Translated from a critique I wrote for Professor Carlos Cunha’s advertising management class at UNISUL. The original is in Portuguese and is called “O Ăłcio ĂŠ precioso”.
This week’s homework was a critique of an interview Domenico De Masi gave to Veja (issue 1744). De Masi is the Italian sociologist behind “creative leisure”, the idea that work and play should blend together, because the good ideas show up in your free time and almost never at your desk.
I liked it a lot, mostly because it’s how I already work. My best ideas show up at 2am on IRC and never in class (sorry, professor).
The reality show fever
My critique went after TV. Reality shows arrived in Brazil like a fever, first Casa dos Artistas and now Big Brother Brasil, and everybody is watching, but fevers pass. The people on those shows are famous for a few months and then nobody remembers their names, the audience gets bored, and when the next “new” show of the same kind starts, the whole cycle runs again. I wrote that Brazilians get tired of things really fast, which is probably true of me too.
Meanwhile all the time that should go to creative leisure goes into watching strangers sleep in a house (I watched a few episodes, I admit).
Tripalium
The best part of the research was finding out where the word “trabalho” (work) comes from. It comes from the tripalium, an ancient torture tool. In the paper I described it as a three pointed dagger that opened up inside you, and I’m not 100% sure that’s exactly what it was, but either way it was made for torture. So work has been a synonym for suffering for a couple thousand years, and that explains Mondays.
Home office
De Masi also talks about people working from home. A few companies already let people do it with flexible hours, and the idea is that home is a calmer place to think than an office full of people. Considering where my good ideas show up, I’m in.
Theeeen there’s the catch. The job market is tough and the obligations come earlier every year, so people end up “selling” their free time to pay the bills. Companies still don’t care much about what goes on in their employees’ heads, so personal life waits for retirement at 60, at least for now.
I ended the paper with “for now”. I hope I was right about that part…