Idler | How to be Idle | Tom Hodgkinson

[Music] hello idlers and wannabe idlers my name is Tom Hodgkinson and I'm editor of the idler and today I'm going to present a six-part course on how to be idle why me why am I giving this course well in 1993 I started a magazine called the idler which was really a fan thing a friend and I ran it and what you want to do was to look at alternatives really to wage slavery I at the time or previously had been stuck in a really boring job and I found the confinement really insupportable to somebody who wants to be creative and perhaps even entrepreneurial in their own lives so I'm going to look at idleness and how idleness could be reframed as a very positive part of your life too often I think idleness and laziness a criticized and we're supposed to work very very hard and hard work is seem to be the answer to every problem individual or social got a problem apply more hard work to it whether that's your work life your home life or any other part of your life more effort requires well I think that's simply not true and worse than that this the ethic which we'll talk about today the process and work ethic can lead to huge problems for people particularly later in life when you're stuck in the job which you hate it makes you depressed you go on to antidepressants people have nervous breakdowns there's a huge social cost as well as the people who are just living everyday with the kind of nagging sense of unease they've got to be a better way of living there's got to be a better way than this so we're going to look at ways of escaping from that trap freely perhaps escaping from consumerism escaping from a kind of career ISM what are the alternatives and they're not actually necessarily that easy the course today is going to be split into six parts the first part is called live the good life the second part be thrifty the third is be enterprising the fourth is go back to school the fifth contemplate and the six engage with the world or the limits of engagement well I've been editing the idle magazine for 21 years now we've produced 46 or 47 issues over that time I've interviewed 50 or 60 people who I think have arranged their lives in it in a positive way free spirit if you might call them more successful Bohemians in that time I've also written four or five books the first of these was called how to be idle and this book has sold all around the world in 20 countries which shows you that there is a need for people to express their will to idleness if you like that's divided into 24 chapters and I really bring to bear a host of witnesses in the support of my argument that idleness is good we've seen great idols in that in history I think the poets and philosophers who could commit so much to culture or essentially idlers and I also try to show and to demonstrate how the Industrial Revolution was a big step back for idleness and and for idlers in general I'm teaching here today with Anna who's my people with afternoon or today and you're a student in education and theology at Cambridge and why'd you come on this course today I thought it'd be quite interesting in to expand the ideas that we kind of cover in education okay great yeah we're going to be talking about education today so without further ado let's start with our first part and what I'm going to try and do in examining ideas of the good life is to look at in a sense of the history of idling or idleness its ups and it's downs from 300 BC to the present day in about 20 minutes so that might seem a little ambitious but we're go to give it a go and I want to start our story in around 300 BC with the invention really of philosophy in ancient Athens and ancient Athens is when you get this figure of Socrates who pops up in the marketplace and and he's really telling people to examine their lives and to take seriously the philosophical dimension of your life so not just to devote yourself to work and to seeking prestige and honor which the politicians and lawyers of the time we're doing but to think about the purpose of life and Socrates didn't really do anything you know he sets the example of the idle philosopher firstly he's against consumption he goes into the marketplace and he says what a lot of things here that I don't need he really sits and does nothing except for talk and in doing so it's a good example for people to follow after him he doesn't even wear shoes he's all the Hewlett auguste wears sandals is the current demonstration against outward signs of affluence and he taught Plato Plato taught Aristotle and for the Greeks in general you know life wasn't just about hard work as if it is for so many of us today Aristotle particularly explored the concept of eudaimonia which he's often translated today as happiness and he thought that you know that the struggle to find eudaimonia was one of the most important things of your life not be shouldn't also have a family life and work and make money but you should use your legs productively for self development if you like a new day ammonia really means being at one with your demon and I think that's an interesting concept for idlers demon meaning the thing that you really want to do that the the purpose that you have in life and I think a simple way of trying to discover that is to think back into your childhood and think about the things that you really liked doing for their ends sake not because somebody was paying you not because this was going to lead to better meant in your in your in your work life or your career or more money or something like that just the things that you did quite naturally and I've realized this in my own life that when I was probably eight eight nine onwards I enjoyed reading books I enjoyed making little magazines and like getting people together for little parties well I'm still doing that kind of thing now and I've been lucky enough for enterprising enough to make those things that I liked to do quite naturally as a child for their own sake into something that for better or for worse I'm trying to make a living out of so that's really I think what is meant by eudaimonia it doesn't mean that we can all completely quit our work and only make money out of our hobbies or things that we really love to do but it doesn't mean that it's important to take that seriously that that that sort of friendly demon inside of you you their menu is translated as happiness it could also be translated as fulfillment something like that an Aristotle was quite clear that a fulfilled life a life where you were trying to find your demon involved a lot of idleness what we would call idleness or lega this came to be called in that endure the the Viva con-tem-plat-- Eva the contemplative life an Aristotle argued that the life most likely to lead to happiness was the life of contemplation and that means just reading and studying learning being with people debating and dialogue and I think that's still true today but that gives you a powerful philosophical defense of idleness from probably the most influential philosopher of the Western world because it was any until quite recently that Aristotle wasn't really at the back of every thinking man and woman's mind right through the medieval period and the early modern period as we'll find out around the same time that the Greeks were really encouraging this life of the mind which could be called contemplation and really starting to demonstrate the kind of monkish ideal because Plato lived in an Academy which was slightly removed from this another philosophical school was the Epicureans and they counseled that you should remove yourself from the city and live in a kind of monkish arrangement and in the kind of a hippie commune and in a way for the exit the world of work and these ideas came up later in Christianity as we'll find out but around the same time that the sophisticated Greeks were exploring these ideas perhaps for the first time the Daoists also were exploring them and and Taoism the Chinese philosophy of the Dao or the way became really popular in in the Western world in the sixties and seventies with teachers like Alan Watts and was kind of a hippie principle and the idea of Taoism is you don't push too hard in the wrong direction you don't strive you don't work too hard you go with the flow and bitter I do going with the flow is that a taoist idea and their symbol if you like for life was the river so the river starts at its source in the mountains it makes its way through the mountains across the plains and out to the sea where it ends up in doing so it creates beautiful curves and an individual pattern all rivers are different from each other and it's done that by taking the easiest path through the rocks and mountains and across the plains to the sea the path of least resistance so this the Taoist felt was a very powerful idea that you could try to apply to your own life and they were in opposition in a sense to the Confucians and Confucius was also around at this time and he was telling people that you should sort of really work very hard on your on cultivating yourself and probably for an ideal of there's some sort of balance there to be found because the Taoist feel like the sort of punks of their time and they were still Taoist punks in Beijing today who reject worldly ambition rejects aim reject the whole world of money and these were these were issues for the Vista cating Chinese just as much as for the ancient Greeks as for us today you know how much do you engage with the world and how far do you retreat from it the great Taoist principle was Wu Y which means inaction and it's somehow discovering this way of being which is elusive but but out there and if you could slot into it we could be sometimes do occasionally then your life could really sort of flow quite easily it's likely extremely difficult thing to do and it takes a lot of practice and the famous symbol or the famous kind of metaphor was the the the Taoist butcher and the Taoist butcher through practice and work and repetition over twenty or thirty years with such a good butcher that he could slice apart the ox with apparently no effort whatsoever because he could find the places in the meat which resist resisted Dilys after practice so to be idle to go into flow is an ongoing project it doesn't get to happen overnight and it could take a lot of hard work now these ideas also popped up in Roman times and I was really delighted to read a bit of Nietzsche passage from Nietzsche when he says that the Romans in the ancient world in general really privileged what he called odium as the noble path through life otm meaning leisure and the Romans had got this from the Greeks Nietzsche said that the the the path to nobility for the ancients were odium or bellum leisure or war so is through glory and honor in fighting or through lying around doing nothing and studying that all it was to be found and not in this kind of striving bourgeois path that's presented as the as the almost the only path through life today there's always the kind of aristocratic idea that the the noble ones the gods don't work and so each individual should tried to create a life which has much 'i'm in it as possible so you know aristotle said well you know some people like plato they're Arastoo Kratz and so they live off their rents they've got lots of time so that's fine they can get going be idle most of us are not so lucky but we should work to produce the money that's going to allow us the time to be idle or it might enter being idle it doesn't mean slopping out and doing nothing that means engaging with other people and learning and studying now these ideas also come up in the figure of Christ who remember doesn't work in fact one wag in the 19th century said God in fact you know gives us the ultimate example of an idler because he worked for six days and then rest for all eternity we can I think of ideal idlers way of working it said to work in it a little outburst of diligence and then have long gaps before and after when you kind of sit around so Christ famous words about work can be found in the Sermon on the Mount consider the lily they told not neither do they spin yet I say to you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these so in a kind of Taoist way the Taoist also counseled that you should get back to nature and stop striving for worldly goods he's saying even Solomon the richest person of his day it's not as beautiful as a simple lily which just floats in the wind and doesn't work for its living and this was a sort of a providential idea in the way you shouldn't overwork because to overwork might be seen actually this is a theological point which comes up in the medieval era to work over long hours might show a lack of faith in God's providence so the Taoist have this sort of fatalism about life which you can still see in China thing you know whatever happens happens you can't really control it too much we can't tossed around by the winds at the same time you want to try and create your own life and there is you can exert your free will and change your circumstances so what do you mean long hours well but long hours what I mean is in the medieval period our working hours work quite strictly restricted to something like 40 or 50 hours a week which is not commonly known so work was organized around the guild principle the I suppose early bourgeois had escaped the rule of the nobles in the countryside and had built their own self-governing cities and needs a well loved by anarchist writers in the 19th century because they were thought nations there was small self-governing city-states of fifty to a hundred thousand people and they looked after their own affairs and Christianity had actually been suspicious of work because it was too worldly if you're working too hard it meant that you were kind of striving was really the main mission of life was to get into heaven it was about your salvation and the monks demonstrated a life of not striving not trying to make lots of money not competing although there would have been office politics I'm sure in the monastery someone like Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans actually didn't even live in a monastery bigots wandered around doing nothing with the begging bowl so in a sense that that kind of religious idleness which is about contemplation and meditation and prayer with dignified by the examples that these mendicant friars than wandering monks and by and by the monk she lived in monasteries as well so the the that Christian culture the the medieval Christianity stopped people from working too hard one by having lots of festivals so obviously we know about Christmas that was twelve days there were days offer these two their days off at the creeping of the cross and all these weird festivals all year round when you weren't allowed to work we weren't allowed to work on Sundays certain mondays and feast days in the holidays holy days and so that the medieval peasants the medieval worker probably worked a lot less hard than your average kind of wage slave today you were discouraged from competing with your fellow in the guild so today you're generally people are encouraged to compete with the person sitting next to in the office you work longer hours you leave your jacket on the back of the chair to share that to show your boss that you've been there a long time but in those days it was seen as wrong to work to overwork for example it was bad to work at night by candlelight because he would produce inferior quality work if he worked longer hours than your fellow in the guild that was giving you an unfair advantage to devote your life to work was seen as a lack of faith in Providence a God had plans for you it was almost arrogant to take your life into your own hands in an excessive way I mean issues were all debated but this was a dominant view at the time and also in the Middle Ages he had the example of people like the Brethren of the free spirit he wandered around doing absolutely nothing and they what they were again they were the punks of their day they wore ripped clothes you know in those days you were supposed to your clothes reflected your social status but these members of the Brethren of the free spirit would wear any old clothes and so they would wear clothes that was suited to a noble even though they weren't noble but they would rip them and they would wear strange combinations of clothing you couldn't quite tell where they were coming from so they were like Bohemians they made a deliberate attempt to be classless if you like and in fact there they came from all sorts of different backgrounds some from very rich some from a pool and they also had shocking morals so they would wander in to Florence and and they said we don't have to work because we're pure in heart and they would beg for bread and say for bread for God's sake and they would also argue that they could sleep with their own sister on the altar something incredibly shocking but it didn't matter because Piron spirit okay they were kind of very much a fringe group and the bishop have cologned through twelve of them into the river and killed them but they showed that this the these the idea that you know there are different paths through life have been they're kind of forever and a lot of people thought they were onto the it's a sort of more extreme form for monk in a way like a kind of there were to be monks but without the inconvenience of the formality of Christianity this period ends with the Reformation which we generally put to being taking place in about 1535 in this country when he attacked the monasteries and so really in the year or two that old culture which as I've described was not exactly work based yes you you were a baker or candlestick maker or whatever it might be you identified with it with your with your profession your task or what have you did to make a living but the medieval historians say they unlike the culture that came later that medieval man and woman didn't consider themselves first and foremost to be a worker you're a human being you were a sort of a brother and a sister equal under God in in the Christian Brotherhood in a sense and your main mission was to get into heaven but it was a lot of fun at the same time I mean you know we had maples in this country we had a 12-day rest from work at Christmas when he weren't allowed to work you expected to go to church a lot but there are lots of feasts and fun and parties as well but this whole culture was considered completely superstitious old-fashioned irredeemably Popish all these people are going to hell by the new Puritan reformers so we're talking about people like Calvin and Luther and if you talk to Americans today they say they they work under this sort of Calvinist work ethic and this is something quite new so this old the corrupt Laidback system of the medieval Christianity was overthrown all across Europe more or less the culture was more individualistic the the Puritan and the Crossland culture that replaced the old medieval one was more individualistic and now you were allowed in a sense to work very hard you're allowed to work hold on this God's us it was okay to be rich it could be seen as a sign that God favored he was merchants previously had been viewed with some suspicion you know the miser with his moneybags was a character to be derided the medieval church had actually actually frequently attacked the bankers who lent money in charged interest on the lens and that was called usury there was a long history in huge a ISM and in Christianity and in Islam today of criticizing lending money to interests particularly if it was done to the poor it was directed down to the poor but the the prohibition against usury was gradually lifted under people like Calvin and Luther and Henry the eighth's as I've said smashes up the monasteries he also removes in the process the kind of welfare state that had been operated by the Christian Church because you know anybody could more or less get educated of the monastery they would look after the homeless and the second because this was a no Christian thing to do you know it was it was good for you to give to a beggar because it's going to help you to get into heaven so you had a actually had a Tudor homeless problem because the homeless weren't being looked after and there was a new load of homeless and the monks and the nuns who now had nowhere to go so this was a really a he change and in the 17th century in the 16th and the 17th century attitudes really begin to change towards work and towards money making it becomes more acceptable to make a lot of money people that had been fascinated by riches in the past of course as well but now it was though it was a more common aim now under the under the Commonwealth under Cromwell I mean Cronk Cromwell remember ruled for 15 years there was no king and he was a kind of a bit of a Lenin that was supposed to be a sort of equal communist state but a lot of the old phone was taken away so maples were taken down because they were seen as kind of heathenish stinking idols Popish superstitious but people had loved the maples and the old medieval church had kept a lot of the old-fashioned people's places in place things like drinking and dancing around the Maypole but the maple was seen as a relic of the old-fashioned Poe fish religion was it was sort of evil Cromwell also bans Christmas so that's another kind of idle places that was taken away so I think Ivan that really really suffers at this point in the 17th century and I don't think it's a coincidence that one of the best-selling books of the 17th century which will come on to you later it's called the anatomy of melancholy by Robert Burton who was an Oxford scholar and this is a huge seven or eight hundred page seventeenth century self-help book to help people deal with being depressed and so you could conclude that there are a lot of depressed people in the 17th century and you could also conclude that people would depress because a lot of their fun had been taken away under this new regime and they weren't really allowed to be idle in a great resistance a great resistor of this culture was Isaac Walton who wrote The Compleat angler because the guide to fishing it was a guide to fishing it was a fishing handbook if you like it's a political work because he attacks the Puritans and the Protestants and he says they're sour-faced money-getting men we anglers know how to sit here doing nothing and we love the contempt of life in fact he says in that well that's a great kind of Idol of text it's a lovely book to read and he says you know the argument between whether it's better to lead an active life or contempts of life has been raging for centuries thousands of years probably and he says that with fishing with angling we combined the two in happy harmony because you know a lot of it's about guys sitting there doing nothing staring at water so you got the Daoist thing of connecting with nature and doing nothing and being near to water is therapeutic but you're also doing something quite useful catching food hunting and there is some activity and bustle associated with it so the the complete angrist of this is because the ideal human pursuit is fishing and it's fishing is very popular today and I think it's because it's a way of reclaiming some idle time and some time with nature time to more or less do nothing but with this kind of cover of a purpose now in the restoration when the King comes back to the throne in 1665 roughly the theaters opened again and people like he like Charles the second the Mary Moloch he's got long hair he has a kind of life ain't just court and he loved going to the theatre he loved drinking he loves pleasure he's called the Merrie Monarch he surrounds himself with these sort of pleasure loving fun-loving people and the poet's and so on and the nel Gwynn's and that kind of sets the tone he knew you could argue that this is sort of corrupt and old-fashioned but something deepened the p-funk actually seems to quite like this and you know they love the fact that the theaters have reopened and fun comes back into everyday life so I think idleness idleness in the late 17th century perhaps is reintroduced and people don't feel so guilty about it now in the 18th century in the run-up to the Industrial Revolution which is a a really bad moment in our history for idlers you get this really lovely period in the middle of the 18th century of a new kind of journalism in London but people like my hero dr. Johnson dr. Johnson wrote a series of essays called the idler and they were printed in 1758 in 1759 and they were published in a magazine called the gentleman's magazine this is from the early 19th century collection of dr. Johnson's works and it was when I was lying in bed feeling guilty about not working harder in my early twenties living in Portobello roads as I found a collection of writings by dr. Thompson and first off I was really comforted to find that he was naturally very lazy and was always resolving to get up earlier and work harder and that's what I was always doing tea so I was always thinking I've got to get up early I'm not working hard enough and so on he would lie bed to lunchtime till 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon doing nothing perhaps reading perhaps receiving visitors then he did involved himself in chemistry experiments to kind of distract himself and in the evenings would go out and no one knew really quite when he got his work done because he was a hugely productive so what I discovered in dr. Johnson writing the idler essays and being the foremost man of letters really of his day he wrote an English dictionary would help he wrote numerous biographies and poems and plays and essays and everyday journalism which she wrote for mummy he was you know self-employed freelance hack he provides an example of idleness in action anyway that the sort of positive the the positive size of idleness and he shows how innate idleness is an important part of the creative process and in this essay the first one printed April 1517 58 the idler number one he has some great lines every man is all hopes to be an idler so he's saying just as peace is the purpose of war it's that it's supposed to be the end of war you know the the goal of war is peace the goal of business which by the way in Latin was neg odium meaning not later there was your business the goal of business is to leisure at the end we had the idea of retirement of course and still people think they're going to kind of make a lot of money and then retire they sadly rarely do because they get addicted to their out gangs he also explains in the eyes of this the item works in a similar way to the principle of momentum so you know kind of heavy body is forced up a hill and then falls very quickly heavily on the other side so and the heavier it is and the slower you push it up the quicker it's going to fall and that's what he said I was like all the way an idler works a longer you sit there doing nothing the more quickly you'll be able to get the work done at the end and personally for me that's very appealing way of working and it's not that you're not you're actually being lazy either it may look to somebody else like you're just lying in bed or staring out the window but at some level your mind's going so I thought this is a very attractive idea and that's dr. Johnson Williams at the basis of this idea of promoting idleness as a good thing in life he he actually posted it together quite came to terms with this and it was quite close to depression for him and if we're going to come up to the idea of melancholy in a in a future talk now what about idleness in the nineteenth century well it takes a step back for sure at the end of the 18th century with the Industrial Revolution so in some senses this is a hugely exciting period because industry really gets going I mean industry the opposite of idleness isn't is it so it was opposed to idleness there's the industrious worker and the idler and you should be industrious so the Industrial Revolution to me is like a kind of in revolution of industry against the naturally idle spirits of the being with people and industry kind of wins and but not without a fight the sort of naturally bloody minded English peasantry didn't particularly like being told to go into a factory for twelve or fourteen hours a day on time there have been more used to working in small groups where there were mini factories they might not even go in at all on Monday or Tuesday because they had a hangover there was a custom called st. Monday because the day you took off every Monday to honor st. Monday but it was basically because you were nursing your headache from the weekends drinking but then they would work harder towards the end of the week so you might work very hard on a Friday and late and Saturday and that's the kind of working pattern that you know the students and freelance journalists can still pursue today and indeed anybody who's self-employed you know if you do work at home then you can take a nap after lunch but you might be quite productive against this later in the 19th century get this revolution where you know everyone has to work very hard and there's a migration from the countryside into the city people are working in factories at the beginning it's completely unregulated and women and children are literally dying from overwork and the factories and you know twelve-year-old boys are dying and as the 19th century goes on under pressure from philanthropists and I suppose charitable individuals the government gradually increases things like the 10-hour day and limits the working day so that people will basically stop dying and later you you get a kind of resurgence of idleness and the idea of the idler in another magazine the idler edited by Jerome K Jerome who wrote three men in the boats and was the sort of foremost Edwardian humorist three men that boat was a huge bestseller it sold millions of copies particular in the States and but before that he'd entered this magazine called the idler for about 20 years with a friend of his called Robert Barr and you can see here there's on the cover there's an Edwardian chap with a pipe loafing in a hammock enjoying himself and this was a kind of statement of to me civilized values against the work hard culture of the Victorian period and he wasn't the only one who's standing up for that Oscar Wilde also said that you know man's not made to work you shouldn't tell people what they do at parties you could ask them who they are what they're thinking and he and others stand up for kind of bohemian artistic approach to life where everyone should be an artist or a philosopher and escape the wegg slavery and world himself is influenced by the anarchists of the famous anarchist of the time not known now Kropotkin prince Kropotkin who was a 19th century anarchist and he felt that you know where people did work they should work in small groups and the issue though in the means of production in the 20th century you get the Bohemians in the 1920s and that's quite a fun period in English life the 1920s where really everything's up for grabs the old morals go out the window men and women and more equal people again try to live a kind of artistic life but that's kind of destroyed really right by the by the in the late thirties for the Second World War but also the 20th century little movements pop up the beatniks the hippies these ideas are all through the beatles songs particularly in john lennon so he has songs which expressed these taoist sentiments you know I'm only sleeping his famous turning off your mind relax and float down the stream so the Beatles brought in and there's always somebody in the culture bringing these ideas back in before them in the fifties it was the situation it was a situation it's in Paris the Philosopher's who screwed on the subway walls neutral Ave Asia may never ever work people like G de Boer who committed suicide ralpher neg him who still alive today the 1968 student protests they influenced the the next real movement to bring up these ideas which was Punk so if you listen to the lyrics of never mind the bollocks from the Sex Pistols it's full of these actually ancient ideas against work against consumption against conforming their everyday clothes like the Brethren of the free spirit of it's and torn there's no way they're gonna get a job dressed like that with green hair and safety pins everywhere so that and what do they do all date nothing just stand around on the kingsroad you know drinking I wouldn't destroy passers-by say I'm Johnny Rotten says you know we don't work we just feed that's all I need so it's a kind of statement of the bare necessities if you like you know I don't want a bit he says I don't want the big house I don't want a big car and so on I'm going to kind of try and find the way it's difficult if I'm going to try and find a way of avoiding all this stuff and being being free the hippies and the punks are rebelling against those old enemies early rising and hard work application servitude to your boss in a and this idea of wage slavery has it's been a frequent phrase in the 19th century you know a job is a kind of form of voluntary slavery if you like I said what are the ways the you can escape from that I think what I'm saying as well as that there's a sort of romantic part of life which we should encourage and you know we like Romantic poets we in general love pop stars singers philosophers and poets they add something they had the culture to the life of it but the culture Springs from idleness and doing nothing people tend to defer the poet to the banker and this isn't something new and this is something that we need to kind of embrace I think you can put romanticism and utilitarianism in opposite corners of the boxing ring and utilitarianism promoted by people like Jeremy Bentham it's really the idea that you know utility is what life is all about what's actually useful here everyday life and that tend to be things like money romantics are saying no there's this whole area of life which is completely useless it doesn't really profit anybody it's it's kind of a waste of time being idle but like you that's the real stuff of life that's where life is really really lived in the problem when you're chatting with friends await when you're not thinking about how to advance your career those things yes are important for your fulfillment and to make money but is that the real part of life businessmen say you know idle is a one who with their heads in the clouds they don't live in the real world which is the real world is it the world of the mind is its flowers and grass and taking walk with friends and reading and poetry you know you could argue that that's the real world and the world of Finance interest payments bank loans and business is the world of the imagination I'm going to end with a few little inaction points so we're going to call these in action points at the end of each of these sessions a few things that you could perhaps do in everyday life to introduce some of these idle thoughts into your life we could start with the idea of cultivating your leisure we all have later time but can we do something different with it we can go shopping in TV and we're gonna look into that a bit more deeply in one's later sessions a lunch hour that's an easy way to get a bit of idle time into your life go to the church sit in the back of the church system a park bench lie in the park there all sorts of ways to be idle within the job and within the city walking to the office is a lovely thing to see if you're getting the bus go upstairs if you have double decker buses and instead of reading the morning paper take a slim volume of verse and do what keeps recommended actually just read a few lines of a poem or a bit of praise in the morning and let the words ferment if you like in your mind through the day and you're gonna have to read a couple of lines of a poem by Keats who would be great an ode on indolence or something like that to give yourself a little kind of vision of something bit wider than the morning paper and the depressing news on the radio I think I'll wind up there was our inaction point just remember those two points what we're trying to reach in these lessons and classes is control over your life autonomy so if you want to change your life for the better I'm saying it's possible but we'll start slowly change your life but change it very slowly that concludes part 1 part 2 we're going to discuss the more practical idea of being thrifty so I hope you'll come back for that thank you very much you

Channel: Idler

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Length: 42min 37sec (2557 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 18 2020