"More Fully" Week 8

In this issue:

• Idleness

Idleness

The word "idle" has religious roots; it originally meant "totally open to the world." This is good in the sense that you're open-minded, innovative, and creative. But bad in the sense that there are some things that should be cut out of life (E.g. self-destructive drugs, using people as objects, etc).

One way of thinking about norm evolution -- open-minded/innovative/creative is valued SIGNIFICANTLY more in today's job market (vs previous job markets). For most of human history, questioning "why are we doing this? is there a more efficient way?" had lower returns than today (2021). And because "culture follows profits," we are becoming more and more open people (when we see people being rewarded for any new behavior x, more and more people attempt to cultivate x in themselves/their kids).

To some, this is one way in which "capitalism is corrupting" -- arguably, molding ourselves into the type of behavior that is rewarded in a CEO's boardroom is NOT optimal in real life. While we (probably?) get better and more efficient at organization/problem solving, we lose out on other qualities, like patience, self-reflection, sitting with ambiguity, etc.