“The loss of time spent on meaningless work is replaced by that devoted to digital leisure which is itself meaningless”

2023-09-02 03:30:08

Lhe debate on pensions which marked the first half of this year will have highlighted the complex and often conflicting relationship that the French have with work and, implicitly, the place of leisure in their lives. A conflict exacerbated by questions about the meaning of work that have emerged in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis and climate change.

Indeed, in a productivist society which has never ceased to raise the level of comfort and security of its citizens, the antonym of work, that is to say rest, has turned into leisure. whose advantage is to be a consumer product, therefore an economic agent. A change that has given leisure a status of social achievement perfectly in line with the fundamentals of our consumerist society insofar as it contributes to its prosperity.

The right to rest has thus surreptitiously become a right to leisure, retirement henceforth no longer appearing as the enjoyment of a well-deserved rest, but “the time to do what one did not have time to do before “. And it is by making the reduction of working time a marker of social progress that leisure time has itself become an object of tension, subject to the same injunctions of efficiency and performance as work: we must ” make a success of” your holidays, “enjoy” them and above all do not spoil anything. As if the holidays were the only moment of life that is worthwhile, and the expression is not insignificant, “to be lived”!

Enslavement

In this context, it is not surprising that the famous “work value” has taken quite a bit of time, including among our elites. All the more so since the value of work, traditionally considered as the cement of social cohesion and of a national unity which is achieved through effort, is seen today outdated, even tainted by the sin of corruption of man and of nature. An evolution theorized by many philosophers, foremost among them André Gorz (1923-2007), one of the fathers of degrowth who promoted the principle of “civilization of liberated time” breaking free from slavery to the value of work.

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However, as nature abhors a vacuum, leisure has not waited to occupy this liberated time and, in the digital age, to transform it in turn into enslavement. To “empty your head” has thus become the injunction specific to those who have already been washed out by work: the loss of time spent on meaningless work is replaced by that devoted to digital leisure activities themselves meaningless or worse. , emptying of their substance moments that could have been real moments of life: those of discovery and encounter, of exchange, conducive to serendipity.

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