The times, they are a changin’
The mapping of the evolution of the idea of leisure in Chapter 1 has shown the zeitgeist and sociocultural context to be essential hermeneutic coordinates in the understanding of leisure. Leisure is conceptualised and understood within a specific historical epoch and based on the sociocultural, political and philosophical foundations underlying it. The historical exposé demonstrates that a certain overlap in the dimensions of the leisure idea existed in the different epochs. Take, for example, the idea of happiness. What happiness meant to Aristotle could mean something quite different to people living today in different parts of the world. Arguably the very meaning and purpose of leisure can only be determined by the people who ‘inhabit a particular time and place’ (Wise 2014: 17). Therefore, in order to grasp the full meaning of leisure today and pave the way for entering into a discussion about foundational themes in the philosophy of leisure, it is necessary to reflect on the times we are currently living in.
Modern times have been characterised by philosophers and sociologists alike either as ‘modern’ or ‘postmodern’. These highly contested terms still function as reference points for a discussion on the zeitgeist of contemporary society. This section will deal with the conceptualisation and interrelatedness of these concepts as approaches to reality and life; reflection on the implications they have for thinking about leisure; considering alternative theories for describing modern times; and also with looking into the implications they might have for thinking about leisure.
Historically speaking, the age of modernity started with the dawn of the Enlightenment, which marks the transition from a ‘traditional’ society to an ‘industrial’ society. This is to say that a mindset that honoured (rural) community values and customs, hierarchy and status was progressively replaced by a mindset that honoured progressive, egalitarian, contractual and urban values (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_society). The modernist mindset focused on the improvement of society through achievements in science and technology, and realised reform in different domains of society such as architecture, literature, philosophy, economy, art and music. Reason, logic, cognition and the belief in progress, unity and harmony were seen as foundational, conceptual instruments for systematically structuring reality and enhancing human capability (Lindijer 2003: 24). This ‘empiricist’ epistemological approach is complemented by a shift in the sources of authority, power and truth, which entails moving away from the Church, politics and universities (Hoffman 2008).
Notwithstanding scholarly debates on the meaning of the terms ‘post-modernity’ or ‘postmodernism’ (some scholars advise that the term should be redefined every five years (Jones 2007: 35)) they mainly indicate a cultural trend or process that started closely after the Second World War and are characterised as a ‘radical discontinuity’ with modernity (Lucy 1997: 20). The discontinuity lies in advocating an epistemological pluralism that makes room for different ways of exploring and knowing reality. It includes intuition and spirituality (Hoffman 2008) and respect for human feeling and fantasy. It is critical of ideologies (grand or meta-narratives) and (economic and technological) systems, and acknowledges the limitations of human knowledge, understanding and possibilities. Sources of truth, power and authority in postmodern thinking are not based on universal truths, because there is ‘no longer an unchanging objective reality to which our ideas can easily correspond’ (Ford 2007: 112). The sources are more diffuse and actually distrusted.
Lyotard put forward that postmodernity should be understood as the rewriting of modernity. It should not be seen as a new historical epoch, since it is part of modernity, which, in turn, is not a historical period, but rather a mode of thinking (Lindijer 2003: 17). However, the philosophical debate about the relationship between modernism and postmodernism has not come to an end yet. Scholars use appellations such as ‘late modernity’, ‘postmodernity’, ‘supermodernity’ and ‘hypermodernity’ in order to find ways out of the controversy. Others identify different kinds of postmodernity, which are labelled either as ‘postmodern culture’ – which focuses on the rights of locality, heterogeneity and the ‘different’ – or ‘postmodern situation’ – which relates to the late capitalist culture of consumption and focuses on success and individual pleasure (Lindijer 2003: 28). Lyotard’s proposition that postmodernity fundamentally is a mode of thinking makes a lot of sense, since modernity itself ‘facilitates cultural movements rejecting modernity, whether they be nostalgic, even reactionary, or, alternatively, avant-garde’ (Hall et al. 2003: 144).
In sum, modernity and postmodernity are modes of thinking about reality and life that currently exist next to each other. It is even possible that a person who is fully modern also employs postmodern thinking (Lindijer 2003: 25). The bottom line is that postmodern thinking corrects modernist thinking where it becomes too tense, rational, unreal and therefore ‘dangerous’ (Lindijer 2003: 37).
Several leisure scholars, being right-minded sociologists, investigated the place of leisure within the modernist and/or postmodernist mind frame. Rojek, for example, characterises leisure in the context of modernity as a phenomenon that aims to enhance human well-being and fulfilment, but which also harbours experiences that have a fragmented and disorderly effect on society. He relates these two contrasting effects of leisure to modernity 1 and modernity 2. Modernity 1 stands for control over nature and society is based on its emphasis on the ‘harmony and ascendency of science’ (1995: 79). The result is that human capacities, time and space are put under pressure by different forms of regulation, such as religion, nationalism, the family, citizenship and bureaucracy (Rojek 1995: 6, 59–78). Modernity 2 emphasises ‘change, flux, de-differentiation and metamorphosis’ and the disorder of things. Rojek stresses that constant change is the main feature of modernity, which makes human relations messy and untidy (1995: 79, 106). He identifies a structural constant pertaining to leisure in the context of modernity, namely liminality, carrying with it ‘the idea of thresholds of freedom and control’ (1995: 103). He holds that liminality relates well to the experiences people have with processes of continuation and discontinuation in the world around them.
As far as postmodernity is concerned, Rojek, in endorsing Bauman’s analysis, stated that postmodernism sprang from the failures of modernity and, for example, resisted an idea that leisure would determine free time as the pre-eminent sign of authenticity (1995: 170). Postmodernist thinking is a critical correction to modernist views of leisure holding that leisure is a separate segment of life which strives towards self-fulfilment and satisfaction in life; that pleasure and fulfilment are to be held ‘normal and ordinary experiences’; that leisure evolves in a linear way and parallel to the human life cycle; that there is a divide between work and leisure and that people can be categorised as leisure providers and leisure consumers (1995: 171–173). Postmodernism opens up new possibilities for studying leisure and ‘places us beyond the epoch of the integrated, triumphant self and the utopia of the emancipated universal subject’ (Rojek 1995: 174).
Blackshaw, in following Bauman, holds that leisure has become liquid. As the modernist mindset is changing into a postmodernist mindset, the view of leisure is also changing. Defining leisure as ‘liquid’ draws into focus the flow and fluency, movement and mobility, and brittleness and breakability of social relations. More in general, it highlights the transparency and the temporary nature of things, which modernity in its formative modality was bent on solidifying and fixing. It goes beyond conceptualising human locations in the social world and inter-human bonds as static, and instead views them in their appropriate organic situatedness (Bauman 2004: 20). Blackshaw takes special care to focus on the human search for meaning and authenticity within this ‘liquid’ modern context, based as it is on freedom and the exploration thereof by social agents. In this sense, leisure can be viewed as a ‘facilitator’ of meaning and a domain for individual freedom. Leisure is dynamic and fluid not merely because of its instantiation in a multimodal context: it is itself a process rather than a thing. Leisure, he claims, has become a hermeneutical exercise: it has ceased to be defined by ‘its good or bad aspects … work against leisure, serious leisure against casual leisure, leisure as freedom against leisure as constraint’. Rather, the essence of leisure lies in the search for pleasure, happiness and freedom, and its meaning has deepened into an appeal to ‘the unknown known’ – the secret of leisure that is uncovered in the search (Blackshaw 2010: 141–142). In this light, leisure can be interpreted as a devotional practice, because the conscious choice for one’s own leisure practice is based on a feeling that deems that practice as something ‘holy’, as ‘though engaging in it were a religious function’ (Blackshaw 2010: 142). This devotional practice should be understood as a central feature of modern life, characterised as ‘reflexive individualization’ (Blackshaw 2010: 102). This feature is especially necessary today, because the ‘postmodern imagination’ provides individuals with a vast array of possibilities for making (a kind of) meaning that, in face of the lack of solid ontologies or a grand theory, has its own authority.
Spracklen, in drawing on the work of Habermas, acknowledges in line with Rojek and Blackshaw that leisure has grown into a domain in which identity and intentionality have received a fluid character, but firmly believes that the liquidity is essentially solidified due to the ‘ontological and epistemological frameworks’ that are used today (2011: 179). These instrumentalist frameworks lead to the commodification of leisure, which in turn, shows ‘an absence of both private cogitation and public discourse’ (Spracklen 2013: 146). For this reason, Habermas regards the post-modernist mindset as a kind of neo-conservatism and wants to revive the modernist frame of reference, because of its inclination to emancipate. Leisure has become ‘less useful as a space, form or activity that gives individuals meaning and purpose’ (Spracklen 2013: 146). The challenge of solving the paradox of leisure – it is instrumentalised on the one hand, but also related to personal choice on the other – has passionately been pursued by Spracklen. He challenges postmodern leisure theories by attempting to reconcile different points of view regarding human choice and the instrumentalised communicative nature of leisure. In order to escape from this paradox, ‘an objective arbiter of truth’ is needed (Spracklen 2011: 181). He finds this dimension in the alternative ‘future leisure stories’ individuals tell, because they reflect truths about the meaning and purpose of leisure within a specific time and place.
Modernity has been superseded by new ideas and perspectives which seem to be fluid (Spracklen prefers to speak about late modernity), but he identifies similarities between leisure today and leisure in other historical epochs and contexts that could be characterised as universal dimensions. Those are individual choice and constraint (2011: 197). To his mind, a universal philosophy of leisure is ‘ultimately associated with agency and with identity’, because ‘leisure is something that makes us human’ (2011: 198).
There are quite a number of sociologists who have reflected on the foundations of modernity and postmodernity whose ideas are worthy of consideration. Giddens, for example, focuses on the multi-dimensional nature, patterns and logic of modernity, while Beck warns of the risks modern society has for citizens. Ritzer identifies (hyper)rationality as the most essential feature of modernity, while Habermas – as has been indicated earlier – regards modernity as an unfinished project and rationality as its very centre. Finally, Bauman, who is regarded the foremost theorist on this theme, assesses (bureaucratic) rationality to have been the precondition for the destruction of the Jewish people (Guru (n.d.) www.yourarticlelibrary.com). He qualifies modernity as a bundle of irregularities and a false consciousness, and opts for a postmodern frame of reference that is in ‘itself a moral question’ (Bauman 1995: 8). Ethics should lead humanity out of the false consciousness of modernity.
Yet none of these scholars has developed an alternative theory of modernity. The Dutch sociologist, Kunneman, came close with his assessment that postmodernist thinking was a ‘successful failure’ and proposed a ‘second postmodernist’ frame of reference. On the one hand, post-modernism has delivered powerful conceptual resources for criticising self-evident and apparently innocent forms of power, which claim to have universal significance. It also provides a space that honours diversity and has respect for difference, and it facilitates the fertile development of horizontal epistemologies and morality. On the other hand, postmodernism was unsuccessful as a factor of political transformation. It did not substantially dialogue with the discourses of technology, the natural sciences, governance and management, except for criticising them from a distance. It failed to appoint a political actor who could implement the very ethical and moral values it called upon when criticising modernist thinking (2013: 13–17). Kunneman envisages a ‘second postmodernity’ which he describes as a political context of normative professionalisation. He sees it as a phase of transition in the development of modern societies that is confronted with new forms of complexity on the level of governance, management and professional behaviour (2013: 29). ‘Second postmodernity’ also relates to an inner, existential complexity of personal needs and desires that is disguised by the freedom, autonomy and the ideal of self-development of the individual. Horizontal morality facilitates acknowledgment of these inner contradictions and also relationships with others. It opens up possibilities for humane forms of (moral) interaction both on professional and organisational levels, and enables fruitful mobility between the utilisation of meaningful technological knowledge modernity has brought about, and the compassionate acceptance of the vulnerability and contingencies of human life (2013: 38).
A sociologist who consciously attempts to build a new theory of modernity is the German scholar Hartmut Rosa. He made a social theoretical analysis of ‘run-away-modernity’ – also called ‘social acceleration’ and ‘high-speed society’ – which focuses on the transformation of order. Rosa firmly rejects postmodern approaches that only favour fragmentation and experimentation and have no interest in any attempt towards constructing a systematic critical theory. The self-understanding of postmodernism as being a way of thinking that leads to emancipation is naive and self-deceptive. It mainly endorses the ‘structural imperative of high-speed society’ and, in addition, its fragmented selves are particularly determined by acceleration instead of autonomous ethical choice (Rosa and Scheuerman 2009: 17).
The four core processes of modernity – individualisation, domestication, rationalisation and differentiation – are all closely related to the increase of speed (Rosa and Scheuerman 2009: 110). Hence Rosa’s dictum that modernisation is essentially based on social acceleration. Rosa underpins his thesis with three arguments, namely that ‘individual as well as collective human existence is in its very essence temporal and processual’; that all four dimensions of modernity underlying social acceleration reflect ‘the unitary logic’; and that profound and fundamental transformations in society can only be understood from the perspective of temporality. He characterised these transformations as a (qualitative) social ‘revolution’ based on (quantitative) change in speed (Rosa and Scheuerman 2009: 111). More specifically: ‘the quantitative heightening of the objective pace of life seems to lead to a qualitative transformation of the subjective experience of time’ (Rosa 2013: 131). The social ‘revolution’ becomes evident in mechanical, technological acceleration (on the levels of transportation, communication and production), the acceleration of social change (on the levels of cultural knowledge, social institutions and personal relationships) and the accelerating pace of daily life (despite the expectation that technological progress would lead to an increase in free time) (Rosa 2013: 71–80, 301). Social acceleration has therefore a profound influence on the psychological, cultural, political, ecological and ethical aspects of human life and it changes the essence of man’s fundamental being in time and space (Rosa and Scheuerman 2009: 10). Instead of moving humanity further into history, it paradoxically leads to what Rosa calls a ‘frenetic standstill’ wherein everything is fluid and dynamic, but at the same time nothing essentially changes (2013: 15).
Thus, the mind frame of modernity, being the intentional transformation of ‘solid’ institutions into fluid and dynamic ones, in concreto creates a state of inertia, a detemporalisation of history and life, which leads to the eclipse of the direction in which historical transformation is going and of which politics seem incapable of steering or controlling (Rosa 2013: 313). In order to understand the zeitgeist of today, Rosa holds, one should study the temporal structures (relations of time) of society, since time is the domain in which ‘systemic imperatives are transformed into cultural orientations for living and acting’ (2013: 315).
This paragraph will briefly look into the implications of Rosa’s thesis of the acceleration of time for reflection on the nature of leisure in modern society. The vehicle for approaching this theme is his notion of the ‘pace of life’. The ‘pace of life’ is described as ‘the increase of episodes of action and/or experience per unit of time as a result of a scarcity of time resources’ (Rosa 2013: 121).
Time has both an individual and a social dimension. The most fundamental ethical question modern man is facing, Rosa holds, is ‘how do I want to spend my time?’ (Rosa and Scheuerman 2009: 16). This question is the temporal version of the ethical question ‘how do I want to live?’ (Rosa 2013: 315). At the same time individuals are incapable of controlling the structures, patterns and speed of social time. This could influence people ‘to will what they do not will, that is to pursue, of their own volition, courses of action that they do not prefer from a temporally stable perspective’ (2013: 2017). It has a normative effect on the ‘pace of life’. In following Schulze, Rosa pointed out that the ‘pace of life’ is determined by the (measurable) number of actions as well as the (subjective) number of experiences. This brought him to define the good life in terms of ‘the more episodes of experience that can be savoured for the enrichment of one’s inner life in less time, the better’ (2013: 124), which implies a ‘compression’ of experiences that have to be gained in less time. The ‘ethical categorical imperative of modernity’ is described by Von Foester as the attempt to increase or minimise the number of available options (Rosa 2013: 136). Individuals experience free time not as a temporal resource, but as time related to actions and experiences (Rosa 2013: 134). The result is stress related to ‘the fear of missing out and the compulsion to adapt’. Daily life has become an array of demands, an issue of necessity and indispensability – even in free time (2013: 134–135). In both the realms of work and of free time there is no time left for ‘really important’, valuable, activities (2013: 136). Modern society has become ‘rich in lived events, but devoid of experience’ (2013: 145). In addition, the acceleration of the ‘pace of life’ not only has an effect on the actions of people, but also on their very being, on who they are. Identity and self-understanding are increasingly experienced as fundamental openness and flexibility towards change (2013: 148).
From the above it is gathered that the ‘pace of life’ accelerates by an increase in the ‘aggregated speed of action’ as well as the ‘transformation of the experience of time in everyday life’ (Rosa 2013: 122). When transposing this maxim to the realm of work (in the context of capitalism), it becomes prevalent that the shortening of work time gives rise to an increase in the work-related tempo of life. However, the ‘pace of life’ related to leisure time shows no correlation with the length of work time. The ‘pace of life’ in leisure could either be faster or slower when leisure time increases – although there is evidence that the pace of life in leisure increases with the increase of material well-being (2013: 123). It is rather the quality of leisure experiences that is undergoing a dramatic change: the acceleration of time prevents lived events (Erlebnisse) to transform into real experience (Erfahrung). The time in which many leisure activities are performed is perceived as ‘short-short’ time, which entails that those activities are not linked to one another, to history or to one’s personal identity (Rosa 2013: 307). They are experienced as isolated ‘events’. In addition, the boundaries between work time and free time are also getting more and more blurred because of the blurring of the boundaries between the spheres of work and life. The life sphere is increasingly steered by the entrepreneurial mindset: one has to move on, climbing up, preferably with success – even if that means that free time is used to achieve that. The paradigm of a successful and fulfilled life is characterised by ‘the maximal enjoyment of worldly opportunities and the optimal actualisation of one’s own abilities’ – even if that implies that one has to live twice as fast (Rosa 2013: 173, 310).
Intermezzo I conveys a brief outline of several scholarly typologies of the current times. It serves as a bridge between assessing the reception of the leisure idea/ideal in different historical epochs and reflection on foundational themes in philosophy such as freedom, meaning, identity and ethics, which will be at stake in the following part of the book. The key concepts used to describe the modern zeitgeist are ‘modernity’ and ‘postmodernity’. Whereas modernity is generally described as a mode of thinking that regards scientific and technological achievements as the prime moderators for societal change, postmodernity is generally conceived as a discontinuity with modernity and a way of thinking that honours different ways of exploring and knowing reality – including intuition and spirituality. However, the nature of and relationship between these two concepts are highly contested and scholarly debates across various disciplines have not yet been completed. One position that has raised quite some interest internationally, because it poses an alternative theory for modernity, is Rosa’s notion of the acceleration of society and time. This notion holds the essence of human existence to be temporality and process, and assesses that modern times are characterised by a quantitative increase in the speed/pace of life, with the result of a qualitative transformation in subjective experience. Moreover, the times seem to be dynamic and fluid, but in effect everything has come to a ‘frenetic standstill’. Nothing really changes.
These insights have implications for thinking about leisure as well. In embracing postmodernity, Rojek holds that leisure can no longer be conceptualised in relation to an integrated self and a free, universal subject; Blackshaw views leisure as a devotional, meaningful practice in which individuals search for pleasure, happiness and freedom, and Spracklen advocates that leisure should be studied under the denominators of agency and identity. Rosa’s break with ‘classical’ discussions with regard to the characteristics and foundations of modernity and postmodernity does raise intriguing questions about the nature of leisure. The ‘important’ seems to have disappeared from both the realm of work and leisure time. The acceleration of time leads individuals to perceive actions in their leisure/free time (Rosa uses ‘leisure’ and ‘free time’ interchangeably) as events (Erlebnis), instead of lived experiences (Erfahrung), and the good life is seen as an accumulation of experience in the shortest time span possible. Therefore, the most ethical question of modern times, Rosa holds, is ‘how do I spend my time?’
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