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
To feel creatively and intellectually alive, you have to stop mindlessly consuming the Internet and start mindfully curating it.
A High-Level Introduction to Idleism
Not to be confused with idealism. Although, I wouldn’t mind making the argument that idle is the ideal. Some principles of Idleism, in no particular order:
You are more than an hourly rate.
You will never get paid “what you are worth” by an employer. The entire precept of capitalism is that they make more from your
“People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.”
Jonny Thomson • The God you find in the pub
There is a baffling amount of words, most of them negative, around the idea of “not doing much at all.” Wasting time, goofing off, slacking, foolishness
Sometimes when I’m parenting alone, I slip into a mental state I call “idling.” It happens when my toddler’s nearby but playing on her own, meaning I only need to pay her half of my attention.
Haley Nahman • #208: What is rotting, if not rest?
I Talked to the Cassandra of the Internet Age
archive.ph
Michael Goldhaber is the internet prophet you’ve never heard of. Here’s a short list of things he saw coming: the complete dominance of the internet, increased shamelessness in politics, terrorists co-opting social media, the rise of reality television, personal websites, oversharing, personal essay, fandoms and online influencer culture — along with the near destruction of our ability to focus.
only 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.