Skip to main content

Busy People


In 1928, eminent economist  John Maynard Keynes wrote in an essay that in a century the standard of life in Europe and America would improve so much that people would have a lot of leisure.  By 2028, “our grandchildren,” wrote Keynes, would have to work only about three hours a day.

The economist was quite wrong, it seems.  14 years away from his predicted time,  the standard of life improved, no doubt, but work or work-related activity has increased more than ever even in the continents he mentioned.  In our own country too, the standard of life has improved considerably.  But we find that the working hours in offices have increased rather than decreased.  In spite of superior technologies like the computer in place of the typewriter, and rapid communication systems like the email, we find ourselves busier than people of the previous generation.  In fact, people had much more time for relaxation in the olden days.   I remember how people of my parents’ generation used to spend hours almost every day chatting and gossiping. 

Picture: From the Internet
We have now become so busy that we don’t even have time to sit idle even while travelling.  If you travel by the Delhi Metro trains you will be amused if not amazed to see almost everyone busy with the mobile phone or some other gadget or reading books or newspapers.  Some of that activity is entertainment, not work-related; people listen to music or play games on their gadgets.  On the whole, however, people are busier than ever.  No one, it seems, has time even to look at other people let alone communicate with them.

In 1976, psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in his book, To Have or To Be, that technological societies foster ‘having orientation’.  That is, people want to have a lot of things; they are highly competitive.  The ideal would be ‘being orientation’ which focuses on what one is rather than what one has.

It seems Fromm is more correct than Keynes.  We have become more technological and more competitive as well as acquisitive.  Since technology is getting better by the day and more sophisticated and complex too, we can expect people becoming more and more busy.  Commodes may come with an attachment for the laptop.


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers


Labels:

Comments

  1. VinchessoMay 22, 2014 at 10:20 PM

    Well I wouldn't really mind a 3Hr work schedule ;) :D ..

    I do agree with the point though, time has certainly become the most expensive commodity!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2014 at 6:21 AM

      3 hour schedule would have created another problem, though - what to do with the leisure? On the other hand, now there is no leisure. We are a funny lot, aren't we?

      Delete
  2. Anita SabatMay 23, 2014 at 8:35 AM

    Valid observation, Sir.
    Modern life has proved Keynes wrong. Technology & advancements ought to make life relaxed, no?!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 23, 2014 at 3:11 PM

      I guess that's what Keynes had imagined: that tech and progress would make life easier. But we humans are beyond intellectual understanding :)

      Delete
  3. D.NambiarMay 23, 2014 at 1:52 PM

    So true. I feel like I could do a few more hours to my day.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Issac WritesMay 23, 2014 at 7:07 PM

    True......desires have no limits...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 24, 2014 at 8:27 AM

      ... and desire is the cause of sorrow, the Buddha said.

      Delete
  5. K V V S MURTHYMay 24, 2014 at 9:43 PM

    Who knows ...you may be right.....!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 24, 2014 at 10:03 PM

      Not I, dear Murthy sir. Either Keynes or Fromm. Keyness is out. Fromm is impractical. Alas, nobody is right. We are all seekers at the feet of politicians. Or Babas. or any other frauds.

      Delete
  6. Nima DasMay 25, 2014 at 4:34 PM

    Our leisure activities have changed,when people travel in closed spaces they feel its rude to stare at others or start a conversation with a stranger,so we keep busy by catching up with our mail, listen to music or read.Work hours have reduced in the western countries its 5 days a week only and 8 hours of flexible timings It can't be 3 hours thats a little too much Mr.Keynes was expecting from humans.although who would not love that!

    ReplyDelete
  7. wingsMay 26, 2014 at 5:59 PM

    Sir,
    People really have no time today. That's because of the 'cut throat' competition prevailing not only in education but in all walks of life. There is a Macro level Marathons and Decathlons run by mankind. Darwin's theory can be revised as: The fittest of all the fittest ones will survive. Right, sir? And that too is because of the whole world having become a small gazebo of communication.
    When I read Manish' blog and tried to publish a comment, I got a dialogue box which read: Prove that you are not a robot. (!?...!) To prove so, I had to depend on typing certain numbers displayed over there. Somehow I proved myself a human(?) and the web accepted it and published my comment.
    Technology has transformed human life into robotic life. Your blog has proved it in a very scholarly way. As usual, a very interesting read. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  8. nidhiMay 22, 2015 at 11:27 AM

    3 hrs a day..would that not be a dream come true!
    nice read.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 22, 2015 at 2:09 PM

      A year after I wrote this I have realised that the economist's prediction will be defeated by inefficient administrators who will fill people's time with absurd duties :)

      Delete
  9. UnknownAugust 7, 2018 at 11:34 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Life of an Activist

Book Review   Title: I am What I am: A Memoir Author: Sunitha Krishnan Publisher: Westland, Chennai, 2024 Pages: 284 Sunitha Krishnan is more of a conqueror than a survivor. She was gangraped at the age of 15, and that too because she had started working for the uplift of the girls in a village. She used to interact with the girls, motivate them to go back to school, give them remedial classes, and discuss topics like menstrual hygiene “and other intimate issues”. Some men of the village didn’t like such “revolutionary” moves coming from a little girl. Eight such men violated Sunitha Krishnan one evening as she was returning home from the village. “Any sexual assault is a traumatic event and leaves deep scars on the psyche of the survivor. The shame, the guilt, the feeling of being tainted, the self-loathing that it brings in its wake is universal. I was no exception.” That is how the third chapter, title ‘The Girl Who Did Not Cry’, begins. Sunitha Krishnan didn’t l...
10 comments
Read more