Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (Masterminds Series)

Work itself becomes as enjoyable as leisure, and when one needs a break from it, leisure is likely to be true recreation instead of a scheme for dulling the mind.

In any case, we have seen that at the social as well as the individual level habits of leisure act as both effects and as causes. When the lifestyle of a social group becomes obsolete, when work turns into a boring routine and community responsibilities lose their meaning, it is likely that leisure will become increasingly more important. And if a society becomes too dependent on entertainment, it is likely that there will be less psychic energy left to cope creatively with the technological and economic challenges that will inevitably arise.

Ironically, it seems that how much happiness and enjoyment we get from leisure has no relation at all-if anything, a negative relation-to the amount of material energy consumed while doing it.

To make the best use of free time, one needs to devote as much ingenuity and attention to it as one would to one's job.

Modern civilization has found radio, TV, nightclubs and a huge variety of mechanized entertainment to titillate our senses and help us escape from the apparent boredom of the earth and the sun and wind and stars. Sailing returns to these ancient realities.

When productive activities become too routine and meaningless, leisure will pick up the slack. It will take up progressively more time, and rely on increasingly more elaborate artificial stimulation.

Thus "bread and circuses" is a ploy of last resort that postpones the dissolution of society only temporarily.

Depending on one's perspective, one can interpret this in two quite opposite ways. One can see in these instances leisure being used as an "opiate of the masses," to paraphrase what Marx said about religion. Or one can see them as creative responses to dangerous situations impervious to more effective solutions.

But in human development causation is usually circular: what was an effect in the beginning eventually turns into a cause. An abusive parent may force his child to adopt a defense based on repressed aggression; as the child grows up, it is this style of defense rather than the initial trauma that might make it easy for him in turn to become an abusive parent.

Not all free-time activities are the same. One major distinction is between active and passive leisure, which have quite different psychological effects.