In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell

Thanks to HN, I get to read some amazing stuff always. I often used to think that world is moving at a faster rate than required and there is no pause in the process anywhere. People are working continuously without breaks, making more money (whether they are happy or not) without giving themselves some time to be idle. Idleness is simply not acceptable in this modern society and we all think that being idle is a bad thing to happen. 

Here is an interesting read that make us learn how important it is to have idle time in our lives. It is a long read but worth every word. Here are some interesting excerpts that makes us think:

Link to the post: http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

…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?

…Why Idle time is necessary?

In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but in spite of this drawback it contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never have emerged from barbarism.

Cheers,
Srik

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