An average life today, in France as in Quebec, lasts more than 80 years and consists of thousands of days and hours. What do we do with this “ocean of time”?

After being buried under work, stuck in transportation, going from one screen to another, how do we manage the time we have left, what we call free time? Many of us still waste it in front of screens, letting algorithms and content succumb to the exponential growth of digital platforms.

“We stole our time,” states Olivier Babeau The tyranny of entertainmentthe essay he devotes to this phenomenon, intended as a “concerned warning of a problem no one wants to see.”

For between the industrious leisure of antiquity and the search for immediate pleasure through leisure, it seems to the essayist that we live in an age that is “leisure sick”.

“I’m not criticizing entertainment per se, I’m criticizing tyranny,” said Olivier Babeau, 47, a liberal economist, professor at the University of Bordeaux and co-founder of the Sapiens Institute, a laboratory for ideas, in a 2017 interview. “Actually, it’s a question of balance. We all feel the need to relax, do something different, relax from time to time. The problem is when we spend all our free time there. »

Today we live in a civilization of leisure in which, recalls the man who was briefly an adviser to Prime Minister François Fillon in 2009, working hours have fallen rapidly in just a few decades. So, without really realizing it, we have entered a world in which work no longer occupies the essential place.

It’s really a matter of balance. We all feel the need to relax, do something different, relax from time to time.

Good use of freedom

“Of course, freedom in itself is a good thing. But we refuse to imagine that, unfortunately, misuse of free time could happen. In other words, there is work that alienates, but free time is not necessarily emancipatory. It can also be alienating. »

Olivier Babeau presents this book as a logical continuation of his previous essay, The new digital chaos (Buchet-Chastel, 2020), which discussed the polarization of the world – social, economic, even democratic – in the digital age. It also feeds on a more personal dimension, linked to the death of just over two years ago of his father, an intellectual and economics professor who died at his desk at the age of 86 while writing his last article.

“My father was lucky, like me, not to have a job, but to have a job. Something he has been doing all his life and which was in symbiosis with his person and his way of life,” he says.

if inside The tyranny of entertainment He first unfolds a panoramic story of work and free time and does not hesitate to question the way in which he, even today, passes his free time on to his children. “Because free time is fundamental,” he believes. This is where the social differences are made. And that’s where the reality of our lives plays out, from beginning to end. »

Leisure time is time for oneself, leisure time, remembers Olivier Babeau, who differentiates between three types of leisure use. First there is time for others, social contacts, family or friends. “Then there’s time for yourself, that’s what I call it skhole, busy free time. It is all the time that you will be active, growing and empowering yourself. For example through reading, sports, reflection, meditation. Whenever you want to improve yourself, cultivate yourself, if you will. »

The last type, he continues, is leisure “outside of itself,” passive, that which degrades one. “It’s an activity that takes you away from yourself, that atrophies you. It is that Scroll which made you lose 45 minutes of your life jumping from one video to another. That’s what encapsulates the word “entertainment,” which the essayist recognizes has an appeal the other two don’t have.

“We always think a lot about work and the connection with it, but it takes up a rather small place in our lives. And I think the social differences are mixed elsewhere too. First before work, during studies. And I always tell my students at the beginning of the year that the difference between them when they later work in a company is what they did alongside their studies. »

New technologies, perverse effects

In his opinion, there is no doubt that new technologies are amplifying the tragedy of leisure through a series of perverse effects. The right-wing economist rightly resists a moralizing approach and multiplies the precautionary measures in his essay so as not to come across as reactionary.

So it’s not about keeping pleasure at a distance because pleasure would be bad. He takes the Greek or ancient approach that pleasure is good when it is disciplined, thereby providing us with the highest quality of pleasure.

“It’s Michel Foucault’s idea The care for yourself. Basically, pleasure is a super servant but a bad master. Like money by the way. You have to know how to tame it. Sometimes it takes self-discipline. For example, if you work on a musical instrument, it can take several years before you have access to absolutely incredible pleasure. »

Eating only sweets or eating too many of them does not promote well-being either. We must, he says, develop the same discipline towards the screens. Basically there is only one choice: resistance or submission.

“Free,” writes Olivier Babeau, “we are our greatest enemy.” The affluent society that has become ours and in which everything seems designed to spare the individual the slightest effort – including the trouble of thinking, with the recent and dazzling breakthroughs in artificial intelligence – now urges to resist the “comfort trap”. And first of all, resisting yourself.

“It’s super difficult, freedom,” notes the essayist, who recalls that in the past people didn’t choose anything in their lives. “You carry an infinity of content in your pocket permanently today, planned to be most attractive to you. The ones that suit you. What power it takes to say: I take a book, create something or even dream! It is exceedingly difficult to resist this temptation. We all have this problem. »

But Olivier Babeau, who admits to having a bit of an addiction himself, believes it’s important not to demonize screens. It is above all a question of balance, a state that can be achieved by setting small rules.

We need to develop the user manual that didn’t come with the technologies. “Being aware of that is the most important thing. »

To see in the video