10 ms·

In Praise of Idleness (1932)

270 points by TotalCrackpot 2y ago

drsopp 2y ago
In 1998 I found some articles online by Russell and put them here: http://trondal.com/russell/russell.html http://trondal.com/russell/russell.html
- gavmor 2y ago
  Excellent grist for a Saturday afternoon RAG. Thanks!
- blueridge 2y ago
  Amazing, thank you!
firtoz 2y ago
The essay comes up every now and then in HN, 5 pages of it in search. I'm unsure if it reached the status of most shared essay yet. Does anyone know?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- pvg 2y ago
  Looks about the same as other evergreens like Politics and the English Language and The Story of Mel to me. Greenest (i.e. earliest) evergreen is almost certainly Story of Mel, ever-est (most posted), I'm not sure but I want to say I've seen bigger ones than either of those.
cko 2y ago
I like this essay but I've found it hard to be idle. I jumped aboard the FIRE train so I could coast the rest of my life, and quit my job once when I was 31 and then when I was 33 after working for a year. Now I'm working the same dead end job again and I don't mind it. When I'm not working I'm consuming YouTube, HN and reddit. Not sure how to love idleness again. I used to be able to sit still for an hour at a time (meditation).
- lolinder 2y ago
  You seem to have really misunderstood the essay, then. He uses the word "idleness" to be provocative, but he's not actually saying that people find fulfillment in sitting and staring at the wall. He explicitly calls for efforts to be made to help everyone to learn enough about a wide enough variety of topics that they can choose their own interests to pursue in their leisure time. From the essay: > It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. > ... > When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered 'highbrow'. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.
  - paulpauper 2y ago
    People seldom read beyond the title before commenting
    - 93po 2y ago
      Articles are rarely worth reading, so I don't blame them
    - 2y ago
leetrout 2y ago
This made me think of this passage from "Happy to Work Here: understanding and improving the culture at work" which is on the web[0]: The business of busyness is a contradiction in terms. The more politics forces you to look busy, the less time there is for real business. An old joke to set the tone for this section: A group of excited young curates crashes into the office of the Archbishop at St. Patrick’s cathedral. “Your Eminence!” one of them cries. “Jesus Christ has just appeared in lower Manhattan!” “What?!” “He walked across the water and came ashore in Battery Park.” “Oh my.” “And now he’s headed up Fifth Avenue toward St. Patrick’s. He could be here any minute!” “I see.” “So, tell us, Eminence, what do we do?” The Archbishop thinks that over for a moment and finally says, “Look busy.” An apparent busyness can be a sign of deep and very professional engagement in an important task, vital to the long-term interests of the organization. Or it might be a sign of something else entirely. In a fearful organization it most likely implies a worry that it’s downright unsafe to seem unbusy. The unspoken rule that governs people in this case is: Look busy. Of course, the fear itself has already done damage to the organization’s culture. But obedience to the unspoken rule makes the matter worse. The consequences of everyone trying to look busy include: • No time for reflection • No time to confer with colleagues (which might be interpreted as “chatting”) • No time for lunch • No time for training • Nobody willing to be away from his/her desk • No off-site activities • A general uneasiness with activities that might seem “passive” like reading, and research. Most of the things that the rule makes impossible are culture positive. That is, they help the culture heal and improve itself. The more you find yourself and your co-workers compelled to look busy, the surer you can be that your working culture is damaged. [0] https://systemsguild.eu/ https://systemsguild.eu/
- fastasucan 2y ago
  This is parts of what I enjoy by working as an academic. I can get into a comfortable position with a book, take a walk or go to the gym during my workday without any judgement. I find that it is very helpful to be able to do something physical while thinking about a hard problem, and conversely being able to leave my desk and do something else for a short while if I am struggling to get into my work. I am a lot more productive than when I was a consultant and was busy trying to look busy.
- deleted 2y ago
Fezzik 2y ago
One of my favorite bands, TTNG, has a wicked good song inspired by this essay. If you like math-rock at all I reckon you’d enjoy it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKXg2scb_s&pp=ygUaaW4gcHJhaXNlIG9mIGlkbGVuZXNzIHR0bmc%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKXg2scb_s&pp=ygUaaW4gcHJhaXN...
- itchyjunk 2y ago
  I have been bingeing on ttng for a year now. I thought of the song when I saw the title and didn't realize maybe it was inspired from the essay. Saw the mention of TTNG and it got me excited enough to log in and comment after a long time, hurrah!
  - Fezzik 2y ago
    I am thrilled to cross-paths with another TTNG fan online; I know a grand total of 1 fan outside of the internet. They are criminally underrated and I am praying that despite their years-long-silence we’ll get some new material and another tour in the near future.
CobaltFire 2y ago
I, through a combination of fortune and misfortune, was able to retire at 40. I am trying to figure out how to employ my hands in ways I enjoy and that may be of net benefit to society at this time, and this essay touches on a lot of the concepts I've been thinking over. I'm actually surprised I haven't run across it; I should probably start my search by reading a little deeper into some philosophy.
- purple-leafy 2y ago
  You could try first doing that which is a net benefit to yourself, and your family (non-monetary) then extend that onto your immediate community Congrats on retirement :)
wenc 2y ago
I read In Praise of Idleness when I was 13-14 because an older person recommended it to me. Although the essay was written in the 1935, he convinced me this was the future, and that it foretold what European life was going to be. And indeed, modern Western Europe lives this way -- where leisure is accorded importance, hard work is not the highest virtue, and citizens were free to create culture and invent new ideas. As evidence, he pointed to all the discoveries made by medieval monks and people with idle time to play with ideas, as opposed to the proletariat who worked but did not have the luxury to think higher thoughts. Idleness was thus the pre-condition for great ideas. In a sense, this is the vision of UBI -- where basic needs were met, and people were free to self-actualize. This is also the happy version of tenure in academia -- where you didn't have to worry about "publish or perish" but instead you get to work on really important ideas without showing results for years (multi year grants or being in a place like the IAS helps). Google in some ways used to operate like this before the current pivot -- many googlers lived a life of "resting and vesting" while wandering about for years looking for a big idea with little pressure to deliver anything. I definitely found this vision attractive, but as I grew older, I realized that it was not entirely tenable in it purest form. Yes, the best ideas certain came from having time to wander and work on different things (you get more creative working on multiple decorrelated ideas at the same time rather than one big idea), but in my experience, complete idleness without pressure to deliver anything does not work. I don't know if I believe the premise of In Praise of Idleness any more. We no longer live in a simple world. In a complex world, great ideas come from incrementalism, and keeping busy and making progress seems to be necessary in many domains in order get to the big idea because all the low hanging fruit have been plucked.
- t43562 2y ago
  Keep yourself busy on one thing if you want to. If you don't then why are you doing it?
- advael 2y ago
  I think Russel, like many scientists, feels the need to dangle "the next big idea" as a tantalizing reason to allow more idleness. I do think that in an important sense, he is right and you are wrong, that "pressure to deliver" is not as necessary as you think, and that the world has not changed so much since his time so as for him to have once been right but now be wrong However, I think this takes for granted the primacy of "big ideas" as the sole organizing principle we should arrange the world to efficiently produce, by force if necessary. I think the real argument for UBI is that self-determination is a core value, that the negotiations we make to better society neither need nor should involve a gun to the head of every person not born into wealth. I also think that overvaluing efficiency, expediency, and generally speaking impatience is pushing our species off a cliff
mitchbob 2y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 (120 comments)
- dang 2y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29338666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29338666 - Nov 2021 (170 comments) In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21509144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21509144 - Nov 2019 (82 comments) In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876730 - Jan 2016 (25 comments) In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310846 - Oct 2015 (24 comments) In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092 - Feb 2015 (50 comments) Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 - Oct 2013 (120 comments) In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396167 - June 2010 (5 comments) In Praise of Idleness - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187681 - March 2010 (4 comments) In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85325 - Dec 2007 (1 comment)
quercusa 2y ago
If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment -- assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. True sensible organization has never been tried!
- 48864w6ui 2y ago
  It's been found difficult, and left untried
- BirAdam 2y ago
  Did you mean this ironically, cuz uh… it’s been tried many times and often led to death on very large scales.
  - quercusa 2y ago
    Yes, very much so.
kubb 2y ago
> In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons. There will be hundreds of people here that fit this perfectly, or am I wrong about the demographics of HN?
- resource_waste 2y ago
  "The strong do what they can, the weak suffer as they must" There is a reason we work constantly and always. Nature is brutal, and if I am not among the best, I'm going to experience pain. Or at least that is what my 'trauma' pushes me to do. I'm literally afraid not to be a 1%er. And if you lived my life, have my experiences, you'd probably come to the same conclusion.
  - sameoldtune 2y ago
    Trading pain for fear is one approach I guess. I don’t know a lot of 1%ers without coin sickness.
  - dambi0 2y ago
    What are you scared of? Why 1%? Why not the 0.5% or the 2%? It all seems rather arbitrary.
    - j7ake 2y ago
      OP didn’t mean literally 1 percent. They meant as close to number 1 as possible, and never stopping even if they are number one. They are afraid that they would be discarded by society if they fall too far behind.
      - matwood 2y ago
        I don't care about being discarded, but I do care about financial security. I grew up with near nothing, and I'll fight and claw to never end up there again.
kzz102 2y ago
If one works in a field where there is already an issue of abundance, which is (nowadays) basically any field that produce information, it's better for the society to produce less, but higher quality, more meaningful work. Of course, it is hard to do so because the incentives are against it.
user_7832 2y ago
A point that one of the comments here addressed but I think is worth re-emphasising - Russell isn't talking about not working, but rather to not work in a way that's not productive - which often occurs if you need to be in office till 5pm because I told you so!"
tracerbulletx 2y ago
I think every discussion about this should focus on what exactly are the things that need to happen that no one would do if not coerced by either force or threat of destitution. How do we make sure those things get done and done well is a constraint of any economic changes we make to make things more fair. Also keeping in mind some of those things need to organize 1000s of people, how do you mine lithium in one place, and ship it across the world to 200 other places without financial incentives, how would you fuel the ships, load and unload them, track their location, repair and maintain them. I think it's pretty obvious things could be MUCH better and our current solution is very sub-optimal, but also that the problem being solved is very complex and the solution we have mostly works, but also there is a lot of work that is not particularly fulfilling or attractive to do, and especially not going to self incentivize anyone to do it well. Also it's clear markets are the best way to signal demand. So you really want to keep all of that, while getting rid of some of the biggest exploitative extractive inefficiencies in the current system.
- gorbo42 2y ago
  If everyone had to perform an equal portion of the labor that's needed but nobody wants to do, the need for that labor would be minimized. If Zuckerberg or Musk (and everyone else) had to pick up trash one day a month they'd spend their capital solving those problems (automating them away) instead of whatever the hell they think is so important right now.
- lesam 2y ago
  The author is suggesting normalizing a 20 hour work week, and an approximate doubling of hourly wages for the majority of workers. (And continuing to reduce the hours worked per week until full employment is reached). Work that is unattractive would presumably still be incentivized by higher wages.
t43562 2y ago
I was thinking recently that there's enough food to feed everyone but some people cannot afford to buy it. Hence there are food banks in an apparently "first world" country like the UK. Just to annoy some Americans...what's with the worlds richest country letting people be homeless? I remember a beautiful park in San Jose that I went to was full of rough sleepers and wondering how that happened in the middle of all that tech wealth. Why? Why are there men who demand 50-whatever billion payouts in a country where not everyone has a place to sleep? It seems the same issue to me. We're not on the earth to "do great things" or "achieve progress" or any of that crap. That's for people who have some special enthusiasm which the rest of us need not share, or, as Bertrand Russell says, for the elite who want us to labor for them. If one builds one's morality or sense of virtue on doing stuff one is a self-whipping slave and probably ready to become a slave driver for other people too.
- pbj1968 2y ago
  Because some people want to sleep outside. Are you proposing we round them up into camps against their will? Very European of you.
  - t43562 2y ago
    I'm from Zimbabwe - so insults like "very European" aren't your get out of jail free card. The third world has an excuse for its problems - where's yours?
    - pbj1968 2y ago
      Well, we haven’t had an authoritarian dictator to cull the herd, so there’s that going against us.
  - mft_ 2y ago
    You seem to be suggesting that homelessness is simply an expression of people's wish to sleep al fresco?
- Aunche 2y ago
  One can argue that the California homelessness crisis is caused by a certain type of idleness. NIMBYs refuse to adapt to their changing cities and instead try to force it to remain unchanged. You also have progressives who think that they can simply throw billions of dollars in tech money at homelessness, which is another form of idleness. As a result, you get nonprofits that receive millions of dollars a year that don't accomplish anything.
dang 2y ago
We've changed the URL from https://libcom.org/article/praise-idleness-bertrand-russell https://libcom.org/article/praise-idleness-bertrand-russell to the original source. Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lo_zamoyski 2y ago
I would recommend Josef Pieper’s “Leisure: The Basis of Leisure” [0]. Leisure is not recreation. Indeed, the word “school” is derived from the Greek word for leisure, and the state of having to work was defined in terms of the lack of leisure, a negation of leisure. The leisure/work distinction is also reflected in the classical division of the liberal arts and the servile arts. (The liberal arts were what free men pursued, for the sake of wisdom, virtue, etc. The servile arts were for the sake of practical ends.) Work was understood as something you did for the sake of leisure (but again, not leisure as we understand it today which is at best recreation), not as work for work’s sake. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Leisure-Basis-Culture-Josef-Pieper/dp/1586172565 https://www.amazon.com/Leisure-Basis-Culture-Josef-Pieper/dp...
malingo 2y ago
Reminds me a little of hammock-driven development [1] > the background mind is good at synthesizing things. It's good about strategy [1] https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hickey_Rich/HammockDrivenDev.md https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...
bogdart 2y ago
I understand everything and maybe even agree with the main thesis. But the positive example that he gives is Soviet Russia, which that time (1932-1933) went through massive famine in literally the most fertile land in the world which was caused by completely artificial reasons. And Soviet workers were forced to work more than ever without any payment. So the solutions in the article cannot be taken seriously.
- ornornor 2y ago
  Russell was quite critical of Marxism afaik. He admires some things about Soviet Russia but certainly not all of it. I don’t think he says we should aspire to emulate Soviet Russia for the most last.
tim333 2y ago
Fun fact - if you search your file system for idleness.txt you'll probably find it includes quite a few copies as npm/node likes including it in its packages. I seem to have 30 on my macbook.
- ornornor 2y ago
  That’s a peculiar fact, I wonder where that originated.
azureumbra 2y ago
Thanks for the awesome read! Sharing it with my UBI group now
readthenotes1 2y ago
He sure put a lot of work into this
lurking15 2y ago
I read Intellectuals by Paul Johnson and it occurs to me that even generously doubting the book, Bertrand Russell comes off as a real scumbag, complete womanizer, generally untethered person and despite being prodigiously intelligent, simply unwise. Also defending idleness seems like the sort of opinion the well-off espouse, Russell carried around accounting of every cent he made, just to cheer him up whenever he felt down.
rlhf 2y ago
That's true, maybe it's the reason why short videos burst into exploding.
alexashka 2y ago
A shorter version with much greater bite and wit by Nietzsche published in 1882: 329 Leisure and idleness. - There is something of the American lndian, something of the savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the way the Americans strive for gold; and their breathless haste in working - the true vice of the new world - is already starting to spread to old Europe, making it savage and covering it with a most odd mindlessness. Already one is ashamed of keeping still; long reflection almost gives people a bad conscience. One thinks with a watch in hand, as one eats lunch with an eye on the financial pages - one lives like someone who might always 'miss out on something'. 'Rather do anything than nothing' - even this principle is a cord to strangle all culture and all higher taste. Just as all forms are visibly being destroyed by the haste of the workers, so, too, is the feeling for form itself, the ear and eye for the melody of movements. The proof of this lies in the crude obviousness which is universally demanded in all situations in which people want for once to be honest with others - in their relations with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, students, leaders, and princes: one no longer has time and energy for ceremony, for civility with detours, for esprit in conversation, and in general for any otium 2 ° For life in a hunt for profit constantly forces people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretence or out-smarting or forestalling others: the true virtue today is doing something in less time than someone else. And thus hours in which honesty is allowed are rare; during them, however, one is tired and wants not only to 'let oneself go' but also to lay oneself down and stretch oneself out unceremoniously to one's full length and breadth. This is the way people now write !etters, the style and spirit of which will always be the true 'sign of the times'. If sociability and the arts still offer any delight, it is the kind of delight that overworked slaves make for themselves. How frugal our educated and uneducated have become concerning 'joy'! How they are becoming increasingly suspicious of all joy! More and more, work gets all good conscience on its side; the desire for joy already calls itself a 'need to recuperate' and is starting to be ashamed of itself. 'One owes it to one's health' - that is what one says when caught on an excursion in the countryside. Soon we may well reach the point where one can't give in to the desire for a vita contemplativa21 (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience. Well, formerly it was the other way around: work was afflicted with a bad conscience. A person of good family concealed the faet that he worked if need compelled him to work. The slave worked under the pressure of the feeling that he was doing something contemptible: 'doing' was itself contemptible. 'Nobility and honour are attached solely to otium and bellum'22 - that was the ancient prejudice! The Gay Science Bertrand Russell did a great disservice to philosophy by reducing great minds and talent to what he understood of them. Philosophy departments haven't recovered since and now we seem to be in full swing going back to... fucking religion for ethics and morality spearheaded by the likes of Jordan Peterson.
hnthrowaway0328 2y ago
Indeed I can never enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness. To me the sin is not to get the most out of life and especially not devoted most of life to a passion. To me the sin is to stop "evolving". Getting sunshine is mostly for health benefit. I keep asking myself: Did I learn more about the universe? Did I improve myself today? Of course most of the time the answer is no, but I still try to get some yes occasionally. A bit of idleness for sure is an antidote for burnout, but the Mediterranean sunshine idleness is way way too much for my taste.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
xnx 2y ago
Related: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" -French philosopher Blaise Pascal, 1654
naveen99 2y ago
Life is acting, choosing what to do and not to do. There is no idleness.

270 points by TotalCrackpot 2y ago

In 1998 I found some articles online by Russell and put them here: http://trondal.com/russell/russell.html http://trondal.com/russell/russell.html

gavmor 2y ago
Excellent grist for a Saturday afternoon RAG. Thanks!
blueridge 2y ago
Amazing, thank you!

firtoz 2y ago

The essay comes up every now and then in HN, 5 pages of it in search. I'm unsure if it reached the status of most shared essay yet. Does anyone know?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pvg 2y ago
Looks about the same as other evergreens like Politics and the English Language and The Story of Mel to me. Greenest (i.e. earliest) evergreen is almost certainly Story of Mel, ever-est (most posted), I'm not sure but I want to say I've seen bigger ones than either of those.

cko 2y ago

I like this essay but I've found it hard to be idle. I jumped aboard the FIRE train so I could coast the rest of my life, and quit my job once when I was 31 and then when I was 33 after working for a year. Now I'm working the same dead end job again and I don't mind it. When I'm not working I'm consuming YouTube, HN and reddit. Not sure how to love idleness again. I used to be able to sit still for an hour at a time (meditation).

lolinder 2y ago
You seem to have really misunderstood the essay, then. He uses the word "idleness" to be provocative, but he's not actually saying that people find fulfillment in sitting and staring at the wall. He explicitly calls for efforts to be made to help everyone to learn enough about a wide enough variety of topics that they can choose their own interests to pursue in their leisure time. From the essay: > It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. > ... > When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered 'highbrow'. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  People seldom read beyond the title before commenting
  - 93po 2y ago
    Articles are rarely worth reading, so I don't blame them
  - 2y ago

leetrout 2y ago

This made me think of this passage from "Happy to Work Here: understanding and improving the culture at work" which is on the web[0]: The business of busyness is a contradiction in terms. The more politics forces you to look busy, the less time there is for real business. An old joke to set the tone for this section: A group of excited young curates crashes into the office of the Archbishop at St. Patrick’s cathedral. “Your Eminence!” one of them cries. “Jesus Christ has just appeared in lower Manhattan!” “What?!” “He walked across the water and came ashore in Battery Park.” “Oh my.” “And now he’s headed up Fifth Avenue toward St. Patrick’s. He could be here any minute!” “I see.” “So, tell us, Eminence, what do we do?” The Archbishop thinks that over for a moment and finally says, “Look busy.” An apparent busyness can be a sign of deep and very professional engagement in an important task, vital to the long-term interests of the organization. Or it might be a sign of something else entirely. In a fearful organization it most likely implies a worry that it’s downright unsafe to seem unbusy. The unspoken rule that governs people in this case is: Look busy. Of course, the fear itself has already done damage to the organization’s culture. But obedience to the unspoken rule makes the matter worse. The consequences of everyone trying to look busy include: • No time for reflection • No time to confer with colleagues (which might be interpreted as “chatting”) • No time for lunch • No time for training • Nobody willing to be away from his/her desk • No off-site activities • A general uneasiness with activities that might seem “passive” like reading, and research. Most of the things that the rule makes impossible are culture positive. That is, they help the culture heal and improve itself. The more you find yourself and your co-workers compelled to look busy, the surer you can be that your working culture is damaged. [0] https://systemsguild.eu/ https://systemsguild.eu/

fastasucan 2y ago
This is parts of what I enjoy by working as an academic. I can get into a comfortable position with a book, take a walk or go to the gym during my workday without any judgement. I find that it is very helpful to be able to do something physical while thinking about a hard problem, and conversely being able to leave my desk and do something else for a short while if I am struggling to get into my work. I am a lot more productive than when I was a consultant and was busy trying to look busy.
deleted 2y ago

Fezzik 2y ago

One of my favorite bands, TTNG, has a wicked good song inspired by this essay. If you like math-rock at all I reckon you’d enjoy it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKXg2scb_s&pp=ygUaaW4gcHJhaXNlIG9mIGlkbGVuZXNzIHR0bmc%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKXg2scb_s&pp=ygUaaW4gcHJhaXN...

itchyjunk 2y ago
I have been bingeing on ttng for a year now. I thought of the song when I saw the title and didn't realize maybe it was inspired from the essay. Saw the mention of TTNG and it got me excited enough to log in and comment after a long time, hurrah!
- Fezzik 2y ago
  I am thrilled to cross-paths with another TTNG fan online; I know a grand total of 1 fan outside of the internet. They are criminally underrated and I am praying that despite their years-long-silence we’ll get some new material and another tour in the near future.

CobaltFire 2y ago

I, through a combination of fortune and misfortune, was able to retire at 40. I am trying to figure out how to employ my hands in ways I enjoy and that may be of net benefit to society at this time, and this essay touches on a lot of the concepts I've been thinking over. I'm actually surprised I haven't run across it; I should probably start my search by reading a little deeper into some philosophy.

purple-leafy 2y ago
You could try first doing that which is a net benefit to yourself, and your family (non-monetary) then extend that onto your immediate community Congrats on retirement :)

wenc 2y ago

I read In Praise of Idleness when I was 13-14 because an older person recommended it to me. Although the essay was written in the 1935, he convinced me this was the future, and that it foretold what European life was going to be. And indeed, modern Western Europe lives this way -- where leisure is accorded importance, hard work is not the highest virtue, and citizens were free to create culture and invent new ideas. As evidence, he pointed to all the discoveries made by medieval monks and people with idle time to play with ideas, as opposed to the proletariat who worked but did not have the luxury to think higher thoughts. Idleness was thus the pre-condition for great ideas. In a sense, this is the vision of UBI -- where basic needs were met, and people were free to self-actualize. This is also the happy version of tenure in academia -- where you didn't have to worry about "publish or perish" but instead you get to work on really important ideas without showing results for years (multi year grants or being in a place like the IAS helps). Google in some ways used to operate like this before the current pivot -- many googlers lived a life of "resting and vesting" while wandering about for years looking for a big idea with little pressure to deliver anything. I definitely found this vision attractive, but as I grew older, I realized that it was not entirely tenable in it purest form. Yes, the best ideas certain came from having time to wander and work on different things (you get more creative working on multiple decorrelated ideas at the same time rather than one big idea), but in my experience, complete idleness without pressure to deliver anything does not work. I don't know if I believe the premise of In Praise of Idleness any more. We no longer live in a simple world. In a complex world, great ideas come from incrementalism, and keeping busy and making progress seems to be necessary in many domains in order get to the big idea because all the low hanging fruit have been plucked.

t43562 2y ago
Keep yourself busy on one thing if you want to. If you don't then why are you doing it?
advael 2y ago
I think Russel, like many scientists, feels the need to dangle "the next big idea" as a tantalizing reason to allow more idleness. I do think that in an important sense, he is right and you are wrong, that "pressure to deliver" is not as necessary as you think, and that the world has not changed so much since his time so as for him to have once been right but now be wrong However, I think this takes for granted the primacy of "big ideas" as the sole organizing principle we should arrange the world to efficiently produce, by force if necessary. I think the real argument for UBI is that self-determination is a core value, that the negotiations we make to better society neither need nor should involve a gun to the head of every person not born into wealth. I also think that overvaluing efficiency, expediency, and generally speaking impatience is pushing our species off a cliff

mitchbob 2y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 (120 comments)

dang 2y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29338666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29338666 - Nov 2021 (170 comments) In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21509144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21509144 - Nov 2019 (82 comments) In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876730 - Jan 2016 (25 comments) In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310846 - Oct 2015 (24 comments) In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (1932) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092 - Feb 2015 (50 comments) Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness (1932) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 - Oct 2013 (120 comments) In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396167 - June 2010 (5 comments) In Praise of Idleness - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187681 - March 2010 (4 comments) In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85325 - Dec 2007 (1 comment)

quercusa 2y ago

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment -- assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. True sensible organization has never been tried!

48864w6ui 2y ago
It's been found difficult, and left untried
BirAdam 2y ago
Did you mean this ironically, cuz uh… it’s been tried many times and often led to death on very large scales.
- quercusa 2y ago
  Yes, very much so.

kubb 2y ago

> In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons. There will be hundreds of people here that fit this perfectly, or am I wrong about the demographics of HN?

resource_waste 2y ago
"The strong do what they can, the weak suffer as they must" There is a reason we work constantly and always. Nature is brutal, and if I am not among the best, I'm going to experience pain. Or at least that is what my 'trauma' pushes me to do. I'm literally afraid not to be a 1%er. And if you lived my life, have my experiences, you'd probably come to the same conclusion.
- sameoldtune 2y ago
  Trading pain for fear is one approach I guess. I don’t know a lot of 1%ers without coin sickness.
- dambi0 2y ago
  What are you scared of? Why 1%? Why not the 0.5% or the 2%? It all seems rather arbitrary.
  - j7ake 2y ago
    OP didn’t mean literally 1 percent. They meant as close to number 1 as possible, and never stopping even if they are number one. They are afraid that they would be discarded by society if they fall too far behind.
    - matwood 2y ago
      I don't care about being discarded, but I do care about financial security. I grew up with near nothing, and I'll fight and claw to never end up there again.

kzz102 2y ago

If one works in a field where there is already an issue of abundance, which is (nowadays) basically any field that produce information, it's better for the society to produce less, but higher quality, more meaningful work. Of course, it is hard to do so because the incentives are against it.

user_7832 2y ago

A point that one of the comments here addressed but I think is worth re-emphasising - Russell isn't talking about not working, but rather to not work in a way that's not productive - which often occurs if you need to be in office till 5pm because I told you so!"

tracerbulletx 2y ago

I think every discussion about this should focus on what exactly are the things that need to happen that no one would do if not coerced by either force or threat of destitution. How do we make sure those things get done and done well is a constraint of any economic changes we make to make things more fair. Also keeping in mind some of those things need to organize 1000s of people, how do you mine lithium in one place, and ship it across the world to 200 other places without financial incentives, how would you fuel the ships, load and unload them, track their location, repair and maintain them. I think it's pretty obvious things could be MUCH better and our current solution is very sub-optimal, but also that the problem being solved is very complex and the solution we have mostly works, but also there is a lot of work that is not particularly fulfilling or attractive to do, and especially not going to self incentivize anyone to do it well. Also it's clear markets are the best way to signal demand. So you really want to keep all of that, while getting rid of some of the biggest exploitative extractive inefficiencies in the current system.

gorbo42 2y ago
If everyone had to perform an equal portion of the labor that's needed but nobody wants to do, the need for that labor would be minimized. If Zuckerberg or Musk (and everyone else) had to pick up trash one day a month they'd spend their capital solving those problems (automating them away) instead of whatever the hell they think is so important right now.
lesam 2y ago
The author is suggesting normalizing a 20 hour work week, and an approximate doubling of hourly wages for the majority of workers. (And continuing to reduce the hours worked per week until full employment is reached). Work that is unattractive would presumably still be incentivized by higher wages.

t43562 2y ago

I was thinking recently that there's enough food to feed everyone but some people cannot afford to buy it. Hence there are food banks in an apparently "first world" country like the UK. Just to annoy some Americans...what's with the worlds richest country letting people be homeless? I remember a beautiful park in San Jose that I went to was full of rough sleepers and wondering how that happened in the middle of all that tech wealth. Why? Why are there men who demand 50-whatever billion payouts in a country where not everyone has a place to sleep? It seems the same issue to me. We're not on the earth to "do great things" or "achieve progress" or any of that crap. That's for people who have some special enthusiasm which the rest of us need not share, or, as Bertrand Russell says, for the elite who want us to labor for them. If one builds one's morality or sense of virtue on doing stuff one is a self-whipping slave and probably ready to become a slave driver for other people too.

pbj1968 2y ago
Because some people want to sleep outside. Are you proposing we round them up into camps against their will? Very European of you.
- t43562 2y ago
  I'm from Zimbabwe - so insults like "very European" aren't your get out of jail free card. The third world has an excuse for its problems - where's yours?
  - pbj1968 2y ago
    Well, we haven’t had an authoritarian dictator to cull the herd, so there’s that going against us.
- mft_ 2y ago
  You seem to be suggesting that homelessness is simply an expression of people's wish to sleep al fresco?
Aunche 2y ago
One can argue that the California homelessness crisis is caused by a certain type of idleness. NIMBYs refuse to adapt to their changing cities and instead try to force it to remain unchanged. You also have progressives who think that they can simply throw billions of dollars in tech money at homelessness, which is another form of idleness. As a result, you get nonprofits that receive millions of dollars a year that don't accomplish anything.

dang 2y ago

We've changed the URL from https://libcom.org/article/praise-idleness-bertrand-russell https://libcom.org/article/praise-idleness-bertrand-russell to the original source. Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lo_zamoyski 2y ago

I would recommend Josef Pieper’s “Leisure: The Basis of Leisure” [0]. Leisure is not recreation. Indeed, the word “school” is derived from the Greek word for leisure, and the state of having to work was defined in terms of the lack of leisure, a negation of leisure. The leisure/work distinction is also reflected in the classical division of the liberal arts and the servile arts. (The liberal arts were what free men pursued, for the sake of wisdom, virtue, etc. The servile arts were for the sake of practical ends.) Work was understood as something you did for the sake of leisure (but again, not leisure as we understand it today which is at best recreation), not as work for work’s sake. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Leisure-Basis-Culture-Josef-Pieper/dp/1586172565 https://www.amazon.com/Leisure-Basis-Culture-Josef-Pieper/dp...

malingo 2y ago

Reminds me a little of hammock-driven development [1] > the background mind is good at synthesizing things. It's good about strategy [1] https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hickey_Rich/HammockDrivenDev.md https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

bogdart 2y ago

I understand everything and maybe even agree with the main thesis. But the positive example that he gives is Soviet Russia, which that time (1932-1933) went through massive famine in literally the most fertile land in the world which was caused by completely artificial reasons. And Soviet workers were forced to work more than ever without any payment. So the solutions in the article cannot be taken seriously.

ornornor 2y ago
Russell was quite critical of Marxism afaik. He admires some things about Soviet Russia but certainly not all of it. I don’t think he says we should aspire to emulate Soviet Russia for the most last.

tim333 2y ago

Fun fact - if you search your file system for idleness.txt you'll probably find it includes quite a few copies as npm/node likes including it in its packages. I seem to have 30 on my macbook.

ornornor 2y ago
That’s a peculiar fact, I wonder where that originated.

azureumbra 2y ago

Thanks for the awesome read! Sharing it with my UBI group now

readthenotes1 2y ago

He sure put a lot of work into this

lurking15 2y ago

I read Intellectuals by Paul Johnson and it occurs to me that even generously doubting the book, Bertrand Russell comes off as a real scumbag, complete womanizer, generally untethered person and despite being prodigiously intelligent, simply unwise. Also defending idleness seems like the sort of opinion the well-off espouse, Russell carried around accounting of every cent he made, just to cheer him up whenever he felt down.

rlhf 2y ago

That's true, maybe it's the reason why short videos burst into exploding.

alexashka 2y ago

A shorter version with much greater bite and wit by Nietzsche published in 1882: 329 Leisure and idleness. - There is something of the American lndian, something of the savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the way the Americans strive for gold; and their breathless haste in working - the true vice of the new world - is already starting to spread to old Europe, making it savage and covering it with a most odd mindlessness. Already one is ashamed of keeping still; long reflection almost gives people a bad conscience. One thinks with a watch in hand, as one eats lunch with an eye on the financial pages - one lives like someone who might always 'miss out on something'. 'Rather do anything than nothing' - even this principle is a cord to strangle all culture and all higher taste. Just as all forms are visibly being destroyed by the haste of the workers, so, too, is the feeling for form itself, the ear and eye for the melody of movements. The proof of this lies in the crude obviousness which is universally demanded in all situations in which people want for once to be honest with others - in their relations with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, students, leaders, and princes: one no longer has time and energy for ceremony, for civility with detours, for esprit in conversation, and in general for any otium 2 ° For life in a hunt for profit constantly forces people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretence or out-smarting or forestalling others: the true virtue today is doing something in less time than someone else. And thus hours in which honesty is allowed are rare; during them, however, one is tired and wants not only to 'let oneself go' but also to lay oneself down and stretch oneself out unceremoniously to one's full length and breadth. This is the way people now write !etters, the style and spirit of which will always be the true 'sign of the times'. If sociability and the arts still offer any delight, it is the kind of delight that overworked slaves make for themselves. How frugal our educated and uneducated have become concerning 'joy'! How they are becoming increasingly suspicious of all joy! More and more, work gets all good conscience on its side; the desire for joy already calls itself a 'need to recuperate' and is starting to be ashamed of itself. 'One owes it to one's health' - that is what one says when caught on an excursion in the countryside. Soon we may well reach the point where one can't give in to the desire for a vita contemplativa21 (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience. Well, formerly it was the other way around: work was afflicted with a bad conscience. A person of good family concealed the faet that he worked if need compelled him to work. The slave worked under the pressure of the feeling that he was doing something contemptible: 'doing' was itself contemptible. 'Nobility and honour are attached solely to otium and bellum'22 - that was the ancient prejudice! The Gay Science Bertrand Russell did a great disservice to philosophy by reducing great minds and talent to what he understood of them. Philosophy departments haven't recovered since and now we seem to be in full swing going back to... fucking religion for ethics and morality spearheaded by the likes of Jordan Peterson.

hnthrowaway0328 2y ago

Indeed I can never enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness. To me the sin is not to get the most out of life and especially not devoted most of life to a passion. To me the sin is to stop "evolving". Getting sunshine is mostly for health benefit. I keep asking myself: Did I learn more about the universe? Did I improve myself today? Of course most of the time the answer is no, but I still try to get some yes occasionally. A bit of idleness for sure is an antidote for burnout, but the Mediterranean sunshine idleness is way way too much for my taste.

deleted 2y ago
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xnx 2y ago

Related: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" -French philosopher Blaise Pascal, 1654

naveen99 2y ago

Life is acting, choosing what to do and not to do. There is no idleness.