Here’s something that will make change your attitude to how and why you work. Far from defending bone idleness, the writer encourages the reader to see idling as a way of reclaiming time and the opportunity to do the things you want to do, even if they are only drinking or sleeping. How to be Idle urges us to not be deceived as trade unions have been, by bigger wages, but to see work as slavery that makes us cash rich but time poor. In his leisurely and amiable style, he also makes us question the improving value of work, the relentless growth of the 24/7 culture and states that any gains are in spite of, rather than because of, employment.
For Tom Hodgkinson, the Luddites were heroes who saw the Industrial Revolution as an enemy of their ability to control their own lives and work patterns and a force to make them the slaves of others. He mourns the loss of the tea break and late lie-in and scorns mirthless dictators like Margaret Thatcher who derided the benefits of 8 hours sleep. As he says, “if work was so … ennobling you’d see the Duke of Westminster doing his own gardening”.
Amongst the writers he praises are the authors of Affluenza which attacks the pursuit of wealth and possessions as environmentally destructive, disruptive to the community and ultimately unsatisfying.
He also recommends Nickel and Dimed a depressing, if fascinating undercover study of low wage workers in the USA. You’ll never take a motel cleaner or fast food server for granted after reading it.
2 April 2008 at 10:44 pm
Really love the sound of this, and I’m hoping that it represents the spearhead of a revolution. People should stop harping on about
the need and virtues of full employment; surely the eight or so hours spent working week days isn’t the best that life can offer,
or vice-a-versa. Let’s be honest,thinking idealistically, surely we aspire not to work…whilst not suffering the privations from the loss of wages.In this sense work may be like death, a necessary evil; but the reality of death doesn’t make medical science pointless, rather it spurs it on to new
advancement. And who knows with cryogenics; maybe we can one day awake to a world without work
9 April 2008 at 2:16 pm
I wonder how amny people if offered the same salary to go part-time or unemployed, would take it!