So, I'm still reading Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt's "Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream" and uh...yikes. Okay. So....there's a reason I've gotten obnoxiously elitist lately toward americans in recent posts. It's because between supporting Donald Trump, and turning away from leisure as a goal, my faith in humanity is hitting an all time low, and I really have to wonder, wtf is wrong with people?
So...TLDR...why did we turn away from leisure? Yes, FDR making a deal with big business in the 1930s set the POLICY blueprints, but the idea was still popular among people and only started fading between the 1960s and 1980s. A huge reason? Gender role BS.
First, a lot of men didn't like spending time at home with women. They thought it emasculated them and made them girly. Their wives didn't work so when they stayed home, they would have to spend time with them and they didn't find common ground.
And often times, they would end up being nagged by them to do things. Like, even if their bosses werent telling them what to do, their wives were. Now, I kinda understand what this looks like, since my parents seemed to have a similar dynamic since my dad retired. my mom would want my dad to do stuff around the house and my dad...just wants to chill. And there would be tension between them. In a lot of cases, this drives a lot of men back to work. They wanna work longer hours, so they don't have to go home.
Honestly, this speaks to me of deeply unhealthy gender dynamics. And I kind of think I understand why. The nuclear family, and the judeo christian values associated with that. Gatekeep sex behind marriage, encourage childrearing, and a lot of men aren't thinking with their heads when they choose their partner. Because the blood is going elsewhere. You get the picture. Anyway. Idk...I've always been at least resistant to this. While deep down part of me always desired a partner, I understand that it's romanticized and that the brain chemicals are messing with my head. Yes, I've always been attracted to women since I was the normal age...but I never actually wanted to date, outside of a handful of situations. Because quite frankly, most women aren't worth it. And I feel like there's this pressure, especially when you're young, to pair off, find someone, and get married so you can have sex, and then eventually the hype wears off, and people wonder wtf did they just do with their lives. But by then, it's too late. You're stuck with someone you're fundamentally incompatible with, marriage is supposed to last forever, and working is the only thing keeping the family together. We all know with the boomer generation they always make these "women" jokes implying that they hate their wives. And it seems like people stay in bad relationships either for the kids, or because it's just the thing to do, and yeah. As such, people end up trapping themselves in situations where they're deeply unhappy, and the solution is to spend more time at work so they don't have to spend it at home.
But it went further than that. Not only were these people hating their home lives so much they'd rather work, they started eventually developing this toxic work culture of glorifying how many hours they worked, and calling people sissies who worked less. Like some unions wanted to work less and they did secure contracts for as little as 25 hours. They were called wimps and lightweights and loafs because REAL MEN worked a full 40 hours. And yeah, we see this in our culture now. Dont wanna waste your life working as a man? Well, you're not a REAL MAN, REAL MEN will put up with it. Man, F this toxic masculinity BS. I just wanna work less. And you know what? Because I didn't ever get married, I dont have the problem with a toxic homelife. Because I would only settle for the right person and the "right person" rejected me. So...yeah. There's that. But hey, at least I'm free.
Ya know, btw, UBI would basically allow people to escape toxic relationships? It would guarantee financial independence to people and allow them to leave dysfunctional relationships. Cool, right? it was so cool that in the 1970s one of the reason the public freaked out on the idea was UBI led to a spike of divorces as people were willing to leave bad relationships. And of course the traditionalists freaked out, because you're not supposed to get divorced, you're supposed to put up with obligations you made when you were young and stupid and didn't know any better for life. And you're supposed to cope with them...by going to work. Really, it's like it's all christian repression all the way down.
Speaking of women's empowerment, women's empowerment also has a role, as feminism trended toward the "yay girlboss slay" thing where independence became...having a job. So now we have women working, and more people are working, and yay work and jobs. It's amazing how so much gender nonsense contributed to this, but yeah.
And btw, we also saw this during covid. You wanna know why housing suddenly got so bad during covid? because a lot of people were forced to spend their time at home with their bad relationships and roommates and their home lives...fell apart. Apparently they need to work and not spend time with each other to function if the relationship isn't healthy, and too much time drove people out of their homes and caused more demand for housing. Now, to be fair, I'm not saying we shouldnt do UBI because of this. i'm for freedom, UBI gives freedom, and if people wanna leave bad relationships all the power to them, but yeah it does seem that a post work world will require a retooling of how we think about relationships and people might have to be a bit more careful in choosing partners. That and we might just full stop have to stop encouraging people to get in incompatible relationships that are supposed to be life long, just saying.
Another reason people turned away from leisure is many people were just bored with it. I mean, I personally blame society for this one. Work is so central to our lives that it just overtakes everyone else, and people don't know what to do with their freedom when they get it. TO be fair if you spent 8+ hours doing stuff you had to every day, you might not know what to do with all of that free time either. it's a little scary and intimidating at first I guess. But me, on the other hand? There's SO MUCH I wanna do. I've been doing my election models. I spent much of today blogging. I'm trying to write a book. I like to play video games and I still got a backlog of games i wanna get through. I'm CONSTANTLY doing stuff and am in some ways busier than an employed person. I never run out of stuff to do. I go to bed wishing the days were longer a lot of the time because there just arent enough hours in the day to do everything I wanna do.
Of course, when I was a kid, my parents had a simple approach to me doing the summers. Never say you're bored. if you're bored we'll send you to camp. Idk why they'd say that. Some people like going to camp, but I never wanted to go. I WANTED to be home. So you know what? I found something to do for every minute of every day. i'd read books, build intricate military bases with legos, play video games, play outside with friends. I'd never run out of stuff to do. And when school came and i had to go back, it always felt like oppression. I went from being able to do what i wanted whenever i wanted to only having a few hours a day to be able to do what i wanted, having to spend the rest of my day doing things i didn't want to do. It was like a shock. And I hated school, I hated getting up early, I hated uniforms, I hated having to do homework. I just wanted to do what i wanted to do and looked forward to those three months of the year when I was free. And as I got older, I never changed. So no. I never get bored. people who are bored are people of little imagination who don't know what to do with their lives. Society (and protestantism, let's be honest, that's where a lot of this comes from) tells them that they need someone to manage their lives for them. but you know what? I think they just need to find a hobby. And probably have an existential crisis make them purge all of these nonsense beliefs society taught them about work.
Really, I do kinda realize if we transition to a post work society, people will need to face the abyss that is nihilism, but uh, trust me, you come out on the other side of that, and you won't WANNA work. You wont wanna spend empty hours doing stuff you dont wanna do, you'll understand that it's slavery. Heck maybe you'll know all along if not forced to. I think people come to a point in their life as they get older and they settle into their careers in their 20s that this is what life is and it sucks and it scares them. They miss simpler times when they were teenagers or children and had time to play and realize those days are never coming back. Imagine being like 22 or 25 and realizing the best part of your life is over. That's modern work culture for you.
And yeah. Beyond that, another reason...unions gave up on it. And this is where I have issues with unions. So unions wanna collectively bargain. That's fine. But what if I DO wanna work less and unions start developing those toxic masculine "if you dont wanna work full time you're a sissy" mentalities? It's like unions eventually, through the 60s and beyond, turned away from leisure, and while holdouts existed, they were often ostracized for their views. It's like, the unions just gave up the fight, and even as individual members wanted to keep fighting for it, they were eventually just told to STFU and ignored and made fun of. Ya know, kinda like we progressives are in the democratic party today. The party decides, they're gonna do something, the members are like, no you're not, they're like, yes we are, and then they do it and dont care what the members say. That's what happened over time with anti work people in unions. They were eventually isolated and ostracized. They were called sissies (toxic masculinity again..) and unpatriotic, because obviously if you dont wanna work 40 hours to beat the reds you HATE America!
Quite frankly, btw, this is literally the ONLY legitimate argument I've heard against my points. The idea that we're in an arms race with other powers and have to work to maintain our economic and industrial capacity to be able to front a war effort if we ever got involved in a hot war with like russia or china. I do think we're far enough ahead we could just, chill a little bit, and tone down the work a little, like, america is so over the top ahead in military might other countries dont stand a chance against us, and then there's the pesky issue of geography that makes us immune to invasion, but yeah, to be fair, I will concede somewhat that part of the reason for our obsession with growth is to maintain an economy to maintain our military superiorities over our enemies. But yeah, that's literally the only legit argument I believe i dont have a sufficient counter to other than "meh, moderating a bit on the issue will be fine!" And I do believe that. Im not anti growth after all, i just dont support growth at all costs.
But other than that, yeah, that's the only argument I can justify for working as hard as we do. Even then if we didnt work as crazy hard, we could likely expand our industrial capacity in the case of total war very quickly. I mean we'd be putting the R&D into fancy toys regardless. We could then just say, okay, we need more crap, let's get more crap quickly. We did it in WWII, we did it again.
To go back to the boredom thing, consumerism played a role. Like to do anything in our deeply capitalist society, you need money. You go out, you gotta spend money on food, drinks, etc. There arent many common spaces any more like in the past. To do things, that costs money, and obviously if you're into doing that stuff, you need money to do it.
Now, for me, it's easy I stay home. My hobbies mostly involve internet and computers. I can live very cheaply. I dont desire to eat out, to go places. I literally just wanna live like a lump at home. I have a world of infinite things to do at my fingertips, and I'll just say it. I dont need much, materially, to be happy. Relatively speaking. Even a single day out will cost more than that triple A video game on my steam wish list, you know? And not last as long.
Either way I concede this. And this is my attitude toward this. My biggest issue with capitalism is the compulsion to work. I believe basics should be free, but I do understand that because much of life is, well, labor intensive, that people who desire extra will want to consume more. And they will work. ANd heck, this is why im so confident my ideas would work. Because as much as I talk about freedom and not wanting to work, I understand that I am a minority, and a lot of people love the extra money that comes with work. And they are extraverts. They wanna go to bars on the weekends. They wanna meet people. Do things with them. They dont just wanna sit at home all day playing video games and reading books and going on about politics and how we should all work less. Some of them tried it during covid and it drived them mad, even though I personally LIKE the COVID lifestyle and the lockdowns barely took anything away from my life. But that's the thing. We both should have a world that we can do what we want. if I choose to live freely with less work and choose a lower standard of living (but still reasonably adequate), i should be able to do so. If I want to work more to get more spending money to spend on luxuries, i should be able to do so. But everyone should get what they want, and not be forced to do anything. And I know libertarians will claim that's the world we live in now, but uh...no not really. Introverts who hate work like me are functionally forced to participate and often live on the bottom rungs of society where we have to work harder for less money because we lack the ambitions required for higher level jobs. Society becomes quite coercive if you dont willingly accept its values and precepts. And maybe they dont see it, but to people like me, it's literally slavery, or a prison, or a sisyphusian hell.And I want out of this crap.
And yeah, that's my views. If YOU like that that's fine, but dont emasculate me, or call me a sissy or say i'm not a real man for not wanting to live like you. And don't basically coerce me under the threat of poverty to work as much as you do just because you like to work and like to spend your time doing things that require a higher standard of living. Really, much of my resentment toward this stuff comes from that fact that it seems like most of this stuff comes down to the fact that other people think differently than me and i have to conform to their values. Which is nonsense. Just because i dont have a dysfunctional home life doesnt mean that i wanna spend my time at work. Just because you dont know what to do with your time doesnt mean that i dont either. And there's too much "well i think this way therefore everyone should think this way" mentality in peoples' views.
And people wonder why i have trust issues with typical left wing solutions. In socialism, ie economic democracy, I'd be outvoted by these people and forced to submit to tyranny by majority. With unions, we saw how they betrayed the anti work holdouts. Collective solutions dont work. We need solutions that empower individuals to make their own decisions. Which is why I like UBI and the ability to say no. I dont trust collectives to make decisions for me. I trust me to make decisions for me, I just want the means to be able to make my own decisions, and everyone else can make their own decisions.
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