half the time, fuck all or nothing...
#allornothing #cancercapitalism #halfthetime #leisure #fulltime
#leisure
A quotation by Gilligan, James
In short, the contradiction in the old defense of class stratification is that it defends leisure for the leisure class, but not for the underclass. With reference to the underclass, leisure is said to destroy the incentive to work, leads to slothfulness and self-indulgence, and retards cognitive and moral development. When applied to the leisure class, the concept evokes an image of Plato and Aristotle, whose leisure was based on slave labor, creating the intellectual foundations of Western civilization; or patrician slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson laying the foundations of American civilization; or creative aristocrats like Count Leo Tolstoy or Bertrand, Earl Russell; or, even closer to home, of our own sons and daughters (or of ourselves, when we were young adults) being freed from the stultifying tasks of earning a living until well into our adult years so that we could study in expensive universities to gain specialized knowledge and skills.
James Gilligan (b. c. 1936) American psychiatrist and author
Preventing Violence, ch. 5 (2001)
#quote #quotation #aristocracy #class #class-warfare #contemplation #higher-education #laziness #leisure #oligarchy #sloth
Sourcing and notes: https://wist.info/gilligan-james/55500/
Finally I am out and about again, an it is Copenhagen Jazz Festival these days. Friday my wife and I choose a local and very young piano trio whose records we have enjoyed a lot: Little North.
It was steaming hot (my comfort limit is 22°C), but they really played beautifully and I had a very cold beer. Same sound and tight, concentrated improvisations as we knew from the records I bought on Bandcamp. In the second set there was one, very long, very complicated ... erhm ... movement, where I had to whisper to my wife that it probably was entitled, "Lost in the Northern Jazzmark", but all in all a killer concert by some incredible, but still humble young musicians, who couldn't hide their surprise that the concert had been sold out. (The fate of the jazz-man and -woman who has played for empty night clubs and uninterested party people their whole life).
Their sound is both new and still very traditional. There is a certain sound of Nordic jazz and these blokes has both Niels Henning Ørsted-Pedersen and Jan Johansson in them while also doing all sorts of new things. Well, it was great!
Yesterday we were at a small concert at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory with the slovak singer Sisa Feher, very much pregnant. Very charming. On the last picture you can see the braids of my daughter :) Her mother make those and get high praise from all the African women in Copenhagen.
#music #festival #Copenhagen #jazz #CopenhagenJazzFestival #life #leisure #beer #LittleNorth #SisaFeher
Removing benches, blocking cycle paths: why are police interfering in the UK’s public spaces? | Phineas Harper | The Guardian
The Secured by Design initiative is damaging British cities, robbing them of greenery and public amenities while promoting fear
Remove the benches and where will the older people sit? Or will they become antisocial?
#UK #police #LawEnforcement #leisure #ParksAndOpenSpaces #ageing
Quit the Rat Race
Adopt a don't work ethic.
China now has a Lying Flat movement.
The idea is not to be a productive citizen. Don't work any harder than you have to. Don't help stockholders and bankers. Don't contribute to the GDP.
I've read that slaveholders in what's now Haiti were afraid that, if they freed their slaves, they wouldn't be able to pay them to keep working for their former slaveholders. They were afraid they'd take to the hills and forage or engage in subsistence farming. In other words, they were afraid that the former slaves would produce only what they needed, and nothing would be left over for the land owners.
This is what the authorities in China are worried about now. They don't want people to reduce their cost of living in order to be able to earn less, they want them to increase their cost of living, forcing them to work harder and longer. They want them to stay in the rat race. They want them to be in debt.
Reducing our cost of living to be able to lower our income has other advantages.
The only way to do anything useful about the on-going climate catastrophe is to reduce consumption of everything, and to reduce the amount of transportation, both of people and of other things.
The on-going climate catastrophe is only one (probably the most dangerous) of the symptoms of wealth and income inequality. Quitting the rat race is perhaps the most effective way to attack this central problem. The billionaires get all their income directly and indirectly from selling people goods and services they would be better off without. What will happen to Tim Cook if no one will buy a new Apple product? The wealthiest people in the world are those who peddle the most harmful goods and services.
- Buy durable clothing, and keep on wearing it, year after year.
- Keep on using your present computers. This is practical because there are Linux distros made especially for old machines. Other distros will have better support for old machines if we stop buying new ones.
- For all devices, mechanical and electronic, buy the most durable and reliable.
- Rent living space, and don't rent more than you need. Mortgages are a huge part of the banking business.
- Live as close as possible to the grocery store. It's best if we can walk to the store.
- Buy a motor scooter, preferably for cash. It's less expensive to buy, insure, and operate. The Japanese ones tend to be the most durable and maintenance-free.
- Better yet, if you live close enough to the grocery store, buy a bicycle instead.
- Eat vegan. It's less expensive, and it puts less land under agricultural use.
- Often, in the supermarket, the best value is on the bottom shelf. Always look.
- Wash your hair with the same inexpensive soap you wash the rest of your body with. Use that same soap for shaving.
- If you have a beard, don't shave it. Just trim it with scissors.
- Don't print stuff. Printers are a huge rip-off.
- Don't be a tourist. Tourism is a huge and entirely unnecessary industry that requires transportation.
- Don't get more medical care than you need. You need a lot less than the health care industry says you need.
So, once again, the goal is to reduce your cost of living, and not increase your income. Refusing to work full time for wages will kill the same industries that we're killing anyway by not buying what they sell. I look forward to a world that has fewer people, and is much quieter. I don't want to stop science, but I do want to stop the patenting of inventions. I also want culture to be free. Let's completely abandon the idea of intellectual property.
What else?
Well, if you spend less of your life toiling for the wealthy in order to sell unhealthy crap to people, and more time learning, napping, reading books, and listening to old records, you'll probably be happier and live longer.
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell
#laziness #work #rat-race #leisure #income #bankers #wealthy #billionaires #gdp #lying-flat #idleness #happiness #inequality #markets #buying #buy-less
