I started with “How to Be Idle” by Hodgkinson about 20 years ago. Found “The importance of living “ by Lin yutang.
I now have a small collection of books about idleness… yet here i am working and then throwing myself into working on a century house in my spare time… feeling starved for idleness. Yet my most creative ideas for it come when I’m idle.
Idleness led to Taoism, the pursuit of being useless. Led to Buddhism: just sit.
As the quote sort of goes: The great preponderance of society’s problems come from people’s inability to sit quietly in a room by themselves.
It’s a noble pursuit, idleness. Really. If you haven’t tried it, give it a real shake. A little more might fall out than you expect.
It feels like there is no correct translation for it in English -- idleness carries connotations of laziness whereas a better way to think about it is being aware and present of the moment.
I have been practicing Buddhism for a while and it often is indescribably blissful to just sit in nature, feeling the wind in my hair and sun on my back.
Anyone can experience this door with just a little bit of practice and I encourage everyone to try.
I actually like that it does. I'm lazy, and that's not a bad thing. I show up to work every day and get the job done with bare minimal effort, and then I go home an laze around with the lazy dogs, lazy family, and lazy friends. There's nothing wrong with that, but some people think there is. That connotation is useful in identifying those people, because they aren't people that I want to associate with further.
I don't know... I know a few people who inherited enough money to be idle and they don't seem particularly happy with their idleness. Could of course be the social pressure we live in, and that could change if we're all idle.
As you mention Lafarge. I think his fallacy and other theorists of its time and school of thinking was mankinds natural sense of enough os enough.
Lafarge wont come true with the quite large inequality of wealth and mankinds appetite for disteactions and general fear of silence and deep contemplation.
In the case of Europe much of generated wealth is wandering abroud (China: goods, US: digital services) so wealth doesn't get enough redistributed but is created somewhere else.
I hope that people realize still that LLMs will never ever be able to produce a piece like this.
This is extraordinarily written. It is etymologically out of the average.
It’s complex. Concepts intertwine and build on each other.
The linguistic choices are unusual but perfectly placed.
>>“But even idlers, try as they might, cannot ignore the passage of time. In 1911, a dozen years before Capek published his essay, Paul Lafargue and his wife committed suicide—he was 69; she was 66. His reason, it seems to me, dovetailed with his philosophy”.
“Dovetailed”.
Call me when an LLM will ever be able to pick and use such a perfect, yet statistically improbable, word
to construct such a sentence.
I really do like the idea and the thinking behind it. I wpuld even argue that modern Europeans are already embracing and practicing much if it. Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally. Need to get kids from school earlier? no prob… Need to spontanously (!) to go the dentist? no prob.
(Honest disclaimer: I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble, no idea about blue collar to be honest. Not much contact with people from that field unfortunately)
So we surely made progress here in the direction of being more idle (though one could question wether you are truly “idle” if you fill your free time with staring at your phones screen, consuming the latest societal rage bait. But i’d say in the spirit of the essay, yes, we are much more idle thanks to tech).
BUT! Is this a survival strategy? While we Europeans are super idle, Chinese arose to be a super power. The US dominates tech and the future technologies. Russia is banging on our front door and we dont have the military means and will to put an end to it. So while idle ness is a great mode for Being, is it a great mode for making sure the own civilization survives?
Thats always my problem with those ideas. They sound super nice in theory, but in the harsh world, there will always be a predator who just works a little bit hardwr to get you …
I don't think idleness is what's preventing it anyway. It's more about capital ownership. I'm not deploying high speed rail because I expect it would be impossible to get the land rights, not because I wouldn't work enough hours.
Actually I myself would be a terrible entrepreneur in any field, but I feel that I produce good value at a good rate at the actual work that I do. I don't think there's a shortage of entrepreneurship even though I happen to have none. I do think it's not being deployed on things that make the country more powerful.
There is also a general mindset of worklife balance and enjoyment from life.
as someone who spends a lot of time in Spain but lives in the US, the Spanish prioritize social interaction much more than the US (sweeping statement I know) - you go to many towns and cities in Spain and locals are socializing multiple nights per week in vibrant bars and cafes an having so much fun. London has a bit of this with pub culture but less family friendly.
The US on the other hand, the focus is on work and friends rarely get together and we study why people are socializing less (bowling alone etc. ).
> (Honest disclaimer: I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble, no idea about blue collar to be honest. Not much contact with people from that field unfortunately)
Even ignoring your "BUT! Is this a survival strategy? While [...]" point - try talking to the farmers and blue collar workers upon whom your day-to-day life is critically dependent.
Europe is not behind because Europeans are working less and taking more vacations. This message that is being loudly broadcasted hides the real problem.
Europe is behind because we do not have good leadership. The decisions taken by leadership, no matter what level you look at - local, company, national, supranational - are rarely in the best interest of Europeans. Our markets - housing, rental, labor, capital, pension - are broken and therefore the population does not find opportunities to express their talent completely and the more motivated migrate. Europeans lack well-paying jobs and pay is low because pay is not transparent.
Issues like raising funds easily or faster bankruptcy processing are not something an ordinary European citizen can solve. These are leadership issues. The proliferation of consultants means that management talent is never developed. Avoiding accountability is rewarded.
Consistently what could become common wealth in form of company is sold to private equity or sold to US. Friction in movement of information is sheer incompetence at leadership level.
For years blue-collar jobs were being moved to China, while white-collar jobs were being moved to US. And now the workers are being blamed for not working hard enough. It is never asked - is there work?
> The decisions taken by leadership ... are rarely in the best interest of Europeans
...and you offer America as a counterpoint? A nation predicated on fucking its people over? A hellscape of vulture capitalists, wreckers with MBAs, capricious firings, regulatory capture, poisoned water, political graft, televangelists with rolexes, police killing citizens for sport, judges getting kickbacks from prisons? And, right at the top, Mr Zero Sum himself, a man who destroyed as many public institutions as quickly as he could but somehow increased the national debt by 25% in two years.
That America? Makes decisions for the benefit of Americans, you think?
You have a point about government roadblocks - I could tell you stories about petty officialdom in rural Spain. But, unlike you, I've been to the American deep south. No, you do not have prospects there. Fucking Latvia is more advanced than most American states. Go to Lubbock and tell me europe is "behind". You've fallen for the American myth.
America has many merits, and would have become a regional power even without the fall of European empires, but please be informed: America's place in the world today comes from being the last one standing after two wars.
My biggest issue with Europe is not that we work less. I lived in the US for a while, and I can confirm they stay longer in the office but get the same amount done.
My biggest issue is that we have focused for too long on managing (regulating) and redistributing wealth instead of creating new sources of wealth.
We are obsessed with slicing and controlling the pie instead of creating new ones for everybody.
That mindset might cost us the future of our children.
Turn this into linkedin-speak, how you inevitably are promoted to power and a leadership position. This is not a tactic, it is a long-term strategy. #softskills #success
Perhaps. But if you look into the history of that idea, you may notice that it's almost always applied to the young and the lower classes. Perhaps the Baron, Bishop, and Business Magnates are too godly to be at risk?
I don't mean it in a clock more hours in at the factory way. Some people can direct themselves. But you've got to do something, even if only for the personal outcomes, i.e. comparing retirees who keep busy to those who do not, you'll find a significant effect on health, satisfaction with life. And of course there's a ripple effect on others, I am one who gets many presents cooked up in that workshop, and am hardly alone.
That's the ideal. Really is a complex grayscale, depending greatly on the person's current circumstances. And, factory or not, for society to function it needs 99% of people to pick from a pretty short list of fairly prosocial choices.
> But you've got to do something, even if...
Yes-ish? I'm not saying it was good - but society didn't much mind people being couch potatoes watching 1960's-era TV. Vs. falling down the addictive rabbit holes of modern social media - that's not looking like it can end well.
It is really thought provoking. Interesting how lafargue saw machines as a path to freedom, yet today we fear them for the opposite reason. Maybe the real issuen't AI replacing work, but our inability to redefine what "valuable time" looks like without it.
The issue is that he saw machines as working for the greater good of all, yet the reality we have are machines working for the benefit of a select few, who use that advantage to perpetuate the system where they are at the top and everyone is below. We have the technology to feed and clothe everyone and live comfortably, just not the collective will. Too many of us have been sold the fake idea that “everyone can make it” but individually. That you should be selfish and trample over others for your own personal success, instead of defining success as helping everyone do better.
its a good idea in theory. But capitalists will make sure this does not happen because greed is never ending. today its AI, 10 years down the line it something else. Hence i think the right to be lazy is for a lucky few.
> Hence i think the right to be lazy is for a lucky few.
The freedom or ability to be lazy may be for a lucky few, but the right should be for all. A right doesn’t stop being a right when it’s not being observed, and when that happens it should be a warning to us all.
For example, access to clean water should be a right. But some communities don’t have it, and we should collectively help them. Due process is also a right, and when people are systematically captured from their communities and unilaterally stuck in a cell, we should collectively remove the power to do so from those who are doing it.
well not only that but the space to think about systems of power and possible realities (like the COVID lull) is antithetical to capitalist aims. leisure is doled out just enough to prop up consumer spending. if you restrain your desires you can buy back your time (FIRE) but that affordance is reliant on the status quo (others consuming so that your investments do well).
I feel like right now is the worst time to be idle. Stopping to smell the roses or lie on the grass when you could be spinning up agents and burning tokens means you'll be left in the dust.
Oh you will, will you? And what, pray tell, happens in this dust you’re left in? What’s the reward for working so hard right now? More work? What a rotten deal.
It’s common for people on their death beds to wish they had spent more time relaxing. It’s not common for anyone to wish they had spent more time working.
The sentiment you’re expressing has been sold to us for a long time, way before “agents” were a thing. “You have to work harder, pull yourself by your bootstraps, build a company, spend all your free time on side projects, …”. It’s a grift designed to keep you busy, selfish, and brain dead, oblivious to your own condition and the state of the world. Stop drinking the Kool-Aid.
It is very important to have the time and freedom to be idle.
In our modern society, however, we hear the phrase "time is money". So, if you are idle, you are not making money. Instead of being idle, you should be busy. "business" is good.
I learn this play of words in Spanish. Idle in Spanish is "ocio". Business in Spanish is "negocio". Thus negocio is the combination of words "negación" and "ocio". The phrase "negación del ocio" translates as "idleness denial/negation".
Boy does that resonate with my current feeling.
I've spent the last maybe 18 months constantly working, paid, non-paid, voluntary work, side-projects, etc. I almost feel like I'm confusing myself with the amount of work/different projects I have. All while whenever I find an hour or two to just sit idle in the sun, I feel the very best, happy almost. No, I have nothing to show for this time, I can't go to bed with the feeling I've achieved something, I wasn't productive. But I feel.. good?
We have all learned (especially men I think) that we define parts of ourselves through what we achieve. However, is that a good idea? Also, what counts towards that goal? Did I achieve something if I support a friend that struggles? Or do I only achieve something that can be added to my CV? Who am I trying to show what about me?
I absolutely love the idea of being idle. It strictly goes againt current societal developments, but I think it would do a lot of good for a lot of people. We don't have to perform all the time, we don't have to be perfect all the time. What's the end-goal anyway? Rich people, statistically speaking, are not more happy. Managers with 60 hours a week often suffer from depression or burnout. The only two valid reasons in my mind to work hard are: 1. bring in enough money to live comfortably (which unfortunately isn't achievable for many) and 2. do good for society. Meanwhile, most people are struggling to even get by and tech CEOs can buy a new fancy car every day and tell us how to deal with the disruptions they cause? They tell us how we can save the economy? Why us? What did we do for the economy to be bad? Did we start wars, increase the cost of oil, create a self-inflicted banking crisis? What's it to us anyway? We're the ones suffering in the end, regardless of what we do.
I also find it quite irritating that the comments started discussing geopolitical power conflicts regarding idleness.
Anyway, I'm going to shut down my computer now and enjoy the sun. Happy idleness guys!
In a similar vain, I currently enjoy reading A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros. Gros draws the musing of various philosophers on walking. To me, his description of the slow beat of the footstep that propels imagination resonates with how walking works for me. When I'm stuck on something and feel I need to keep pushing towards a solution, a short break, often the result of an obligatory walk/ride to the train station, already sets my mind in motion.
Crucial is that the walk is not an intentional break for the purpose of brainstorming, because then my thoughts stay stuck. Such walking is 'idle' in the sense that it is an almost automatic process. The whole point is that walking/idling should not be a productivity tool.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like: Head-Trapped – Descartes, Dawkins, Hobbes, Marx, Mill, Darwin, And The Myth Of Western Civilisation.
> Marx, then, argued that the more we subordinate our creative needs to dead capital and its goals, the less we are. But this is also true when we subordinate our creative needs to revolutionary goals in the future. Why? Because the future is non-existential, it does not exist; it is as dead as capital.
We need more businesses run like the co-op models in some European countries where the workers own a large percentage of the business. Or those rare, profitable US companies that are privately held and offer significant ownership stake to their employees with upside (not fake startup options).
I don't expect to ever be in that position, but I couldn't imagine becoming a multimillionaire off the backs of my employees and to keep on stacking more money than I could ever spend just to feel like I'm still winning.
Point is, there's enough money being made to employ just about everyone and at fewer than 40 hours a week, but instead we have multi billionaires with more money than a dozen generations could spend.
60 comments
[ 11.0 ms ] story [ 1002 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33901623
Idleness led to Taoism, the pursuit of being useless. Led to Buddhism: just sit.
As the quote sort of goes: The great preponderance of society’s problems come from people’s inability to sit quietly in a room by themselves.
It’s a noble pursuit, idleness. Really. If you haven’t tried it, give it a real shake. A little more might fall out than you expect.
I have been practicing Buddhism for a while and it often is indescribably blissful to just sit in nature, feeling the wind in my hair and sun on my back.
Anyone can experience this door with just a little bit of practice and I encourage everyone to try.
I actually like that it does. I'm lazy, and that's not a bad thing. I show up to work every day and get the job done with bare minimal effort, and then I go home an laze around with the lazy dogs, lazy family, and lazy friends. There's nothing wrong with that, but some people think there is. That connotation is useful in identifying those people, because they aren't people that I want to associate with further.
Lafarge wont come true with the quite large inequality of wealth and mankinds appetite for disteactions and general fear of silence and deep contemplation.
In the case of Europe much of generated wealth is wandering abroud (China: goods, US: digital services) so wealth doesn't get enough redistributed but is created somewhere else.
>>“But even idlers, try as they might, cannot ignore the passage of time. In 1911, a dozen years before Capek published his essay, Paul Lafargue and his wife committed suicide—he was 69; she was 66. His reason, it seems to me, dovetailed with his philosophy”.
“Dovetailed”. Call me when an LLM will ever be able to pick and use such a perfect, yet statistically improbable, word to construct such a sentence.
So we surely made progress here in the direction of being more idle (though one could question wether you are truly “idle” if you fill your free time with staring at your phones screen, consuming the latest societal rage bait. But i’d say in the spirit of the essay, yes, we are much more idle thanks to tech).
BUT! Is this a survival strategy? While we Europeans are super idle, Chinese arose to be a super power. The US dominates tech and the future technologies. Russia is banging on our front door and we dont have the military means and will to put an end to it. So while idle ness is a great mode for Being, is it a great mode for making sure the own civilization survives?
Thats always my problem with those ideas. They sound super nice in theory, but in the harsh world, there will always be a predator who just works a little bit hardwr to get you …
anyway! loved the essay. thanks for sharing
I don't think idleness is what's preventing it anyway. It's more about capital ownership. I'm not deploying high speed rail because I expect it would be impossible to get the land rights, not because I wouldn't work enough hours.
Actually I myself would be a terrible entrepreneur in any field, but I feel that I produce good value at a good rate at the actual work that I do. I don't think there's a shortage of entrepreneurship even though I happen to have none. I do think it's not being deployed on things that make the country more powerful.
as someone who spends a lot of time in Spain but lives in the US, the Spanish prioritize social interaction much more than the US (sweeping statement I know) - you go to many towns and cities in Spain and locals are socializing multiple nights per week in vibrant bars and cafes an having so much fun. London has a bit of this with pub culture but less family friendly.
The US on the other hand, the focus is on work and friends rarely get together and we study why people are socializing less (bowling alone etc. ).
> (Honest disclaimer: I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble, no idea about blue collar to be honest. Not much contact with people from that field unfortunately)
Even ignoring your "BUT! Is this a survival strategy? While [...]" point - try talking to the farmers and blue collar workers upon whom your day-to-day life is critically dependent.
Europe is behind because we do not have good leadership. The decisions taken by leadership, no matter what level you look at - local, company, national, supranational - are rarely in the best interest of Europeans. Our markets - housing, rental, labor, capital, pension - are broken and therefore the population does not find opportunities to express their talent completely and the more motivated migrate. Europeans lack well-paying jobs and pay is low because pay is not transparent.
Issues like raising funds easily or faster bankruptcy processing are not something an ordinary European citizen can solve. These are leadership issues. The proliferation of consultants means that management talent is never developed. Avoiding accountability is rewarded.
Consistently what could become common wealth in form of company is sold to private equity or sold to US. Friction in movement of information is sheer incompetence at leadership level.
For years blue-collar jobs were being moved to China, while white-collar jobs were being moved to US. And now the workers are being blamed for not working hard enough. It is never asked - is there work?
...and you offer America as a counterpoint? A nation predicated on fucking its people over? A hellscape of vulture capitalists, wreckers with MBAs, capricious firings, regulatory capture, poisoned water, political graft, televangelists with rolexes, police killing citizens for sport, judges getting kickbacks from prisons? And, right at the top, Mr Zero Sum himself, a man who destroyed as many public institutions as quickly as he could but somehow increased the national debt by 25% in two years.
That America? Makes decisions for the benefit of Americans, you think?
You have a point about government roadblocks - I could tell you stories about petty officialdom in rural Spain. But, unlike you, I've been to the American deep south. No, you do not have prospects there. Fucking Latvia is more advanced than most American states. Go to Lubbock and tell me europe is "behind". You've fallen for the American myth.
America has many merits, and would have become a regional power even without the fall of European empires, but please be informed: America's place in the world today comes from being the last one standing after two wars.
My biggest issue is that we have focused for too long on managing (regulating) and redistributing wealth instead of creating new sources of wealth.
We are obsessed with slicing and controlling the pie instead of creating new ones for everybody.
That mindset might cost us the future of our children.
That's the ideal. Really is a complex grayscale, depending greatly on the person's current circumstances. And, factory or not, for society to function it needs 99% of people to pick from a pretty short list of fairly prosocial choices.
> But you've got to do something, even if...
Yes-ish? I'm not saying it was good - but society didn't much mind people being couch potatoes watching 1960's-era TV. Vs. falling down the addictive rabbit holes of modern social media - that's not looking like it can end well.
The freedom or ability to be lazy may be for a lucky few, but the right should be for all. A right doesn’t stop being a right when it’s not being observed, and when that happens it should be a warning to us all.
For example, access to clean water should be a right. But some communities don’t have it, and we should collectively help them. Due process is also a right, and when people are systematically captured from their communities and unilaterally stuck in a cell, we should collectively remove the power to do so from those who are doing it.
If he had just kept going, he would have won easily. It would have been embarrassing for the tortoise.
It’s common for people on their death beds to wish they had spent more time relaxing. It’s not common for anyone to wish they had spent more time working.
The sentiment you’re expressing has been sold to us for a long time, way before “agents” were a thing. “You have to work harder, pull yourself by your bootstraps, build a company, spend all your free time on side projects, …”. It’s a grift designed to keep you busy, selfish, and brain dead, oblivious to your own condition and the state of the world. Stop drinking the Kool-Aid.
In our modern society, however, we hear the phrase "time is money". So, if you are idle, you are not making money. Instead of being idle, you should be busy. "business" is good.
I learn this play of words in Spanish. Idle in Spanish is "ocio". Business in Spanish is "negocio". Thus negocio is the combination of words "negación" and "ocio". The phrase "negación del ocio" translates as "idleness denial/negation".
We have all learned (especially men I think) that we define parts of ourselves through what we achieve. However, is that a good idea? Also, what counts towards that goal? Did I achieve something if I support a friend that struggles? Or do I only achieve something that can be added to my CV? Who am I trying to show what about me?
I absolutely love the idea of being idle. It strictly goes againt current societal developments, but I think it would do a lot of good for a lot of people. We don't have to perform all the time, we don't have to be perfect all the time. What's the end-goal anyway? Rich people, statistically speaking, are not more happy. Managers with 60 hours a week often suffer from depression or burnout. The only two valid reasons in my mind to work hard are: 1. bring in enough money to live comfortably (which unfortunately isn't achievable for many) and 2. do good for society. Meanwhile, most people are struggling to even get by and tech CEOs can buy a new fancy car every day and tell us how to deal with the disruptions they cause? They tell us how we can save the economy? Why us? What did we do for the economy to be bad? Did we start wars, increase the cost of oil, create a self-inflicted banking crisis? What's it to us anyway? We're the ones suffering in the end, regardless of what we do.
I also find it quite irritating that the comments started discussing geopolitical power conflicts regarding idleness.
Anyway, I'm going to shut down my computer now and enjoy the sun. Happy idleness guys!
Crucial is that the walk is not an intentional break for the purpose of brainstorming, because then my thoughts stay stuck. Such walking is 'idle' in the sense that it is an almost automatic process. The whole point is that walking/idling should not be a productivity tool.
> Marx, then, argued that the more we subordinate our creative needs to dead capital and its goals, the less we are. But this is also true when we subordinate our creative needs to revolutionary goals in the future. Why? Because the future is non-existential, it does not exist; it is as dead as capital.
https://www.medialens.org/2023/head-trapped-descartes-dawkin...
The author's book, A short book about ego, is also very good.
I don't expect to ever be in that position, but I couldn't imagine becoming a multimillionaire off the backs of my employees and to keep on stacking more money than I could ever spend just to feel like I'm still winning.
Point is, there's enough money being made to employ just about everyone and at fewer than 40 hours a week, but instead we have multi billionaires with more money than a dozen generations could spend.