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> “Lying flat is my sophistic movement,” Mr. Luo wrote, tipping his hat to Diogenes the Cynic, a Greek philosopher who is said to have lived inside a barrel to

> “Lying flat is my sophistic movement,” Mr. Luo wrote, tipping his hat to Diogenes the Cynic, a Greek philosopher who is said to have lived inside a barrel to criticize the excesses of Athenian aristocrats. On Chinese social media, Mr. Luo’s manifesto, and his assertion that he has a “right to choose a slow lifestyle” of reading, exercising and doing odd jobs to get by, quickly went viral. Sympathizers shared versions of a belief that is gaining global resonance: Work has become intolerable. Rest is resistance. I don't understand why this is controversial. If someone wants to get by on odd jobs and spend their time reading, exercising, and relaxing, why should anyone have a problem with that? Mr. Luo seems to understand the consequences of the lifestyle he's chosen, and he's willing to accept them. Likewise, the woman who doesn't want a career is free not to have one, assuming she is willing to accept the consequences of her actions.

1MachineElf 5y ago
>If someone wants to get by on odd jobs and spend their time reading, exercising, and relaxing, why should anyone have a problem with that? The right-wing sentiment that's been whipped up various times is that this type of lifestyle leads to welfare dependence, which comes at the expense of those who have the ambition and willpower to be productive. The sense that unproductive people would be entitled to the labor and profits of productive people has evoked anger among many. I'm not sure how strongly such a sentiment holds today when it's more obvious than ever that the money supply is less controlled by those productive people and moreso by centralized banking cartels and the elites who revolve around them. And yet, the people in our society who value self-sufficiently enough to work themselves to death cannot have their resentment towards supposed careless dregs quellled by a discussion on economics. Deeply rooted personal beliefs paint reality in black and white. For some, it's just prejudice. For others, it's the grounded fear of a former life at the bottom of 3rd-world society. For them: work, order, and riches are life; while play, frivolity, and consumption are death.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > The right-wing sentiment that's been whipped up various times is that this type of lifestyle leads to welfare dependence, which comes at the expense of those who have the ambition and willpower to be productive. It's interesting to note that kind of unproductive lifestyle is not too different from the lifestyle of some capitalists, for instance those who inherit or live off interest/capital gains. They might have a pile of money, but that money is going take the fruits of labor from the same pool as a welfare recipient without adding anything to it.
colmvp 5y ago
I have a friend who is very high up in one of the biggest companies in the world. He's very well compensated, but works insane hours and is never happy about working at his company. It's always "maybe this next role will finally be the thing", then he gets it, and then a few weeks later he mentions something that's wrong with it. Which is fine. It's his life choices and no one can argue he's not successful. But he never seemed particularly accepting of the life choice I took some years. Those years, I took a break from full-time employment and spent my days going deeper into a coding language out of intellectual curiosity, studying online courses in area I didn't have much familiarity in, and biked in the afternoons for hours to get exercise. His opinion was mostly "Don't you work? What are you doing with your days? I could never do that." Meanwhile now that I'm writing this, I'm thinking, "wait how could you not conceive of doing that? You're always talking about how much you hate your job. It's been a decade of these conversations!!!" I'm back in the full-time workforce, but a part of me wishes I was in that part-time lifestyle because my happiest moments at work are when I'm pushing myself on a side project to shore up a weakness in software development instead of extracting value at the skills I'm already good at.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Noone can argue he is not successful.. That very much depends on the definition of successful....if we define it as living a happy, calm, peaceful life, he would be a complete loser. Personally I decided to not try and climb the career ladder by instead having my own 1-man consulting company. This way, I work as much as I need to to live comfortably, while also allowing myself to take 4-6 months off work every year. I'm literally having more vacation in one year than that guy has in his lifetime. That's success.

1MachineElf 5y ago

>If someone wants to get by on odd jobs and spend their time reading, exercising, and relaxing, why should anyone have a problem with that? The right-wing sentiment that's been whipped up various times is that this type of lifestyle leads to welfare dependence, which comes at the expense of those who have the ambition and willpower to be productive. The sense that unproductive people would be entitled to the labor and profits of productive people has evoked anger among many. I'm not sure how strongly such a sentiment holds today when it's more obvious than ever that the money supply is less controlled by those productive people and moreso by centralized banking cartels and the elites who revolve around them. And yet, the people in our society who value self-sufficiently enough to work themselves to death cannot have their resentment towards supposed careless dregs quellled by a discussion on economics. Deeply rooted personal beliefs paint reality in black and white. For some, it's just prejudice. For others, it's the grounded fear of a former life at the bottom of 3rd-world society. For them: work, order, and riches are life; while play, frivolity, and consumption are death.

tablespoon 5y ago
> The right-wing sentiment that's been whipped up various times is that this type of lifestyle leads to welfare dependence, which comes at the expense of those who have the ambition and willpower to be productive. It's interesting to note that kind of unproductive lifestyle is not too different from the lifestyle of some capitalists, for instance those who inherit or live off interest/capital gains. They might have a pile of money, but that money is going take the fruits of labor from the same pool as a welfare recipient without adding anything to it.

colmvp 5y ago

I have a friend who is very high up in one of the biggest companies in the world. He's very well compensated, but works insane hours and is never happy about working at his company. It's always "maybe this next role will finally be the thing", then he gets it, and then a few weeks later he mentions something that's wrong with it. Which is fine. It's his life choices and no one can argue he's not successful. But he never seemed particularly accepting of the life choice I took some years. Those years, I took a break from full-time employment and spent my days going deeper into a coding language out of intellectual curiosity, studying online courses in area I didn't have much familiarity in, and biked in the afternoons for hours to get exercise. His opinion was mostly "Don't you work? What are you doing with your days? I could never do that." Meanwhile now that I'm writing this, I'm thinking, "wait how could you not conceive of doing that? You're always talking about how much you hate your job. It's been a decade of these conversations!!!" I'm back in the full-time workforce, but a part of me wishes I was in that part-time lifestyle because my happiest moments at work are when I'm pushing myself on a side project to shore up a weakness in software development instead of extracting value at the skills I'm already good at.

peakaboo 5y ago
Noone can argue he is not successful.. That very much depends on the definition of successful....if we define it as living a happy, calm, peaceful life, he would be a complete loser. Personally I decided to not try and climb the career ladder by instead having my own 1-man consulting company. This way, I work as much as I need to to live comfortably, while also allowing myself to take 4-6 months off work every year. I'm literally having more vacation in one year than that guy has in his lifetime. That's success.