It is clear that industrialization and civilization have turned our society into a working society where people are spending a lot of their time working leaving no or little time for other things that do matter in life such as family, relationships, leisure, and religion, we can further say that work has also stopped people from appreciating what nature has to offer. According to (Schor J,1991) “Americans reported that they had only sixteen and a half hours of leisure a week, after the obligations of job and household are taken care of”.
following industrialization and civilization, the standards of living and the needs for human life have gone high thus people spend much of their time making money to cater to their ever-increasing needs. However, it is unfortunate that some people do not realize early enough in life that one can acquire freedom and fulfillment in life not only by working so hard to buy luxurious goods but also by doing other things in life that brings in pleasure.
According to Wordsworth (1807) “the desire for goods is sometimes antithetical to the desire for personal fulfillment and spiritual growth” this is because society is spending a lot of time acquiring material things at the expense of their personal fulfillment and spiritual growth as a result of industrialization. (Thoreau D, 1817-1862) “feels that civilization has brought about necessities in human life and as a result of these necessities people are employed in the name of laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal”. Thus he emphasized that people should not work since all the material wealth at the end is not important if they will not have accumulated enough wealth spiritually.
Schor (1998) asserts that “it is clear that people do spend a lot of their time working in order to cater for their luxuries at the expense of leisure and families only to realize when it is too late that it was not worth having to work themselves to death since one can get fulfillment in life by doing other things while earning less”. This is clearly depicted in her two case studies.
Wordsworth (1807) observes that “……….little we see in nature that is ours; we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon…….” These phases confirm that people in our society are working too much that they do not have time to appreciate nature and feel anything for other people, this is clearly expressed in the two case studies presented by (Schor J,1998) where Alice describes “her job as her identity, what makes her important, and that’s what confirms her skills” though she realized later that her lifestyle was strange and confessed that “she had been halfway around the world and she did not miss anything as anybody”.
Schor (1998) indicated that “Jennifer had to work most of her time just to add an extra coin in her pocket in order to finance her ever-increasing expenses. Since she was an impulse buyer her expenses also went higher as her income increased leaving her in the same situation as she was before income increased.” Jennifer is a representative of most of the people in our society who are working even ‘over time and yet the money is never enough for our luxuries.
From the two case studies in (Schor J,1998) “it is clear that our society is working too much just to earn cash even though we have no passion for our work, just to buy things that we don’t have time to use or things we even don’t require”, for instance, Jennifer says that “I felt like I was spending all my life’s energies doing something that I did not much care about to get a check every two weeks so that I could go out and buy books that I never had time to read and some records I never had the time to listen to”.
In conclusion, though our society focuses more on spending much time on work in the name of making money to buy luxuries, the earlier the better we realize that other things in life such as family, relationship, religion, and leisure can as well give us freedom and fulfillment.