Hi, friends! Twilight Sparkle here with another episode of “Spark of Insight,” where we explore the complexities of the universe through science!
Today’s going to be a bit of a departure from our normal content. And, to be honest, it’s gonna get kinda heavy at parts.
But I hope you’ll stick with me on this because, if you take what I say to heart, I think you will appreciate our normal content even more, and perhaps appreciate more about life in general.
Science has been a lifelong love of mine. For years it was practically the only thing that mattered to me. My every waking hour was bent to the study, to the advancement of humanity’s understanding of the universe.
Then I met my friends – Sunset and the others – and they helped me to see a… broader view of the universe I was studying.
Ever sense then, I’ve been examining that broader world just as much as I’ve been studying the science I love, and what I’ve found is that insights into the former have enhanced my appreciation of the latter.
So, today, I want to share some of those insights with you.
Today, we are going to talk about work, leisure, and boredom. We are going to learn about how to make your boredom enriching, and about how not doing things can be one of the most important things we ever do, so long as we approach it the right way.
And, since we’re all struggling with boredom one way or another right now, this seems like the appropriate time to talk about it.
Let’s start by pointing out the fact that we, as a society, are facing a deep, profound unhappiness. There are many reasons for this unhappiness, but I think a lot of it has to do with how we approach work and leisure. More specifically, I think it has to do with how many of us, when we drill down to it, are workaholics.
Now, when I say ‘workaholic,’ the image that comes to mind for many of you is probably a 40s something businessman who practically lives at the office, who barely sees his kids, whose friends can’t remember the last time they’ve seen him, and whose wife doesn’t remember the last time she heard him say “I love you.”
It’s a pretty grim caricature, one that I’ve unfortunately seen all too often, but it’s also just that: a caricature.
In actuality, workaholics take many forms, from people who work too many hours, to people who aren’t present to their friends and family on the hours they don’t work, to people who justify getting lost in their work because of the good it does. It can be anywhere from selfish to generous in intent, and can run a much broader gamut of hours than the stereotypical sixty- to eighty- hour weeks of the classic caricature.
No matter the field, whether engineering or writing or interior decorating or charity or anything in between, you will find workaholics.
Now, the reasons this sort of workaholic approach to life is unhealthy should be pretty obvious if we take a step back and look at it from the outside:
What point is there to working so hard to make a good life if you’re never able to actually live that good life?
How can you make a better world if you don’t see enough of the world to understand it?
How can you understand the meaning of a function if all you care about is the function itself?
So… yeah. Being a workaholic is bad. As a recovering workaholic, I can definitely confirm that it’s a great way to destroy your life. And, now that I’ve said that, you’re probably expecting me to say something like, “don’t be a workaholic like me.”
But here’s the thing:
You’re probably already a workaholic.
“Whoa, back up the truck,” you might say. “I’ve got a good work life balance. I don’t work too hard. I go out of my way not to work too hard.”
Heck, some of you might even say, “I don’t work at all! In fact, I’m really lazy! How can you call me a workaholic?”
Easy.
Because being a workaholic isn’t about work itself. It’s about how we think about life.
You see, the real problem with being a workaholic isn’t so much the long hours as what those hours reflect. It has to do with priorities.
Consider two people: the caricaturish workaholic father, and his caricaturish deadbeat adult son who lives in the basement.
Disclaimer, I know there are lots of people who have every good reason to move back in with their parents in this economy and who are not deadbeats. Housing is expensive and lots of things are a mess right now; sometimes moving home for a while is the prudent choice, and I’m not dissing that. I’m definitely not saying this caricature is universal.
That said, I’m going to use it because, though it’s far from universal, it is easily recognizable.
And, let’s be honest, most of us know someone it directly applies to.
Moving on: Caricature Dad grinds and grinds and grinds to make money to make a home for his family and provide for them. However, his obsession with work has led to him valuing the utility of the work over what the work actually accomplishes. He has the concept of a ‘good life for his family’ and works day and night to achieve it, but he’s forgotten what a ‘good life for his family’ actually looks like, if he ever knew to begin with. He spends no time thinking about a healthy family life because he’s too wrapped up in working.
If we give him the benefit of the doubt, we might note that he has the right intent: provide for the family. But he’s shot himself in the foot by neglecting to contemplate at a deeper level why it’s important to provide for his family in the first place.
Meanwhile, Deadbeat Son grinds and grinds and grinds on video games, eats junk food, binges on shows, and does whatever he wants, but he’s generally unhappy in life. He’s not sure why – after all, each of these activities seems to bring him pleasure and some measure of happiness in the moment, but nothing ever seems to last. He’s reaching the point where he’s not sure if happiness is attainable, since all he does is pursue it but he never seems to get any happier.
Again, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt: he wants happiness, which is something all humans are wired to pursue. Pleasure, assuming no immorality, is a legitimate way to pursue happiness, albeit within certain limitations. But, like his father, Deadbeat Son has shot himself in the foot by forgetting to ask himself why pleasure and happiness matter at all.
Now, notice something: both the father and the son are making the same critical mistake. They are seeking fulfilment in the function rather than in what the function achieves. They both compulsively pursue these functions to the exclusion of all else, and in doing so find themselves in compulsive, addictive loops wherein they chase highs with ever-diminishing returns.
In essence, Caricature Dad is a workaholic with his professional career, while Deadbeat Son is a workaholic with his pleasure-seeking lifestyle.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Now, to be clear, work, pleasure, happiness, providing for the family, entertainment – all these things I’ve mentioned have purpose, meaning, and value. I would even go so far to say that we are wired for Ultimate Happiness, and that each of these have a role to play in achieving that.
So, the problem is not that these things don’t have value – the problem is that we cannot fully benefit from their value if we don’t slow down and wonder what their value is in the first place. But we can’t do that if our compulsive all-must-have-an-immediate-utility workaholism gets in the way.
Enter Josef Pieper, a German philosopher of the 20th century who saw this exact problem unfolding in post-war West Germany.
Now, Germany got hammered in World War II. They weren’t as bad off as, say, the absolutely devastated Poland, but they’d still lost horrifying amounts of their industry, economy, agriculture, infrastructure, and the population needed to rebuild it all, not to mention the fact that the Soviets made off with half the country.
Repairing the damage done would be a multi-decade effort requiring intense work from the entire population. So, it’s not that surprising that a workaholic culture took root in West Germany during that time.
Which is exactly what Josef Pieper was worried about.
Now, Pieper understood that Germany would need to pour itself into an all-hands-on-deck effort to rebuild the country. He had no objections to people working hard. What concerned him wasn’t the work. What concerned him was the problem we looked at earlier – the danger of this disconnect between the function and the reason for the function.
You see, work is not what gives meaning or lasting happiness to life. For that matter, neither is pleasure.
No, discovering meaning requires a contemplation of higher things – of friends, of family, of morality, of ethics, of truth, beauty, human dignity, and the transcendental.
After all, what motive is there to run a charity if we can’t say that humans have value? Why care for one’s family if one doesn’t realize one’s obligation to one’s children?
As a personal example, why plumb the depths of scientific advancement if there’s no greater purpose to uncover?
Answering these questions is where we find our raison d'être, our reason for existence. And we have no hope of answering them, Pieper warned, if we don’t have leisure.
Now, it’s important to note that when Pieper talks about ‘leisure,’ he’s not talking about playing video games or binge-watching on Netflix or playing football.
Or, more accurately, he’s not necessarily talking about those things.
Much like how being a workaholic isn’t so much about work as it is about the way we approach life, leisure isn’t so much about the activity as it is about the mindset. As he defines it, “Leisure is the disposition of receptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion in the real."
To put it another way, leisure is the mindset of being open to receiving wisdom in the ways that life naturally offers it – in beauty, in experience, in quiet contemplation, and so on. It is the recognition of the thing or the person or the idea in itself rather than simply as a means to an end. It is receiving truth, not because we are trying to derive some immediate utility from it, but because truth is valuable in itself.
Pieper called for people to be deliberate in taking the time to appreciate beauty, art, literature, philosophy, nature, exercise, music, and all such things in their own right, rather than compulsively trying to bend them to the purpose we impose. He believed that, in being deliberate about our appreciation, we open ourselves up to consider the true worth of things and the true meaning behind life.
This was the view of many of the Ancient Greek philosophers, whose term for ‘leisure’ would pass through Latin to create the word for ‘school’ – a place where people learned not merely practical things, but, more importantly, why those practical things mattered. This was also the view of the Medieval scholars, which is why, when they created the University system, such contemplation was so central to their methodology.
In all of this, Pieper never condemns hard work or pleasure, but he is insistent that we cannot properly be immersed in either unless we ensure that we have time for true leisure – time to grapple with questions of meaning and purpose, right and wrong.
The reason for his insistence is made grimly obvious by the backdrop of the atrocities of 20th Century. I’m sorry to have to get morbid for a second here but, trust me, it’s important.
Think about the three bloodiest regimes of the 20th Century: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Chinese Communist Party. Each of them is different in its particular rhetoric and self-justification, but there are certain key similarities we should all be aware of.
Among them, the death of creativity and free-thinking in favor of monolithic obsession with utility.
Notice how in each regime, art is only tolerated if it serves the State. Science is only sanctioned if it benefits the State. Morality is only given by the State. Philosophy is only what is approved by the State. Family life is only there to provide loyal bodies to the State. God, as far as they are concerned, is the State.
All entertainment becomes manufactured to keep the people happy and docile. Work only serves to benefit the ‘common good,’ which is determined by, you guessed it, the State. Nothing that people do has any higher purpose beyond its utilitarian service of the State’s monolithic intent.
This nightmare is made possible by the lack of contemplation of any sort of beauty, truth, or meaning that might question the State with moral objections or diverging thought.
In other words, without leisure, without the “disposition of receptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion in the real,” then ‘reality’ is determined by whoever is in power, while the citizenry lacks the understanding to object. Revolution is impossible because people don’t know what it is to live outside what has been prescribed for them by people in power. Without leisure, freedom dies.
Now… is this an extreme example?
Yes.
But, the world can be an extreme place. If we want to avoid personally experiencing that extremity, it’s worth our while to spend some time thinking, really thinking about just how receptive we are to the world around us.
Are we making use of our ability to think rationally, or are we just filling our days with work and pleasure that we can’t even define the greater purpose of?
Right now, we’re all bored. In that state, my fellow workaholics, our urge is to fill that boredom with work or pleasure so that we can feel productive.
And, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, within limits.
My challenge to you is to spend at least a part of that boredom in true, authentic leisure. Listening to the birds sing, immersing yourself in good music, reading an edifying book, even just taking some time each day to simply think.
I’m not saying you need to throw out the Xbox or swear off Youtube or cancel Amazon Prime Video. I am saying you’ll get more out of all those things if you spend a little more time thinking about the things that matter in life.
Start small. Just a few little things you do to remind you to think differently. Embrace low-key activities and be present in the moment. Put down the phones and iPads and dare to wonder about the real, the true, and the beautiful.
And, if nothing comes to you, don’t sweat it. That’s part of the beauty of this kind of leisure – it doesn’t have to achieve some objective right then and there. It’s about the journey as much as anything. It’s about taking a step back, asking questions, and being okay with not getting all the answers. It’s about learning what questions to ask, and how to enjoy the asking.
I think you’ll be surprised just how much brighter the world looks when you take off the workaholic filter and see the colors for what they really are.
As for me… I’m going to go read a good book. Not because I’m trying to accomplish something, but because good books deserve to be read.
See you next time.