Leisure and Work in Postindustrial Society

The rich and leisured are no longer drastically set apart, but seek for the sake of their souls as well as their public relations to work with relative sobriety and consume with relative modesty and inconspicuousness; thus, they no longer set an example for either good or ill. A decline of exuberance is just barely noticeable in America, making itself felt particularly among the more highly educated and the well-to-do in a loss of appetite for work and perhaps even for leisure. In the mercantilist era, and even in the countries of grinding poverty, the creation of new wants has been a first step toward a better life and wider horizons of choice. In pre-industrial cultures leisure is scarcely a burden or a “problem” because it is built into the ritual and ground plan of life for which people are conditioned in childhood; often they possess a relatively timeless attitude toward events.