[srs0001]

I think that leisure, perhaps, has the wrong kind of connotation with it.

I spend much of my own free time designing, writing and tinkering with things that I find interesting. To many of my coworkers, it appears that I am working, but to me it's working on something I enjoy—and more importantly things that other people may one day enjoy.

The challenge is to get more people to pick up an instrument, work on a new project, learn something new in their free time instead of starting at a television.

[wsxcde]

> The challenge is to get more people ...

Why do you think this is an important goal? If we really could have a world in which machines could do all the work, would it really be that bad if some people sat around and watched TV all day?

I certainly don't buy the argument that society would stagnate if this happened. There are many people - you and me are probably in that group - who probably wouldn't be able to sit around and do nothing all day. It just seems so boring. And if you look back in history, for example imperial England, a lot of the "idle rich" did take up the pursuit of art, science and technology.

I also really don't care what other people do with their time. First, there's a moral issue, it's not for me to decide how other people should be spending their time. And if some people want to sit around and watch TV all day, well, good for them. It's no skin off my nose.

I also know a lot of people who seem think that somehow "work" is noble and is worth pursuing as an end in itself and I really don't like this idea. It seems very analogous to management that values effort over results. And more importantly, if we dislike the idea of people being idle as a sort of moral hazard, then why isn't there a big backlash against the millionaires who've inherited their wealth, the royalty, the sheikhs of the middle east, the reality TV stars and so forth. A lot of these people seem to have money vastly disproportionate to their net contribution to society and they're able to sit around doing basically nothing. And yet it's only when the possibility of us plebs being idle comes up that we start here these cliches about hard work and dedication and so forth and everyone gets all worked up about it. Something to think about, I'd say.

[rfrey]

>> The challenge is to get more people ... > Why do you think this is an important goal?

The purpose of banding together in communities is to provide better lives for those who join. At the most basic level, communities provide protection against predators (and other communities!). A more sophisticated benefit comes later with specialization of labor. Recently (the last 500 years or so) significant economic advantages have been had by members of larger communities.

So if physical needs are satisfied, why shouldn't a community concern itself with other ways to make its members happier and live more fulfilled lives? That might might include finding ways to encourage members to, as the OP says, learn instruments, languages, etc.

That requires us to assert that some things (art, music, kayaking) are better than others (reality TV, talk radio). I'm OK with that.

[innguest]

If you think that and other people you know think that, you should be free to voluntarily form your own community, protect yourselves, work hard and do the things you want.

But I'm not OK with your opinions of what activities are better than others and so I don't think it's fair for you to force it on others.

I'll take talk radio and TV over kayaking any day. You'll never get people to agree with all your thoughts. That's why we need to be free to form our own communities.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Wish I had more than one upvote to give!

[eli_gottlieb]

>Why do you think this is an important goal? If we really could have a world in which machines could do all the work, would it really be that bad if some people sat around and watched TV all day?

Television is much less fun than other things people can do with their free time.

[npsimons]

This. I also very much get the feeling that if people weren't being kept so busy trying to pay their bills, they might actually have time to pause and reflect on the current state of the world, and the powers that be don't want that. Either keep 'em busy working, or keep 'em distracted with shiny baubles and insipid passive entertainment.

Let me be clear that this isn't an attack on those who find so much passion in their work that they spend the great majority of their waking hours at it. I applaud them, and wish that more people could find that passion. But every time someone comes along and proposes something like basic income (or heaven forbid, affordable health care) that would make the path towards true passion in work and leisure, they get shouted down.

[avn2109]

>> "... or keep 'em distracted with shiny baubles and insipid passive entertainment."

Panem et circenses. Hardly a new trick, and truer now than ever.

[zo1]

For those that didn't get the Latin reference: Bread and Circuses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

[eli_gottlieb]

A few decades ago, when mass consumption of luxury goods was still "A Thing", I could have agreed. These days, the system mostly just keeps busy people at work, constantly trying to keep up with their bills.

[shostack]

"The challenge is to get more people to pick up an instrument, work on a new project, learn something new in their free time instead of starting at a television."

This is indeed an interesting challenge and one I've tackled for myself over the past year or so. For me the primary distractions are games and Reddit (although I've definitely gotten quite a bit of education and professional insights from Reddit so its not all bad).

As a huge gamer growing up, I didn't think anything about unwinding by playing video games. I never in a million years thought I'd see a day where they lost a lot of their appeal, but the F2P shift has definitely accelerated that. I think it stems from the fact that I'm now significantly aware of the various hooks that go into a game to extract more money or keep me playing longer. It just killed some of the appeal. Of course, I still sunk 3-4 hours into Mount & Blade: Warband multiplayer last night, and find that round-based multiplayer games without microtransactions still hold great appeal to me.

Ultimately though, as I grow older I find myself saying "it's ok if I want to play a game now to relax, but I need to be aware that it is a conscious tradeoff between doing something fun and mindless, and doing something less fun and productive." Trying to teach myself how to code is hard work, and so it is a real mental battle for me to make myself do that sometimes, but will pay dividends down the line as I develop a new skill and gain more technical knowledge.

At the end of the day, the only one who can make me spend time doing something is myself, and once you realize your battle is with yourself and not with gaming, or TV, or any other distraction/vice, that is the first step to improvement.