Leisure: The Basis of Culture

Two-thousand years ago, concepts of work and leisure were associated with servitude and freedom, respectively. In Ancient Greece, explains Aeon, most of the labour was outsourced to slaves, while wealthier parts of society pursued other activities. “Leisure was an active state of mind. Good leisure meant playing sports, learning music theory, debat... See more

The regrettable consequence of justifying leisure only in terms of its usefulness for other things is that it begins to feel vaguely like a chore – in other words, like work in the worst sense of that word. This was a pitfall the critic Walter Kerr noticed back in 1962, in his book The Decline of Pleasure: ‘We are all of us compelled,’ Kerr wrote,

... See more