The 19th-century utopians imagined that by now the human race, buoyed by “mechanization,” would lead lives of leisure, but that fantasy still lies somewhere in the misty future. Like other theorists, Lucassen points to the rising standard of living: Some people work hard because they like their work but others work hard to live up to the standard. He quotes an unemployed English miner from the 1960s: “Frankly, I hate work. Of course, I could also say with equal truth that I love work.”
Is our problem, then, that we like too many nice things? Turns out, the desire for nice things also isn’t new. Lucassen points to evidence, for example, that already in the 8th or 9th centuries B.C.E., the development of tools was hastened by the desire to cut and polish precious stones.
Yet leisure does matter, and relatively speaking, we enjoy a lot of it. The rise of free labor, alongside improving technology and a burgeoning welfare state, has led to lives where we start our careers later (all that schooling first), work fewer hours (difficult to believe but true), and generally have the option, at some point, of deciding to lay down the burden of work and enjoy our relatively extended life-spans.
That’s more time for family and friends—the things that give life meaning—than at any time in recorded history. And if that’s not reason enough to enjoy a happy Thanksgiving, I don’t know what is.
Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of law at Yale University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. His novels include The Emperor of Ocean Park, and his latest nonfiction book is Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster.