Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS, was a Welsh philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, pacifist, and prominent rationalist. Although he was usually regarded as English, as he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."
In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays is a collection of essays by Bertrand Russell published in 1935. The collection includes essays on the subjects of sociology, philosophy and economics.
"Modern Man thinks everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and not for its own sake." In Praise of Idleness
Bertrand Russell, as we all know from his Autobiography, was a man possessed of a prodigious intellect and a nearly insatiable appetite for intellectual work.
The second quality, so alien by tradition to a Peer of the British Empire, and to the sensibly easy-going manner in which he was raised, came from his inner anxiety.
A screaming anxiety.
You see, his first love Alys - his first wife - was an inveterate cheater. With men, and other ladies. Naturally, he flew into a rage.
Russell, a dyed-in-the-wool Victorian puritan sorta like me - thought lividly otherwise than his wife - but he was now trapped in an alien world. Divorce was a no-no for Victorians. Containing his outrage, he flung himself into his mathematical and scientific work.
Without remission - in itself a Perfect Storm.
Well, of course his sanity was affected. He started REALLY losing it.
Until - that is - he discovered the psychological benison of alternating his assiduous industry with protracted periods of doing Absolutely Nothing. Just Therapeutic Daydreaming.
Hence this essay.
And it works, as Celeste Headlee writes in her recent British bestseller Do Nothing.
It works wonders, too of course, for us online labourers for online bosses.
You know, in 1985 New Age music was all the vogue:
A frenetic worker at that time in frenetic salt mines for imperious and slave-driving senior managers, I spent long, chilling hours - in my free time from work - Doing Absolutely Nothing but living in the headspace between my headphones.
The audio cassettes of glorious nondescript droning hummed endlessly through my unwinding brain.
So, in view of this essay, there was a real method to my madness.
I was putting my health first.
And I had learned from a Master:
For I had read and relished Russell's delightful essay -
BEFORE I entered the workplace -
And, again long retired, now at peace with my healing wounds of experience.
I would seriously love to become more idle. That is, at this moment, my highest aspiration. Right now I sort of just want to shoot myself in the throat because I feel like all I do is go to work, and stay late at work, and then feel terrible at times like this one because I should be catching up on work before I go to bed, but actually I just got back from work, plus I gotta get up soon and go back to work, and in any case I'm starting to feel like quite the dull girl and all this work work work work is really kind of just totally destroying my body and crushing my spirit.... Do you guys remember when I didn't even HAVE a job, and all I did was lie around all day long reading novels and eating bonbons and writing book reports? God, those were the days. I mean, they really were. I honestly used to think that I had something called a "work ethic," and that I actually did enjoy working, provided it was the right sort of job, but since then I've discovered the truth, which is that I'm an essentially lazy person, and if I had my way, I'd have nothing to do with this depraved institution called "earning a living."
Anyway, if Bertrand Russell has got some suggestions on how I can create and maintain a life of blissful indolence, I would love to hear them. Of course, the predictable irony here is that there's no way in hell that I will ever find the time to read this book. Yeah. Ugh. Somebody call the wah-mbulance.
So far, I've only read the title essay, "In Praise of Idleness", but I must say that it rings as true (if not truer!) today than it must have in 1932 during the Great Depression.
The value and virtue of "hard work" and the vilification of "idleness" is indeed a dual construct of the upper (leisure) class and the puritanical (right-wing) religious origins of our country. Must keep those working-class lackeys occupied so they don't revolt! Or fall to drinking, gambling, and crime!
There is nothing wrong with "idleness", especially if it is active, involved idleness. A contradiction, you say? Oh no. Russell uses the dual example of "peasant dances" set against urban leisure such as "seeing cinema" and "listening to the radio". Today I would use the examples of declining volunteerism, creative hobbies/crafts, even active sports, set against television and, yes, still, cinema. The problem is not so much in the leisure as in the passiveness and placation of society. This kind of social construct, being fed pablum by the mass media (including the news outlets), told what to think, how to feel, what matters to us, is as sure an oppression as any form of dictatorship or totalitarianism. (At this point, I could devolve into a long rant on the power elite and class structure, but I won't.... it's a little off topic...)
What really concerns me in this particular essay, though, is the distribution of work and the distribution of goods (those goods necessary for survival: food, shelter). There are enough resources in this country to go around, except that those resources have been hoarded by those in the highest echelons. For example, there are an estimated 1.5 million homeless people in the US (this is a low estimate in my opinion: homelessness is very difficult to quantify especially as it is in constant flux, and there are questions of who, exactly, should be included in such a count). At any rate, there are currently approximately 750,000 foreclosed homes on the market, owned by banks or investors, sitting empty. This does not include all the "newly" constructed homes that never did sell after real-estate crash. That, in case you can't do the math, is one empty home for every two homeless people. Why not train and/or employ some of these people to do renovation on the many trashed or "scavenged" foreclosed homes in return for reduced occupancy fees? It would solve at least two problems with one blow. But no, those empty homes represent material value to the banks and investors, and they will not share those resources, even when the perceived market value of those resources has fallen by 50% or more!
But again, I'm drifting off topic. Read the essay. We should all be able to meet our needs on 4 hours of work per day, and the rest of our time should be a choice, between working harder for "extra" consumer goods, spending time with family and friends, or painting, writing great literature, working on solving the worlds social ills, or all the many other things that one can't do while drudging away for 8 to 10 hours a day in jobs that are frequently pointless in the first place.
Wise words. Actually, I assume that whatever needed to be known has been long said by giants like Russel, it is time to do sth accordingly. When are we gonna take action?
I am a massive fan of Bertrand Russell. I find his writing sophisticated, innovatory and for his time (writing in the 20's/30's) highly revolutionary!
I love his thoughts on socialism, despite the fact that they're so idealistic. He makes me live in hope for a better world! His take on idleness is fantastic; everyone needs downtime and the ability to be a human "being" not doing.
A pleasure of a read and one I'll be dipping back into many times over.