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In Praise of Idleness
There is more to life than the work ethic
My own recent retirement has led me to reconsider the notion of idleness. I have been re-reading Bertrand Russell’s short essay, In Praise of Idleness that includes the delightful quote:
The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
Since I elected to withdraw from the world of full time, paid employment last year, I have been happily testing the validity of Russell’s praise. Unsurprisingly, I fully concur with him.
Russell makes the point that his definition of idleness is freedom from paid work. Work means activity you would not do unless it was to keep a roof over your head and put food on the table, plus the indulgence of a few extra creature comforts of consumerism. It is his contention that there is no essential need to work eight hours a day in order to achieve this, if we allowed for a modest reordering of society. Writing in the thirties, Russell suggests a four hour working day to be sufficient.
When I was in my twenties I remember many media discussions regarding how the average working person would occupy their increased leisure time. This was due to the correctly anticipated rise in technology that would allow for a…
