While extolling the virtues of idleness to highly educated and compensated persons who are likely to find his
New York Times post, writer Tim Kreider does offer a passing dollop of empathy for the really working class -- those with backbreaking and sometimes multiple poorly-paid jobs who aren't busy so much as exhausted and dispirited. No question we should all do fewer e-mails while on vacation in Hawaii or during our Alaskan cruise. But by large his is a prescription available only to those who wish to be members of a healthier ruling class. What dockworker, domestic, paralegal, or flight attendant wouldn't love Tim Kreider's life? Sounds good to me:
I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?
While extolling the virtues of idleness to highly educated and compensated persons who are likely to find his New York Times post, writer Tim Kreider does offer a passing dollop of empathy for the really working class -- those with backbreaking and sometimes multiple poorly-paid jobs who aren't busy so much as exhausted and dispirited. No question we should all do fewer e-mails while on vacation in Hawaii or during our Alaskan cruise. But by large his is a prescription available only to those who wish to be members of a healthier ruling class. What dockworker, domestic, paralegal, or flight attendant wouldn't love Tim Kreider's life? Sounds good to me:
1 comment:
This engineering manager in the semiconductor industry envies Tim as well. We've had a rather odd economic recovery. Most of the people who work in my industry are putting in more hours than they ever have before. No one takes vacations, and every group is stressed to the limit. Unemployment is still too high, but profits seem to be higher than ever. The only conclusion that I can draw is that the most wealthy among us want things to be like this.
To them I say this: be careful what you wish for!
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