Equal Leisure in an Unequal World

Equal Leisure in an Unequal World Though the globe today is characterized by deep and different layers in in terms of capital accumulation and resource appropriation, the leisure experience may display a different type of demarcation – one that may have the possibility of enriching different social groups if they drew from each other. Societies in which leisure has come to be characterised by the consumption of the fruits of production individuals may appear to be bound by a stimulus-response mode of leisure behaviour. What should be 'done' during 'leisure time’ is fed into the psyche through media pressure and socialisation resulting in activities that may or may not be self-enhancing even thought they feed into the leisure industry. In conventional understanding of leisure, there continues to be a simplistic dichotomy between work and leisure and 'free' and 'occupied' time as though these were easily separable categories. In this same layered global society there are groups of people who still live with values that recognize the organic unity of all things, are aware of a sense of continuum, as a movement from matter to spirit and vice versa, and see an interconnectedness of all things. As a result there arises a tendency to respect the environment and other beings. The ‘leisure’ of such societies need not be time abstracted from other day to day activities but a mindset that characterizes the whole. The presentation will look into the possibility of interaction of these segments on each other so as to enable a more holistic attitude to the environment and to other existents on earth.