Ray writes:
Charles, does it not seem that as lean
manufacturing techniques take over the factories the presumption of leisure
becomes the issue as much as the need for work? So is not
the issue what we will do with leisure? Maybe the old model
of God, Family, Work and Play must now give way to something more
"Wholistic"?
Selma: Ray's mention of the coming
importance of leisure and the reference to 'wholistic' allows me to segue into
a mention of Abraham Maslow's idea that if children are born into an
environment that provides them with all of their 'basic', needs for
physical and emotional nourishment and psychological security and stimulation,
and if they are surrounded by the 'best' that civilization has to offer in the
way of aesthetic nourishment, they will grow to be mature 'self-actualized'
adults who have developed the 'being' needs to love and to
work.
Maslow's work, combined with Ruth Benedict's work
on 'synergistic' societies give us the hope that we can have societies in
which children will develop their unique potentialities such that they will
love to work because that is what fulfills them in the very sense that an
artist works because that fulfills her/his own needs.
Work then becomes an activity that can
assume characteristics that are spiritual and 'holy' because that
activity connects the individual to her/himself, to the community, and to the
universe.
Selma
