Not Enough Time to Cook?

 It is estimated that cave people worked less than 20 hours a week to produce life's essentials. In 1930, economist John Manyard Keynes believed that, due to increased productivity, his grandchildren would likely have to work only 15 hours a week. In 1968, Mechanix Illustrated predicted: "People will have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work week is about four hours."

Here we are in 2017, at hand the greatest time-savings devices ever known. For most the work week is longer and more stressful. Technology has not delivered the promised dividend of time. It has increased the burden of living. Its benefits have flowed to the already rich.

This perceived shortage of time has given rise to a previously unthinkable e-commerce business. For a fee, someone will buy, measure, cut, chill, box and ship every ingredient for a meal to your door. According to a purveyor of this service, "There's not enough time in modern lives to receipt-collect or grocery-shop." (New York Times, March 31, 2013)

With an array of push-button devices at our command, why is there "not enough time"? Why has technology not improved our lives to the point where we can stop after four hours of work? As Shakespeare has observed, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.

The promised contentment

In its November 1968 issue, Mechanix Illustrated informed the world, "People will have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours."

The sixties was a time which Prime Minister Lester Pearson described as one of "rising expectations." This spirit of optimism carried on through the primeministership of Pierre Trudeau.

Then what happened? What is now happening?

How would the Wright brothers react if told that within 60 years of their first flight, man would set foot on the moon?

How would Graham Bell react if told that in the next century people will communicate around the world and into space?

How would Henry Ford react if told that in his century there would be millions of cars around the world available at reasonable cost?

How would John Maynard Keynes react if told that between 1950 and 1975 the Gross World Product would double?

How would people still living today react if told when they were still young that in their lifetime there would be machines to wash our dishes, to wash clothes and dry them, to offer instant world-wide communication, to record music and make it available to all, to help diagnose and help cure diseases which then even had no names?

No doubt, they would all think enviously of us. How great life will be. What luxury these devices will bring with the reduced the work week. With the drudgery abolished, work will be more interesting. Life will be great. What else could result with all those time-saving devices but more time to relax and enjoy life?

Instead of easing the burdens of life, each technological advance seems to increase stress in our lives. We work overtime to produce time-saving devices. What has happened to the time saved by these devices? It is estimated that the caveman worked no more than 20 hours a week to produce the necessities of life. Today, some of work three times those hours and produce less.