I found it very interesting that the happiness surveys show that it is not just Americans who show a dip in happiness in the past 50 years (subjective well being has dropped in plenty of developed countries); Amish don’t fall into this dissatisfaction. It wasn't brought up in class but I did find it interesting that nations considered to be developed were the ones becoming increasingly dissatisfied with life.
We also discussed the idea that leisure is freedom and opportunity as well as control. I found this an interesting (but true!) paradox as well. Don't parents use leisure to control their children (You can't go play until you've eaten everything on your plate)?
Will leisure stay the same or will it completely change in this century? I think our ideas about it (it is important, it has benefits, etc) will stay the same but what we feel is leisure will change. Facebook for example has become more of a task than leisure, but then again baseball has been around for a long time and it’s still considered leisure. I think even baseball is morphing though. For example, 30 years ago, I think more adults were playing baseball whereas today, adults watch baseball.
I also liked the idea that leisure is an octopus with its tentacles in movies/travel/food/clothes/etc. It is a very great analogy to all the disciplines that leisure can include. I could argue that almost everything could be one of the octopus's tentacles. I might not like eating brussel sprouts, but someone out there does and so eating brussel sprouts is leisure for them. You might not like running, but someone else does so it is leisure to them.
I'm not sure I completely agree with the thought that education is one of the best indicators of leisure preferences. I think we put too much emphasis on this. Yes, it does corelate with income (to some extent) and income has an effect on what you can afford to do, but that's too long of a chain to support. Especially since more and more people are going to college these days. By the time I finish school, I will have 2 degrees but one of my favorite things to do for leisure is go swing. I don't think that's something that correlates with my education level.
Our discussion on the loss of newspaper, being replaced by blogs either of specialists or with academic focus left an important idea out. Yes, they might write blogs, but what about the senior population? Technology is changing our leisure and forgetting about the older population! Have we done anything recently for elderly recreation? Kindle is the only thing I can really think of.
Finally, the quote from About A Boy was interesting. “This is an island age.” Is the age old adage "No man is an island" true still? Is there a point where you appreciate being an island? I think today's technology makes it a lot easier to be an island for longer periods of time, but I think the idea still rings true for the most part. In Texas, fences are built 8ft high creating island homes. The community does not interact the way the community in New England does. Each house creates it's own family island. Did we trade community for safety when we moved out of the cities and into the suburbs? I think some places did, while others did not. The places that are not the most tech-savy are the ones who still find the sense of community.
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