The finding about flow is the tell. Csikszentmihalyi sees flow when challenge meets skill—a contest. Work isn't meaningful because it's work; it's meaningful because it posts a score.
That reframes your two loose threads. The 1965–95 leisure never turned into Mozart because leisure has no scoreboard—the competitive drive idles, and idling looks like screen time. And the male suicide effect you cite isn't incidental: male status evolved as mate-value competition, and a job is where that gets settled. Pull the arena and you don't get a relaxed man, you get a drive with nowhere to go.
What worries me more than anomie: the drive doesn't go quiet—it reroutes to zero-sum arenas that build nothing. Gambling, the gym, ranked games. Not so much lost meaning as meaning sent somewhere worse.
“The Devil makes work for idle hands” was a vey popular saying when I was growing up (I am WASP). I used to dismiss it as old-fashioned nonsense. Then I started managing people! Boy was I wrong
Your framing of work and leisure is too binary. There is a hierarchy of work on a societal scale but also within every specific role. Most people would have an immediate answer for which parts of their job they enjoy and which they don't. I don't think they to free themselves completely from work, but they do want to choose more engaging or meaningful work. Taking this to its logical conclusion you do end up with the much mocked commune where everyone is a poet and nobody collects the bins. But the general idea of choice still resonates strongly - many people will feel this flow state in leisure such as in the examples.you use, sport, video games, theatre. It's a question of choice and leisure is not always idle.
This reminds me of one of my favorite anonymous quotes of truth about men with idle/leisure time: “when left to his own devices, man creates new vices.”
Retirement disabused of any illusion of an inner Mozart just biding his time. Reality is ‘no job - no need to get out of bed today (or even this month)’.
The finding about flow is the tell. Csikszentmihalyi sees flow when challenge meets skill—a contest. Work isn't meaningful because it's work; it's meaningful because it posts a score.
That reframes your two loose threads. The 1965–95 leisure never turned into Mozart because leisure has no scoreboard—the competitive drive idles, and idling looks like screen time. And the male suicide effect you cite isn't incidental: male status evolved as mate-value competition, and a job is where that gets settled. Pull the arena and you don't get a relaxed man, you get a drive with nowhere to go.
What worries me more than anomie: the drive doesn't go quiet—it reroutes to zero-sum arenas that build nothing. Gambling, the gym, ranked games. Not so much lost meaning as meaning sent somewhere worse.
Brilliant. We all need to hear this🖤
“The Devil makes work for idle hands” was a vey popular saying when I was growing up (I am WASP). I used to dismiss it as old-fashioned nonsense. Then I started managing people! Boy was I wrong
, especially when it pertains to men.
Your framing of work and leisure is too binary. There is a hierarchy of work on a societal scale but also within every specific role. Most people would have an immediate answer for which parts of their job they enjoy and which they don't. I don't think they to free themselves completely from work, but they do want to choose more engaging or meaningful work. Taking this to its logical conclusion you do end up with the much mocked commune where everyone is a poet and nobody collects the bins. But the general idea of choice still resonates strongly - many people will feel this flow state in leisure such as in the examples.you use, sport, video games, theatre. It's a question of choice and leisure is not always idle.
Thank you for this Rob. It should be required reading for all school children.
Now I must get back to work trying to accurately pronounce Csikszentmihalyi.
This reminds me of one of my favorite anonymous quotes of truth about men with idle/leisure time: “when left to his own devices, man creates new vices.”
Retirement disabused of any illusion of an inner Mozart just biding his time. Reality is ‘no job - no need to get out of bed today (or even this month)’.