In Praise of Idleness

Yesterday a friend told me where to find live internet broadcast of Polish Public Radio, so ever  since I’ve been listening to Trójka. This morning (well, my morning, but in Poland mid afternoon) I listened to a long discussion about not wanting to do things. Some callers were funny, others not so much, but the most interesting thing was mention of an essay by Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness. For someone still looking for a job, it’s a very refreshing thought. Maybe more so, for someone who sees work is a means to a happy life, and not the goal of it.

He writes: “The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.” Then he continues with the following thought.

“This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?”

Is then our relentless pursuit of “more” coupled with ambition causing misery, because we are expected and we expect ourselves not to have leisure? Maybe, just maybe we should get a little lazy…

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