Workaholism, Leisure And Pleasure Essay -- essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web SitesThe official conk outing week is being reduced to 35 hours a week. In more or less countries in the world, it is limited to 45 hours a week. The trend during the last degree centigrade seems to be unequivocal less work, more play. Yet, what may be reliable for blue collar workers or state employees is not necessarily so for white collar members of the liberal professions. It is not rare for these people lawyers, accountants, consultants, managers, academics to give in 80 hour weeks. The phenomenon is so widespread and its social consequences so damaging that it acquired the unflattering nickname workaholism, a combination of the words work and alcoholism. Family life is disrupted, intellectual horizons narrow, the consequences to the workaholics health are repellent fat, lack of exercise, stress take their toll. Classified as alpha types, worka holics scram three times as many heart attacks as their peers. notwithstanding what are the social and economic roots of this phenomenon ? Put succinctly, it is the result of the blurring borders and differences surrounded by work and leisure. The distinction between these two types of time the one dedicated to tire out and the one spent in the pursuit of ones interests was so clear for thousands of years that its gradual disappearance is one of the close to important and profound social changes in human history. A host of other shifts in the character of the work and domestic environments of humans converged to evolve this momentous change. Arguably the most important was the increase in labour mobility and the fluid nature of the very concept of work and the workplace. The transitions from agricultural to industrial, then to the services and now to the information and knowledge societies, each, in turn, increased the mobility of the workforce. A farmer is the least mobi le. His means of drudgery are fixed, his produce was largely consumed locally because of lack of proper refrigeration, preservation and transportation methods. A marginal group of people became nomad-traders. This group exploded in size with the sexual climax of the industrial revolution. True, the bulk of the workforce was still immobile and affixed to the production floor. But raw materials and the finished products travelled gigantic distances ... ...eneurs, the managers, the businessmen. They are the movers, the shakers, the pushers, the energy. Without them, we guide socialist economies, where everything belongs to everyone and, actually to none. In these economies of collective ownership people go to work because they have to, they try to avoid it, to sabotage the workplace, they harbour shun feelings. Slowly, they wither and die (professionally) because no one can live long in hatred and deceit. Joy is an essential ingredient. And this is the true meaning of capitalis t economy the abolition of work and leisure and the pursuit of both with the same fanaticism and satisfaction. Above all, the (increasing) liberty to do it whenever, wherever, with whomever you choose. Unless and until the Homo East Europeansis changes his set of thinker there will be no real transition. Because transition happens in the human mind much before it takes form in reality. It is no use to dictate, to legislate, to finance, to cajole, to offer the human being must change first. It was Marx (a near non-capitalist) who said it is consciousness that determines reality. How right was he. Witness the USA and witness the worthless failure of communism.