ABSTRACT
Four areas can benefit from assessed from the common ground of devotee work and serious leisure: well-being, bureaucracy and alienation, the Information Age, and serious leisure as a substitute for work. Personal well-being is a major by-product of much of serious leisure. Serious leisure offers a refuge for those who are mismatched, in that, at least, they can still find a substantial pursuit to sink their teeth into. For leisure is more democratic than work; leisure choice is wider and not constrained by need to make a living according to the level on the economic situation scale to which a person aspires. For this to happen, however, they will have to become familiar with the work/leisure coinage metaphor. Work and leisure have long been conceived of in Western civilization as distinctly separate spheres of life, a conception that appears to have reached its most extreme expression in the Protestant ethic.
