Ishmael: Idea of Leisure and a Cultural Prison – Bryan Trumble

A very interesting idea I saw illuminated between primal and technological culture is the idea of leisure and imprisonment in the book Ishmael by Nathaniel Quinn. Quinn claims that even though primal culture has a great deal of leisure time, the technological culture views their culture as struggling to get by. He also claims that technological culture has less leisure time and is trapped by their struggle for survival.
The primal culture according to Quinn, only works about 20 hours a week to take care of life sustaining necessities. Compared to the technological minimum 40 hour work week it seems evident that the primal culture has much more leisure time. This is especially prevalent in our modern society where the workweek has far surpassed 40 hours and is now approaching 60-90 hours. This is hardly leisure when we look at the 168 hours a given week offers (almost half are spent just working).
The technological culture sees the primal culture as struggling to survive because they can’t easily go to the store to get what they need. However, they do have a store: nature. So although they have to work immediately for what they want they (in general) have more free time.
Looking at the hours we now work, it seems understandable that our culture is ‘trapped’. We seem to feel forced to succeed at our job. To do this we must put in more effort than ‘the other guy’ and this leads to longer work hours and shorter leisure hours. This forms a hidden entrapment that our culture imposes on itself, yet this culture prison is not found in most primal societies.