But, but…how am I going to afford that steampunk floor lamp, or that $4,000 custom-machined fidget toy, or those hand-made Japanese fountain pen inks, if I don’t get more productive?
“Time for contemplation” is an unattainable luxury to those around the world who support themselves by subsistence agriculture. They are going to need some first-world, energy intensive support systems before they can spend any time in the park or the library,
let’s see now…who built this place?
You don’t even need to go around the world or look for subsistence agriculture.
Poverty isn’t just for people somewhere else.
Who is arguing that a person’s productivity should be used as the metric for measuring that person’s quality life?
Well, there’s all the people who’ve listened to this guy:
and these people:
They (specifically) may not make headlines much anymore, but their legacy casts a very long shadow.
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I’m not huge on philosophy, but I think Nietzsche would disagree with you there. From what I understand Nietzsche’s oft maligned and co-opted idea of a “will to power” is that people don’t only seek to be happy, they seek to create things. Not necessarily to be productive, or to wield power as we think about it now, but to put something into the world that has meaning.
It’s an idea I’ve always liked, and I think it gels well with the ideas here. People do, in general, want to be useful, to contribute to society, have some meaningful thing they do in their life. This is why people often become depressed after retirement unless they find a meaningful hobby. Capitalist culture has co-opted this by narrowing our idea of what meaningful pursuits are to being only pursuits that help someone else get money.
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