Leisure and the Evil of Full Employment
MICHAEL WATSON writes at the Clifford Hugh Douglas Institute, which is dedicated to the promotion of the economic theory known as Social Credit: In our modern, fast-paced society that holds servile work and the fanatical pursuit of money to be the primary aim of our very existence, every adult man and woman must have a paid ‘job’ in order to survive and feel ‘dignified’ lest they suffer the curse of unemployment and the poverty and stigma associated with it, and this despite, or perhaps because of, the paltry and condescending ‘dole’ payments the state may hand out to them. We are not only expected to work, we are expected to compete and battle with one another to get that job or to obtain that promotion in order earn the money to pay those expensive bills and to purchase those precious goods that we need to survive and thrive. We must climb that corporate ladder or work that extra hour just to get those few extra dollars to pay off that mortgage or to make one’s marriage last just a little bit longer. Everything else apart from that is an irrelevance. Leisure, that is free time in which activities that do not involve working in some sort of servile occupation that serves some financial or materialistic end, is deemed ‘useless’, a sign of childishness, unimportant and is even open to outright scorn or viewed as devilish idolatry by our…





