Saturday, January 31, 2009

M.I.S Bowling Alone

My M.I.S for this section is from Page 16 of "Bowling Alone." I chose the sentence that stated that "the most dangerous threat hanging over American society is the threat of leisure." I know we touched on this in class a little, but I thought that even though this was written about 9 years ago, it still applies today. The whole idea that our own free time is hurting our progress sounds ridiculous when we think about how little free time we have in the first place. I think that we all have far more free time than we think however. I, for example, normally don't have class after 3 on most days yet I still don't start my homework until much later. We all complain about having little amount of time to do what we want, but we actually have far more than we need and we don't know what to do with it and end up procrastinating. This is why I chose this sentence because it holds more truth than we want it to, but nevertheless exposes our own laziness.

4 comments:

  1. I chose this as my MIS as well, and I agree with your observations. When put that way, it seems sad that in our free time, instead of taking part in volunteer and more structured activities, we are more engaged in being anti-social and just watching t.v., like its our obligation. This obviously doesn't promote social productivity.

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  2. I didn't choose this as my MIS, but I think its really interesting. I'm not sure our lack of social contact has to do with the amount of leisure at all. I think it has more to do with how we spend this time. No amount of free time will ever make me join a bridge club or a bowling league. Our taste in entertainment has just change and it just so happens that we are now more amused with watching T.V. alone than we are playing marbles. In the end, in my opinion, the problem is what entertains us these days not how much time we get to do it.

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  3. I did not chose this as my MIS, but I think it holds true. A lot of times we say we are "so busy" and barely have time to get our homework done, but in reality we never end up starting on our homework until way later because we spend a lot of time procrastinating (for me, this would mostly be facebook). However, I think technology part to do with this, because now we have things like the internet, we can use that to stay in contact with people. Years ago, people did not have this so they had to rely on social events as their primary source of staying in touch with people.

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  4. I do not see leisure as a problem at all. In my opinion, this is your life and you only have one chance at it. There is a lot of time you must spend doing things like sleeping and working or school and the rest of it is leisure. And that is your chance to do what you want to do whether it be watching tv, bowling with friends, or traveling the world. I feel your leisure time is what makes you- you.

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