In Praise of Idleness - By Bertrand Russell
Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.
It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
[Instead, in a world where there is adequate leisure,] above all, there
will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and
dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not
enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time,
they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one
per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to
pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these
pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there
will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is
not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear.
Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more
kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The
taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will
involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities,
the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and
security, not of a life of arduous struggle.
