In Praise of Leisure
A positive vision of design
How can design be a force for good? How can it serve society rather than shareholders alone? These questions are constantly discussed in the design world. The answers tend to involve making products and services more eco-friendly, more inclusive and less exploitative. Laudable goals, certainly; but I have another suggestion.
Last year I made the case that our culture should be more oriented towards leisure. This notion – leisure – should not mean “time off.” Nor should it mean entertainment or personal hobbies. If we understand leisure in such vague, private terms, it stands no chance against the pervasive pressure to be always working, always productive, always striving to optimise ourselves. As I see it, leisure describes a distinct sphere of social life, consisting of activities that we do for their own sake. It describes active pursuits, shared directly or indirectly with other people, that we do for no reason other than the satisfaction, beauty and relationships that they bring. Here we develop our faculties and discover our potential not as economic beings, but as people. Tending to a garden can be leisure. Sport, music, and other artistic or craft practices can be leisure. Travel can be leisure, as can learning a language or cultivating a reading habit. In a certain ritualised social context, like the British pub, drinking can be leisure.
So what does this have to do with design? While I was reporting for my latest essay in Unherd, which looks at the story of Land Rover, the iconic British carmaker, I spent an afternoon with some people who have, it seems, realised my redemptive vision of leisure. The Shire Land Rover Club is one of many associations in the UK and elsewhere for people who love classic 4x4s. Its members collect Land Rovers from across the decades, help one another to repair and customise them, and take them out on monthly “play days,” where they test the vehicles in mud, water and all manner of rugged terrain. In essence, they are celebrating a design achievement: a tradition of remarkably tough, simple cars that drivers can appreciate as both amateur mechanics and off-road junkies. In the process, they have forged a genuine community that can also be mobilised to help others. As I mention in the Unherd piece, the Club has used its Land Rovers to deliver aid and supplies to places ravaged by war.
This is design at its best: producing artefacts that bring people together, and that sustain the practices and traditions which make life meaningful. I have encountered something very similar in the way musicians bond over instruments, amateur athletes over sports equipment, or DIY enthusiasts over tools. This is not the detached appreciation of the connoisseur. It is the appreciation of people who use the objects in question, whose sense of themselves is tied to those objects; an appreciation that is deepened, in many cases, by the difficult but rewarding process of becoming competent in an activity they love. Before I tried my hand at etching, the tools and paraphernalia associated with that craft, which I sometimes saw in my mother’s studio, had a strange, esoteric beauty. After a few years of struggling to use them, they conjured a very different set of emotions: a healthy respect, a sense of possibility, and the bliss of being fully absorbed in a task.
What of the virtual activities that have proliferated in the digital age? Some of them, like the open-source software coding described by Richard Sennett in The Craftsman, can no doubt be performed in the spirit of leisure. But with those video games or social media where the entire experience has been prefabricated, the rewards and stimuli calibrated to tranquillise the mind, we are really dealing with entertainment or escapism. On the other hand, there are many old forms of leisure that involve a kind of virtual community. Reading, cooking or gardening can be enjoyed alone, but only thanks to the language, flavours and cultivars developed by others who have shared that passion. It is often through design – through the tools and techniques particular to an activity – that our connection with this wider community is manifest.
I believe that leisure, as I’ve tried to describe it, is essential for human flourishing. If designers can create products that enrich this sphere of life, they are doing good in the world. Obviously this does not free design from other social responsibilities, but it does remind us that ethics itself can be directed towards fulfilment and joy, rather than just away from harm.
This is a big truth, that leisure, amateur's activity outside the profession, is indispensable for mental and physical health. And here, a special, vast field of meticulous, researched, and optimised design comes to my mind: outdoor equipment. Evolutionary improvements in design, materials and manufacturing technology serve not only for enjoyment, but to keep us comfortable and safe in adverse environment. It may be a piece of garment, or an inflatable kayak, or a bicycle. Designers are passionate to design them, and amateurs entrust them, often, with their lives.
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My second thought is on the sideline: look at this vintage Land Rover. How bright, well lit, the interior is, thanks to big glass panes! They were designed to let the light in, not to conceal. Compare it to modern high metal sides, where what small spots of glass remained, are darkened to be only partly transparent (perhaps the Cybertruck is the most ugly epitome of this trend.)
What does this shift in transparency, and in acceptance of light, tells about our social condition?
You are aware of Johan Huizinga right? To talk about those matters without mentioning him is quite off haha.
Below is Lewis Mumford talking about him on his book The Myth of the Machine: Techniques and Human Development:
«Only a little while ago the Dutch historian, J. Huizinga, in 'Homo Ludens' brought forth a mass of evidence to suggest that play, rather than work, was the formative element in human culture: that man's most serious activity belonged to the realm of make-believe. On this showing, ritual and mimesis, sports and games and dramas, released man from his insistent animal attachments; and nothing could demonstrate this better, I would add, than those primitive ceremonies in which he played at being another kind of animal. Long before he had achieved the power to transform the natural environment, man had created a miniature environment, the symbolic field of play, in which every function of life might be re-fashioned in a strictly human style, as in a game.»
I shall add that with this technological drive we are fashioning reality like a VIDEO-game. Not free playfulness, but a competitive struggle for existence in a scripted universe. A corruption of the above.