Feb 08 2010
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“ Internalizing the work ethic of the industrial age, professional men dedicated themselves to self-improvement even in their leisure hours. They avidly read books and attended lectures on business or cultural themes. […] through their support for Sunday schools, factory owners sought to persuade workers to adopt middle-class norms of respectability and morality.
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— p 832 Traditions & Encounters by Bentley and Ziegler
This account of how the middle class was fueled in part by intellectual endeavor is indeed encouraging, but it seems to be falling away in some respects. Their is less interest now in reading and more toward less intellectually-stimulating means of filling free time (read: television and Youtube). While I believe the Internet has in part helped to save us from a Fahrenheit 451-esque society where nobody desires depth in knowledge anymore, it is interesting how much of what we in the middle class of the industrialized world do in spare time. Going to lectures sure isn’t something you hear about people doing very often in their leisure hours anymore—that much is certain.
