Labor and Leisure

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.