So we surely made progress here in the direction of being more idle (though one could question wether you are truly “idle” if you fill your free time with staring at your phones screen, consuming the latest societal rage bait. But i’d say in the spirit of the essay, yes, we are much more idle thanks to tech).

BUT! Is this a survival strategy? While we Europeans are super idle, Chinese arose to be a super power. The US dominates tech and the future technologies. Russia is banging on our front door and we dont have the military means and will to put an end to it. So while idle ness is a great mode for Being, is it a great mode for making sure the own civilization survives?

Thats always my problem with those ideas. They sound super nice in theory, but in the harsh world, there will always be a predator who just works a little bit hardwr to get you …

anyway! loved the essay. thanks for sharing

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.

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.

We have all learned (especially men I think) that we define parts of ourselves through what we achieve. However, is that a good idea? Also, what counts towards that goal? Did I achieve something if I support a friend that struggles? Or do I only achieve something that can be added to my CV? Who am I trying to show what about me?

I absolutely love the idea of being idle. It strictly goes againt current societal developments, but I think it would do a lot of good for a lot of people. We don't have to perform all the time, we don't have to be perfect all the time. What's the end-goal anyway? Rich people, statistically speaking, are not more happy. Managers with 60 hours a week often suffer from depression or burnout. The only two valid reasons in my mind to work hard are: 1. bring in enough money to live comfortably (which unfortunately isn't achievable for many) and 2. do good for society. Meanwhile, most people are struggling to even get by and tech CEOs can buy a new fancy car every day and tell us how to deal with the disruptions they cause? They tell us how we can save the economy? Why us? What did we do for the economy to be bad? Did we start wars, increase the cost of oil, create a self-inflicted banking crisis? What's it to us anyway? We're the ones suffering in the end, regardless of what we do.

I also find it quite irritating that the comments started discussing geopolitical power conflicts regarding idleness.

Anyway, I'm going to shut down my computer now and enjoy the sun. Happy idleness guys!

In our modern society, however, we hear the phrase "time is money". So, if you are idle, you are not making money. Instead of being idle, you should be busy. "business" is good.

I learn this play of words in Spanish. Idle in Spanish is "ocio". Business in Spanish is "negocio". Thus negocio is the combination of words "negación" and "ocio". The phrase "negación del ocio" translates as "idleness denial/negation".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33901623

>>“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.