Gambling and Leisure
Post industrialism, as it blossomed in the years after World War II, marked the culmination of many changes under way--- since at least the late nineteenth century.
With the economy geared less of industrial growth and more of personal consumption, many people regarded their jobs differently.
Greater numbers of Americans looked to the workplace less for the personal challenge or the potential for personal fulfillment.
In addition, it was also more for the security it offered in the way of rising per capita income, heightened corporate, bureaucratic, and union organization, and greater emphasis on social welfare programs.
As many jobs seemed less satisfying and grew less distinctive, Americans sought fulfillment and a sense of self less from the work world, and more from their consumption activities, including the consumption of leisure time.
The shift contributed to the perception that the work week as shrinking.
People did not need to visit Las Vegas or any other resort in order to escape work; indeed, in bits and pieces, work appeared to be escaping them.
The postwar economy generated another important change in the relationship between work and leisure, since the onset of the industrial revolution in the Anglo-American world.
There, the two spheres of work and play, which had overlapped extensively in preindustrial societies, became increasingly separated from one another.
In industrializing countries, people reordered their lives so that hours devoted to leisure were differentiated sharply from periods of work.
Such compartmentalization of daily life endured well into the twentieth century, until the imperatives of a post industrializing economy began to dissolve conventional divisions of time.
More laborers interrupted the working day with breaks, more businessmen took extended lunches, and more people attended conventions, often in resort cities like Las Vegas, where job-related activities came to be intermixed with play.
The meaning of leisure was consequently redefined. As Americans incorporated forms of leisure into their working hours, they also began to work harder at play. It quickly became clear that leisure would no longer be so leisurely any more.
The novel importance of play, coupled with Americans' general unfamiliarity with the serious consumption of leisure, made it difficult for people to accept this particular cultural shift and helped to explain why adjustment to the new conditions was somewhat troubled.
Americans turned increasingly to leisure activities for fulfillment, but play did not yet provide the moral equivalent of work for their lives.
As a result, Americans tended to work at play. People found themselves unprepared to make leisure a source of purpose for their daily existence and remained uncertain about new styles of play. Leisure consequently induced at times a sense of 'aimlessness'.