Bertrand Russell
1932
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From the jump, so many lolz:
Every one knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. This traveler was on the right lines.
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Re putting money into Treasuries: ouch!
One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the expenditure of most civilized governments consists in payments for past wars and preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man’s economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings.
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Reductive but witty:
First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
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Is it really the case that under a century ago work was solely either physical or managerial? Kinda doubt it, but it makes for a good little homage to Ambrose Bierce.
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Tart iconoclastic tweaking of values and definitions and noses.
“The gospel of work,” etc.
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The conception of duty, speaking historically, has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than their own.
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I have no idea what this man is trying to say about the Soviets.
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20th century philosophers (yes, all of ’em) really liked the word “slave.”
“The Slave State.”
“A slave morality.”
Chill on the slavery, sir.
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The fact is that moving matter about, while a certain amount of it is necessary to our existence, is emphatically not one of the ends of human life.
If we’re talking about hauling rocks and digging latrines to appease Pharaoh or whatever, I can get with this.
But there’s lots of “moving matter about”—turning the compost, planting a fruit tree with your BAAW, chopping onions and celery for soup, whittling a stick on the porch of a cabin in the woods while you listen to kids whoop and holler at the creek, said kids spending hours moving rocks into the creek in an ever-failing attempt to dam it, raising a barn with your Amish bros when you’re Amish, removing a cancerous growth when you’re a doctor, et cetera ad infinitum—that could absolutely be among the ends of human life.
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Serious-minded persons, for example, are continually condemning the habit of going to the cinema, and telling us that it leads the young into crime.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA what a world.
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I don’t always agree with this man, but damn he’s sharp.
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Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was rendered possible only by the labors of the many. But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technic it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.
I think this could be true. I want it to be true. Is it true?
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As with Jules LaFargue, the title is perhaps misleading.
Here’s what I really wanted him to write: an actual paean to idleness.
Long lazy sentences unfolding down the page.
Loveliness of nowhere to go.
Lying in thick grass beside a glassy slow-moving river.
A lone insect whirs.
Evocations of brilliant sun and thickets of deep shade.
Basket of good bread and cheese and stone fruit, bottle of wine chilling in a bucket.
Lying on a blanket, book forgotten, limbs intertwined with the beloved.
Can someone please just write me that?
It was clearly much too long ago that I read Russell’s tome on idleness! (I think I was ~13?) I appreciate your brief/witty rundown. (Interesting though how he gave many words to investing as a subject...) Forgive me for an errant incident of snacking on literature, & not re-reading it before recommending. I realize now my youthful/idealistic self mostly attached to the (heady) promise of the title, wanting support for the idyllic ideas you so rightly beg to be written; ‘a paean to idleness.’ Noble idleness.