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.

David Pennington

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.

I think that “doing nothing”—in the sense of refusing productivity and stopping to listen—entails an active process of listening that seeks out the effects of racial, environmental, and economic injustice and brings about real change.

Jenny Odell • How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

"One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."

- Nikola Tesla

Trudeau Resignation, Live TV Merger, and Reminiscing Y2K

Capitalism tells us this. Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey takes a deep dive into this link exploring how capitalism and white supremacy are at the heart of our inability to rest. These learnings have been crucial to my rest practices and are now weaved into my Yoga classes and wellbeing offerings because of it.

Jodie Melissa Rogers • Why we feel guilty & uncomfortable when resting

His biggest worry, though, is that we still mostly fail to acknowledge that we live in a roaring attention economy. In other words, we tend to ignore his favorite maxim, from the writer Howard Rheingold: “Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.”

nytimes.com • Opinion | Michael Goldhaber, the Cassandra of the Internet Age - The New York Times

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

It’s ok to wait, and it’s definitely ok to de-wheel from the hamsterism of today’s productivity theatre. In fact, you might need to if you really want to dream up a monster story.

Kristin Posehn • Mary Shelley (and a bit of Steve Jobs)—On the Art of Creative Waiting

Does the act of sitting in a park, patiently looking through a pair of binoculars and reading through field guides really deserve to be described with the same adjective usually reserved for angsty hardcore punk music, crusty anarchos and angry outcasts with ripped leather jackets?

If one considers punk as anything defiantly anti-capitalist,... See more

Alexi Gunner • idle gaze 067: slowpunk

“Slowpunk”

The pleasure of this depraved human state lies, I think, in the contradiction: Resting in the literal physical sense, persisting in the toxic spiritual one. It’s a state that suggests a low tolerance for understimulation, a common modern condition.