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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

>we also need to challenge the cultural ethic that teaches us to value ourselves in proportion to our capacity for “economically productive” labour. Human beings are more than just workers. We need to learn how to value idleness.

I think much more than valueing idleness it's also a massive indictement of the system we live in. The number of people who I've talked to who legitimately don't know what to do without work during the pandemic is staggering.

It says a lot that as a society there is so little attention paid to instilling curiousity in people and fostering people's potential that, left without menial work to do, nobody knows what to do with themselves.

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> The number of people who I've talked to who legitimately don't know what to do without work during the pandemic is staggering.

The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.

-- Bertrand Russell http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

I'm not sure that this little nugget of wisdom has withstood the test of time. The average number of hours worked has fallen dramatically since the 30s[0] even as interest in passive entertainment has skyrocketed.

[0]https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/

> as interest in passive entertainment has skyrocketed

I would like to see some data on this. It may seem like it but I would say it's quite the opposite.

Why do you think so?

I dunno. Here is just one random stat that came to mind. Boston marathon participation throughout the years

  1897 - 18
  1930 - 218
  1970 - 1174
  2000 - 17813
  2019 - 30234

https://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/results/participat...

Still, would be interesting to see some comprehensive study on active leisure.

Meh. I would bet that has way more to do with the cost of travelling to Boston for the average person around the world and the growth in prestige of that particular event.

Also, athleisure is "active" in the literal sense, but is it contributing anything back to society? I guess one could argue it collectively reduces the cost of our growing passiveness. But I would argue, as someone who loves exercising, that exercise is just a video game that makes you feel progressively better the longer you play it instead of worse. It doesn't serve a broader purpose beyond a certain point of basic health, unless you are so good that other people derive satisfaction from your accomplishments (pro athlete) or you are doing it to form social connections (golf, intramural sports leagues, etc.) or like break a world record or something.

The core of it stands that 'urban populations have become mainly passive'. Perhaps I'd consider revising to replace passive with consumers. So, we've been taught and continually urged to spend our idle hours consuming. So, it isn't a surprise to me that most folks don't know any other way to spend their time.

Consumption usually costs money and increases money velocity, which leads to a better economy. So it's a bit different than "idleness."

A better economy... Please define "better".

Money is worse when its velocity is low. This is associated with hoarding of cash.

The world could have 10000T in cash but if no exchange happens, everyone is poor.

Endless consumption is a delusion, regardless of how much "better" the economy appears.

Idleness doesn't necessitate consumption, and it's interesting that that conclusion was jumped to.

Leisure != time outside of work. If you're commuting, if you're too exhausted to get off the couch, if you're on-call and worrying about interruptions, then you're not truly at leisure.

Why do you associate those things specifically with urban life? Cinemas, televised sports, and listening to music are pretty broadly-enjoyed things. I don’t think they’re particularly “passive” either, but they’re certainly not uniquely urban.

When I think of unique opportunities in urban environments, I’m thinking more along the lines of nightlife, live sports, music, and theatre, boutique shopping, art galleries, etc. which I don’t consider to be particularly “passive” activities either.

That is a quote from Russell from 1932 written before desegregation, white flight, and the explosion of the suburbs so the differences between urban and rural life was far more stark than it is today. The big networks like NBC and CBS were born just a few years before and it took them until WWII IIRC to really penetrate into all the rural areas of the US (in the 1930 census only 40% of households owned a radio, mostly as a sign of middle class wealth in urban areas). Sports teams could only be supported by relatively high densities of people because television wasn't yet a major source of revenue.

Today's equivalent would be smartphones, which are definitely harder to use the further out you are from civilization (I've got no reception 40 minutes from DT San Diego!)

Yeah, I think Russell got this one wrong and Vonnegut got it right. Consuming-all, creating-none became normal because of mass media. Its availability drove down the social value of playing on an unremarkable, very-local sports team, or playing the piano unremarkably, or singing, or being pretty good at telling a story (but not as good as the radio), and so on.

Know what you see references to all the time in previous centuries? Reading aloud as entertainment among family and friends, sometimes even in public places, and even staging little dramas at home. Kids might do the latter still, a bit, but one gets the impression it was much more common then. People didn't stop doing that because they were working more, they stopped because radio was invented.

When there was no radio or gramophone, if you could play the piano tolerably well and sing a little you were, to your social circle, hot shit. Not so much afterward. You could play a pick-up game on the green off town square against a neighboring town and people would show up and watch with enthusiasm. When things were expected to be repaired and a blanket might cost quite a damn bit to buy, being able to sew pretty well or being fairly handy at woodworking was far more valuable than it is now. Mass production has driven the social (and economic) value of both way down.

Direct personal enjoyment wasn't the only thing one could hope to get from all those "leisure" activities.

Oh, your sketches and watercolors? Yeah they're nice I guess. Have you seen Deviantart? Instagram? I follow 200 artists better than you, from around the globe, and most of them aren't even good enough to make any money at it. And so on. Social value approaching zero.

I agree it is more about this kind of raising the bar than "lack of free time". I can't even stand watching college-level sports anymore because the quality of play is so low compared to getting the best 500 or 1000 people on the planet together in a professional league.

That said, I think there's also room for a new kind of very-local active-not-passive activity to spring up. We already see the beginning of this with mass tourism and the rise of mass-amateur photography thanks to digital cameras and cell phones.

Does anyone really think their picture of the Grand Canyon taken on their iPhone is better than the thousands of professional photos already taken of it? Yet people (me included!) continue to take pictures.

I'm not really sure exactly what form it will take but that kind of "sure but I haven't personally experienced it" take feels like it might re-open the doors that were slammed shut by the kind of mass media effect you describe.

Compound that with a kind of long-tail niche of hyperlocal activities and there's more scope for hope in the future. Sure things like theater and music have been are a lost cause. But maybe birdwatching in a nearby national park? Or groups that handle beach cleanup or beach erosion?

Maybe we're just in the middle of a (long) transition toward those kind of things.

The photos of Grand Canyon require literally no time investment into building a skill. I think this is about as much (i.e. zero) as most people are willing to invest into totally non-productive hobbies right now.

For instance, many people are still gardening - not only because they like it, but also because the product, a beautiful garden, makes the effort worth it for them. I doubt many people would still garden if we could just display an equivalent garden in their AR glasses - similarly to how almost no one plays the instrument now because we've got recordings of music.

Because at the time Russell wrote that (1932), the Suburbs didn't exist yet. If you didn't live in the city, you were agrarian; think sharecroppers living with dirt floors (the dust bowl/Grapes of Wrath were the 1930's). Most "modern" leisure activities were only enjoyed by urbanites.

> The number of people who I've talked to who legitimately don't know what to do without work during the pandemic is staggering.

I wouldn't look at that and conclude that these people are just domesticated livestock who have no self-worth beyond their job. A lot of legitimate hobbies and even just normal socializing are completely shut down or heavily restricted in a lot of places.

It's unfortunate that passive entertainment is all that we crave, people in general have become "lazy", they simply don't want to put the effort in doing anything "active" > sports, art, music. And I disagree, you can pick a new sport, prior to the pandemic I worked out at the gym and played racquetball. Now I work out at home with kettle bells and resistance bands. Picked up mountain biking and tennis, which are "socially distanced" sports. You can learn a musical instrument, cook, bake, paint, ride a motorcycle, kayak, take pictures, no one is stopping you.

Yes and no. Kayaking needs transport to a body of water. Biking is okay, but some people find it hard to breathe with a mask on while biking. Musical instruments work if you have a private residence and already know how to play. If you don't many people prefer learning from a tutor.

Of course there are some things we can do by ourselves, but not everyone is made that way. Lots and lots of people would rather while time away. "Dumb" by Nirvana captures this pretty well.

Good grief, people. If you're wearing a mask while on a bike (distant from people) you're doing it wrong.

I don’t think this is true at all. I often wear a mask when it’s not entirely necessary, just to be on the safe side in case something happens or I encounter someone unexpectedly.

Sure, I’ll almost always be fine in these circumstances, but the “cost” of wearing a mask is really nothing compared to the protection afforded me in the event of the unforeseen.

Absolutely cannot agree enough with this sentiment and I do the same out of what seems like basic cautionary instinct, though the sheer quantity of people (perhaps a loudly vocal minority) who seem to consider the particularly minor inconvenience of wearing a mask to be too high of a "cost" continues to surprise me.

In some jurisdictions it's mandatory to wear a mask when out in public. A lot of the definitions are wishy washy (medically approved, for example), is a national forest a "public space"? technically, yes...

Austin, Texas. One of "the worst hotspots".

Can confirm that not one soul has hassled any of us for riding our bikes in the woods with our masks off.

Were it not for bicycle motocross, I think I would have jumped in front of a bus by now. Seeing my friends in the woods is one of the only things keeping me sane.

I cannot recommend cycling highly enough; not just as a pandemic activity, but as a way of life.

I live in Gent, Belgium, which has more bike traffic than car traffic on any given day. Biking here is treated as a way of life. I've been spoken to for biking without a mask, even though I was not in a heavily populated area (I was riding along a canal outside of the city, and was accosted by a police officer riding in the opposite direction).

But even so, so what? The mask isn't going to let me ride as vigorously as I normally would, but I can still get out into nature and enjoy some exercise and new scenery.

I think this is part of it. Lots of things require social contact in parts of the process. If your hobby produces something useful, it might also require a way to distribute it in a marketplace: say bread, or cheese or beer, furniture, etc., etc. At some point your hobby can cause things to pile up in your residence and that's no good either.

Isn't that exactly the point? It's just extended a little, with "legitimate hobbies" and "normal socializing" not available. So take that away and then they are domesticated livestock? If you don't have the ability to do something with your time outside of your normal environment, that is definitely an indicator that something is really off. There is SOOOO much you can do. I wouldn't even know where to start even if I didn't have my job and was locked in a room.

that's half the point though - the pandemic means we're all locked away as individuals, roommates, or family units, with few exceptions.

I'd love to go jam with my band, but we're all in lockdown mode. I'd love to go to the playground with my kids, but they're all closed. I'd love to have a playdate with my friend's kids, but everyone is self-isolating.

These are not normal circumstances.

Sure, in the strictly technical sense, there's "SOOOO much you can do" — but that's not really useful information, is it? Just because you could pound sand, or eat dirt, or bang your head into a wall, that doesn't mean those activities are enjoyable or enriching. The challenge is not finding something you can do, it's finding something you can do that's more rewarding than staring at your phone, and there are a lot fewer things that fall into that category, and they're not all the same for everyone.

In prison, the worst punishment you can get is being moved AWAY from all the rapists and murderers, and into solitary confinement. Humans are extremely social creatures.

I still have my job, but not being able to go out and socialize in the evenings and on weekends is driving me a little nutty. Sure, I work on some side projects, read books, work out, watch films, etc., but it just doesn't come remotely close to filling the same void for me as having a drink and good conversation (in real-life) with my close friends, or swinging by my climbing gym, or seeing live music.

I don't think that means something is "really off" with me, or that I'm "domesticated livestock" - it just means my hobbies and the way I like to spend my time aren't as pandemic-friendly as yours.

> I wouldn't even know where to start

Right.

I have a different perspective.

I see work as the way we contribute to society, how we help others with things that are important for them. In return, other people work on things that benefit me.

This is how we can live in wealth and peace unimaginable to most of history. This is a fantastic historic achievement, and I want to keep it going.

I do agree that we are much more than just workers, of course. But that feels like a strawman argument. Does anyone actually argue that?

And likewise, we are more than just self pleasers. If all you do is trying to entertain yourself every moment, I think a big part of life is missing.

This echoes my favourite passage from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations:

“If any action of yours, then, does not have direct or indirect relation to the social end, it pulls your life apart and destroys its unity.”

That said, keeping yourself mentally healthy is just as important, to the social end.

There are a large fraction of Americans who don’t have that leisure though. They’re forced to work long and arduous hours at meaningless jobs for low wages, because they can’t survive otherwise. Hard to see yourself as someone who is valued beyond their economic output in those cases.

I'm in my late 20s and used to believe something like this, but I've become quite cynical. I think that modern work is just about capturing wealth and passing it onto the wealthy, so they can have more control over their time and can enjoy the fruits of our labours.

I think people conflate the above with "wanting to contribute to society and benefit others" because you're not usually willing to pay for things that don't benefit you. However we all know there's a massive section of capitalism that's built on manipulating people to buy things they don't need or will actually do them harm, and there's also a huge section that benefits from desperation and will use it's political weight to increase said desperation if possible.

Of course in principle it's possible to have a company that balances a healthy profit with a useful and beneficial product, but in practice a vast majority of companies will abuse its customers and employees as much as legally permissible if it increases the incomes of the upper echelons. At least that's my view.

So nowadays I just do my job to get my stagnant wage, so that I can pay my extortionate rent.

> Of course in principle it's possible to have a company that balances a healthy profit with a useful and beneficial product, but in practice a vast majority of companies will abuse its customers and employees as much as legally permissible if it increases the incomes of the upper echelons. At least that's my view.

Survival of the fittest. Competition on the market guarantees that, over time, the companies that do useful things and balance that with profits and employee needs will die off, while companies good at maximizing revenue by any means necessary will flourish.

That's my cynical realization. Both too little and too much competition on the market is poison.

> I think that modern work is just about capturing wealth and passing it onto the wealthy, so they can have more control over their time and can enjoy the fruits of our labours.

wether or not that is a concious goal. it defintiely seems the result that is happening in our current culture

sometimes i think of it like a horse and a jockey, somehow the horse was acclimated to allowing someone to ride on its back, tell it where to go, and how fast to run... in return the horse gets a stable, some food and a trough... but even if the horse is compensated for its "work" its still a releationsnip of "rider" and "rode on"

The day I drove into Mexico it was a huge shock to see so many people around just enjoying their time - paying with their younger relatives on the beach, playing guitar, singing and dancing. My fascination and disbelief at the amount of leisure time everyone has continued for two years through all of Latin America, and then for another three years when I drove right around Africa.

Having come from years grinding at a desk job, it was startling to see that many millions (probably billions) of people live extremely happy and fulfilled lives without the need for menial jobs and "a career". Money is useful, but if you can shortcut straight to happiness why bother with the inefficient middleman.

We in the West tend to think our way of life is the "best" or the "only", but that is very far from the truth, and I urge anyone who is curious to spend time in parts of the world where work is not the meaning of life. Spend a summer in Spain and enjoy siesta.

I found the Spanish lifestyle harrowing. Many work for hours in the morning, take an hours long break, then work into the late evening. Maybe the warmer climate or tourism economy agree factors. But it didn't strike me as appealing. They also have high unemployment along the youth.

Where did you go? Because the average Mexican works more hours than every other OCDE country[1].

[1] https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm

You probably don't see these workers as a tourist (aside from workers in the service industry I guess). You see the people that are out having a leasurely time.

I spent roughly a month per country in 17 countries in Latin America over 2 years, and 35 countries around Africa in 3 years.

theroadchoseme.com

West way of life is expensive that is why we have to grind at a desk job.

What do we pay for with that grind: low violent crime rates, good roads so lower amount of traffic deaths, better health care.

Being poor or sick in Latin America or Africa sucks.

> Being poor or sick in Latin America or Africa sucks.

Speaking of the US, being poor and sick here also sucks but differently. You won't die of malaria. Instead, you will spend the rest of your days scraping pennies to pay for an outrageous medical bill because you don't belong to the class of people with good employer-provided health insurance.

Good roads and cars exist in Latin America and Africa as well of course.

The anxiety of not knowing when or how you're going to be able to support yourself and/or your dependents can have a pretty chilling effect on one's openness to experience and idle creativity. It's very easy to get yourself into a cycle of existential paralysis where you can't/don't allow yourself any opportunity to do something normally considered "frivolous" despite the fact that there's no real opportunity for you to do something normally considered "useful".

Even though the actual opportunity cost of doing something "frivolous" is zero given the circumstances, the self-imposed perceived cost could feel much higher. There's a difference between not knowing what to do with oneself and feeling like one shouldn't be doing any of those things.

I get your point, but because we're in a lockdown, a whole host of things that we'd normally have available to us are gone. Normally when people have time off, they can still meet up with friends, or hang out at the coffee shop, or go to a meetup or a conference. Now we're idle at home without much-needed social connections to grease the daily wheels.

Meetups and conferences are happening online now and it's actually pretty nice. For example, if the Julia Conference had not gone online this year, there's really no way I could've gone to Baltimore for most of a week to attend. But because it was online it was not only free, but also accessible. They had discord channels to hangout in as well as other ways to socially engage.

The most recent DefCon conference was held virtually and they referred to it as "safe mode" which I thought was a funny, poignant touch for a computer conference.

Right. Even activities you can do alone are distorted by isolation. I usually cycle alone 80% of the time. Now I do 100%. I have less motivation for my solo rides, even though I would be alone this year, or last year, no difference. Last Friday I decided a ride with one other person would be safe enough, and I find myself more motivated to ride alone afterwards.

That makes sense. There's an extra benefit to having company even if the goal of the activity is not to socialize itself. Just their mere presence feels good.

I was thinking the other day that I found it easier to dive deep into my side projects when I have the contrast of social outlets. If I just have my side projects, the balance is out of whack. It doesn't feel as meaningful as an outlet if it's the main thing. It's no longer this fun thing to do to give myself time away from others. All time is time away from others now.

This. People are conditioned to non-productive, consumptive leisure. Some have hobbies and can find meaning in productive leisure, but for those who don't, after a while binging Netflix is just meaningless. Creating things is a very important way for humans to find meaning and to be in the Zone.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand I don’t think we should be overprescribing any particular path towards finding meaning in one’s life. On the other hand promoting other possible paths is probably a good thing.

Some people genuinely find “work” meaningful and purposeful and that should be okay if that’s what they value. If other things provide them meaning, that’s okay too.

Industrial Society and its Future has a far more interesting take on this topic, and one that I haven't seen effectively refuted. (If you have examples, please comment!)

Specialization trades off innovation for efficiency while generalism/curiosity trades off efficiency for innovation.

If someone is going to say human beings are more than just workers it would be helpful to say exactly what else they can be that doesn't involve work.

I think the point is that you can be whatever you want. It's a change from being forced to do something just to pay the bills to doing what you want because you want to do it due to personal interest. It seems to me that many people need to be told what to be interested in. It is the reason we have fads of interest, driven by media exposure or personalities. It is very rare for somebody to decide to do something without some type of stimulus.

Yes you can be whatever the limitations of your resources and responsibilities allow you to be.

Turns out for many people, there’s not much else they can be that would be an improvement over whatever they currently are.

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