WHO IS TO BLAME?

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 121, 25 May 1933, Page 11

WHO IS TO BLAME?

MAN OR MACHINE?

VULGAR PERSONAL CHOICES

"WILLLEISURE CURE THEM?,

(By P.N.)

In a'Canterbury College commemoration day address, entitled "Culture in a Mechanised World," Professor, 'Jumps Shelley touched, inter alia, on culture and a shorter working day. This raises the question whether leisure means culture.' The same question cropped up in an ar.gu.mtut between | Mr. Douglas Jerrold and Professor Levy, as reported.- in the "Evening Post" of May C. "No decent art and no decent thought," said Mr. Jerrold, "was ever turned out in anybody's spare time." One school of thought holds that an Idle man is a lazy man and often a bad man. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." "Man shall earn his bread, by the sweat of his brow." There is a gospel of work which regards work as salvation. Far from being a destroyer of the leisure that Is said to mean culture (but does not) work is the saviour of man. Man cannot be trusted in idleness. He must be compelled to work, unless worse things befall him. The compulsion of slavery spoiled man as a consumer, but the compulsion of the industrial sys--lem cannot be abolished as slavery was, because industrial compulsion (-working iv order to eat) creates a consumer who is a free man after about eight, hours' work. This, it.is. argued, is a fair compromise: eight ' hours sleep, and eight hours' work to couuleract the effect of eight hours' misused leisure. For-Mr.. Jerrold, and those who think with him, clearly regard the average'man as being too poor personally to make good use of las nonworking time. Leisure is not culture, but the reverse. The other school of thought assumes lhat man need not be driven to work .in. order to protect him from himself, it thinks that his leisure can bo extended—perhaps by a gradual decrease of tho -working day—and that ho can be led into paths of culture. ■ People of this school are optimists, and call the others cynics. SELF-EXPRESSION. ■What is cultures Culture, as Professor Shelley sees it, seems to be mainly self-expression. Ho said he intended to use the word, "culture" to cover-all those attempts at expression by which mail progressed in his efforts to use his own nature—by which man became, something more intensely living; and he regarded as anti-cultural anything that tended to reduce man to a lower standard of sensitivity and creative effort. Apart from the usual modes of expression included in art,drama, music, poetry, he would find an important place in culture for scientific research, for aeronautical adventure, and he might even find an out-of-the-way corner for such things as golf and fishing. This is a fairly wide- definition of culture, but later, as will bo seen, Professor Shelley introduces a much more specific and elusive factor —personality. He thinks that most people find that the life of this mechanical age of ours compares unfavourably in fullness or l-icbness in any cultural sense with •that of earlier ages. Included in misused mechanisation is the radio, "that most potent and amazing evidence" of electrical invention,- which<is "used t6 batter the ears of every ~ housewife into a state of hopeless insensitivity with raucous jazz while she is pounding '.the dirt out of the week's washing." It may here be asked: does this radio 'disease affect only the working house•wife? Do not the most supposedly cultural women of society spend a great deal of thefr lives talking down the radio or the gramophone, so that Ihe guest can hear neither? ',' Tho future of culture in a mcchan--sserl world (says' the professor) is not 'to be found in that conglomeration of clerk-filled concrete kennels called skyscrapers, jazz-strident restaurants, mobtickling theatres,, and shamelessly lying advertisement signs which is called a modern city." But with a shorter •working day "man is freed for leisure much more than he is at present," and the hope of the future lies in "estabOishing communities in (beautiful and natural surroundings where people will live their real lives in as fully expressive a way as possible with all the facilities for creative activity at their disposal." As to "personality": "Nowadays there seem to be a few so-called 'personalities' fictitiously valued at high prices as public attractions, whether as concert performers or conference experts, leading a lonely life in the midst of crowds to which they do not.bejong, tvnd on the other hand there are millions of people just rubbing along from day to day, shifting about from one lodging-place to another as industry dictates, and realising no value eithcr_ in terms of personality or community.' ... Industrialised life in a mechanised world seems to demand a I'ew highly specialised experts who may find adequate expressive value in their work, and a multitude of routine:) workers on monotonous and iivcxprcs-1 pive jobs. »».■•■ WHAT MAKES PERSONALITY? j So here are linked up three things: culture, self-expression, personality. It j is evident that the mode of sclf-expres-■ sion.is largely'based on personality (common examples, .gambling and gar-j dening) and that tho culture of the individual is conditioned accordingly; but does leisure develop personality, ■ and does it develop the individual towards the gardening typo of self-ex-pression, and culture, or towards the "ambling type? This question may not be answerable, but at least serves to focus the argument. "Man (says Professor Shelley) cannot breathe as an expressive personality among the cold imperßonal monuments of induiitrial efficiency." Alan is, however, entirely self-expres-sive as a barrackcr at a football or a. wrestling match, but can he be said to be cultural'? ' Again: "In tho multiplicity of superficial experiences offered us by the mechanical facilities of these daystravel, talkies, broadcasting—there is a grave danger that cultural contacts may be too slight to count worth while. To pass tho time of day with a thousand people rarely approaches the cultural value of spending the same amount of time in the company of two or three.". ' > But that, again, is more than ever a question of personality. Who or what has "robbed people's leisure of expressive meaning?" Professor Shelley says that mechanical facilities have done this? But is not the old personal factor present also'? And Will leisure correct it'? The professor asks: "Why should we regard, not the living, but the dull preparation of the tools of living as the centre of the social scheme and give over to it the best hours of the day, when tho sun is shining, and then stretch out into the night all sorts of vicious attempts to stimulate our jaded nerves'?" AVhy, indeed? Mechanical facilities .-may be doing something to shut out tho sun, at any rate on a. winter's day; but who has corrupted the nights —the "facilities" or the people who giopft out for tlicm ?

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