Thursday, February 3, 2022

"What they create [in their free time] has something superfluous about it."

I am finding it difficult to proceed with writing about free time because I am not having enough opportunity to talk out these questions with people in person.

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am finding it difficult to proceed with writing about free time...

[ Likely this will seem foolish, but I do not know what free time is. I am occupied from the time I wake till the time I go to sleep, and generally feel productive all the while. My parents are so occupied, so too friends.

Possibly if free time is explained to a person like me, it might be easier to write about. ]

Sandwichman said...

What I am finding difficult is precisely explaining this and that rather than engaging in a conversation where various people share their perspectives about what this is and what that is. "Explaining free time" is like explaining ecstasy, explaining humor, explaining sorrow. If you don't experience sorrow, my explanation of sorrow is not going to give you an understanding of sorrow. But if you join a conversation about sorrow with several people maybe you will begin to understand.

Anonymous said...

My sister and I grew up having out time awake almost completely structured by our parents. Even the time that was unstructured however such as on waking early was time for me to read and I was surrounded by books. Even now, when I read a comment or reply I am trying to learn what I might use in teaching or writing. I watched the opening of the Olympics on an international channel earlier and thought the event grand, but that was not in my "free time" since I do not know that I have any. I will use the Olympic experience.

Jerry Brown said...

I would call 'free time' any time that you have not already committed to work or caring for yourself or others who are dependent on you. Minus the time you need to sleep. I think I have more free time than most people- which is nice. I do seem to waste a lot of it in relatively unproductive ways though. Like writing comments about it :)

Sandwichman said...

Correct me if I am wrong but I am guessing that Anonymous 2 is the same as Anonymous 1 and presumably is the person who posted as anne on Economist's View.

Now, I think I understand a bit more what you mean by not knowing what free time is. Adorno's argument in "Free Time" is almost that people do not know what free time is. Under compulsion, they have surrendered their imagination of what they might do with free time (if they had it) and thus fill the hours they don't work with hobbies* and pseudo-activities.

Free time thus stands as a sort of signifier with an absent signified. My question boils down to "what might free time consist of IF our time and our imaginations were emancipated from: 1. "work," 2. the artificial division between work and not-work, and 3. the colonization of non-work time by the commodities of the culture industries?"

Jerry Brown said...

What is your definition of 'Free time' Sandwichman?

Been self-employed for 30 years so I know there is not an automatic division between work and non-work time.

If you are looking to discuss it more, I will be happy to. Tomorrow night or Sunday. Because unfortunately, tomorrow will definitely be an actual workday where I will not have much free time to speculate.

Sandwichman said...

Jerry,

I think this is one place where definition becomes self-defeating. This is where Adorno went astray with his condescension to hobbies*. I presume what he meant by hobby* is some mindless activity that someone does to pass the time because they saw an ad on tv telling them it would be fun. Or "pseudo-activity" is some kind of political activism that Adorno would deem ineffectual. As the Dude would say, though, "that's just your opinion, man."

Ultimately, the freeness and imagination involved in free time has to subjective, which is not to say, "if you think you're free, you're free." That's solipsism. It seems to me that freedom must not only involve a subjective experience but also develop a relationship with other people. That's why I see things like dialogue, scholê and "yarning" (see Tyson Yunkaporta's book Sand Talk) as exemplary but certainly not exclusive. I think the pop-up books I make and share would also qualify. What unites these examples are they are ways of communicating responsibly and with consideration.

Social media simulates communication but often irresponsibly and inconsiderately.

Anonymous said...

Defining free time is similar to defining disposable income?

Anonymous said...

I think the pop-up books I make and share would also qualify. What unites these examples are they are ways of communicating responsibly and with consideration.

[ Really excellent. I admire and value the pop-up books and have shown them in class. The point being that definition was not self-defeating but explaining and actually inspiring. An analogy would be that the Beijing Olympics is serving as a poverty reduction program through China, beyond an exercise for the participants and community inspiring experience for observers. ]

djk said...

Your difficulties put me in mind of some thoughts I was having over my lengthy christmas holidays - the result of a union and a progressive employer - and prompted me to think harder about them. I often, esp in the early days, found myself doing things not because I particularly wanted to or found them fulfilling, but because they required qualities that were not hose I require on the job.

This put me in mind of an essay by Norbert Trenkle where he argues that the analytical distinction between concrete and abstract labour already casts the former as an abstraction of characteristic of capitalism where and not as a transhistorical category. He briefly extends this to working/not working time, though without going into any detail about the latter. It occured to me in this context then that perhaps what I had for much, perhaps all, of my vacation was not so much "free" time as "non-working" time and that these two are not at all the same thing. What, then, might "really" free time be and how can we think about it?

Thinking more about your (our?) situation, led me to recall a more recent read, Salvage Collective's "The Tragedy of the Worker" where they suggest that an ecologically sustainable post-capitalist society will require such a radical transformation of society that we cannot from our current state really conceptualise how the inhabitants of such a society will think and feel, what they will value or desire. This of course draws on Marx's famous comments on the relation between historical conditions and consciousness and his (rather off-hand) comments on Aristotle early in Volume 1 of Capital.

Anyway, might it be that the difficulty of thinking of "free time" isn't so much a consequence of our personal situation (eg too few conversations, a long vacation) as a product of a pre-structured and historically specific social condition that causes our time to be "really" experienced as "work time" and "non-work time"?

Not sure any of this helps you in your further explanation. For what (if anything) it's worth, its more a (perhaps too long) stream-of-consciousness triggered by your difficulties, my recent experience (and reading) and my fellow commenters thoughts. I suppose some people might say I have too much time on my hands.....



Anonymous said...

What if free time frees me from Adorno's attempts to shame me? (Perhaps analogous to "#^$% You" money, in the spirit of the disposable income comment?)

Anonymous said...

DJK, a brilliant comment.

Anonymous said...

DJK:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm


The two latter peculiarities of the equivalent form will become more intelligible if we go back to the great thinker who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of thought, society, or Nature, and amongst them also the form of value. I mean Aristotle...

[ The following is relevant and important. Aristotle was always the empiricist. ]

Sandwichman said...

Yes, DJK, much of the difficulty of explaining, defining, and/or experiencing free time comes from that overarching binary of worktime and non-worktime. The latter is self-evidently not equivalent to free time.

Let me go out on a limb and say that there cannot be any such thing as individual free time no matter how much one may enjoy solitude. Free time is social. Solitude must also be essentially social, to the extent that the space to be alone has been granted by others. Etymologically, free time is akin to friendship.

Anonymous said...

Why would others not grant me solitude? Is it because solitude is shameful?

Jerry Brown said...

What is 'free time'? Given that we are all mortal and are going to die at some point, maybe there is no free time. We are all here for some uncertain amount of time after all. And how we 'spend' our time may or may not affect that. 'Spending time' implies it is valuable. 'Free time' implies it is not.

Today though, two of my cousins, Ken and Steve, drove an hour and a half each way to my ailing sister's house and worked hard for at least six hours to help me in converting her bathroom so it is handicap accessible. Would not even accept gas money in return. Now that was 'free time' for me- or my sister really. But it cost them a day in their lives.

I don't know where I'm going with this. But thanks Ken and thanks Steve.

Sandwichman said...

Jerry,

Not to be contrary, but it seems to me that what Ken and Steve did exemplifies free time, regardless of what Adorno had to say about do-it-yourself being pseudo-activity. Converting your sister's bathroom affirmed the relationship between the four of you. Thanks to you and your cousins, your sister is able live her life with greater comfort and dignity and the three of you can know that was "time well spent."

Jerry Brown said...

I guess I missed the memo that we were discussing Adorno's ideas about free time. I'm sure he was a deeper thinker than I, but I am not sure his opinions should carry much more weight than mine or yours or Anne's on this subject. Anyways, he's been dead for fifty years so any discussion with him is going to be fairly one-sided. He either has no free time or an infinity of free time depending on how that goes. Limited means to communicate thoughts at this point in either case.
'
In general, wouldn't you think it was fair for people to ask what it is you wanted to discuss? I mean Anne and I both asked for a definition of what free time meant to you. I don't think it is an unfair question to ask of you. What do you mean by 'free time'?

Sandwichman said...

Jerry

"I am not sure his opinions should carry much more weight than mine or yours or Anne's on this subject."

Between you and I and anne, our opinions should carry more weight than Adorno's. For myself, Adorno's 1969 lecture stands as a benchmark against which to evaluate subsequent contributions. It doesn't have to stand as a benchmark for you, though.

I would reject or qualify much of Adorno's unqualified disdain for hobbies* and do-it-yourself. There is a whiff of European cultural superiority to Adorno's view to which one could crudely retort, "what's so great about a high culture that ushered in Nazism?" That would be a cheap shot, though.

Where Adorno's lecture is still useful is in its calling into question the freedom of activities that are marketed by the culture industry to people who have had their imagination truncated. I find it useful because I am dealing with the paradox of widespread indifference toward an increasingly irrational allocation of time between "work" -- much of which is at bullshit jobs or destroys more natural wealth than it creates market wealth -- and leisure, whose definition we are trying to grapple with here.

You and anne have asked me for a definition of free time and I have answered that free time cannot be definitively defined. Part of the problem is that we would be defining something within a social framework that doesn't currently exist. Nevertheless, all four of us have gestured as qualities that could help define free time. I don't think I have evaded the question, therefore, only a specific form of answer. That is because I am holding out for a dialogical answer and not an authoritative one.

Jerry Brown said...

I guess I got off the tracks somewhere here. I don't understand what this do it yourself stuff has to do with anything. I'm a professional contractor who has remodeled kitchens and bathrooms and built additions and repaired houses for 30 years. My cousin was once a licensed plumber but now is some sort of corporate executive and the other one is a very good lawyer now but had considerable experience working in construction previously. Work is work and this kind of work is not always easy or fun and requires attention to detail and skill.

I mean I had a corporate executive and a lawyer crawling around in a basement crawlspace installing drain lines for a shower installation out of good will for my sister. Because she needs a shower on the first floor of her home or it is back to the hospital for her. Maybe that is free time we spent but it certainly is not comparable to a hobby.

As far as 'bullshit jobs'- well most of the work I do could not be considered that. There's the occasional job where someone just wants to change the 'look' of an area- maybe that gets close to being bullshit sometimes. But almost always it is about fixing something that isn't working or providing a substantial improvement to a living space.

Anonymous said...

I find this discussion absolutely excellent, and that after a thorough re-reading.

Anonymous said...

Jerry Brown is superb:

"I'm a professional contractor who has remodeled kitchens and bathrooms and built additions and repaired houses for 30 years..."

Superb.

Anonymous said...

Watching Olympics events, I can easily identify with the dedication of the athletes or the work they have done over the years to be as good as possible at a particular craft. I value work that is done as well as we are capable of doing work, at any level. I will find the Paralympics athletes just as inspiring.

Anonymous said...

"Where Adorno's lecture is still useful is in its calling into question the freedom of activities that are marketed by the culture industry to people who have had their imagination truncated."

How does Adorno know when an imagination has been truncated? Is he saying more about himself than about the freedom of others' activities?

As ATVers on forest trails seem to have truncated imaginations to me, would I seem to Adorno to have a truncated imagination since I still love to listen to the type of jazz that was marketed in Adorno's day?

In other words how reliable are Adorno's observations? Why does he seem like a philosopher-king wannabe? Does he just want power to command others what to be interested in?

Sandwichman said...

"How does Adorno know when an imagination has been truncated?

"Is he saying more about himself than about the freedom of others' activities?

"In other words how reliable are Adorno's observations?

"Why does he seem like a philosopher-king wannabe?

"Does he just want power to command others what to be interested in?"


These are all excellent questions. I have to wonder if Adorno was deliberately being provocative with his pronouncements. I sense there was some residual resentment about his experience living in the U.S. and being criticized by the student movement back in Germany.

What I see as the value in Adorno's lecture is the questions he raised and not the answers he gave. It would be nice to think that he gave flawed answers on purpose to force the listener to think of different answers. But I can't verify such speculation.

In a sense his answer to emancipation was "be like me" (with all the associated privilege and guilt). "Be a matador of the culture criticism industry like me!"

Anonymous said...

In a sense [Adorno's] answer to emancipation was "be like me" (with all the associated privilege and guilt). "Be a matador of the culture criticism industry like me!"

[ Altogether superb. The thinking here is entirely invigorating. ]

Anonymous said...

"Doctor Faustus" makes Adorno beyond any harsh criticism. The work is a profound criticism of the culture industry, and an inspiration to always be properly critical.