We live in an era of “total work”, populated by The Worker. Our profession is our religion, our sin is our lifelessness, to paraphrase Bob Dylan. Internalizing Weber, we live to work. For some this is long hours at the office, others it is social activism. Those like me feel the ever present need to do something, to be productive. After all, hard work is virtue to The Worker, and time off is vice. “What am I doing that tangibly improves my wealth, social status, or physical health?” Can I “show you on the doll” that what I am doing is of value to my station and the economy at large? Physical health as work is often neglected, as work is usually tightly connected with income, despite many Workers in this decade becoming consumed with diets, counting carbs, and avoiding the legion of harmful chemicals like plastics, flame retardants, and vegetable oils. Health becomes work too, and the more work, the harder work, put into health, the more virtuous it becomes. Between Weber and 21st century health fads, chronologically, is an intellectual work stemming from Romanticism’s “cult of genius.” Even if the cult of genius, the phenomenon where poets, public intellectuals, and philosophers took on a pseudo-religious authority following the secularization of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, is an exaggerated phenomenon, the mere idea of “the cult of genius”, taught in high school history courses and in the university, has birthed The Intellectual, the thinking man who is no longer content to work within a tradition, using the deposit given to him to solve contemporary problems, but feels it is upon his shoulders to think Thought anew.
Who is not a Worker today? Just the other evening I was at a social event with fifty or so people, and as I was playing pool (poorly), having a drink, and meeting new folks. I was astounded by how many people present had masters and were getting ready to start their PhD programs. Surprised, not because they were a dull crowd—quite the opposite! —but because a crowd of young adults having beer and playing pool was filled with so many masters, future PhD candidates, and generally ambitious people. All present were Orthodox Christians, yet it was clear that next to serving the Church, serving one’s career was the highest priority. I do not fault these Workers, for I am one too! On the off chance one of my new friends is read this, I had a lovely time and I use you as an example only to show that The Worker is not necessarily, and is often not, the man obsessed with money or social status. The Worker is driven by an internal need, often unsayable, not a love for money or for being puffed up. There is something in the air, in the zeitgeist, that produces Workers. Good and bad, virtue and vice, are defined by our activism, and the man who comes home after work to watch Netflix is quasi-immoral. “What do you do?” It is not enough to have a job; you must also do something interesting outside of work. Call it the Protestant Work Ethic, The Cult of Genius, social activism, or dietism, The Worker is he who lives to work.
A Worker myself, I do not condemn The Worker. What I wish to point out is the necessity for leisure. Leisure is the absence of work, but it is not doing nothing. Amusement, the absence of musing, the absence of thinking, is not leisure. Leisure is anything that is not work, but is also not amusement. Watching Netflix, and playing video games are two forms of amusement. Playing the guitar, reading poetry, going for a walk, fly-fishing, and painting, are, in contrast, examples of leisure. Although hard work provides discipline, teaching patience, and inculcates humility, leisure opens up the soul to Beauty. It is for this reason, because leisure opens up the soul to Beauty, that Aristotle said “we are unleisurely to be leisurely”, or translated differently, “we work to have leisure.” We do not live on bread alone, and we have more to do than store up grain in the grain house. Unlike the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, we look upon the world and say with God, “it is good.” At the center of what it means to be human is Eucharist, to give thanks to God for what He has given us, transform it, offer it up to Him, and then receive it back. We do not offer up wheat and grape juice at the altar, but instead we transform wheat into bread and grape juice into wine, offering to God a mix of our own energies with His Energies, and this is why the priest prays thus during consecration, “we offer to You these gifts from Your own gifts.” We are given beauty, and though leisure, be it poetry, music, a walk through the woods, or art (these are only examples, not an exhaustive list), we affirm beauty and, when leisure is perfected, transform beauty and offer it up to Him who is Beauty.
Outside of an explicitly theological importance of leisure, keeping in mind that all talk is theological, leisure is, as Joseph Pieper says, the basis of culture. Great cultures are remembered for their art, their myths, and their heroism. Neither of these three are products of The Worker, but The Gentleman. This Gentleman I speak of is not a member of the gentry, and not even a man. The Gentleman, opposed to The Worker, is the person who works to have leisure. Art and myths are leisurely creations. This is not to say they are easy, otherwise it would be easy to write on the level of an Ezra Pound or a T.S. Eliot! No, these creations are leisurely because they are not work, they are not done for something else. To ask what Melody of the Night or The Theogony is for is to ask the wrong question. Melody of the Night and The Theogony are for themselves, they are ends-in-themselves, for the simple reason that they are beautiful. Heroism, too, is not for something else. Heroism, being virtuous, is good for its own sake. Effort is not work, and work is not effort. Lots of effort can be put into leisure, or even amusement for the matter. Leisure and work define ends-in-themselves, and means to an end (respectively), whereas effort defines the concentration, time, and care put into either an ends or a means.
To say that leisure is the basis of culture, or that it is fundamental to being human, is not to degrade work. It is very noble to work for one’s family, to strive for physical health, or, although I am unsure about the possibility of it, to attempt to think Thought anew. Yet, to do any of these good things at the expense of leisure, that great thing, is laziness. Yes! To work instead of being leisurely is laziness! Why laziness? Being lazy is choosing to do other than what one ought to do, and if leisure is fundamental to human being and the basis of culture, then to work at the expense of leisure is laziness. Above all others, the workaholic is the laziest man alive. The workaholic is addicted to finding anything else to do but his chief job. Our job, before our job, is to engage in leisure, to nourish our soul. We must have a job to do this job, it is true, but we work so that we can be leisurely.
Leisure, to say the same thing in a different way, is not a rest from work. Too often the weekends are periods of recouperation, time “to recharge the battery”, (the mechanical, object-orientated, language is revealing), and holidays are things to be “squeezed in” between work seasons. Yet, leisure is a task given to us by God and is the basis of culture. Therefore, we must not treat leisure as a rest from work, but treat work as a means to sustain leisure.
Talking with friends, a topic that comes up at least twice a year is the repetition in culture. Whether I am with friends from high school, college, or from work, the idea that culture has ended is, although not a frequent but, certainly a constant idea. What do I mean? Many movies and television shows are set in the 80’s, new Disney movies are mostly live-action remakes, sequels to Blade Runner and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are advertised, but very few movies or shows are “original” or do not involve heavy nostalgia. There are exceptions, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones, but the exception only proves the rule. Why is it that so much media in the 20’s is 80’s repetition, or at least a callback to the 80’s? As you gremlins know, I loved Stranger Things and consider it to be art, but this does not negate the heavy 80’s nostalgia. Some friends have speculated that such repetition is economic in nature, that it expresses a desire for a more prosperous and stable time. I am sure this is true. In interpretation, the interpreter brings his own questions, prejudices1, and concerns to the object of interpretation, and thus the interaction between interpreter and object of interpretation yields different readings. Reading the writings of Thomas Jefferson with a concern for economics will yield a different picture of the man than if I were to approach the texts with a primary interest in American successors to Rennaissance Humanism. There is not endless play, I am no Derridian, but in a conversation there is possibility…so long as neither partner in conversation, or interpretation, is misconstrued (something a Derridian reading is often accused of). Jefferson the economist is the same person as Jefferson the Humanist, my concern, question, and prejudice did not change him, but what I bring to the text will change how I read him.
Bringing my concern for leisure to the phenomenon of interpretation, the absence of new culture, if leisure is the basis of culture, indicates a lack of leisure. Maybe this lack is for the reason my friend suggested, that we do not have the prosperity and stability as the 80’s, and without work there is nothing to sustain leisure time, but another possibility is that leisure is no longer valued as it once was. A moment ago, I tried to avoid placing blame on Weber and the “Protestant Work Ethic”, and I still stand by it. Circling back to Jefferson, The Republic of Letters would not have been possible if the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, or the Founders as a whole, did not have a culture of leisure. It is hard to read the correspondence between Jefferson and Adams and not see in them The Gentleman, the man who works so he may have leisure. If the loss of leisure, or the lessening of its value, was due to Weber or Protestantism, The Republic of Letters would not have been possible. Further, the loss of leisure must be more recent than we think, otherwise the culture of the 20’s would not be repetitions of the 80’s. To find the causes of this loss, and there is always more than one cause, is an important task.
Should we fulfill the task given to us by God, that we might be more than the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, that we might do more than store up grain in the grain house, to live on more than bread alone, and so that we might kindle the basis of culture, The Worker must become The Gentleman. How? By intentionally making space for leisure, and to accustom yourself to liking leisure. For many, poetry, nature walks, and playing music is an acquired taste, and to acquire it involves making it a habit. We are our habits, and thus forming good habits is of great importance. Before you go to bed, read poetry for five minutes. Take time on the weekends to sing, walk in the park, or invest in a fishing rod. Your goal is not to become the best at what leisurely activity you pick, but simply to enjoy it. Remember, this is leisure and not work.
Prejudice, here, simply means “pre-judgement.” The value of a prejudice, good or bad, depends on the specific prejudice.
It's a Christian way of life to find joy around the world, and not to get caught up with the mechanical needs of survival. Brilliant article!
I don't believe The Worker can't become the gentleman. The ant can't transform into a bird, much like a man can't become a woman. As you said, it's an inborn instinct in the Worker, and we have a culture of workers who are already convinced they are aristocrats, or a world where the Worker is the elite. All the worker does is outcompete the Gentleman for space to provide for their leisure. The Worker, after all, is better at work, and will be chosen every time over the Gentleman. The Gentleman is relegated to a struggle for money which is difficult for him, as the type can't become self-motivated for work, only for a leisure that is increasingly out of his reach. As an additional contrarian take, I might as you what the Gentleman, the warrior, might be doing today to sublimate his desire for battle outside a machine-like military. It might be something you denigrated in this piece. Who knows.