Have the old Puritan scolds been vindicated? Perhaps, but only because they bequeathed us a self-fulfilling prophecy. A society so thoroughly steeped in the work ethic and committed to the pursuit of individual achievement cannot but fail to prepare its members for any other kinds of lives.Yet solutions to the problem of leisure exist throughout our own wisdom tradition, which stresses the value of friendship (Epicurus), contemplation (Aristotle), and “other-regarding” public service (Cicero). These basic human goods have been severely eroded, producing an age of loneliness, inattention, and ginned-up tribalism; but each could be reclaimed with sufficient free time and a proper command over it. While there will always be demagogues, conspiracists, and cult leaders, they would have no purchase over a people who can find fulfilment in themselves.Developing a healthy relationship with free time does not come naturally; it requires a leisure ethic, and like Aristotelian virtue, this probably needs to be cultivated from a young age. Only through deep, sustained habituation does one begin to distinguish between art and entertainment, lower and higher pleasures, titillation and the sublime. Those who would deny such distinctions cannot be dissuaded, because they belong to the uninitiated. They know not of what they speak.Honing an appreciation for the more sustaining sources of self-fulfilment takes time and self-discipline, yet a vast industry exists to lure us from the primrose path. At some point, the purpose of education was no longer to create well-rounded citizens with rich inner lives, political discernment, and a capacity for spiritual or emotional self-sufficiency – as Dewey hoped. The motivation, instead, has been to sustain the economy’s stock of “human capital” in the face of constant technological change.Just a few short years ago, everyone was advised to “learn to code,” regardless of where their real interests might lie. Yet now, we are told, this is one area where large language models already excel. Will some share of the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested into STEM be reallocated toward rescuing the humanities – the one set of disciplines whose value does not depend entirely on unforeseeable macroeconomic contingencies? We shouldn’t hold our breath.
American greatness has produced a society whose members know not what to do with the freedom and abundance that earlier generations secured. We are now witnessing the squandering of this inheritance, and it is even more idiotic and vulgar a spectacle than anyone would expect.
As a kid, I remember riding home in the car from my Great-Grandpa and Grandma Firchau's house after Sunday dinner, my Mum telling my sis and me nearly the same thing.
All afternoon I would watch and listen to four men that had secured America's freedom and abundance during their service in both theaters of World War II. These men who regularly hugged me, scrubbed my head after telling me jokes, and gave me sips of their beer, sat next to me at meals, stood beside me in church, and let me steer their cars from their laps. They were my family. I was their family. They never spoke of it, but my Mum had told me the stories of the inheritance they ensured for us.
Somehow I missed it, though. The increased debt I owe for being the first Firchau, going back as many generations as records allow, to not serve in the military, isn't lost on me.
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