1 From Latin, ne-='not', cessare='to be idle': necessity is lack of idleness. So lack of idleness is the mother of invention. |
The time that he must on average busy himself fishing each day is time that is already spoken for, assigned to a particular activity. That amount of time is time that is not available for him to dispose as he pleases, but must be devoted to fishing. It is only during unassigned idle time that he can do as he pleases. Thus idle and busy states are not simply times in which an individual does different things, but are rather states of freedom and constraint. During the busy state, the individual is constrained (on pain of death) to a narrow range of necessary1 activities. During the idle state, the individual is free to engage in an actually infinite range of possible activities. |
2 Apparently doing two things at once can only be achieved by swapping attention between two activities, neither of which requires complete attention. |
The busy state always entails focusing attention on some activity. Such absorption in a task entails obliviousness to anything else that may be happening. The attentive fisherman does not see passing ships, or clouds or birds. His entire attention is given to the fishing line he holds. He doesn't notice, or pay attention to, anything else. The fisherman cannot do two things at once.2 If he is able to talk while he is fishing, he is simply alternating attention between fishing and talking - and while he is talking or listening he is not fishing. |
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The idle state may involve focusing attention on some activity, or shifting attention from one matter to another, or not being attentive at all. It is only during his idle time that the fisherman can see the shore on which he stands, the waves breaking on the beach, the seabirds wheeling overhead, the clouds drifting above, ships passing on the horizon. It is only during this idle time that he can widen his attention to take in the world around him. When he is busy, it is closed off from him, as his attention narrows to the single thread held between his fingers. Thus the human experience of life, of the diversity of sounds and shapes and odours and textures, is the experience of idle time, not of busy working time. All the fullness and richness of life is the experience of idle time, and oblivion the experience of busy time. When idleness falls to the point where an individual is continuously busy, oblivion is total. And, in Idle Theory, zero idleness means death. Human life is only free to the extent it is idle. A life of perfect idleness - were it attainable - would be a life of complete freedom. A life of zero idleness is a life of complete constraint. Human life is mostly lived somewhere between these two extremes, and human beings are part-time free agents. In Idle Theory, idleness means life, and work means death. These are not subjective associations, but are explicit within the Idle Life model, in which zero idleness is the threshold of physical death. This idea of incomplete or partial freedom, of human beings as part time free agents, underpins the entire approach of Idle Theory to human life, and distinguishes it from a conventional wisdom that assumes human freedom to be the datum of human life - something that comes automatically bundled with being alive. Life At Gunpoint. It might be objected that the fisherman is free to choose what to do, at all times. He can stop fishing at any time, and do something else. He is his own master. In this formal sense he is free. But however the fisherman arranges his time, he must always put in some amount of time fishing, on pain of death - after which he will cease to choose to do anything. The fisherman has to choose to spend some amount of time fishing. In doing so, he is choosing to go on choosing. If he chooses not to do any fishing, he has chosen to stop choosing, chosen to die. Human life is not different from living under the barrel of a gun, under the threat "Do this, or die." Of course, anyone faced with such a threat can choose to refuse to do what is asked of them - and pay with their lives, if whoever holds the gun to them is not bluffing. The only difference from everyday life is that necessity only periodically holds a gun to a human and says: "Find and eat food, or die." - and it never bluffs. That such necessity is not actually a person, and does not hold a actual gun, makes no difference to the reality of the threat. Where human life is very idle, nature only holds that gun to the head for a few minutes each day. Where human life is very busy, nature holds that gun to the head almost all day long. While someone living at gunpoint remains free to choose whether to do what is demanded of them or not, and is in this sense formally "free", such a condition is not ordinarily held to be a condition of freedom. Where people are captured and held at gunpoint, they are usually regarded as unfree, and are only regarded as free when they escape or overcome their captors. They are no more free than slaves who are threatened with beatings, and perhaps death, if they do not perform their masters' will. When such slaves are freed, they are freed from their tyrannical masters. But the free life they thereafter live is not itself wholly free. Living under the lash, or at the point of a gun, is not a wholly different condition from the ordinary life to which freed persons return. Ordinary life, if it is relatively idle, is simply a milder experience of the same, as if lived under a slaveowner who seldom required his slaves to do anything. A slave, if he is not being continually worked by his master, is also a part-time free agent. He does what his master requires, but when there is nothing to do, he does what he himself chooses to do. The emancipation of slaves does not actually set them free. At best it makes them more free. At worst, where an easy-going master frees a slave to live a life where he must work far harder than he ever did as a slave, emancipation entails a decrease in freedom.
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Author: Chris Davis
Last edited: 3 Oct 1998