The result is a set of social regulations constructed to encourage pleasures that are physically, spiritually and intellectually useful while stigmatizing ones that are useless or harmful. In this way the Protestant Work Ethic has been replaced by the Bobo Play Ethic, which is equally demanding. Everything we do must serve the Life Mission, which is cultivation, progress and self-improvement. As Cindy S. Aron argued last year in Working at Play, Americans have always been incapable of separating work from play, always have wedded recreation to autodidacticism. American businesses have thrived over the past decade and established American dominance in sector after sector.
American companies are creative and efficient at the same time.
The Bobos have given us Microsoft and Ben and Jerry and Starbucks. You can't argue with success. Gone are the Sixties era things that were fun and of interest to teenagers, like Free Love, and retained are all the things that might be of interest to middle-aged hypochondriacs, like whole grains. For the sake of the Republic one can only hope he is right, but touchy-feely narcissism seems a shaky foundation upon which to rest the American future. News Jobs AP Shopping Archives Entertain.