[HN Gopher] In Praise of Idleness (1932)
___________________________________________________________________
In Praise of Idleness (1932)
Author : TotalCrackpot
Score : 165 points
Date : 2024-05-04 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (harpers.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (harpers.org)
| drsopp wrote:
| In 1998 I found some articles online by Russell and put them
| here: http://trondal.com/russell/russell.html
| gavmor wrote:
| Excellent grist for a Saturday afternoon RAG. Thanks!
| firtoz wrote:
| 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?
| pvg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| People seldom read beyond the title before commenting
| drak0n1c wrote:
| In my experience, having kids has had the dual benefits of
| making my days purposeful and fulfilling, and also more
| appreciative of idle time. The mind does not do well with the
| extremes of unlimited idleness or unlimited work. Turns out the
| rhythm of child-raising can fit the perfect middle ground
| between work and idleness, and has the advantage of creating a
| more meaningful cumulative product than either realm. That
| balance of time is especially true if you're financially
| independent or have family willing to help during the first
| year or two of a new baby.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Idleness is not just sitting on your couch watching TV. It's
| basically the freedom to pursue whatever's interesting you in
| the moment.
| theropost wrote:
| Same, I don't think we can lump all different personas and
| natures into one bucket. Some people thrive, and enjoy doing,
| building, learning, and not staying in one place. Others enjoy
| sitting, relaxing, doing little, introspection, etc. It really
| depends on the individual, each has their own areas that give
| them meaning and joy.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _each has their own areas that give them meaning and joy_
|
| on that note, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40256243
| leetrout wrote:
| 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/
| fastasucan wrote:
| 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.
| Fezzik wrote:
| 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=ygUaaW4gcHJhaXN...
| itchyjunk wrote:
| 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!
| CobaltFire wrote:
| 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.
| wenc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Keep yourself busy on one thing if you want to. If you don't
| then why are you doing it?
| advael wrote:
| 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
| DenisM wrote:
| Low-hanging fruit depletion is a problem, but there are ways of
| dealing with it:
|
| - A larger number of people searching for the next Newtonian
| apple all over the place.
|
| - A smaller number of larger groups that pursue a narrow area
| with intense focus. That's more like "work" though.
|
| - New areas. Especially software. Google, Facebook, Microsoft,
| Apple were created by tinkerers with the privilege of free
| time. This process did not yet stop.
|
| To your other point, not every idle person will pursue new
| knowledge. And that's ok. A larger number of idle people will
| contain a larger number of tinkerers.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Re: your last paragraph
|
| I would say there's a mid-point somewhere between overworked
| 60-hour-a-week employees burning out and folks doing absolutely
| nothing productive. The nature and environment of work is
| important too, if you're tilling a farm there's an upper limit
| on your output, but with the internet anyone can be made to
| feel inadequate for not "hustling"/"grinding" enough.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I do wonder if the problem is not enough, or too much idleness.
|
| Isaac Newton is regarded as a genius, but he worked on really
| basic stuff like calculus and Newtonian mechanics. Of course it
| was harder, when he and his competitors were inventing it.
|
| Sure, we handle more complex stuff now. But modern highschool
| material used to be really complex. Eventually theory,
| frameworks, language, and pedagogy, develop around a field that
| make it look deceptively simple. That's still incrementalism
| but incrementation comes from the next generation that grew up
| in an environment where our discoveries are table stakes.
|
| Is it possible that _you_ no longer live in a simple world,
| because you've become an expert, and moved on from ingesting
| the refined model from the previous generation, to either
| applying the current unrefined model to the hardest problems it
| can handle, or to building the model for the next generation?
| jimsimmons wrote:
| It comes down to honesty. Are you idle because you want to be
| idle or are you just being lazy and not going after the
| opportunity right before you? Are you not pursuing the low-
| hanging fruit out of principle or is your ego holding you back
| from doing humbler things?
|
| If you can be honest with such questions then the duality goes
| away and everything boils down to doing the right thing
| t43562 wrote:
| This is not about idleness or laziness at all. It's about
| working for the man versus doing what you want to do.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| Right, how do you know what you want to do is not sleeping
| 15 hrs a day versus getting inspired by some idea
| t43562 wrote:
| Why shouldn't you sleep more if you want to? Why should
| you feel under pressure to not sleep because you have to
| add 0s to some billionaire's account - that's exactly
| what my daily work is about BTW.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| You can do both at the same time.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| Maybe low hanging fruit only hang low in hindsight. There's a
| kind of control-certainty associated with some things, we got
| this, and there are some things where we at least know what we
| need to work on. Other things are more vague. So we now have
| more of the first category (in some areas) and this makes the
| apples appear to be lower than they were and most likely still
| are.
| mitchbob wrote:
| Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765
| (120 comments)
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _In Praise of Idleness (1932)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29338666 - Nov 2021 (170
| comments)
|
| _In Praise of Idleness (1932)_ -
| 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 - Jan 2016 (25
| comments)
|
| _In Praise of Idleness (1932)_ -
| 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 - Feb 2015 (50
| comments)
|
| _Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness (1932)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765 - Oct 2013 (120
| comments)
|
| _In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396167 - June 2010 (5
| comments)
|
| _In Praise of Idleness_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187681 - March 2010 (4
| comments)
|
| _In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85325 - Dec 2007 (1
| comment)
| quercusa wrote:
| _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 wrote:
| It's been found difficult, and left untried
| kubb wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| Trading pain for fear is one approach I guess. I don't know a
| lot of 1%ers without coin sickness.
| dambi0 wrote:
| What are you scared of? Why 1%? Why not the 0.5% or the 2%?
| It all seems rather arbitrary.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > There will be hundreds of people here that fit this
| perfectly, or am I wrong about the demographics of HN?
|
| Why would there be people on HN not wanting people earning less
| than them to have leisure?
|
| People are free to bicycle, hike, rock-climb, and do whatever
| the fuck they want.
|
| The only thing I don't want is wage-earner longing for my
| savings through taxes so they can buy Luis Vitton man purses.
|
| And I want to be free to buy whatever the fuck I want with my
| hard-earned money: be it luxury cars or audiophile (audiofool,
| I don't care) audio gear.
|
| But I don't give a crap what others do.
| kzz102 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| t43562 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Because some people want to sleep outside. Are you proposing we
| round them up into camps against their will? Very European of
| you.
| t43562 wrote:
| 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?
| Aunche wrote:
| 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.
| anon7725 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Thank goodness there are people who do build their morality on
| "doing stuff": surgeons, cancer researchers, etc.
|
| Some people innovate, and some (most) maintain. A healthy
| society needs a spectrum of endeavour.
|
| I think our fundamental problem is that many of us do work that
| does not feel meaningful, and it seems that a lot of meaningful
| work is not respected and compensated as it should be.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I agree strongly with the last two paragraphs. I think the
| surgeon/medical example is nice (though not they certainly
| don't work for free), but a lot of the ambitious people I've
| known all sought middle management or higher in some big
| company, which hardly seems like a good application of human
| potential.
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the URL from 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
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| 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...
| malingo wrote:
| 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/Hi...
| bogdart wrote:
| 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.
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