In Praise of Idleness (1932)

I read In Praise of Idleness when I was 13-14 because an older person recommended it to me. Although the essay was written in the 1935, he convinced me this was the future, and that it foretold what European life was going to be. And indeed, modern Western Europe lives this way -- where leisure is accorded importance, hard work is not the highest virtue, and citizens were free to create culture and invent new ideas. As evidence, he pointed…

I cite this paper every chance I can get. Bertand would be rolling in his grave now about the current situation where we've gone completely in the opposite direction. Here's a Buckminster Fuller quote that I also like to share: "We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The…

Bertand Russell, ahead of his time in his socio-political musings, as with foundations of mathematics. Although the essay begins as though he is advocating for leisure for some privileged section of the society -- and one might especially suspect his position is thus given he himself was part of the old aristocracy by birth -- he explains not only that idleness being a collective right will elevate the society but also that it can be achieved. The time to have…

I remember reading the 6th paragraph as a teenager, it’s still good: “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. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders but those…