Idleism
Not to be confused with “idealism.” Not everything needs to be productive. Life happens in the idle margins, margins that are shrinking by the day.
Idleism
The internet doesn’t have to demand our presence the way it currently does. It shouldn’t be something we have to look at all time. If it wasn’t, maybe we’d finally be free to hang out. The first time I ever heard about Facebook, back in 2004, was from someone proudly declaring that she had just spent four hours using it. At the time, it was... See more
Drew Austin • It's Time to Lie Down and Be Counted
He took up this path not out of some particularly lazy disposition, but because of his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding. ‘[T]o do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual,’ Oscar Wilde observed decades before Cioran.
Costica Bradatan • Learning to Be a Loser: A Philosopher’s Case for Doing Nothing
Thinking About Attention -- Walk with Me
youtube.comonly when we have shifted into the rest-and-digest response of the nervous system will our brains allow us to reclaim our attention, access the power of our imagination, and unlock our subconscious.
James Doty • Mind Magic
Aggressively uncreative practices such as aimless wandering or birdwatching (or, as she perceptively calls it, “bird listening”) offer “an antidote to the rhetoric of growth” that surrounds us every day. There is ultimately a feminist and environmental case to be made for doing nothing: if we can shift our notion of constructive social behavior
... See moreSamuel W. Franklin • The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History
“Under the pretext of saving labor, the ultimate end of this technics is to displace life, or rather, to transfer the attributes of life to the machine and the mechanical collective, allowing only so much of the organism to remain as may be controlled and manipulated.”
L. M. Sacasas • (100) Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On It Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On It
Emil Cioran never had a real job. ‘I avoided at any price the humiliation of a career,’ he observed toward the end of his life. ‘I preferred to live like a parasite [rather] than to destroy myself by keeping a job.’
Costica Bradatan • Learning to Be a Loser: A Philosopher’s Case for Doing Nothing
The Internet is Destroying Your Attention: How to Survive the Attention Economy
highexistence.com
“The culture tells us two things can’t coexist. People say to me ‘I want to love my life but also pay my rent’ or ‘I want to be super mature but also child-like’, or ‘I want to travel but I’m also a homebody’ or ‘I want to be productive and also relaxed.’ Calm down... you can do both.” — Martha Beck