The Virtual Rambler

Number forty one: 20^th October 2013

Free Time

Decades are yet to elapse before you reach retirement age , so you continue going to work. Maybe you're among the lucky ones with what passes for an education , so you don't have to make unwanted phone calls to rank strangers or sit at a supermarket checkout all day. Being higher up the ladder , you're in the inescapable grip of enterprise culture. Your company has been invested with a logo and there are regular staff development sessions full of motivation seminars. These expensive but futile occasions' actual purpose is to renew a message (actually a threat) hanging over the heads of employees across the land : You’d better shape up , get your shoulder to the wheel , don’t let the grass grow under your feet , stand tall , think positive and go the extra mile at all times. Or else. It’s odd that people sitting in front of computer screens all day should be exhorted (however metaphorically) to engage in such essentially athletic pursuits. Outside working hours , there's shopping to be done and there are household chores. One eye must be kept on all the numerous payments (direct debits , standing orders) to the several organisations that run different provisions of service to your busy life. There are pressing family obligations involving elderly parents and young children. Nevertheless , a modicum of free time remains. What's to be done with it ?

In a 1941 essay , George Orwell remarked upon the “the liberty to do what you like in your spare time , to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above.” Although he came to be posthumously indicted as an old-Etonian tourist of working-class culture , his essays celebrated its subversive character , in folk-ballads , music-hall acts and the comic seaside postcards ⁽¹⁾ of his day. As quaint a figure to the modern eye as a pigeon-fancier on a seaside postcard , he was a traditional Socialist who believed that the first question to ask of any social arrangement was not how profitable it might be but rather , “Is it fair and just ?” Although subscribing to the First Principle that democracy implied a more equitable distribution of economic resources , he was just as interested in libertarian ideals of free speech and the preservation of personal free time as a private oasis in the barren public desert of political propaganda , commercial advertising and the gathering influence of mass media. Just the sort of agenda that a future New Labour party came to turn their backs on as “naive and outdated socialism”.

We welcome to our pages again the Frankfurt School⁽²⁾ of social philosophy , a group of Marxist-leaning psychogeographers who charted the fault lines cutting through the heart of modern society. Of particular interest is their analysis of all the ‘pseudo-activities’ fostered by commerce and the media as palliatives for the yoke that weighs upon us all. Co-opting the once private and inexpensive hobbies of individuals , business re-organised these for its own profit and we became acquiescent consumers of every pseudo-activity this dislocated world has to offer. The act of dozing in some distant sunshine suggests a crucial element of free time under present conditions - paying to be bored. These Germanic nay-sayers pre-dated the internet but they would have pointed out that as websites and 'smart phones' multiply , boredom expands with the frquency of our upgrades. We have become permanent gawpers in the phantasmagoric world of urban commodity capitalism. We groan in direct proportion to the ever-expanding levels of ‘choice’ on offer everywhere. A media cornucopia (on subscription) of zombie films , varieties of internet gambling and pornography , documentaries about the Nazis , multiple options of “patient-centred healthcare" or of “student-centred education” , etcetera etcetera ad infinitum. Choice is not a consumer preference but a supplier- designed labyrinth promoted to bamboozle the hapless punter into accepting more and more inessential stuff along with its attendant barrage of advertising. Once agriculturalised , then we were industrialised , now we have been consumerised.


Wig

⁽¹⁾ Exemplified by those ascribed to Donald McGill , the subject of Orwell’s 1942 essay “The Art of Donald McGill”. There is a museum on the Isle of Wight dedicated to his work. Holmfirth was the birthplace of one James Bamforth , who was a specialist in making lantern slides before he went on to pioneer early moving films in 1898. Later his company Bamforth & Co. specialised in the ‘saucy’ postcards now on show in a museum in Holmfirth itself.

⁽²⁾ See The Virtual Rambler #33.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan & Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20^th September 2013