A Right To Leisure
In response to my piece on Anne Helen Petersen and the hollowed middle class, a friend of mine noted that she had never considered “money for a hobby” as being an essential need. I had factored it into the cost of living alongside rent and food.
She has a point: there is no human need for a hobby. If you believe that rights fundamentally concern themselves with fundamental human needs, those needs necessary to live and survive, then we could find no right to a hobby. Additionally, she noted, she knew of no NGOs promoting hobbies as a human right. The idea of one seems possibly silly when so much energy is expended protecting the right to say, water.
Yet rights which we hold to be fundamental need not concern themselves with specific biological functions. Nor, I would argue, are rights a static entity, but rather expand to fit the technological reality of the day. That is, rights evolve as society does. The right to be forgotten, implemented in Argentina and the European Union, provides a clear example of this: it is a right to expunge data about oneself from Internet search engines, a right which could not be fathomed fifty years ago but which some respectable governments view as fundamental.
There are less controversial, more longstanding rights that are inscribed within technological fact rather than biological need. They may seem natural due to how long these technologies have been with us, but they are rights that, like the right to be forgotten, would have, at some point in history, been meaningless.
The United States Constitution delineates rights not based on biological functions, but on certain technological realities of 18th century life. For example, the right to the press: one cannot have a right to the press until the press is invented, and prior, until written speech is invented. No person has a biological need to write and express an opinion, but we still value and protect this right, and protect the ability for publishers to distribute speech. Though outside the United States Consitution, the UN enshrined a right to Internet in 2016, itself an extension of a right to the press, showing that technology defines rights as much as ineffable human characteristics. Rights to arms are a more complicated matter: it is not a general right to weaponry, or even a right to some biological need like “protection.” We do not find a right to atomic missiles, tanks, to cyber attacks, or spy planes, so the right itself in the United States is tied to a specific technological class: the firearm, a relatively young invention. This is why the counterpoint to allowing assault weapons, that the Framers could have no understanding of the damage an assault rifle could do, compels: rights inscribe themselves in technological realities.
Other countries enshrine other non-biological rights with a technological quality. A right to education, for example, is enshrined in the Pakistani and Indian constitutions. This is similarly technological: a right to education must evolve with technology. Were such a right to have existed in ancient times, the development of written word would then expand the right to education into a right to literacy. A right to education likely includes a right to scientific and mathematical knowledge, even a right to learn to code as an expression of these, and so the right to education must expand with technological advancement. But, there is a sociological and economic aspect as well: a right to education can only be meaningfully acted upon if sufficient teachers, textbooks, and school supplies exist. The technological rears its head again. You cannot have these things without a society abundant enough to nourish and clothe teachers, to print textbooks.
A right to healthcare exists in 67.5% of written constitutions, though not in the United States’ Constitution. This itself is a right to a specific subset of technologies, and therefore an ever-expanding, non-static right. A right to a COVID-19 vaccination did not exist prior to a vaccine being developed. Even in countries where there is no right to healthcare, like the United States, I think the median citizen would agree that if someone were denied the COVID-19 vaccine that this would trespass against good morals, which to me sounds akin to a right. Though health is biological, resides within us, healthcare resides in the technological and sociological.
I believe many of the rights above to be fundamental in that they are the foundation of a just society. But they do not have a natural basis, and some of them only have a basis in 20th and 21st century technology, and could not have existed prior to this. One could not dissect a human body and thereby identify that these rights stem from human needs. And if one believes that rights come not from nature but from God, then you would have to have a God who amends rights over time to match new technologies: at what point did God identify that the printing press was widespread enough that a government should accept it as fundamental? If God is all-knowing, has He a list of all future technologies and the precise point in each region in which they belong to the people and the government must not withhold it?
Either way, rights must be fluid because rights that exist today could not have always existed, rights that we cherish. And we should expect, then, as time goes on, rights will expand.
The 19th and 20th century labor movements sought to expand the library of rights to economic and technological realities that did not exist prior. Though not written into any constitution of which I am aware, a right to leisure underpins many of the laws that workers cherish.
The idea that one has the right to free time, and a right to sleep, can be seen in the below labor posters.
The norms of middle class life rest on the belief that there ought to be free time, though I would warrant that many middle class people may not believe this a right worth extending to the poor, those who need two or three jobs to make their pay. The protections of middle class time, which come in mandated lunch breaks and the designation of when overtime must kick in, however came from a labor movement that believed in eight hours for everyone, to the factory worker and beyond.
Then there is a right to time, but do we have a right to a hobby? I’m undecided, but I don’t think it absurd. If we have a right to time, we should have a right to fill it with some non-offensive activity, be it playing sports, writing, doodling, or watching the tube. When FDR proposed his “Second Bill of Rights,” which included the right to education and healthcare that we see in other constitutions, he proposed “The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.” The idea that money enough for “adequate” recreational activities should be a 20th century right has backing from someone who knows much more about constitutional law than I do.
As such, I believe I am permitted to factor in a hobby, recreation, into my list of a true cost of living. I think FDR and I would permit soccer club fees and cleats as a right citizens should be able to hold. A radio star in his own right, FDR would likely permit that a just society would have a radio, and by extension, perhaps, a television and a PS5, in every home. We may even be able to convince him that a Peloton—or less luxurious exercise equipment—counts as an “adequate” recreational right. I’m a little less sure that a 60,000 dollar SUV, or a vacation juggled on multiple credit cards, expenses I balked at in my previous essay, would pass the threshold of “adequate recreation.”
(As for the NGOs, we have sports NGOs in India and art education non-profits have been a part of American life for some time).
I’ll summarize. I think it’s an open debate, and a fair debate, as to whether recreational activity is a right, and therefore reasonable to include in a cost of living. As I’m neither a political scientist or philosopher or lawyer, luckily, I am not required to have a firm stance. I can contain my multitudes, and you can contain yours.
But, what I want to impress upon a reader is that rights should expand and change as time progresses, and that we should not limit our rights to fundamental human needs. So much of our lives extend beyond bare biological baselines, and I think our rights should not be thereby constrained.