Yeah, Russell is the quintessential British liberal, hence the disdain for the working class in all his work.
Yes, exactly, his article is steeped in contempt for work.
So much so that he considers writers and artists slackers—that sounds ridiculous to me.
Example: Jules Verne worked very intensively. His workday lasted up to 15 hours. The writer strictly adhered to the following schedule:
Start: early morning, from 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM.
Finish: late evening (around 8:00 PM). Daily output: he wrote 10 to 20 printed pages daily, which allowed him to publish several seminal novels a year.
How can you call this man a slacker, and where would he find the time to work for four hours, only to then… in his “free time” pursue creativity?
And what mark did this man leave on history?
But he does get at the irrationality of capitalism here where the goal is simply to maximize profit with no regard for anything else.
Yes, I liked his logic, at some point I even got carried away reading it.
I also very much agree with your point that overwork turns people into zombies.
I saw this with my own eyes in Moscow. People on the metro are empty-eyed, detached, and always in a hurry. Such are the conditions for survival there.
My view is that required work should be minimized as much as possible, and people should have the ability to choose how they spend their time.
I’m not sure about the 4-hour period. I doubt unemployment in more or less developed countries is 50%… it’s probably not even like that in Africa.
But 6-8 hours, depending on the complexity of the job, would be normal.
My expectation is that most people would be productive even if they didn’t have to work. People like making things, it’s in our nature. Imagine a society where you had minimal work, but you had things like community workshops, and places where you can get together with people to build whatever you want. Like even public access to labs, factories and so on. I think we’d see incredible things getting made because people would get ideas, find like minded people and work on projects together just because they find them interesting. We actually see this happen with software and the whole open source movement already. Plenty of people write large software projects just because they find it interesting, they don’t make any money off them, and the goal is purely to make something interesting. The reason it works for software is because anybody with a laptop can do it, but I think it would work exactly the same for building physical things if tools were readily available.
Yes, exactly, his article is steeped in contempt for work.
So much so that he considers writers and artists slackers—that sounds ridiculous to me.
Example: Jules Verne worked very intensively. His workday lasted up to 15 hours. The writer strictly adhered to the following schedule:
Start: early morning, from 4:00 AM to 5:00 AM.
Finish: late evening (around 8:00 PM). Daily output: he wrote 10 to 20 printed pages daily, which allowed him to publish several seminal novels a year.
How can you call this man a slacker, and where would he find the time to work for four hours, only to then… in his “free time” pursue creativity?
And what mark did this man leave on history?
Yes, I liked his logic, at some point I even got carried away reading it.
I saw this with my own eyes in Moscow. People on the metro are empty-eyed, detached, and always in a hurry. Such are the conditions for survival there.
I’m not sure about the 4-hour period. I doubt unemployment in more or less developed countries is 50%… it’s probably not even like that in Africa.
But 6-8 hours, depending on the complexity of the job, would be normal.
My expectation is that most people would be productive even if they didn’t have to work. People like making things, it’s in our nature. Imagine a society where you had minimal work, but you had things like community workshops, and places where you can get together with people to build whatever you want. Like even public access to labs, factories and so on. I think we’d see incredible things getting made because people would get ideas, find like minded people and work on projects together just because they find them interesting. We actually see this happen with software and the whole open source movement already. Plenty of people write large software projects just because they find it interesting, they don’t make any money off them, and the goal is purely to make something interesting. The reason it works for software is because anybody with a laptop can do it, but I think it would work exactly the same for building physical things if tools were readily available.