A leading cause for this may be the longer work hours & increased commuting time in the urban areas. The pioneer of the "Eight Hour Workday" was not a labour leader as can be expected, but a visionary Welsh Mill Owner, Robert Owen, in the early nineteenth century. This was gradually accepted as a universal norm. Before this, especially after the Industrial Revolution, workers, not even sparing women & children were overworked, so that three generations of workers were used up in one generation.
The horrendous working hours existing in the pre-Robert Owen era, seem to be making a comeback in the twenty-first century with a vengeance. Employers are exhorting employees to forget about work/life balance & be available 24 X 7 hours, seven days a week, little imagining the future catastrophe awaiting. This hare-brained extolling of workaholism hits at the very base of society as a recent report of alarming decline in birth-rate in Japan has proved. Japanese workers are known to be workaholics.
Some form of (perceived useless!) cultural activity daily, repeat "daily!" is essential for humans to distinguish them from animals, who exist, feed, reproduce & die. The very "uselessness" of cultural activities is what makes us human & not mere animals. Some fondly imagine that these "useless" activities can be taken up after retirement. But unless these are cultivated & persevered with from a young age, it is too late to develop an interest in them when old. One may even have developed Alzheimer's disease by then. That is why the ancients had an adage "All work & no play makes Jack a dull boy"!
Bertrand Russel, mathematician & philosopher, & an extremely productive man had advocated a four hour workday in his celebrated essay "In Praise of Idleness." But then, who has time to read Russel now?
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