Are you the sort of person who feels guilty if you spend an hour doing nothing productive or edifying or are you the sort of person who wishes there were more hours in the day just so you'd have more time to squander? Whichever you are you'll enjoy Jonathan David Price's meditation on wasting time at First Principles. Here's Price's lede:
Do not say this to a philosopher but we have more time now than ever before. One would think that since modern men-and modern women too-have more time, they would think less of it. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The same applies to health and money. We are healthier and wealthier than ever, and these facts have neither calmed our fears nor added peace to our souls. Actually, we seem more anxious than ever about how we spend our time.
This newly-won time, occurring on weekends, evenings, and during paid vacations, is called "free time," and it is a byproduct of industrialization. Delayed marriage and fewer children may have also helped. The majority waste their free time without a second thought, egged on by television, video games, and personal billboards (a.k.a. social networking sites), which they may or may not feel vaguely guilty about. But there is another group-perhaps fifteen percent of Americans-that busies itself with doing and getting and self-betterment.
This cadre of overachievers has the opposite problem: it is terrible at wasting time. And even worse at wasting it well. Their days are planned, their evenings booked, futures fixed. From this group comes our leaders, teachers, businessmen, and preachers. Thus, if the likes of YouTube and the proverbial bear pit fill their lists of time wasters, it is commendable. The problem is that they consider leisure to be a waste of time as well. What Joseph Pieper called the basis of culture, leisure-activity outside the field of servile work, the retreat from the world to study it, reflect on it, worship its source, and return refreshed to serve it-is considered to be wasting time. In recent memory, even the everyday connotation of the word has changed to "doing nothing."
Further on he makes the point that when we waste money it doesn't seem so bad because we can always make more, but the time we waste can never be recovered. The question is what exactly is a "waste" of time?
I wonder if spending a couple of hours a day writing a blog qualifies as "wasting time." Maybe it depends on the blog. I'll have to think about that. Anyway, you'll like Price's essay.
Thanks to No Left Turns for the tip.
RLC
