We live in the age of cybernetics, of next-day Amazon delivery, of iphone instant communication anywhere in the world.  The American way of life is idealized as the apex of 21st century freedom and affluence by many.  Nietzsche, living in the late 19th century, as the industrial age broke like a wave transforming Europe, made these observations about life in America.

…lust for gold…

the breathless haste with which they work
— the distinctive vice of the new world
—is already beginning to infect old Europe with its ferocity…

Even now one is ashamed of resting,
and prolonged reflection almost gives people a bad conscience.
One thinks with a watch in one’s hand,
even as one eats one’s midday meal
while reading the latest news of the stock market;
one lives as if one always
“might miss out on something.”

…One no longer has time or energy
for ceremonies, for being obliging in an indirect way,
for esprit in conversation, and for any leisure at all.

Living in a constant chase after gain
compels people to expend their spirit
to the point of exhaustion
in continual pretense
and overreaching and anticipating others.
Virtue has come to consist
of doing something in less time
than someone else.

If sociability and the arts still offer any delight,
it is the kind of delight that slaves,
weary of their work, devise for themselves.

…we may well reach the point
where people can no longer give in
to the desire for a vita contemplativa
(that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends)
without self-contempt and a bad conscience.

Formerly it was the other way around:
it was work that was afflicted with the bad conscience.

A person of good family
used to conceal the fact that he was working
if need –compelled him to work.

Slaves used to work, oppressed by the
feeling that they were doing something contemptible:

“doing” itself was contemptible.
Nobility and honor were attached solely
to leisure and war,
that was the ancient prejudice.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 4, Section 329 by Friedrich Nietzsche

It is worth noting that Nietzsche did not consider the attachment of honor to leisure and war, a worthwhile alternative to contemporary attitudes.  This was “the ancient prejudice.”