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--- doing_nothing [2013-10-21 15:35] – nik
+++ doing_nothing [2014-01-23 10:01] – [Working Less] michka
@@ Line 109: / Line 109: @@
 ==== Working Less ====
   * http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/working-hours
+  * http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2014/01/27/140127ta_talk_surowiecki
 ==== Fishing ====
@@ Line 127: / Line 129: @@
   * no-grow zone
+==== Homage to Idleness ====
+<blockquote>
+Over the centuries, the illusion of mastering time through obedience to it came into acceptance. Across Europe, the medieval monastery’s bell tolled as a reminder to eat, sleep and pray. But while there must have been some soul’s release in relinquishing earthly sovereignty to that sound, as the clock’s authority spread, we sealed all the gaps through which curiosity might seep into our days. Curiosity, after all, could lure the susceptible way off track, as the Italian poet Petrarch learned in the spring of 1336, when he famously climbed Mont Ventoux, motivated by “nothing but the desire to see its conspicuous height.” One of the texts he carried along was Saint Augustine’s “Confessions,” detailing the moral dangers of such expeditions, when men “go out to admire the mountains,” or the course of the stars, and therein forget themselves. Chastened, Petrarch made his descent in silence.
+Only the Enlightenment redeemed our penchant to while away the hours in wonder. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes called curiosity the “singular passion” separating humans from animals. Even better, it was “a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.” What pleasure we might know by letting curiosity have its way with us for an hour or two.
+http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/opinion/homage-to-the-idols-of-idleness.html?ref=international&_r=2&_r=2&
+</blockquote>