This node presupposes that you have read the "In
Praise of Idleness" node. It a very nice and comprehensible essay
by Bertrand Russell, in which he explains why he considers that working
8 hours a day is way too much and harmful also, and proposes a cut
to 4 hours a day.
So, when I first read the essay, I was so... how can I express
it with my poor english... so accordant, so furiously impassioned with
the idea that 8 hours a day working is TOO MUCH, that I felt like a little
kid whose lollipop has been taken... The Truth shone before me: life
9 to 5 is not a life. Let me explain myself.
But first things first (although not necessarily in that order as Dr.
Who would say ;-). Let's sum things up in categories:
We have to discriminate between two cases:
- First, there are the hours we spend on things that we can't do without/we
can't control.
- There are also those hours that we have at our disposal (to watch
all our Jerry Springer show videotapes for example (my bloody humor
strikes again)).
OK, first category, may the slaughter begin:
24.0 hours available
1
- 2.0 hours for
cooking and eating2
- 7.5 hours for sleeping
3
- 1.5 hour spent in
car/
bus/
public transport4
for going back and forth to
work, to the
theater, to the
gym, (whatever
you do during a day)
-
1.0 hour spent for minor (but
sine qua non nevertheless,
for any human being) needs
5
--------------------------------------------------
= 12 hours left (50 % of the whole day).
And now
ladies & gentlemen the
final blow (a most kind
contribution
of our
beloved economical system):
12.0 hours
-
8.0 hours of
slaver... errr, working
6
--------------------------------------
=
4 hours finally left.
1 As we all know,
a day on earth has 24 hours.
2 Someone may argue: "Oh, c'mon, do you need 2 hours for
two
meals a day?? Have
a pizza in the microwave oven and you're done.
It fills you up and it's quick". I'll answer politely: "Fuck you man!
Eating
is (or at least used to be) one of man's most highly valued pleasures. To
say the least, I don't want to end up with
stomach cancer because of junk-food".
3 Scientists say that 7 hours a day (night actually :-)
sleeping is
OK for most adults. 8 hours is also OK, but more than 8 is
actually harmful. So, for our calculation, let's say 7.5 hours. You'll say:
"...but you said 7 hours is enough!". Do not make me say any bad words again:
Sleeping is also a pleasure (...and does good to the
skin also ;-). Remember,
we do some things for their own sake,
we did not come to earth just to work!
(As the motto sometimes seen on the
E2 home page says: "
Don't take life
too seriously".
4 And of course everybody will agree with me that, in most
cases the 1.5 hour
is by far exceeded. But let's, conservatively,
say 1.5 hour in order not to make our model even more
pessimistic...
5 time in the
toilet, time to
brush your teeth, to
have a
bath/
shower etc.
6 As "
Les Luthiers" have said, "
Slavery was not abolished,
it was just changed to 8 hours per day"... Oh, and did I mention the
overtimes??...
So, 4 hours left...
4 hours in which we will:
- watch a tv/movie/attend a concert/watch a theatrical play (average
duration: 2.0 hours)
- read a book (average duration: 0.5 hour)
- do some sport (average duration: 1.0 hour)
- spend time with our family (average duration: 1.0 hour)
- go out with our friends (average duration: 1.5 hour)
- do nothing1
1 Yes, do nothing. Except from physical rest
acquired by sleeping, humans also need time to just sit, and do nothing
but contemplate, look out of the windows at the cloudy sky, watch the rain,
anything of the kind. You simply can't run the whole day from this
activity to that activity; you also need to spend some time for yourself
in the relaxed way I described.
What has to be done & why
Of course one will say, you can't expect to do all of your leisure
activities every day. I will agree. But, come on, we live in the same
world, it is obvious to everybody, that the maths simply don't work. 4
hours is zero. I will give an example: You go to the gym. You say to
yourself: "We have exactly 1 hour to finish our training". But then you meet
some good friends there and they talk to you. You stare nervously at your
watch all the time, knowing that probably you won't make it... Is there
anybody who likes that? Is there anyone who likes his life being so exact
and strict as a computer program? I don't think so...
And all that, caused by the fact that in the 21st century we still
have to work 8 hours a day! At that point let me quote from Bertrand
Russell's In Praise of Idleness (which I strongly recommend reading):
I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is
being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work,
and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in
an organized diminution of work.
and
The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern
world has no need of slavery.
As Russell says, the conception of duty has always been a means of power-owners
to convince others to labour not for their own interests but for those
of their masters. And as for the power-owners, they conceal this fact
from themselves by managing to believe that their interests are identical
with the larger interests of humanity. And sometimes this is true.
For example, we have to admit that our civilization would lack a whole lot
if in ancient Greece had existed no slavery. Under those conditions,
a just economic system would make any contributions to the civilization
impossible.
I will not try neither to justify, neither to condemn the Athenian slavery
status quo. That was thousands of years ago and would be totally silly
to judge it with our morality. What really matters is that today we
do not need slavery to contribute to civilization (I repeat, I do not
consider now the ethical aspect of slavery) because with the automatization,
industrialization etc, the amount of work needed to secure for everybody
the necessaries for life has greatly diminished. But instead of reducing
the hours of work, people continue to work as hard as before, the production
of course is of a much bigger quantity due to automatization, the market
cannot absorb it, companies go bankrupt, and people lose their work... As
Russell (again) says, "Could anything more insane be imagined?".
So, that what has to be done is to "reduce the amount of labour. Preferably
from 8 hours, to 4 hours per day".
Enjoy life! Taste every moment of it, but not in the frenzy way that
modern society forces us. Life is like good wine, you can't drink it
as if it were Coca-Cola or else you will actually turn it into Coca-Cola.
So, having read In Praise of Idleness and dreaming about how wonderful
things would be if we could get rid of all the unnecessary and harmful labour,
how wonderful it would be not to have to run all day to do this, to
do that, to catch up the bus, oh I missed the bus, I'll take a taxi, shit,
too much traffic, no time to go to the gym, no time to cook, I'm hungry,
damnit not McDonalds again, etc... Errrr, what was I saying? Ah, yes. So, having read the essay, I
explained all these wonderful things to a rather cynical friend of mine,
who, the whole time I was talking was looking at me untouched and unmoved.
When I finished, quite excited (me not him :-), he asked me
with a face and voice both shining with sarcasm:
"And what about the wages smart guy? How are you gonna live with
half the wage you earn now?"
This question erased the smile from my face. I had not thought about it.
True... If you work for half the time you currently work, you'll get half
the money you now get. Logical. Then I thought it over again. Is
it?...
The Answer is here: Half the work, half the pay. Or not?(Part II)
Since the discussion of this last question goes out of the scope of this writeup, I came up with another writeup, containing my thoughts about what happens with the money you get (and why it happens, and why it should not happen, etc) in case of a reduction of working hours.