Idleness

The lecture on idleness was very interesting. It is supposed in mainstream society that idleness is something which should be rarely exercised. We are constantly encouraged to put our effects in our work, both in educational success and in careers. We value work as a virtue – it defines the kind of people we are, in terms of how others perceive us. Taking long periods off work is forbidden. We feel guilty to spend even a couple of hours in relaxation when we know we have piles of work to do. Meena’s lecture an eye-opener since idleness was portrayed in a ‘good’ light. After discussing these issues we looked at the writing on Idleness by Bertrand Russell. He takes the stance that ‘there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous’ – this is exactly what I had thought before the lecture.

Russell further defined what work really is; which was quite comical and depicts human being as superficial and not at all important in the way we think ourselves to be. He claims that ‘work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people what to do’. More simply, people engage in move things around or being and/or bossing other around. So, should work be virtuous even if advanced technologies means we produce enough goods in this consumer society to live in a communist way, where people can be allocated a couple of hours of day to work, and spend the rest of their day in idleness. It is hardly fair that those that are ‘money hungry’ spend most of their time in idleness but those who are exploited by such people are enslaved and seen to behave in deviance or seen to be a ‘slacker’ or even ‘waste of space’ who is con contributing to society.

There is interview article interviewing Tom Hodgkinson who wrote a book called “How to be Idle”. It is a detailed account of how idleness is more beneficial than not. And further, it does not make much sense to work all hours of the day when advanced technology means that is takes less time then if we were to for example, work out maths, manually, but since we are easier equipped with a calculator cutting half the time it would take to work out manually. Why does this mean we have more leisure time? The lecture on idleness was very interesting. It is supposed in mainstream society that idleness is something which should be rarely exercised. We are constantly encouraged to put our effects in our work, both in educational success and in careers. We value work as a virtue – it defines the kind of people we are, in terms of how others perceive us. Taking long periods off work is forbidden. We feel guilty to spend even a couple of hours in relaxation when we know we have piles of work to do. Meena’s lecture an eye-opener since idleness was portrayed in a ‘good’ light. After discussing these issues we looked at the writing on Idleness by Bertrand Russell. He takes the stance that ‘there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous’ – this is exactly what I had thought before the lecture.

Russell further defined what work really is; which was quite comical and depicts human being as superficial and not at all important in the way we think ourselves to be. He claims that ‘work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people what to do’. More simply, people engage in move things around or being and/or bossing other around. So, should work be virtuous even if advanced technologies means we produce enough goods in this consumer society to live in a communist way, where people can be allocated a couple of hours of day to work, and spend the rest of their day in idleness. It is hardly fair that those that are ‘money hungry’ spend most of their time in idleness but those who are exploited by such people are enslaved and seen to behave in deviance or seen to be a ‘slacker’ or even ‘waste of space’ who is con contributing to society.

There is interview article interviewing Tom Hodgkinson who wrote a book called “How to be Idle”. It is a detailed account of how idleness is more beneficial than not. And further, it does not make much sense to work all hours of the day when advanced technology means that is takes less time then if we were to for example, work out maths, manually, but since we are easier equipped with a calculator cutting half the time it would take to work out manually. Why does this mean we have more leisure time?

http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/2005/06/how_to_be_idle.html