from “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russel, 1932
Andy suggested I read this when we were talking about the importance of play. The first quotation below stuck out to me because it really does make our industrialised society seem a bit insane, and makes me dream of working only four-hour days and then having time each day to write, or dance, or hike, or even sleep a normal amount. At pretty much every job I’ve had, there have been people who don’t work hard at all, or spend a lot of their work day in idleness but still have to show up. I would rather work hard for four or six hours, than lounge around and do bits of work for eight or more hours a day.
“Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?”
This next quotation makes me feel better about how much money I’ve spent in traveling. I have been working for the past three months, and school year, and two summers. Therefore, it must be okay for me to spend the money I’ve earned on leisure.
“The butcher who provides you with meat and the baker who provides you with bread are praiseworthy, because they are making money; but when you enjoy the food they have provided, you are merely frivolous, unless you eat only to get strength for your work. Broadly speaking, it is held that getting money is good and spending money is bad. Seeing that they are two sides of one transaction, this is absurd; one might as well maintain that keys are good, but keyholes are bad.”
