#rational recreation

Initially, enthusiasts of rational recreation set about attracting working-class males into bourgeois establishments to teach them, through a mixture of instruction and amusement, the political and economic laws and certainties of the day. Clearly, a 'properly' educated artisan would be first to qualify for the vote from the disenfranchised multitude. It will be argued, however, that rational recreation underwent a major shift in emphasis after 1870, with moral reformers becoming less confident that their own prized civilised culture would survive the onslaught of modernity. This modernity came in the guise of rapidly growing cities, rising poverty and expansion of low' forms of leisure. The intelligent artisan was becoming lost beneath the degenerate semi-skilled 'pleasure seekers' that characterised the era. Moral reformers from across the political spectrum began to pursue more aggressive and coercive forms of rational recreation, with leisure provision and notions of citizenship reflecting a more anxious and insecure climate in British society. The rational recreationalists' desire to create the model citizen through the reformation of working-class leisure habits stemmed from a number of factors. Male leisure had certainly been most visible to social observers and was often deemed the more threatening to the social order, particularly when public houses and social events became a means of disseminating radical politics during the first half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, it was no coincidence that programmes of rational recreation, which stressed instruction and education, were at their most intense prior to the enfranchisement of the artisanal class of working men in 1867. In the same year, the underlying assumptions of many rational recreation schemes were encapsulated in a Times editorial: «Who would not be the English working man? He is the spoilt child of the great British family. Though very well able to take care of himself, and with strong notions of independence, we arc all striving to take him by the hand and do him some good or other. We build institutions for him, we present him with books, pictures and models, we read to him and preach to him, we teach him to make societies, we are bringing the franchise to his door and laying it on his table if he will but rise from his chair and take it.»

In his book Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism, British writer Alfie Bown suggests that although the leisure afforded by games like Candy Crush and Fruit Ninja may seem like a brief respite from your mechanical capitalist grind, it may be quite the opposite, they’re all part of your humdrum capitalist existence. But this is nothing new. This societal demand for constant gratification, goes all the way back to the 19th Century Victorian concept of "Rational Recreation." "Rational Recreation" was a belief in a hierarchy of leisure--where the urban working class was introduced to the concept of relaxation in the direction of self-improvement. Instead of activities like drinking, napping, and fighting--workers were encouraged to spend their time doing productive and organized things like team sports and stamp collecting. The idea was to keep workers engaged, happy, and domesticated instead of unruly, subversive, and wild. Because a happy worker is less likely to strike.