To understand how leisure plays an important role in our daily lives today, we must have a complete understanding of the historical impact of leisure on our lives. Equally important would be the role that geopolitical events and technology have played throughout history and their effects on leisure. Western civilization uses Aristotle's definition of leisure as “a state of being in which an activity is carried out for its own sake or as its own end” (Grazia p. 13). The concept of leisure was first formed by the Greeks, Aristotle stated that “the life of leisure was the only life worthy of a Greek” (p. 19). They (the Greeks) felt like they could not succeed as a city-state without leisure. There were many forms of recreation, gymnastics, wrestling, dance, drama, poetry and education, among others. The Greeks believed that man's capacity for contemplation was as close to that of God as man could be, and this separated them even from animals. Now let's quickly move on to the Classical Age which was named so to try to emulate the Greeks and their love for literature and art. During the Classic period, most of the world's population worked hard and in arduous jobs, with most working in agriculture, whether livestock or ranching. If they did neither, they made and constructed things with their hands. The workday, by today's standards, was brutal; Twelve- to 16-hour days were very common in the spring and fall and “meals and breaks were breaks, not modern leisure” (Cross p. 9). For those who worked in agriculture, the colder months did not allow for growing or harvesting or moving sheep and cattle from farm to slaughterhouse. This hard work also played a role in the population of many cities. The average age of death for most...... middle of paper ....... Prohibition actually led to more alcohol consumption nationwide than before the passage of the amendment. To go with alcohol, people also needed a place where they could drink without fear of getting caught, which gives us the birth of easy talk. A place that was no different from pre-18th Amendment bars and pubs, but was underground or off-site. There was dancing and gambling, as well as illegal prostitution and moonshine. It was common in this era that most, if not all, crime families supplied both the public and the government (police and government officials). The benefit of working on both sides of the coin, so to speak, was that they kept residents happy and police were able to quickly report raids on establishments that were not legal. This allowed their empires to grow and they accumulated a lot of wealth through it..