You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Today, the American people have more time at their disposal than all the aristocracies of history. This time derives from shorter working days and weeks, longer weekends and vacations, and the population explosion of people over sixty-five, all representing millions of man hours in retirement.
As to the future, economists recently testified before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee that within the next eighteen years (making allowances for population expansion and certain occupational exceptions), the working time of the American people will steadily decrease while their per capita income and gross national product will continue to rise. By 1985, the economic adaptation to this change will eventuate in a 22-hour work week, a 27-week work year, retirement at 37, or some combination of these working patterns.1
I will refer to this time so placed at our disposal as “free time” to avoid the misunderstandings surrounding such terms as “leisure time,” “discretionary time,” “unstructured time,” etc. I will particularly avoid the term “leisure” because it has proved to be a nebulous, ambiguous, and untenable working concept. It has eluded definition for centuries. It still poses a perpetual problem for translators of ancient and modern languages and remains a contentious subject for philosophers and epistemologists. It has lost much of its original, dignified, positive meaning and has, particularly of late, acquired negative connotations with cynical, satirical overtones. This indefinability of leisure has constituted a serious and constant block to communication.
Leisure is essentially subjective, with subjective determinants. We cannot will it to happen. Like relaxation, it is effortless, and comes to us under certain favorable inner and outer conditions which will be discussed later. The term “free time,” as I am using it, refers to an objective, measurable quantity.
Contrary to what the current scientific and popular journals are telling us, cybernation and medical science have not