Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Hasta La Vista, Siesta
Hasta La Vista, Siesta
Sep 19, 2024 9:45 PM

In this week’s Acton Commentary, Anthony Bradley takes a look at the Spanish economy as it faces a “dilemma,” as he puts it, “simultaneously needing immigrants and seeking to curb them.” Bradley also notes that “institutions like marriage and family seem silly to many Spaniards.”

As APM’s Marketplace reports, shifting trends in Spain might claim another Spanish institution, the siesta. A variety of factors, including petition with labor forces in other nations, are leading some to question the viability of the siesta system in Spain.

The siesta works like this: in the middle of the workday, beginning at around 2pm, offices and businesses close up shop for a few hours, giving workers an extended break. It used to be that employees could go home, spend some time with the family, have a meal, and take a brief catnap, returning fresh to work after the siesta concluded.

But nowadays, the mutes for urbanites makes a trip home impractical. And many workers don’t like having to stay at work until 9pm in order to get a full day’s work in after the siesta break. What once was a way to create family time is now being seen as contributing to an anti-family work environment. As Jerome Socolovsky reports, “Young parents who want to go home before 9 o’clock to be with their kids can meet with disapproval from the boss.”

One interesting thing about this story is the juxtaposition of the situation in Spain, which seems to be heading away from the siesta model, and the reality in some other industrialized nations, such as Japan, where “power napping” is ing big business.

In his depiction of the Christian’s daily activities in Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says that “the noonday hour, where it is possible, es for the Christian family fellowship a brief rest on the day’s march. Half of the day is past. The fellowship thanks God and prays for protection until eventide. It receives its daily bread and prays…”

It strikes me that in the rise of the Japanese power nap and the fall of the Spanish siesta, we’re seeing two e together. Perhaps working 12-hour days, as mon in Japan, isn’t the human ideal. And neither is the extended break during the hottest hours of the day necessary in places where the work being done isn’t manual labor.

Appropriate rest is needed, that is beyond question. But exactly what constitutes the right amount of rest seems to be an open question, or at least culturally contextual to some extent. As Calvin observed, the moral requirements of the mandment concerning Sabbath observance are universal, and include provision for “our servants and labourers relaxation from labour.” This includes the “carnal” labor of daily work, as but a pointer toward “the mystery of perpetual resting from our works.”

Update: Marketplace takes a look at the immigration boom in Spain here. According to one immigration lawyer, a major reason immigrants head to Spain is “the generous welfare system. Illegal aliens get free health care here.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Are Christians stuck with 3 approaches to cultural engagement?
How are we to be in the world but not of it? How are Christians to live and engage, create and exchange, cultivate and steward our gifts and relationships and resources here on earth? Beyond getting a “free ticket to heaven,” what is our salvation actually for? These questions are at the center of Acton’s film series, For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles, whichbeginswith a critique of mon approaches to Christian cultural engagement: fortification (“hide! hunker...
Are there economic implications in the Creation story?
“In our search for economic principles in the Bible, we need to begin with the story of Creation found in the first two chapters of Genesis,” says Hugh Whelchel. “Here we see God’s normative intentions for life. We see life as ‘the way it ought to be.’ Man is free from sin, living out his high calling as God’s vice regent in a creation that is ‘very good.’” Whelchel lists three major economic principles laid out in Creation, the first...
Financial deregulation expands opportunity
The Dodd-Frank Act became law in 2010, adding more regulation to a banking industry that was already heavily regulated. The main purpose of this 2,300 page act was to give consumers protection against big profit seeking banks but the unintended consequences prove to be much greater. The regulation was supposed to help the little guy but as Acton Director of Research Samuel Gregg writes at The Stream, it actually hurts the little guy. President-elect Donald Trump claims that he wants...
Kyriarchy and Kuyper
Courtesy Adrian Vermeule at Mirror of Justice, I ran across a word new to me: Kyriarchy. Given the context and my admittedly limited Greek-language skills, I was able to work out the gist of the idea. As Vermeule puts it, “On November 20, the Feast of Christ the King, a coronation ceremony took place at the Church of Divine Mercy in Krakow. The President of Poland and the Catholic Bishops officially crowned Jesus Christ the King of Poland.” Vermeule goes...
Defending fundamental rights
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental rights “asserted in the face of oppression and paid for in blood,” argues Declan Ganley. They “have been the cornerstone not only of American democracy but of western civilization.” In a new article for Prospect Magazine, the chairman & CEO of Rivada Networks says that the West “needs to defend [these] shared values.” He argues that these fundamental rights are now under attack: We live in an age where universal values...
5 Facts about Fidel Castro (1926–2016)
Fidel Castro, the former dictator of Cuba, died this past weekend at the age of 90. Here are five facts you should know about the long-ruling Marxist despot. 1. Castro was baptized a Catholic at the age of 8 and attended several Jesuit-run boarding schools. After graduation in the mid-1940s Castrobegan studying law at the Havana University, where he became politically active in socialist and nationalist causes, in particular opposition to U.S. involvement in the Caribbean. By the end of...
Samuel Gregg: Economic nationalism will not make America great
In a new article at The Stream, Acton Director of Research Samuel Gregg offersgood reasons why a move toward economic nationalism is not in the best interest of America. He starts with this: Whatever the motivations for such policies, their costs vastly outweigh their benefits. In the first place, protectionism discourages American businesses and workers from focusing on producing those goods and services where they enjoy parative advantage vis-à-vis other nations. Not only does this undermine productivity, efficiency, and petitiveness...
Who pays the tax?
Note: This is the eleventhpost in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Who bears the burden of a tax, the buyer or the seller? Or what about the health insurance mandate in Obamacare—does the employer or the worker pay the tax? In this video, Marginal Revolution University examines these questions and explains why the more elastic side of the market tends to pay a smaller share of a tax. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow,...
5 Facts about Black Friday
Today is the unofficial first day of the holiday shopping season. Here are five facts you should know about “Black Friday.” 1. The term “Black Friday” was coined by the Philadelphia Police Department’s traffic squad in the 1950s. According to Philadelphia newspaper reporter Joseph P. Barrett, “It was the day that Santa Claus took his chair in the department stores and every kid in the city wanted to see him. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season.”...
Vouchers: the progressive policy loved by the right and hated by the left
Growing up, I attended a private, Christian school until 4th grade, when my mother couldn’t afford it any more and my brothers and I switched to a blue collar, suburban public school. Academically, I experienced a clear difference. The worst contrast was in math, where I learned basically nothing for three years. The only subject that was probably better at the public school was science, but I’m not even certain about that. Class sizes were larger too. None of this...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved