Keep Your Free Time Free
… A 20th century critical theory guide to work, leisure and what you really should be doing with your free time.
If you look at any blog site there are endless stories and articles telling us how to best use our free time. How successful people spend their free time, How extraordinary people spend their free time, How to stop wasting free time, etc.
What if I told you that, through influences beyond self-help blogs, your time — no one’s time in fact — is really free at all?
This is the view taken by 20th century social theorist and general rainer-on-parades, Theodor Adorno. Free time, depending on your line of work, should have as little resemblance to real work as possible. Away from the constraints of work we can feel at liberty to do whatever it is that we want to do. Whatever it is that makes us feel like humans and develops us into considered, thinking beings. It could be self-fulfillment, self-actualization whatever you want to call it.
Importantly, how we spend our time away from work should be when we are most at our own liberty. But, according to Adorno, it turns out that free time in our society isn’t really that free after all.
How is this possible? Why, when we feel most at liberty, should we think we are tethered to a kind of unfreedom?
…it turns out that free time in our society isn’t really that free after all.
Adorno writes that the terms free time or spare time are recent expressions. They are different to the precursory term leisure. The term leisure refers to an unconstrained, comfortable lifestyle, ‘qualitatively different and far more auspicious’. Leisure brings to mind aristocrats playing croquet in an English garden. Free time however is more closely related to its opposite: work. In Adorno’s words it is ‘shackled’ to it. But how can free time possibly like work?
To answer this, we have to have an understanding of how Adorno viewed society and particularly capitalist and consumer society.
Adorno left Germany in 1934, near the begging of the rise of national socialism. Under the new regime his house was searched and he was banned from teaching due to his Jewish ancestry. Exiled from Germany, Adorno moved to America before beginning of the Second World War. It was in America that he witnessed firsthand the rapid progress of consumerism in Western society.
Strikingly, he saw similarities between the fascist movement, which had gained momentum in Germany and other parts of Europe, and the grip of consumerism in America. The main similarity was control over individual freedoms. If in parts of Europe the tool of control was fear; in America it was pleasure.
For Adorno the conditions and influences of society, be it in Europe or America, meant that in a very real way citizens were losing control over themselves. The form of existence that society was making people live was not in line with who they really are or really could be. It was not leading to a liberated form of human existence.
In America, Adorno wrote about an industry that had sprung up to satisfy people’s need outside of work. This he called the ‘culture industry’ or ‘leisure industry’. The purpose of the industry was to fill free time with as many distractions as possible. This he saw as a powerful tool for control.
Both at work and in free time, the influence and control of society had become all-embracing. At work people are told what to do by bosses. In free time they are told what to do by advertisers and marketers, and the expectations they create in society.
While advances in technology have meant we now have more free time, this has just created more time away from work; time in which we can be influenced and controlled by the ‘leisure industry’. This industry provides us with entertainment and distraction but also tightly controls what it is we can enjoy.
But are we really as unfree as Adorno thinks? Surely my choices are just that: mine.
Well, according to Adorno, I am just deluding myself. While it might seem like I am free to choose, my actual choices are limited by society and forces around me. They are limited because certain ways of spending time become normalised and result in expectations of how I am to spend my free time.
Let’s say that someone goes on summer holiday from work, they are expected to go away somewhere sunny and come back with a tan and stories of cocktails by the beach. This is a ‘normal’ way to spend time away from work. It is less normal to tell co-workers that I sat at home in my pyjamas for two weeks without leaving the house.
Returning to work with a tan is the universal sign of a good holiday, of time well spent. But why? Getting a tan isn’t really that pleasurable; laying down and allowing radiation from the sun to burn our skin. Yet, tanned skin appealing and if we want to be attractive in society, then sun bathing is one thing we have to do with our free time.
Advertisements and marketing for leisure activities and equipment add to normalisation. To illustrate, Adorno describes the evolution of camping. As he saw it, camping began with youth movements of the 1950s and ’60s. These movements were a protest against middle class sensibilities and aimed to get away from consumer society. Even after these movements had died out, people still saw the appeal of getting away from it all. But, importantly for Adorno’s, this desire becomes harnessed by business and industry.
The simple desire to get out of the city and sleep under the stars has become a barrage of high-priced fluorescent tents, down sleeping bags, Gortex and microfiber everything. So much so that the activity of camping and camping equipment become the same thing.
Through representations provided in advertisements there has become a normalised way to enjoy camping. These advertisements give us a concrete image of how to enjoy the outdoors. This image becomes what we think about when we think about camping. We aren’t sold the reality of camping we’re sold a processed idea of it.
Adorno’s point is that, by providing both the image and the equipment, the leisure industry controls how people should enjoy their free time. While there are certain expectations of what people do at work, just as importantly there are expectations of how people should spend their free time. This is what he means by saying that even when people think they are most at liberty they, are still under the influence of ‘unfreedom’.
Of course, free time doesn’t have to be spent just on the products of the leisure industry. It can be spent in pursuits that develop us as humans, that give us deeper insight into human nature and the world around us. Surely, then, the articles mentioned at the top of this post are positive steps in this direction.
On the surface the messages in some of these articles seem to be similar to Adorno’s, to utilise free time. However, there is a key difference. By conflating how to spend your free time with how to be successful; free time isn’t kept as free, it is replaced by more work. This would be Adorno’s vision of a capitalist nightmare.
Success in the sense above is tied to work with free time turning into another facet it. Like work, free time becomes structured, driven and goal orientated. It becomes a chore and one that is based on a specific vision of success in society. Again, free time is turned into unfreedom.
…by conflating how to spend your free time with how to be successful; free time is just replaced by more work.
By feeling pressure to spend free time only on work driven goals, every other activity can feel like it is time wasted. Moreover, by being so narrowly focused we risk missing out on other diverse aspects of life that can develop us as individuals and as humans.
Having free time means deciding how to spend it. Taken to its extreme, Adorno’s view of the leisure industry is incredibly pessimistic. It steals fun away from every past time and recreation leaving us no room for enjoyment in leisure activities — just control.
I don’t think the best decision is to abstain from all forms of culture, hobbies or things that bring us enjoyment. On the other hand, while self-improvement broadly conceived is a worthwhile aim, we should not force ourselves to fall in line with narrow expectations of success or to turn all free time into work.
We should recognise when certain forces are acting upon us. Forces that tell us how to spend our time. It is ultimately up to you to decide. To recognise influences put upon us and to still decide to act in that way is, in itself, an act of freedom.
Whatever it is you want to do in your free time, make sure it is your free choice. We have so few genuine moments to enjoy a liberated freedom, removed from expectations placed on us by society. So, don’t listen to people who tell you how you should spend your free time. Your time is yours and it is precious.
I’m Declan Humphreys I have a PhD in Philosophy and in my free time I like to write about amusements and pleasure.
Reading and quotes from this article come from Theodor Adorno’s essay Free Time, found in The Culture Industry (2001) published by Routledge Classics.
