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"Wisdom generates insights which can lead to breakthroughs that creates immense productivity." It is important to emphasize that while this may be a consequence of wisdom, it is not what leisure is for the sake of. To reduce leisure and wisdom to instruments of productivity is to miss the whole point. We do not make leisure so that we may work, so that we may be more productive; we work so that we may make leisure. Wisdom is an end in itself. Work is not. "Productivity" is not. Work exists for the sake of leisure, not the other way around. (We must also not confuse recreation with leisure.) Josef Pieper's book "Leisure: the Basis of Culture" makes exactly this point. Something Pieper covers in the first chapter and worth noting here is that the word "school" comes from the Latin schola which in turn is derived from the Greek σχολή (skhole) which is the Greek word for "leisure" (indeed, the absence of leisure characteristic of work was defined negatively, askholia in Greek and negotium in Latin). Modern education may make this difficult to comprehend, but this is more discernible in classical education. Similarly, the "liberal" in "liberal arts" refers to the freedom to pursue leisure, and these are opposed to the so-called servile arts. And lastly, Pieper draws attention to the prevalence of religious feasts during the Middle Ages whose essential function wasn't to stuff your face with food and drink yourself under the table, but leisure. What could be more "leisurely" than religion, that which is, after all, concerned with the ultimate end and the highest good? We moderns live in what Pieper called the world of total work (he was writing this book in the postwar period, so this affliction is nothing new). To be sure, we must toil and till the field in which wisdom will grow, but we do not live to till the field; we till the field so that we may live. What is it that we live for, that we ought to live for? Perhaps it is our modern nihilism that frightens us enough to invert the relation between work and leisure, leading us to lose ourselves in work to avoid the realization. |
"... blindly raging industriousness brings riches and honour but at the same time deprives the organs of refinement that make it possible to enjoy the riches and honour; also, that this chief antidote to boredom and to the passions at the same time dulls the senses [0] and makes the spirit resistant to new attractions. (The most industrious age - our own - doesn't know how to make anything of all its industriousness and money except still more money and still more industriousness, for more genius is required to spend than to acquire! Well, we'll still have our 'grandchildren'!) If education is successful, each virtue of the individual is a public utility and a private disadvantage with respect to the highest private end - probably involving some deterioration of the spirit and the senses or even a premature demise: consider from this standpoint the virtues of obedience, chastity, piety, and justice."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 21. To the teachers of selflessness
The title of the article describes the merit of deliberate inaction to gain the virtue of wisdom. Wikipedia (universal standardized knowledge database edited by verified "wise" people?) defines it as the "ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight."
I agree with the author, Jideofor Onwugbenu, that there is utility in the pensive reflection required to digest the broad spectrum of memories accumulated throughout each period of labor. But he/she has produced other articles with titles such as "Tactics to Accelerate your Career" and "Pensions, Exponential Growth, and Investing" which seem to promote the concept of restlessness.
Mr/Mrs Onwugbenu claims that he/she "labors" in yet another remotely located "financial technology" startup which is a synonym for "banking" which is the sector that rides the ("Leverage") waves generated by productive societies. Ever since I saw my tax dollars swallowed by the bloated "financial sector" after failure to enforce restraint among it's mortgage lending "talent" in 2008 (followed by the American coin mint authorization to spend even more of my tax dollars to change the back of the penny, stamping dies used for only one year), I've had to develop a necessary skepticism of any information broadcasted. It makes sense that a person on a computer all day is going to arbitrarily advise us to "do less" [1].
"... a Soviet scientist, Shafarevich, who has nothing to do with religion - he is a computer scientist - did a very intensive research on the history of socialist countries. He called socialist, or communist, any country with a centralized economy and the pyramidal style of power structure. He discovered (actually he didn't discover - he just brought to the attention of his readers) that civilizations like Mohenjo-daro (in the river Indus area), Egypt, Maya, Incas, and Babylonian culture collapsed&disappeared from the surface of Earth the moment they lost religion. As simple as that - they disintegrated. Nobody remembers about them anymore (well, distantly). The ideas moving society and keeping mankind as society of human beings. As intelligent, moral agents of God. The facts, the truth, the exact knowledge, all the sophisticated technology and computers will not prevent society from disintegrating and eventually dying out... " [2]
After I made the decision to spend my limited attention reading what a banker has written about the merit of idleness, I see that the Convenient Almighty Recommendation Algorithm has projected the option to play-back footage of Bishop Fulton Sheen telling me that "Most of us live below the level of our energy, and in order to be happy - we have to do more. Now, we can do more, spiritually and every other way than we are doing as is proven by hypnotism..." [3]
But the pocket computer is a statesman's dream: gps/microphone/camera/accelerometer in every pocket? Yes please. The SysAdmin(s) Among You that desire to play God seek omniscience. And with "helpful" Youtube videos showing how to "employ" surplus devices [5] - you too can add [6] to the chaos of moral dearth by getting paid (wide net indirectly cast via venture capital fueled dot-com-bubble-2.0, transponder switched off [7]) to pretend to be the guiding hand of the calculated opinions of millions of "real" people. A list linking you to digital profiles (proof) "who" have clicked "like" is not available to the user, unlike any stage performer who spends "all this time running around" personally inspecting the "legs and limbs, millions of eyes [8]" - instantly accessing their user base by gazing upon a sea of movement. Fake (virtual) engagement can raise or lower the reception metrics displayed next to the content of both your impressionable children and their teachers - this is the closest thing to centralized hypnotism.
Since the most funded organization of Sol-3 is the United States Military, global hegemony can be challenged by circumventing it's strike capability. Subvert their civilian labour via the shiny trojan horse pocket device:
"... if an enemy is bigger and heavier than yourself, it would be very painful to resist his direct strike... the Chinese and Japanese judo art tells us what to do. First, to avoid the strike, then to grab the fist and continue his movement into the direction where it was before. Until the enemy crashes into the wall... in every society there are people who are against the society. Simple criminals ideologically in disagreement with state policy, conscientious enemies, psychotic personalities that are against anything, and finally there is a small group of agents of a foreign nation (bought, subverted, recruited). The moment all these movements will be directed in one direction - this is the time to catch that movement and continue it until the movement forces the whole society into collapse and crisis... We don't stop the enemy - we help him to go into the direction we want him to go." [9]
It would be "wise" to destroy the conditions that led to the availability of "Rosie the Riveter", that is, the dutifully disciplined daughter descended from strong family values, with her meticulous/patriotic/productive precision operating the industrial equipment providing the steady stream of reliable asset reinforcement to be operated by her beloved man with his high pain threshold staged throughout multiple theatres of engagement.
"... to take advantage of these movements, to capitalize on them... religion, education, social life, power structure, labor relation unions, and Law&Order. These are the areas of application of subversion. In case of religion - destroy it, ridicule it. Replace it with various sex cults [10] which brings peoples attention away from the purpose of religion - to keep people in touch with a supreme being..." [11]
Promote sexual promiscuity disguised as "revolution" across a few decades. The cinema, mass produced televisions, and those that curate their broadcasted content could be considered thrifty foreign military assets because the "useful idiot" does the bulk of the subversion work for free by responding to where the money flows and what the traditionally reliable institutions are projecting.
"... We think a subverter is a person who is going to blow up our beautiful bridges. No - a subverter is a student who comes for exchange, a diplomat, an actor, an artist, a journalist like myself... " [12]
Since the men will eat the apple of "knowledge" because their women insist, then they are aiding their own subversion by having their Goddess Bound by ideology delivered by the voice who moves slowly therefore undetected:
"It's everywhere, it's everything, it's everyone, It's anywhere, its anything, it's anyone , It's a neighbors saving face, by saying grace, Today for yesterday's behavior" [13]
"... Education - distract them from learning something that is constructive, pragmatic, efficient. Instead of mathematics, physics, foreign languages, chemistry - teach them history of urban warfare, natural food, home economy, your sexuality, anything that takes you away..." [14]
A "painless" genocide in slow motion - gender swapping sterilization will be your own "revolutionary" idea, a combination of post-surgery anesthesia and infinite "news" scroll sedating your natural reaction to this final blow. Put it in the credit card commercials, corporate literature circulation, entertainment screenplay dialogue, elevate it to the top of news feeds by social engineering internal FAANG operators via high salary - the bribe to turn the blind eye of the state official is a small price to pay, but an unnecessary expense when a pocket device can show 40k+ zip codes the same story of "progress".
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28821762
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/568877-i-choose-a-lazy-pers...
[2] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=3542
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e5oPIHnHQs&t=210s
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJfNJk08ds
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda
[7] https://youtu.be/2yV3Uj8qbCU?t=51
[8] https://youtu.be/GQ9MnaocJvk?t=929
[9] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=663
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Monroe
[11] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=788
[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9TviIuXPSE&t=229s
[13] https://youtu.be/PIUaU2sWteU?t=92
[14] https://youtu.be/5gnpCqsXE8g?t=869