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I think the idea of laws whose purpose was to "prevent idleness" is interesting. Curious: Does this have some unexpected historical meaning? What was the justif

• hbosch 6y ago
  > It seems today that Western society's whole goal is to increase our option for idleness. Can you please invite me to your Western society that celebrates idleness? In my Western society, we spend the first 22 years of our lives training to work for another 40 years before we can comfortably enter "idleness" at around age 65 for most people. I think that for a long time "idleness" is stigmatized as "uselessness", and that by doing nothing you are not contributing to the wellbeing of the colony/civilization/society. That's likely even more true for a burgeoning settlement or young country, but still true today in almost every culture in the world.
  • danellis 6y ago
    > Can you please invite me to your Western society that celebrates idleness? You don't need an invitation to visit Western Europe, but I'd wait a few months.
    • 082349872349872 6y ago
      Sorry if we didn't answer your call in August, we were on vacation. We're working again now, though. Just don't call during lunch. The kinds of greeks and romans who wrote stuff down that people kept were into σχολή and otium, respectively. a sixteenth century telling of an anecdote from about a millennium earlier: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k70135b/f1013.image.r=essais%20essais https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k70135b/f1013.image.r=... > "Eſope vit ſon maiſtre qui piſſoit en ſe promenant, quoy donq, fit-il, nous faudra-il chier en courant."
      • ben_w 6y ago
        Could you please translate that? I can make up for my poor standard of modern French with Google Translate, but it doesn’t have an option for 16th century French.
        • madaxe_again 6y ago
          Aesop saw his master pissing while walking around, will we therefore, he said, have to shit while running?
          • ben_w 6y ago
            Thank you :)
  • baq 6y ago
    well, it used to be like that in less civilized times, except you'd be spending your first 6 years of life training for work and then work for the rest of it, be it another 6 or maybe 30. no weekends and winters sucked really, really hard.
    • paranoidrobot 6y ago
      It's still like that today. If you don't believe me, try applying for work when you havn't been working for the prior 6 months. You will for certain be questioned on it, and even then it seems you're considered a low quality candidate even if you have a reasonable explanation. With 12 months or more, it's guaranteed to be a major topic during your interview process, and even afterwards it can derail job offers and require even more discussion about it.
    • Amezarak 6y ago
      Preindustrial peoples generally worked less than we do, and life expectancy after childhood was not markedly different; if you survived early childhood, unless you were born in a particularly bad time (like the Black Plague), you could expect to live into your 60s or 70s. Pre-civilization peoples (if by civilization we mean agriculture and settlements) seem to have worked even less.
• cheschire 6y ago
  Anyone who’s been in the military before is familiar with being told to rake sand, or pickup trash in an area with no trash, etc. Western society doesn’t increase idleness options. It actively discourages idleness by giving you ever simpler ways to use up every cycle. Idleness leads to thinking, which tends to lead to people testing their cages.
  • loremipsium 6y ago
    > Idleness leads to thinking, which tends to lead to people testing their cages. I think it has more to do with the fact that you'd otherwise starve to death. There was no wholefoods to trade food stamps in. Also preindustrial probably any man hour had to be useful.
    • iguy 6y ago
      And, food was expensive, it cost a majority of most people's income. While today it costs next to nothing for us to feed the homeless, then it would have been almost as expensive as hiring them.
      • jacobush 6y ago
        To not speak of to cloth them. Functional clothing was very expensive.
        • pmontra 6y ago
          If you go south (close to equator) food grows everywhere and there is little or no need for clothing. As somebody told me in Polynesia "you guys in Europe survive, we live".
          • iguy 6y ago
            Indeed. Although if food grows easily, you might expect the number of humans around to grow to catch up with it... and this mostly didn't happen (in the pre-industrial world) not because there wasn't enough time (exponentials are fast!) but because it ran into other limits, like disease.
• throwawayasdf1 6y ago
  It is not really a concept of western society, it is more so a concept which predated capitalism (i.e. in FEUDAL society which did not have finance or wages) in north western europe. particularly for instance with laws like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Labourers_1351 , and the one from 1349 Idleness and failure to contribute to the state was seen to be a fatal flaw. It also predates the protestant/catholic dichotomy stereotype of hard working wasps vs. mercantile catholics
  • 082349872349872 6y ago
    Under feudalism, idleness was good for me (a bellator or orator), but not for thee (a labourer). Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24540122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24540122
• TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  Western society will let you starve to death if you have not demonstrated an ability to not be idle. The only people it promotes idleness in are the people it makes unfathomably rich on the back of others' non-idleness.
• mci 6y ago
  Saint Paul: "The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat" (2 Thess 3:10). Note the subtle difference in Lenin's version: "He who does not work shall not eat" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_shall_he_eat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_...
  • MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    An interesting contrast to Marx's From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
• aloer 6y ago
  Is it possible that the word idleness is meant differently here? It sounds to me as a way to prevent associated societal problems, real or otherwise: criminality, alcohol abuse, homelessness In today’s context we read being idle as leisure time - and we have way more options to be idle with games and movies while still having a nice life with food and safety for everyone Back then bring idle might simply mean being one step away from moving to the woods and stealing from the rich like Robin hood
  • C1sc0cat 6y ago
    It might be talking about what we would call unemployed / destitute people or it might be we only want middle class plantation owners.
• pjc50 6y ago
  See "Protestant work ethic", but it's not really specific to that. It came along with the belief that "the devil finds work for idle hands"; that is, people who had time on their hands would use it to cause trouble for others. And there's a grain of truth in that, a lot of disruptive youth behaviour is linked to not having a structure and purpose within which to do things. Idleness is great for us self-entertaining solitary autodidacts, but that's not true of most people! > It seems today that Western society's whole goal is to increase our option for idleness. ... in a consumerist context. Although the internet has hugely expanded the options for non-bored non-transactional idling. Prior to the media age, the main thing idleness led to was drinking. And people who are themselves working hard find it hard to tolerate seeing people who aren't. This drives all sorts of ridiculous behavior, like office presenteeism.
• goodcanadian 6y ago
  Does this have some unexpected historical meaning? Maybe? In this context, I mainly interpret it as being unemployed. In other words, you are meant to go out, do some work, earn your keep.
• koenigdavidmj 6y ago
  https://apnews.com/83d5e39462164327a861ba34dcb3752c https://apnews.com/83d5e39462164327a861ba34dcb3752c A slightly more modern example—Iceland had a problem with misbehaving youth that they essentially solved by eliminating opportunities for idleness and strongly encouraging them to be in structured activity at most possible times.
• webel0 6y ago
  In this case, idleness appears alongside the requirement to maintain a plantation. So I think it more has to do with a requirement to be able to provide for oneself (particularly when it came to sustenance) rather than a prohibition on any particular set of activities. I don’t have a reference handy but during this time and several centuries thereafter there were (enforced) laws that sought to prohibit what we’d now call tramps throughout the English countryside. It appears that that is one part of home that they’re trying to leave behind.