Judy, I just finished this rough one within 30 minutes, pretty tight. I had some discussions with my wife before I started. Without the discussion, there will be no quality at all. Please take a look and give me you valueable comments. Thanks in advance.
Answer:
How can we learn about a society? Recently there is a view that we can learn more about a society by observing how its people spend their leisure time than by observing them at work. It makes sense to me for several reasons.
First of all, how people spend their leisure time is a better indicator of their overall life quality. people need a certain level of economic condition to spend their leisure time. The better economic condition they have in leisure time, the less they spend on basic living such as food. The Engel's coefficient is a strong evidence, as in economics, schoolars usually use the coefficient to compare a society's life quality. The Engel's coefficient is a proportion of consumption of food to overall consumption. The lower the coefficient of a society is, the higher life quality it has. In those low Engel's coefficient society such as Norway, people spend a lot of money on travel domestic and internationally.
Secondly, work, for most of people in a society, is a method to make a living. To a great extent, leisure is a reflection of spirit need. According to Maslow theory, we have to meet our basic living need first and we can leverage to meet higher level need such as spirit need. If peoole can't even make a sustainable life, they cann't think about their leisure too much. We can't expect a poor people to shedule an international trip to learn some foreign culture.
Of course, some people might argue that poeple in work can also reflect their spiritual belief such as intergrity. It is true that work can be a source of self-belief. However, we can imagine that people with great spiritual belief in work can easily demonstrate or show it during their leisure time. For example, one of top 10 of the most richest person, the second son of Wal-mart Faimily, Johnson Walton, was a great advercator of providing education opportunity to minorities in the States.
To sum up, we can definitely learn more about a society by observing how its people spend their leisure time than by observing them at work, as how people spend their leisure time can give more information and wider source on the society's life quality and spiritual belief or values. Of course, observation on their work is a good and valid supplement in learning about a society.
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