Leisure and the Liberal Arts

Also: Remembering Francis Parkman, B. H. Fairchild’s machinists and welders, building a 13th-century castle in France, and more.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

In the latest issue of First Things, Elizabeth C. Corey reviews a new book about boredom—Kevin Hood Gary’s Why Boredom Matters: Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life. In the book, “Gary argues that we have become slaves to work and amusement, even though neither pursuit is truly fulfilling”:

Money and honor, the traditional rewards of work, do not satisfy because money begets the need for more money and honor is fleeting. Even pleasure is tiresome after a while. Who, in the waning days of a vacation, has not itched to get back to a “normal” routine? In reaching the limits of work and pleasure alike we are prone to boredom, disillusionment, and depression. Gary proposes that leisure and liberal education can remedy these unpleasant states. I agree. But the escape from boredom may require a still more radical transformation of will, and that transformation may be something we cannot accomplish by ourselves.

The problem is that we escape boredom temporarily by jumping from stimulus to stimulus. Corey writes:

While on tedious Zoom meetings, we doodle, eat, watch video clips, and scroll through social media. These activities offer temporary relief. The problem is that one thereby becomes the kind of person who doodles, eats, watches videos, and scrolls through social media. Our brains respond to these immediate forms of gratification, and sustained concentration is increasingly difficult.

This jumping from stimulus to stimulus not only increases what Gary (and Corey) call “existential boredom”—we become even more bored—it also shapes us into the kind of people who take the easiest route to avoiding temporary boredom by jumping from stimulus to stimulus:

Why does nothing seem interesting, everything dull and gray? The answer might be not that the world is boring, but that we ourselves are dull, shallow, and malformed. This ignorance and lack of formation is partly due to the usual suspects of modern culture—vacuous television programs, electronic devices in general, the advertising industry—but we have allowed these influences to shape us.

According to Gary, the solution is “liberal education”: “If directed by an inspired teacher, a liberal education offers the (willing) student a vision of a better life, an expansion of the imagination, and escape from the tyranny of trivialities.” The problem, Corey writes, is that:

If this attractive vision of life is in principle available to anyone who wants it—and if it is the antidote to boredom—then why don’t more people pursue liberal education and a contemplative, leisured life? Why, despite the efforts of thoughtful authors like Gary, do the vast majority of American undergraduates persist in majoring in fields like nutritional science and supply chain management?  . . . The bitter truth is that we modern Americans are privileged to have enormous potential for leisure and liberal education; yet we cannot seem to understand or desire it.

Gary recommends three practices to use our “free time,” as we call it, well: “Become an apprentice, cultivate a spirit of study, and remember our epiphanies.” Corey agrees, but also remarks that what is needed first is a transformation of the will:

The stubborn characters who appear in C. S. Lewis’s book The Great Divorce illustrate the immense difficulty of such an escape. In this short fantasy, heavenly spirits welcome their visitors from Hell, urging them to forget themselves and embrace the great joy and release that await them in Christ.

Instead, almost to a person, the visitors refuse to relinquish their hard-won identities. The bishop wants to continue his intellectual questioning and paper-giving; the painter insists upon continuing to paint; the mother protests that her love for her son is more important than anything else. All perversely refuse to see the beauty that is right in front of them . . . Perhaps only prayer can really deliver us from our willful pride and self-centeredness, traits that seem to stick with us despite our best efforts.

Corey is right that escaping our slavery to amusement requires a transformation of the will, but I wonder if pitting amusement against the contemplation of beauty is the only distinction we should be making. It is the distinction that bookish folks like to make, of course, but the fact is some people simply do not like to read and think, and they, quite frankly, do not have the present capacity, for whatever reasons, to read and think very deeply. This isn’t because they did not have a “good” education. It is the result of natural inclinations.