widespread. Cities were becoming overwhelmingly crowded and there was an increase in disease as well as harsh child labor. Although child labor would be reduced somewhat due to unions, the Industrial Revolution still contained both it’s positive and negative results.
The Bourgeoisie is the owner of the ‘means of production’. Therefore they have a much higher and more powerful economic position in society. Workers can only live by...
Yet, we have no more “free” or leisurely time today than we did decades ago. Students fill their day with community service, take part in educational clubs, and spend hours studying to boost their GPA because it looks good on college applications. Adults voluntarily take back-to-back shifts and overload on work and obligations. Why? Because they feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t working or doing something to promote their work. Furthermore, even the idea of telling others that they are busy these days seems to make people feel more important or sought-after. Not only is this mindset spiritually destructive and emotionally draining to one’s wellbeing, it saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately
The revolution of the 18th and 19th century saw an immense transformation in science, technology and our economy, hence, the transformation from a Neolithic economy to an industrial economy. The revolution impacted on the social-economic in terms of the industrial research and development. Before the revolution labour was manly manual force however, the first revolution saw the materlisation of machines. For examples, the introduction of steam engines provided powered energy used in replacement of manual labour, therefore ...
Why did I choose to write about workaholics? The main reason is that the general picture about these people is bad, but there are a lot of them around us and very often we admire them. They are doing exactly what they love – work – and they can never have enough of it. Although they spend most of their time working, surprisingly they are happy. They show so good results in what they do. But the consequences are great. Family life is disrupted, intellectual horizons narrow and the consequences to the workaholic's health are severe: fat, lack of exercise and stress. Why do people become workaholics? When a person becomes workaholic is there a way back? How should people around him act in order to keep both him and themselves happy? Lets start explaining what workaholics are, how they act and then we'll get answers to this questions.
Capitalism controls or enslaves the laborer by making his existence dependent on the process of production instead of the production of the labor for himself. The laborer is historically different in a capitalist society because he is separated from production. He no longer produces for himself but instead for the general wealth, or the wealth of the capitalist. Capitalism controls even the capitalist himself by turning him into a mechanism which acts as the driving force of capitalism. As a consequence, the capitalist creates a society which is alienating and brutal for the laborer. However, the domination of the capitalist system leads to the creation of a collective working group that can become a form for human development and the creation of new radical social changes.
Workaholics – people, who have a compulsive and unrelenting need to work (www.dictionary.com) – appear more and more among the working people of United States and other developed countries. At first glance, workaholics do not seem to be such a problem for industry and society as a whole. But in spite of all devotion to their work the workaholic will not be as valuable as a normal worker. Workaholics do not think about anything else except work that can cause severe health problems and can cause problems on their work. All that causes a reduction of economic profit for the company.