Higher Progress: Why Free Time Is the Future

I am convinced that what is lacking in current attempts to restart work-hours reduction is the lack of a vigorous, positive defense of leisure as a desirable alternative to work. I have spent my life as an historian trying to show that there was once an inspiring, moral, and humane alternative to work and wealth as ends in themselves – an alternative Walt Whitman called “higher progress” and which was long associated with reductions in work hours in the West. My goal as a researcher is to recall that forgotten American dream of “free time,” and re-present it as a live option for today’s world of AI, rising unemployment, and failing work ethic (an ethic I have called a failing faith). Without some such concept of progress, current attempts to shorten work hours will fail, as have previous attempts (such as Kellogg's Six-Hour Day) over the last three quarters of a  century.