Comments on: The joy of idleness

By: wood turtle

wood turtle — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 16:27:52 +0000

reuben, douglas, I hear what you are saying. I just think that when a lot of people in this country are tired from overwork, telling them to “work” at their personal lives too may not be the best approach. It’s the word choice that bothers me. And if you go through some “monumental feats” in your personal life, they will almost for sure not be easy.

By: wilful

wilful — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 05:56:18 +0000

Excuse the lack of appropriate linking (hey, it’s my first post ever here), but please find attached a useful guide to looking busy at work: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/8/5/1315/19085

By: Douglas

Douglas — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:20:06 +0000

blundering yet further into the OT thickets of working at relationships, I don’t recollect the Frank Zappa lyric, but Tom Waits: “Well now falling in love is such a breeze But it’s standing up that’s so hard for me” Also, ‘echidne of the snakes’ (a blog) once proposed a graduated scale of tests for heroism, the highest grade of which was ‘loving and staying married to the princess for ever after’ Monumental feats are in some ways easier than the quotidian tests of endurance..

By: reuben

reuben — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 13:34:20 +0000

As sad as it sounds, Wood Turtle, you actually do have to work at good relationships. Even, as far as I’ve been able to tell, at great ones. Yeah, that sucks, and it ain’t romantic, and the leading exponents of the fact tend to be shrill ninnies, but unless you can present evidence to the contrary, that really is how it goes. As Frank Zappa once said (paraphrasing liberally here), falling in love is easy. It’s what happens afterwards that’s the interesting (and harder) bit.

By: asg

asg — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 01:37:53 +0000

Since Mr. Black also apparently thought that the question of who would treat sewage, move garbage, perform brain surgery, catch child molesters, and generally do the things that won’t ever get done unless people are paid to do them was also too prosaic to consider, I’m less sanguine than you are about Black’s willingness to omit the bleeding obvious from his work.

By: Robin Green

Robin Green — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 12:07:54 +0000

Unlike asg I find Bob Black inspiring. But I think he has missed a bleeding obvious point in his rebuttal to Jeremy Rifkin (linked above). Capitalists do not object to shorter work weeks primarily because it threatens their “control over the lower orders” (although that might be a minor factor). They object primarily because, in order to reduce the full-time work week, you have to pay workers more per hour to give them an equivalent living standard to what they had before. So – especially in menial types of work where there is an obvious and direct correlation between hours worked per employee and productivity per employee – obviously capitalists are going to oppose it! Or perhaps Mr. Black thought that too bleeding obvious to mention? Maybe… but I doubt it: it still looks like neglecting the most obvious explanation in favour of something more conspiratorial and explanatorily weak.

By: wood turtle

wood turtle — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 07:23:47 +0000

I liked that very much. It reminded me of that saying of psychologists and well-meaning friends- “If you want a good relationship you have to really work at it.” Every time I hear that one I want to go home and crawl into bed with my clothes on.

By: sennoma

sennoma — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 02:46:23 +0000

Work! Alas! The hours we waste in work and such inconsequence! Friends, I beg you, do not shirk your daily task of indolence! —-Don Marquis

By: asg

asg — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 01:38:59 +0000

I’ve always thought Bob Black’s essays, like PETA, to be clever satires aimed at identifying exactly how nonsensical nonsense must be before no one at all takes them seriously.

By: glory

glory — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 21:31:11 +0000

or idle theory by chris davis in praise of idleness by betrand russell an idler's glossary by joshua glenn a loafer's manifesto by bob jacobson and the theory of the leisure class by thorstein veblen waiting for the weekend by witold rybczynski the overworked american by juliet schor the abolition of work by bob black the end of work by jeremy rifkin (a rebuttal by black) cf on the concept of social value by joseph schumpeter money in an unequal world by keith hart the future of money by bernard lietaer (viz a global currency, the terra - "CBS") happiness: has social science a clue? by richard layard how not to buy happiness by robert frank a happiness compendium (or "consumption divided by desire") compiled by dan kohn for your idle reading pleasure :D cheers!

By: enzo

enzo — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 20:40:17 +0000

Russell also has a book on the subject. It’s called In Praise of Idleness.

By: jamie

jamie — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 18:50:59 +0000

What about Herman Melville’s Bartleby, surely the patron saint of cubicle rats everywhere?

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 18:23:55 +0000

I like that. You could link to Walden, too. There’s that great bit about people who are shackled to a farm, barn, livestock etc. I memorized it once, then forgot it again. Too much work to remember it.