Midterm

What is the problem with leisure?

In the '50s and '60s, Americans had more time to spend on recreational activities, and they weren't spending as much time in work or school, but they were very involved in church and other activities. A 1958 study of the Center for the Study of Leisure said that "the most dangerous threat hanging over the American society is the threat of leisure." The problem with leisure is that Americans really don't know how to take life easy. In the '60s everyone ran out and joined a club to keep themselves busy. So, sure they were improving the country and the community with their work ethic, but what's going to happen when people want to spend their leisure time actually relaxing? They stop joining clubs and groups to keep themselves occupied. Which is exactly what did happen. Not only that, but times have changed politically and socially as well. In the '60s there was the Equal Rights movement, and while things still had a long way to go, people were fighting for the rights of not only African-Americans and women, but also LGBT groups were active, (although I'm not sure if they were called LGBT groups at the time...) While not everyone has yet to receive truly equal rights, most of the hard work of getting publicity for these causes has already been done, and most people don't have something to fight for, even if it's for something trivial like better roads, or they just don't care about anything, and so they also don't have that sense of civic duty in general. The article wasn't very specific about leisure, so some this is my own extrapolation.