The Importance of Being Idle
theamericanscholar.org113 points by Caiero 2 days ago
113 points by Caiero 2 days ago
It feels like there is no correct translation for it in English -- idleness carries connotations of laziness whereas a better way to think about it is being aware and present of the moment.
I have been practicing Buddhism for a while and it often is indescribably blissful to just sit in nature, feeling the wind in my hair and sun on my back.
Anyone can experience this door with just a little bit of practice and I encourage everyone to try.
I have never practiced Buddhism and it is still indescribably blissful to sit in a clearing in a forest, provided you aren't sitting on the wrong kind of anthill.
The jargon term, slack, comes to mind, in the concept-cluster of the old Google 20%-time, Slackware Linux, and Church of the SubGenius.
In general use though slack has an even stronger connotation of e.g. slacking off and not doing anything useful with the time.
I think I would say a better variant would be "the importance of being still"
As a french I like the term "idle", as the state my computer switch to when i'm not asking it anything.
I started with “How to Be Idle” by Hodgkinson about 20 years ago. Found “The importance of living “ by Lin yutang. I now have a small collection of books about idleness… yet here i am working and then throwing myself into working on a century house in my spare time… feeling starved for idleness. Yet my most creative ideas for it come when I’m idle.
Idleness led to Taoism, the pursuit of being useless. Led to Buddhism: just sit.
As the quote sort of goes: The great preponderance of society’s problems come from people’s inability to sit quietly in a room by themselves.
It’s a noble pursuit, idleness. Really. If you haven’t tried it, give it a real shake. A little more might fall out than you expect.
These essays on idleness, along with the more radical ones against work in general (love Bob Black’s take on it), have been great comfort to my tired soul.
I will once again recommend the works of philosopher Byung-Chul Han, especially The Burnout Society.
The older I get, the more pointless I find the modern goal of productivity. If there is one asymptotic goal one should rather pursue, is to do the most with the least bit of effort. And it all circles back to the teachings of the Tao. Be like water, not like the machine.
I don't know... I know a few people who inherited enough money to be idle and they don't seem particularly happy with their idleness. Could of course be the social pressure we live in, and that could change if we're all idle.
It's conditioning. We cannot be happy idle because society deems idleness as bad. Just like people cannot be happy with a balding hairline because society has deemed it to be ugly. If the trend changes in a century and balding is suddenly hot then the same people would be happy.
The ability to be at peace
Everyone struggles with it. Would be nice to have some societal hooks so that more people could be confidently serene
And then go about their day
What do you mean by societal hooks?
The ability to be at peace, in my world view, stems first and foremost from the ability to be at peace with yourself. Being able to look in a mental mirror, and accepting the image staring back as yourself, warts and all. It's not exactly liking every last imperfection, rather not feeling guilty for not measuring up in all aspects to the ideals of a society or dreams of your younger self. Accepting that you are not the universal paragon and probably never will be, all the while not giving up on the idea of improving yourself.
Only when one can be locked in a room with oneself for a measure of time and not get in a fight, can we talk about being at peace with society and other external factors.
Earlier discussion of Lafarge's The Right to Be Lazy (217 comments):
I hope that people realize still that LLMs will never ever be able to produce a piece like this. This is extraordinarily written. It is etymologically out of the average. It’s complex. Concepts intertwine and build on each other. The linguistic choices are unusual but perfectly placed.
>>“But even idlers, try as they might, cannot ignore the passage of time. In 1911, a dozen years before Capek published his essay, Paul Lafargue and his wife committed suicide—he was 69; she was 66. His reason, it seems to me, dovetailed with his philosophy”.
“Dovetailed”. Call me when an LLM will ever be able to pick and use such a perfect, yet statistically improbable, word to construct such a sentence.
If you’re picking apart sentences looking for signs of AI then you’re already rotted. Address how it makes you feel and the argument being made.
Determining if something’s AI generated just gives us another reason not to engage. Like solving a puzzle on the kids menu instead of eating the food on the plate
> Address how it makes you feel and the argument being made.
Why are you telling other people what to talk or not to talk about?
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problem with being idle is you end up with nothing to show for it
and the problem with always needing something to show is that you can never find peace...