In his famous work, Leisure; the
Basis of Culture, Josef
Pieper diagnoses the
modern decline of culture, noting that we find ourselves in pursuit of
labor for its own sake. That is, modern man tends to see labor as his
highest calling. Of all things, production is the measure of man.
This can hardly be considered hyperbole today, when “successful”
signifies “having made a lot of money” and a man's “worth” is
expressed in an exact dollar amount. When someone asks, “what do
you do,” the expected answer involves the principle means by which
you secure an income. The “big guy,” as opposed to the “little
guy,” is the one who has much more money; especially one who
controls the economic viability of the little guy. And “the man”
is the one who controls and seeks to control, sometimes insidiously
but usually overtly, every aspect of your life; “to keep you down”
by employment, taxation, or inflation. We seem to find ourselves in a world
in which material wealth is the only value to speak of.
There is a reason that leisure
(and with it, culture) is still on the decline today. Pieper seems to point to a competition between leisure and labor. Leisure, as he explained, is not
entertainment or “free time.” It takes work, and is the activity
that gives content to culture. Michelangelo, Mozart, and Shakespeare
all produced an immense amount of work.
Yet they are remembered not for how much wealth they had, but
for how much they contributed to culture. They were concerned with
leisure-work. This is
distinct from labor,
which is how we put food in our mouths, keep a roof over our heads,
stay dry, etc. Labor is necessary for survival, but leisure-work is
no less difficult or important. In fact, leisure-work is more
important than labor, because survival is small, temporary, and mean,
but leisure aims at eternity. Leisure, he says, is nothing less than
man's affirmation of creation; his echo of God's own evaluation on
the first Sabbath, saying, “it is very good.” Leisure involves a
kind of instinct toward the divine, and we find its utmost expression
in the worship of God.
Though distinct, the difference between
leisure and labor is not absolute. A man's labor is a response to the
world as he sees it. He needs to eat and he needs to keep his family
warm, safe, and dry. How one fulfills these needs depends entirely on
his surroundings: Does he live on an island, on a plain, in a jungle?
Is it hot, cold, or seasonal? What kinds of animals can he eat? What
kinds of animals would eat him? A desert nomad might know all about
herding, but nothing of fishing. A man in Russia will fear winter,
while a man in the Amazon will fear leopards. As man's labor is a
response to his environment and shapes the way he understands the
world, so is his leisure shaped by this experience. It is no puzzle
that the pagan mythology of Scandinavia is desperate and warlike,
while the mythology of ancient Egypt is fair and optimistic.
It is therefore apparent that there can
never be a simple competition between leisure and labor. Labor is
done not for survival alone (for that would be a hopeless paradox)
but for the sake of leisure, and leisure is informed by labor. A
drastic change in leisure, then, is probably the result of a change
in labor. As labor changes, so changes leisure, and thus culture. And
this is the key to understanding why labor in the modern era seems to upstage and even replace the pursuit of
leisure altogether. Modern labor has nothing to do with a
man's location or environment. It is often monotonous, unseasonable,
impersonal, isolating, dull, and almost completely divorced from all
other aspects of his life, save that of the shared measure and master
of his activity which is the arbitrary quantification of his time and
effort – money. Factories in Russia look strikingly similar to
factories in Germany. Offices in the Unites States are
indistinguishable from offices in Brazil. If a man can drive a taxi
in Saudi Arabia, he can drive a taxi in London. Not only does labor
become more homogeneous across the globe, but the purpose of labor has
already been reduced to one totemic fixation – money. Thus the
apparent dissolution of culture, relegating all “authentic”
tradition to history because it has become absolutely foreign to
current life.
But even modern labor, perhaps, still
informs “leisure” in a way. Consider that most men today consider
“leisure” to be synonymous with “entertainment” or “free
time” (i.e. time that is presumably free of obligation – an
interesting notion). This is itself a strong indication of the
effects of modern labor on what one might call “modern culture.” We have cheapened leisure, assigning it a place beside the sitcom and the chain restaurant. Another indication is that what little culture there is to speak of
is more accurately ascribed to the realm of labor and production
rather than to that of leisure. For example, one might consider
football to be a prime example of American culture, and the watching
of football has become a multi-billion dollar industry. I need not
speak of the arts (especially music and film) or even the celebration
of holidays (most of which are all but lost).
Pieper's insight into leisure is
valuable, but the “world of total work” as he called it, is not
simply a world of work prized for its own sake above all else. It is
a world which has been working like mad to distance itself from
creation and therefore from its Creator. We have not merely come to
estrange the Sabbath. We have estranged God's entire work.
