“The Tyranny of Entertainment: Navigating the Challenges of Free Time in a Digital Age”

An average life, in France as in Quebec, is now more than 80 years long, made up of thousands of days and hours. What do we do with this “ocean of time”?

After being buried under work, stuck in transport, going from one screen to another, how do we dispose of the time we have left, what we call free time? Many of us are still wasting it in front of screens, consenting slaves of algorithms and content to the exponential growth of digital platforms.

“We stole our time”, observes Olivier Babeau in The tyranny of entertainmentthe essay he devotes to this phenomenon, which is intended as a “worried warning against a problem that no one wants to see”.

Because between the studious leisure of the Ancients and the search for immediate pleasure through leisure, it appears to the essayist that we live in an era that is “sick with free time”.

“I do not criticize entertainment in itself, I criticize tyranny”, explains in an interview Olivier Babeau, 47, liberal economist, professor at the University of Bordeaux and co-founder in 2017 of the Sapiens Institute, a laboratory of ideas. “It’s a balance issue, actually. We all need, from time to time, to relax, to do something else, to zap. The problem is when we spend all our free time there. »

We live today in a civilization of free time, where, recalls the one who in 2009 was briefly adviser to Prime Minister François Fillon, in a few decades, the decline in working time has been rapid. We have thus entered, without really realizing it, into a world where work no longer occupies the essential place.

It’s a balance issue, really. We all need, from time to time, to relax, to do something else, to zap.

Good use of freedom

“Freedom in itself is of course a good thing. But we refuse to imagine that there could be, unfortunately, bad uses of free time. To put it another way: there is work that is alienating, but leisure is not necessarily emancipatory. It can also be alienating. »

Olivier Babeau presents this book as the logical continuation of his previous essay, The new digital mess (Buchet-Chastel, 2020), where it was about the polarization of the world — social, economic, even democratic — in the digital age. He also feeds on a more personal dimension, linked to the death of his father a little over two years ago, an intellectual and professor of economics who died at the age of 86 at his desk, by writing his last article.

“My father was lucky to have, as is mine, not a trade, but a profession. Something he has done all his life, which was in symbiosis with who he was and with his way of life, ”he says.

If in The tyranny of entertainment he begins by unfolding a panoramic history of work and leisure, nor does he hesitate to question the way in which he himself, today, transmits leisure to his children. “Because leisure is fundamental,” he believes. This is where the social differences are made. And that’s also where the reality of our life plays out, in fact, from beginning to end. »

Leisure is time for oneself, free time, recalls Olivier Babeau, who distinguishes three types of use of leisure. First there is time for others, social, family or friends. “Then there is time for oneself, what I call the scholar, studious leisure. It’s all the time you’re going to be active, grow, empower yourself. For example through reading, sport, reflection, meditation. All the times when you are going to increase yourself, if you will, cultivate yourself. »

The last type, he continues, is leisure “outside of itself”, passive, that which diminishes you. “It’s an activity that takes you away from yourself, that atrophies you. It’s the scrolling which will have made you lose three quarters of an hour of your life, because you jumped from one video to another. This is what the word “entertainment” covers, which has, the essayist recognizes, a power of attraction that the other two do not have.

“We always think a lot about work and in relation to it, but it occupies a rather small place in our lives. And I think the social differences blend in elsewhere. First in front of work, in studies. And I always tell my students at the start of the year that the difference between them when they later work in a company will be in what they have done alongside their studies. »

New technologies, perverse effects

There is no doubt, according to him, that new technologies, through a series of perverse effects, accentuate the tragedy of free time. Rightly defending himself from having a moralizing approach, the right-wing economist multiplies in his essay the precautions so as not to appear reactionary.

Thus, it is not a question of putting the pleasure at a distance because the pleasure would be bad. He advocates the Greek, or ancient, approach that pleasure is good if it is disciplined, thereby providing us with the highest quality of pleasure.

“It’s Michel Foucault’s idea in The care of self. 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, when you work on a musical instrument, it can take several years of effort to have access to absolutely incredible pleasure. »

In the same way, eating only sweets or eating too many of them does not promote our well-being. We must develop, he thinks, 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, where everything seems designed to spare the individual the slightest effort — including that of thinking, with the recent and dazzling breakthroughs of artificial intelligence — now commands the urgency to resist the “ease trap”. And to begin with, that of resisting oneself.

“It’s super difficult, freedom,” notes the essayist, who recalls that in the past people did not choose anything in their lives. “You have in your pocket, today permanently, an infinity of contents, planned to be those which are most attractive for you. Those that suit you. What strength it takes to say: I’m going to take a book, create something or even daydream! It is prodigiously difficult to resist this temptation. We all have that problem. »

But Olivier Babeau, who admits to experiencing a certain addiction himself, believes that it is 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 was not delivered with the technologies. “Being aware of that is the most important thing. »

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