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On
a Theory of Leisure in the Field of Spiritual Culture
By Ma Huidi
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Page: http://www.chineseliesure.org
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In
the 20th century, one of the greatest contribution of science and
technology to the mankind is that it has freed the human beings from heavy
physical labor and given the people full leisure time. With the coming of
the digital era, most of the future life and state of living of the
mankind will be spent in leisure time. Therefore, leisure has become an
important part of the human social activities. What is leisure? What kind
of inner links exist between leisure and the quality of the human life?
What enlightenment can we gain from leisure which is an implication of
cultural spirit? What kind of value of leisure shall we have in the
future? All the above questions need our careful consideration.
I. Leisure
and leisure culture
Leisure refers to the time the people have after they finish
necessary social labor, which is based on reduction of man-hours. Leisure
is a form of the state of human life, generally including eliminating
physical fatigue and gaining spiritual comfort. With the development of
science and technology as well as the social advancement, leisure has
provided conditions for the rich spiritual life of the people. It is said
that recreation will free the people from labor. On the one side, the
hardness of labor will weaken due to longer rest and recovery time; on the
other side, recreation should play a role in compensating the pains caused
by labor to the people, helping them find back the possibility of the
physical and spiritual balance damaged by labor. Leisure reflects the
level of productive force of one country as well as the apparatus for
measuring social culture. It is the flower watered by spiritual
civilization and material civilization of human beings.
Leisure culture is the distillation of leisure in the field of
culture, meaning a kind of living state and way of behavior in a process
of cultural creation, cultural enjoyment and cultural construction so as
to meet many-sided demands of the people. It creates cultural atmosphere,
transfer cultural information and build cultural artistic conception
through the behavior, thought, feeling and activities of individuals or
groups; thus, physical and mental development of the individuals will be
achieved in a comprehensive and intact way. The essence of leisure mainly
reflect a type of spiritual life of the people. Leisure, with a special
implication of cultural spirit, is different from spare time or idle time.
Instead it refers to the people's self-development after their necessary
labor .
Leisure culture which comes from material civilization is one of
the most important parts of human being's culture. With the development of
productive force, man has leisure time which separates from labor
continuously. Beautiful music and graceful dance were the products of
ancient Greek for leisure. Ancient Chinese also wrote poems to describe
leisure. Leisure makes man's spiritual life colorful. Leisure culture
which reflects spirit of era as well as human nature is epitome of human
being's spiritual culture. It concerns with the level of politics, economy
and ethics in certain historical period.
As a special form of culture, leisure effects man's living in many
different ways such as reading, traveling, drinking, chatting and making
friends in leisure time. It comforts your tired mind and heart.
Wandering in the beautiful countryside, sleeping on the bamboo
chair under the tree and so on all make you relax. Therefore, "the
deep, great and beautiful spiritual home of human being can found in the
wind, cloud, mountains, color and smell of flowers. ([9]p354) Great writer
Yutang Ling once said, "leisure life is not just the right of wealthy
and successful men, but the products of easy heart which comes from happy
sense. To enjoy leisure does not need a lot of money. Sometimes wealthy
man does not enjoy leisure life truly while the person who loves thrifty
and simple life with kind heart does.([19]p259) Perhaps this is the true
essence of leisure culture.
The American sociologist T.Veblen was the founder of leisure study
in the view of culture, which started at the end of 19th century. He wrote
a book in 1898 to analyze the relations between leisure and consume and
thought "The ways of leisure is 'non-material' , but the art or the
knowledge for discussion."([15]p36) With the fast development of
science and technology, leisure time begins to increase generally, and
leisure becomes very important and necessary for the people's many-sided
self-development. In 1936, a secretary office which was in charge of
sports and entertainment came into being in France. This meant leisure
became a task of France government. (In 1981, Leisure Department was
organized in France.) After World War II, traveling and other leisure
activities sprang up. People began to pursue leisure at their own will. At
the same time, various international labor organizations issued
declarations on the rights of the laborers in succession, providing full
legal guarantee for leisure and mood for enjoyments. In 1970, Leisure
Charter was passed which says "Leisure time is the time that man
kills at his own will after he finishes his work. It enriches man's life
and self-development. The activities based on leisure time have a common
characteristics which is a kind of psychology sense and
satisfaction."[1] Many western scholars issued systematic theory from
the angle of culture civilization and daily life civilization as well.
China has a long history of leisure culture. Before modern times,
the leisure culture were mainly reflected among feudal officials and
literatus. Many excellent Chinese traditional words, including The Book of
Songs, The Songs of Chu, The Poems of Tang, The Ballads of Song, The Yuan
Qu and The Trivial Memories of Autumn Light written in the Qing Dynasty,
have recorded rich contents of leisure culture. However, the leisure
culture was far from most ordinary people at that time; and due to the
special background of the Chinese social culture in the past century,
China's leisure culture had dropped to be at a low tide.
In contemporary China, Mr. Guangyuan Yu was the first to put
forward the theory of leisure culture. In 1983 and 1994, he pointed out
that play is one of the basic needs of human beings and people should play
with culture, study the science of play and grasp and develop the skills
of play. In 1995, Mr. Yu established " Liuhe Leisure Culture Planning
Center", beginning the study on leisure cultural theory so as to
promote the leisure with taste for all ordinary people.
As a kind of governmental activity and state system, leisure
culture merely started in the past decade. Since 1985, the Research Center
of Promotion and Development of Science and Technology of China's State
Commission for Science and Technology had studied " The Reduction of
Man-hours" for more than two years. In February 1987, the center
proposed a report on the preliminary practical research on reduction of
man-hours in China. Afterwards, the Chinese Government had made eight-year
preparations for the whole people", advocating scientific, civilized
and healthy way of life which has shown that China has entered the world
process of leisure culture and opened a new era of China's leisure
culture.
II.
Leisure in the Field of Cultural Spirit
It is necessary to consider the nature of people if we ponder over
leisure from the angle of cultural spirit. It is well know that the most
basic difference between the people and the other living things is the
people have the property of social culture. Frome once pointed out that
the essence of life is to be sure of self-existence. "Man's nature
does not confine to food and sex for living. It also refers to the emotion
such as love, friendship, happiness and hatred etc. What is more, man's
character is one part of human nature."([5]p50)
Ancient Greek tried to grasp the characteristics of human being.
"Man is a spiritual being. This makes him have a unique
status."([17]p57) Human being's history proves that man's state is a
spiritual state which gives us necessary theoretic support to study
leisure from the angle of cultural spirit. "When we admit unique
spirit power is the base of life, the behavior itself strengthening this
life reflects the meaning and value of life."([17]p70) What is the
essence of cultural spirit? It is conveyed through knowledgeable and
graceful behavior. It is concessive process to pursue self-development in
inner power. "This inner power comes from one's aesthetics, moral
sense and temperament and interest in daily life.([12]) Therefore, leisure
is in the field of cultural spirit.
Today, man begins to attach importance to economic capital and
cultural capital. What is cultural capital? (I) concrete state ---- the
state of mind and body. (II) objective state ---- cultural goods such as
book, picture, machine and so on. (III) systematic state ----- it is a
objective form which makes cultural capital become primitive
property."([9]p193) In Greek, "Schole" means leisure and
education. From this aspect we know that leisure has close relationship
with education as well as entertainment with the level of education. So
leisure is based on education. This is the theoretic and logical basis for
us to study leisure from the angle of cultural spirit.
Marthom revealed the essence of human being from the aspect of
psychology. He gave man three kinds of power of personality which were:
the power of wisdom; the power of morality and the power of will. He said
, "Man has a advanced instinct which includes the desire for work
value, justice, rationality and good job etc. When man gets basic need, he
will pursue the advance such as emotion, dignity, respect, honor and other
highest values.([10]p6)
Also, Marx laid stress on the relationship between leisure and
man's full-development. He said: "Leisure time itself is property.
Man must train man's social personality and make him full-development as
special social product. (Because the things is complicated, man must have
competence to enjoy leisure. This proves man must be a democratic and
civilized.) This is the condition to regard capital as basis of
production."([18]) When the necessary work time reduces to the lowest
level, leisure time increases, and then man begins to develop himself in
art, science and philosophy etc. Thus man's value as social being is
reflected fully.
It is a long history from leisure to leisure culture, and then to
having a meaning life. In recent centuries, many thinkers have attached
importance to man's self-realization. This provides theoretic basis for us
to study leisure in the field of cultural spirit.
III.
Man's Self-examination and Criticism from the Perspective of Cultural
Spirit
There is no doubt that people will have more and more leisure
time in their life with the coming of modern society. However, we have to
notice and experience such a fact: alienation of the people in modern time
in the process of their "occupation" makes the contradictions
between human and nature, person and person, the balance and unbalance of
individual inner world become sharper and sharper. In the academic
circles, mankind has started to self-examine and criticize from the
dimension of cultural spirit. The extrusive symbol is that man has become
a man without soul though he has magic power.
Bell once described our society as follows, "The developed
science and technology extends human living space, widens fields of human
vision, increases human self-realization and strengthens human power to
control and use nature. However, the essential issues also follow hard at
heel: Although modern knowledge is ever comprehensive, special and
precise, modern man feels unprecedented insignificance and helplessness;
The separations between the religion and human life, the youth and the old
hinder the communication among them. The scientific idea blindly expands
and soaks into the field of the humanities and it pays no heed to human
value. As a consequence, modern man has rich knowledge but he lacks the
intelligence to grasp the significance of life and integrative thought to
deal with the complicated situations in modern time.([3]p140) Therefore,
Bell cried out sadly, " Who am I?" The question demonstrates the
seriousness of human being. The contradiction between physical products
and human soul are becoming increasingly distinct. Human spiritual world
was smashed to pieces by the conflicts between occupation and souls.
Although our spare time increases day by day, we are even more unknown how
to use it well. On one hand, physical products become extremely rich while
human spiritual world is empty. The economy becomes more and more
developed, but most people feel the happiness, the desired life and living
qualities are beyond to reach. "The hiding of the god, the ending of
the subject(man)" just are a true portrayal of the contemporary human
culture which lost its spirit.
It is found out that there are 89% Americans have experienced heavy
psychological depress according to a recent American Harris public opinion
poll. The data supplied by the Ministry of Public Health of France shows
that the reasons of death that speed ghastly are not Aids, not drug
taking, not traffic accidents, but suicide caused by psychological
depress. In Germany 10% of the people has psychological problem. The
United Nations International Organization for Reform Through Labor tells
us in a published report that psychological depress has become one of the
most serious health problems. In China, there are 20.3% of 126 thousand
college students suffered from psychological depress in accordance with
the result of sample investigation made by the State Education Commission
of China. In addition, the 1996 investigation report of the state
commission for Restructuring Economy of China shows that there are 68.5%
of residents felt pressure in their life. On the whole, psychological
problem in different degree exist wide spread in the nation.
Why do so many psychological problems occur while human material
life is becoming rich? Experts say that the arouse of psychological stress
has subjective and objective reasons. From the objective aspect, we can
see that the intense competition, the threatening of losing job, the
rocking of family, the exposure of information and the increasing of
conflicts conform the stress to psychology. From the subjective aspect, we
can see modern man's value outlook and ethics have a great change: their
urges for wealth are continuously expanding; Their expectation to life is
higher and higher; Thought of match and compare is getting more and more
stressed. In fact, the essence of the problem lies in the losing of human
cultural spirit. It is his own soul that modern man alienates in the
process of occupying wealth. Japanese who compete fiercely call themselves
"Economic animals." They feel deeply that their material lives
become prosperous but the real human nature is buried. This makes them
feel stifle.
Certainly, feeling puzzled does not mean that man isn't thinking
deeply. Human has realized in reason that the development of modernization
itself is only means and its ultimate aim is to improve human life or
develop life quality. A life lacking significance and value is obviously
not worth admiring. Therefore it has no lofty character. In this century
many thinkers and scholars have shown solicitude for the world of human
life.(referring to their spiritual life)
Daily life is the carrier of leisure (it is reciprocal entirety in
fact). It is necessary for us to examine our concept of daily life. It's
self-evident that daily life is compared with conscious spiritual activity
such as science, art, philosophy and with organized social activity such
as politics, economy and management. It is a summary of daily ideological
activity, social activity and the other activities which take individual's
direct conditions ------ natural communities as family, village, street
block ----- as elementary condition and aim to sustain individual survival
and reproduction. The most elementary activities of human are to obtain
means of subsistence and consume activity. Their aims are to meet the
needs of food, clothing, shelter and transportation, sex, continuing the
individual's body life, and daily idea activities along with the various
mentioned activities, but they are not initiative and complex. In this way
we divided human society into daily life world and non-daily life
world."([2]p333) Obviously, leisure carries the whole duty and
obligation of not-daily life world of human being.
Looking back the philosophy development in the 20th century, we can
see many thinkers of different schools coincide to turn their studying
angle of view to human "life world".
In the thirties of this century, Husel after observed the cultural
crises caused by the social effect of science, pointed out profoundly
"This is a crises of philosophy, a crises of man himself".
"The root causing this crises was that science world stealthily
replaced and forgot the life world in the course of constructing itself.
Therefore, we must come back to life world in order to break away from
this crisis."([2]p325) Heidegger,
the founder of existentialist, after analyzing the overall alienation of
the modern daily life, questioned closely "what is the significance
of being?"(being is the normal person itself) He thought "Daily
common being's world or daily life world is an overall alienated field,
not real status quo." Lefever, French philosopher, held up the flag
of criticism and pointed out that by now the real man has not come into
being, and man is still in alienated inhuman state. This alienation
existed in the whole life field such as working, thinking, demanding and
communication. He regarded daily life as a gradation between economic
basis and superstructure because the daily life had so important basic
position. Its alienation inevitably hindered the conforming of the total
man and directly obstructed and blinded up the revolution tendency of
superstructure and ideology.([2]p327)
Frome condemned man's character of egoism an desire of occupation.
He pointed out deeply "Just in spare time, people think they are
free, but in fact, it is only conditional release for a Sunday." But
in the last analysis, "The life of the human body was decided by
whether man could thoroughly change his own soul or not."([12]p12)
Therefore he called such a new man who attaches importance to existence,
spirit and initiation.
Argnis Heller, a female scholar of Hungary, in her book named Daily
Life taking three hidden questions which are the essence of man; basic
needs and daily life as the main route, revealed the structure of the
daily life of the world today. She pointed out social transforming cannot
be achieved only on macro-scale. At any rate, man's self-remolding and
attitude alternation are inner composition of every transform, and man's
value must be improved. She thought, "We can see this value
intensively in traditional culture. All these questions that how we feed
ourselves, what we eat and how to eat, where we live and how to arrange
our room, expressed the humanity tendency."([4]p60) The key of this
book is that only by improving the cultural spirit of human being and
giving freedom to man's various potential abilities, man will obtain
happiness.
This self-examination and criticism of human being is a need of
man's nature. It is the reflection of man's nature too. We know "the
liberation of human is not only in the material scale, the emancipation in
economy does not mean the emancipation in culture, the rational freedom is
not equal to perceptual happiness. The basic hallmark and realized way of
liberation of human is to dispel the psychological and instinct depress by
the means of art and culture."([8]p3)
In recent years, a widespread discussion on postmodern cultural
idea rose in the west. Lots of philosophers and scholars exposed the inner
contradictions between its society and culture, reviewed deeply the
current situation of person, had the greatest esteem for reconstructing
more rational forms of society and made an appeal to recast healthy
cultural character.
At present, all the discussion about scientific spirit and humanity
spirit being carried in China and the degree of Chinese government concerning the
life quality and living quality ---- show people have already felt the
most lofty of cultural spirit because the cultural spirit promises not
only to give people a magnificent world, but also the spirit destination.
It is obvious that there is a closely mutual relation between
cultural spirit and leisure. So leisure is taken as a post for person's
soul. At the same time, it bears the historical responsibility to
construct human culture spirit. Therefore it bears the momentous current
significance.
Leisure is a field which has close relation with everyone's high
quality life. Idealistic leisure perhaps is the best way to cure modern
man's psychological disease. However, we haven't paid enough attention to
it and we haven't reviewed and criticized the traditional leisure model
and the structure of daily life yet. The academic research from the angle
of cultural spirit is still quite behind the times. Chun Lin, a scholar of
doing this research in America, after experiencing and observing relevant
facts in America and Europe, pointed out "The study of leisure is not
developed in abroad (Japanese things is not clear). I studied it in
philosophical aspect. Such culture discussion on how to spend money and
one's time or bored life is certainly flourishing, but it has no relations
with the study on leisure. The special background to study leisure in
China certainly is the tradition of restraining lust." Doctor Huajie
Liu gave me a piece of material downloaded from Internet on Nov.3 1997
whose subject is "Consume culture and leisure" sorted out by the
sociology department of London University. I did a preliminary and
essential statistics to the1300 file catalogues and I found the proportion
of the articles written from the angle of sociology, philosophy and
culture is very small. This proves that it is urgent for us to inquire
into leisure in the aspect of cultural spirit.
IV.
Constructing a New Concept of Leisure Culture
In the future, a new society based on leisure will come into
reality instead of an old society base on employment. We have adequate
reason to believe that human being will use his own consciousness to build
the leisure concept adapting to the new time. Jadmal, during his later
years, still beard in mind constantly that "expecting man to restore
the life model of laying equal stress on practice and theory, using
correct theory to guide the benefit practice and strive to get rid of war,
population explosion and religion crisis. He appealed to use ration as our
political standard, to use beauty to mold our wisdom and bravery, our
mercy and sorrow, to lead man gradually to escape instinct and step into
an ideal life heaven."([3]p349) His theory maybe is a little
abstract. He said, "A new man is the sign of a new society and a new
society can prompt the mature of a new man. In fact, a new man is the man
who shall throw off any forms of occupation in order to survive, who is
very confident and embodies his power of love and his strength of life,
who tries to low the lust to the limit, who is aware that self-development
and the others are the man's highest goal, who thoroughly gains spirit
freedom and self-conscience."([3]p377) Isn't this the source of new
concept?
There is no doubt that all the genie thinkers aim at the future.
Although sometime their theories are considered as fancy, we still benefit
from them and grasp the religion on how to be a man ,and even be infected
by their spirit if we pay more attention to them. In the end, a new
concept can be brought birth into our soul world.
The global aspiration for peace and development, the declaration of
sustainable development, the balance between man and nature, the
adjustment of international relation and so on are all the new kinds of
cultural spirit and social atmosphere. Under such background, the new
leisure concept is rising stealthily.
As we all know respecting nature is equal to respecting man
himself. Traveling is scolded as a killer of nature and environment, but
it has been defined as an important part of the economic and environmental
development in Agenda 21st Century in 1992 which principal is to encourage
mutual development of traveling and leisure and make them blend.([14]p146)
In America, satisfying job, comfortable house and luxury car are
the concrete contents of American Dream. But today more and more people,
especially the middle-class well educated prefer to less doing, less
earning and less spending. The life of VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY is growing
popular and has become one of ten tendency acceptable life model. Japanese
known as "crazy-work" have striven for simple and quiet life and
hoped people can live with honesty, love and less lust etc. Korean
however, prefer to combine family life with their work harmoniously. The
reason is very simple: without active work and harmonious family
relationship, people can never achieve their success in their lives. In
Paris, "Philosophy coffee house" which could be traced back to
18th century becomes popular again.
China, with a large population, has its own characteristics in
establishing new value of leisure. One of the most vital characters of
leisure is that family is considered as its main subject. Therefore,
strengthening of family culture has become a new conception of leisure. In
the countryside, about 85% of the villages and towns have set up various
entertainment and leisure places which have reflected the family culture.
In cities, people have a new conception of residence which pursues
community culture. The community culture, with the people at its center,
respects the people's rights and advocates the harmony and integration
between people and nature. Meanwhile, the leisure culture has been
enriched by the plan of body-building for the whole people, reading club,
family politics study, art appreciation and environmental protection
organizations mainly consisted of volunteers. The new value of leisure of
the mankind is coming into being in various fields.
There is no doubt that the new concept of leisure culture for the
new era is based on the social culture structure and man's spiritual
quality which are suitable for the development of human nature and provide
necessary conditions for man's full development in leisure time. The basic
way to establish man's spiritual quality is to change his social concept
and make himself free from the state of "not-man" and
"commodity". When our soul, nature and society are in harmony
and when we treat ourselves and partners in equal principle and ordinary
sense, we will have the experience of quiet life. We believe man is the
link of nature and spirit, and man's obligation and privilege is to have
spiritual life in active attitude continuously.
The coming era is the times for leisure. Whatever happens, we
believe the cultural spirit and leisure culture will be flourishing.
Acknowledgments
During the process of my writing, I got help from my friends,
especially selfless help from Mr. Guangyuan Yu who himself helped me to
search materials and directed my writing.
I also owe much to Miss Chun Lin from America, Professor Huajie Liu
from Beijing University, Miss Qing Xiang from State Science and Technology
Developing Center, Doctor Fengnian Wang from Science and Technology
Institute of China. I give my hearty thanks to them.
References
and Bibliography
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