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 have never practiced Buddhism and it is still indescribably blissful to sit in a clearing in a forest, provided you aren't sitting on the wrong kind of anthill.
I've never seen it mentioned anywhere in their histories but I always suspected the messaging apps Slack and Discord were references to Church of Subgenius and Discordianism respectively
Agreed. Meditation and mindfulness have confirmed the importance of “being idle,” at least for me. Making an active effort to not be distracted by thought is quite the challenge, but it has brought me great peace.
> It feels like there is no correct translation for it in English
Mindfulness, contemplation, mediation, being at leisure, stillness, serenity, tranquility, repose...
How strong the connotations of laziness are with the word idle probably vary with context and culture, and I wonder how much ti has varied historically.
You're a lot more likely to be aware in the present moment when you're deep in a 'flow' state doing something productive than when you're just sitting around doing nothing. Why do people assume that idleness is something to aim for, and enjoying real productive work is not?
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.
Intermittent idleness is appealing and even productive, as it often surfaces valuable ideas from your subconscious. That said, today's society is badly equipped for idleness. With phone notifications going off every few minutes, it's difficult not to be constantly interrupted with the "task" of looking at a text. Let's throw out our phones first, then we can experience true mental repose.
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 …
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
This whole essay very strongly resonates with the anti-natalistic movement. The fact the protagonist of the story kills himself adds to this in a very unmistakable manner.
Otium refers to leisure, not laziness. And leisure in the classical sense is not idling, but rather activity that is not "servile", but rather free. So, for example, contemplation and the study of philosophy in pursuit of wisdom, with no immediate practical or instrumental aim, would be an example of leisure. Indeed, the opposite of otium is negotium, which is to say the negation of leisure. This supports the idea that classically, work was seen as subordinate to leisure and indeed something that was supposed to enable leisure. Today, we rather think of leisure as a recuperation from labor to which we must inevitably return. In Greek, we see something similar: schole meaning "leisure", and its negation ascholia meaning "busyness".
Josef Pieper wrote "Leisure: The Basis of Culture" [0], a book on this subject that people should read. John Paul II also wrote an encyclical, "Laborem Exercens" [1], that discusses, among other things, the purpose and nature of work and responds to both communist and capitalist views on the subject.
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.
209 comments
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.
> idleness carries connotations of laziness
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.
That's how I learned that forest ants, at least the local ones, are incredibly docile. I never got bothered by them.
"Oh boy, look at that all that melting ice cream.. I hope he sits on our anthill!"
> It feels like there is no correct translation for it in English
Mindfulness, contemplation, mediation, being at leisure, stillness, serenity, tranquility, repose...
How strong the connotations of laziness are with the word idle probably vary with context and culture, and I wonder how much ti has varied historically.
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.
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
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!
https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving...
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.
>>“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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33901623
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.
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".
Josef Pieper wrote "Leisure: The Basis of Culture" [0], a book on this subject that people should read. John Paul II also wrote an encyclical, "Laborem Exercens" [1], that discusses, among other things, the purpose and nature of work and responds to both communist and capitalist views on the subject.
[0] https://ballyheaparish.com/resources/Leisure-The-Basis-of-Cu...
[1] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...
> 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.