EURO-INFANTILIZATION CONTINUED (via Mike Daley):

The virtue of idleness: From the Bible on, moralists and nags have promoted the benefits of hard work and early rising. They are mistaken, argues Tom Hodgkinson. For breathing space to create and time to reflect, indolence is essential. He offers a guide to easy living, pleasurable illness, and effortless sex (Tom Hodgkinson, August 7, 2004, The Guardian)

Idleness as a waste of time is a damaging notion put about by its spiritually vacant enemies. Introspection could lead to that terrible thing: a vision of the truth, a clear image of the horror of our fractured, dissonant world. The writer Will Self, arguing that long periods of motorway driving can be a method of recapturing lost idling time, puts it like this: "This cultural taboo against thinking ... exists in England because of the Protestant work ethic which demands that people shouldn't be idle - ergo they shouldn't think."

This prejudice is well established in the western world. Governments do not like the idle. The idle worry them. They do not manufacture useless objects nor consume the useless products of labour. They cannot be monitored. They are out of control.

That being ill can be a delightful way to recapture lost idling time is a fact well known to all young children. On schooldays, the independent child soon learns that if he is ill, then he can lie in bed all day, avoid work and be looked after. What a different world from the everyday one of punishments, recriminations and duties. Suddenly everyone is very nice to you.

Being ill - nothing life-threatening, of course - should be welcomed as a pleasure in adult life, too, as a holiday from responsibility and burden. Indeed, it may be one of the few legitimate ways left to be idle. When ill, you can avoid those irksome tasks that make living such hard work.Dressing, for instance. You can pad around the house in your dressing gown like Sherlock Holmes, Noël Coward or our friend, that hero of laziness, Oblomov. When ill, you are the master. You do what you like. You can play your old Clash albums. Stare out of the window. Laugh inwardly at the sufferings of your co-workers. Looking a little deeper at the benefits of being ill, we may argue that the physical pain can lead to positive character development, that bodily suffering can improve the mind. "That which does not kill me makes me stronger," said Nietzsche.

The intellectual benefits of being ill are demonstrated and reflected upon at length by Marcel Proust. Famously chronically ill and frequently bed-bound, he had plenty of time to theorise on being ill: "Infirmity alone makes us notice and learn, and enables us to analyse processes which we would otherwise know nothing about. A man who falls straight into bed every night, and ceases to live until the moment when he wakes and rises, will surely never dream of making, not necessarily great discoveries, but even minor observations about sleep."

Proust was accused by contemporaries of being a hypochondriac, which may have been true. But how else would he have found the time to write the hundreds of thousands of words that make up À la Recherche du temps perdu? And how else would we find the time to read it, were we not sometimes ill? If Proust had been a healthy, upstanding member of society, then he might have suffered a successful career in the upper reaches of the civil service, and the world of letters would have been a good deal poorer.

It's pretty much self-refuting--as is any argument that relies on the "insight: of "all young children"--ut perhaps Proust's stockbroker, Lionel Hauser, put it best:

Allow me to tell you that even though you are approaching fifty, you've stayed what you were when I first knew you, namely a spoilt child.

MORE:
-Does Europe Need to Get a Life? (RICHARD BERNSTEIN, 8/08/04, NY Times)
-Scots take a fortnight a year off sick: Employers ignoring absenteeism problem (Julia Fields, 8/08/04, Sunday Herald)

Scottish shop-floor workers take up to 10 days’ sick leave a year, according to research conducted for the Sunday Herald.

Yet despite the scale of the “sickie” problem, almost three-quarters of Scottish companies have no policy in place to tackle the issue.

The survey shows 57% of employers saying that rank and file employees took an average of between eight and 10 sick days a year. In sharp contrast, senior managers app eared to be either far healthier or more unwilling to stay in bed, with 55% of respondents reporting an average of between three and five days a year.

The survey is based on responses from 300 private companies and public sector organisations in Scotland.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 8, 2004 8:53 AM