Deep Play

• In 1885, socialist William Morris proposed that in the factories of the future, employees should work only four hours a day.
• In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that advances in technology would lead to an age of leisure where people might work 15 hours a week.
• Since the early 2010s, these ideas have been developed further, creating a growing critique of work as an ideology, and exploring alternatives to work.
• Post-work offers enormous promises: In a life of much less work, life would be calmer, more equal, more communal, more pleasurable, more thoughtful, more politically engaged, more fulfilled.

The work ideology is not natural nor very old.

• Before the modern era, all cultures thought of work as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
• Once the modern work ethic was established, working patterns started to shift. Between 1800 and 1900, the average working week shrank from 80 hours to 60 hours, and in the 1970s to roughly 40 hours.
• In 1979, Bernard Lefkowitz related in his book that people who had given up their jobs reported feelings of "wholeness." During the same period, because wages were high enough, it became possible for most people to work less.
• During the 80s, work ideology was reimposed by aggressively pro-business governments who were motivated by a desire for social control.
• By the early 21st century, the work culture seems inescapable.

Jordan Peterson observed that virtues aim for balance and to avoid the extremes of the vices. Cultivating judgment about the difference between virtue and vice is the beginning of wisdom.

Modern relativism asserts judging how to live is impossible, because good and virtue are relative. Thus relativism’s version of “virtue” is “tolerance.” This leads to people broadcasting their tolerance as a form of self-promotion, and secret vice, which is also known as virtue signaling.

Order is where the people around you act according to the established social norms, remaining predictable and cooperative. Society is simultaneously structure and oppression.

Chaos is where the unexpected happens. 

Addiction can include:

• Addiction as a moral transgression, like excessive drinking or drug use.
• Addiction as a scientific disease, which characterize alcoholism and drug addiction as biological.
• Colloquial violation, which applies the term to almost any fixation. 

The idea that someone can be addicted to a behavior, as opposed to a substance, remains debatable.

• Excessive gameplay is a symptom of a larger problem, like anxiety or depression.
• The fear of possible addiction arrises from moral panic about new technologies, not scientific research or clinical data.
• Making excessive gaming a disorder can harm the gaming industry by stigmatizing their products.