Download or read book In Praise of Laziness and Other Essays written by Indrjait Hazra and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-12-19 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cross between a collection of philosophical investigations and idle banter, In Praise of Laziness and Other Essays, is a celebration of what Milan Kundera defined as ‘Mystification: the active form of refusing to take the world seriously’. From an Erasmian encomium to laziness, a literary forensic report on the adult years of Sukumar Ray’s Pagla Dashu and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the joys of staying indoors, to the exquisite pleasures of an electric blanket—and with a science fiction story on colonisation bunged in—this book is the equivalent of a meandering river in which the reader dips his or her toes in, not knowing whether a dolphin will come by or a piranha take a snap. This is a book that’s equal parts serious as well as frivolous, except you never quite know which parts are which.
Download or read book In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays written by Bertrand Russell and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 1972 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Praise of Idleness written by Bertrand Russell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-26 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intolerance and bigotry lie at the heart of all human suffering. So claims Bertrand Russell at the outset of In Praise of Idleness, a collection of essays in which he espouses the virtues of cool reflection and free enquiry; a voice of calm in a world of maddening unreason. From a devastating critique of the ancestry of fascism to a vehement defence of 'useless' knowledge, with consideration given to everything from insect pests to the human soul, this is a tour de force that only Bertrand Russell could perform.
Download or read book In Praise of Idleness written by Bertrand Russell and published by Thomas Dunne Books. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered 'the Voltaire of his time', Bertrand Russell was a fearless iconoclast who stood unbowed before political and religious leaders; his disdain for conventional thinking and accepted beliefs set him apart from his academic peers and at odds with the authorities throughout his long and storied life. In his celebrated essay, In Praise of Idleness, Russell champions the seemingly incongruous notion that realising our full potential – and thus enjoying the greatest possible success and happiness – is not accomplished by working harder or smarter, but through harnessing the extraordinary power of idleness. Russell's penetrating insights and exquisite turns of phrase feel as fresh and relevant today as when they were first written. Arguing that we can achieve far more by doing far less, and that traditional wealth accumulation is a form of cultural and moral poverty, Russell demands greater depth from our age of abundant creativity and heralds the next wave of enlightened entrepreneurs. Replete with a new introduction and afterword, and interspersed with comic illustrations, informative notes plus a curated selection of Russell's best quotes from many of his acclaimed works, this unique edition of In Praise Of Idleness is given new life by New York Times best-selling author and internationally acclaimed humourist, Bradley Trevor Greive. --
Download or read book Idleness written by Brian O'Connor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For millennia, idleness and laziness have been regarded as vices. We're all expected to work to survive and get ahead, and devoting energy to anything but labor and self-improvement can seem like a luxury or a moral failure. Far from questioning this conventional wisdom, modern philosophers have worked hard to develop new reasons to denigrate idleness. In Idleness, the first book to challenge modern philosophy's portrayal of inactivity, Brian O'Connor argues that the case against an indifference to work and effort is flawed--and that idle aimlessness may instead allow for the highest form of freedom. Idleness explores how some of the most influential modern philosophers drew a direct connection between making the most of our humanity and avoiding laziness. Idleness was dismissed as contrary to the need people have to become autonomous and make whole, integrated beings of themselves (Kant); to be useful (Kant and Hegel); to accept communal norms (Hegel); to contribute to the social good by working (Marx); and to avoid boredom (Schopenhauer and de Beauvoir). O'Connor throws doubt on all these arguments, presenting a sympathetic vision of the inactive and unserious that draws on more productive ideas about idleness, from ancient Greece through Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Schiller and Marcuse's thoughts about the importance of play, and recent critiques of the cult of work. A thought-provoking reconsideration of productivity for the twenty-first century, Idleness shows that, from now on, no theory of what it means to have a free mind can exclude idleness from the conversation."--Provided by publisher
Download or read book Laziness Does Not Exist written by Devon Price and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From social psychologist Dr. Devon Price, a conversational, stirring call to “a better, more human way to live” (Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author) that examines the “laziness lie”—which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough. Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles. Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity. Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,” including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough. Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now” (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet).
Download or read book We Learn Nothing written by Tim Kreider and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "New York Times" political cartoonist and writer presents a collection of his most popular essays and drawings about life and government hypocrisy.
Download or read book Quotidiana written by Patrick Madden and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflecting on Montaigne, Virginia Woolf remarked, "The most common actions-a walk, a talk, solitude in one's own orchard-can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind." In Quotidiana, Patrick Madden illuminates these common actions and seemingly commonplace moments, making connections that revise and reconfigure the overlooked and underappreciated.
Download or read book Surrealist sabotage and the war on work written by Abigail Susik and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Surrealist sabotage and the war on work, art historian Abigail Susik uncovers the expansive parameters of the international surrealist movement’s ongoing engagement with an aesthetics of sabotage between the 1920s and the 1970s, demonstrating how surrealists unceasingly sought to transform the work of art into a form of unmanageable anti-work. In four case studies devoted to surrealism’s transatlantic war on work, Susik analyses how artworks and texts by Man Ray, André Breton, Simone Breton, André Thirion, Óscar Domínguez, Konrad Klapheck, and the Chicago surrealists, among others, were pivotally impacted by the intransigent surrealist concepts of principled work refusal, permanent strike, and autonomous pleasure. Underscoring surrealism’s profound relevance for readers engaged in ongoing debates about gendered labour and the wage gap, endemic over-work and exploitation, and the vicissitudes of knowledge work and the gig economy, Surrealist sabotage and the war on work reveals that surrealism’s creative work refusal retains immense relevance in our wired world.
Download or read book Labour of Laziness in Twentieth Century American Literature written by Zuzanna Ladyga and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text argues that major twentieth-century American writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, and David Foster Wallace provocatively challenge the ethos of productivity by filtering their ethical interventions through culturally stigmatised imagery of laziness.
Download or read book Revolting Indolence written by Marcos Gonsalez and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2024-12-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How indolent practices in Latinx LGBTQ culture challenge capitalist imperatives to be productive. Revolting Indolence makes a case for laziness as an aesthetic-political strategy for countering the oppressive logics of cisheteronormative racial capitalism. Focusing on ways in which queer and trans Latinx people demonstrate the unwillingness of their participation in “productivist” ethics and allied respectability politics, Marcos Gonsalez argues that slacking off, lounging, daydreaming, and partying are liberatory practices—revolts that in turn are treated as revolting. Gonsalez explores how queer and trans Latinx artists refute discourses in which work is a moral good. In Paris Is Burning, RuPaul's Drag Race, documentary photography of queer and trans Latinx life in Los Angeles, and other sources, Gonsalez identifies two lazy styles: first, flagrant refusals of work that critique capitalist reason; and second, the invention of alternative aesthetic worlds beyond racial capitalism and violence targeting queer and trans people, whose rejection of the cisgender nuclear family paradigm is rightly seen as threatening the stability of a functioning capitalist system. Reclaiming laziness as a resource for radical imagining, Revolting Indolence asks us to do that which we want most and which capitalist exploitation can least tolerate: to slow down.
Download or read book Anarchism and Other Essays written by Emma Goldman and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How to Be Idle written by Tom Hodgkinson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yearning for a life of leisure? In 24 chapters representing each hour of a typical working day, this book will coax out the loafer in even the most diligent and schedule-obsessed worker. From the founding editor of the celebrated magazine about the freedom and fine art of doing nothing, The Idler, comes not simply a book, but an antidote to our work-obsessed culture. In How to Be Idle, Hodgkinson presents his learned yet whimsical argument for a new, universal standard of living: being happy doing nothing. He covers a whole spectrum of issues affecting the modern idler—sleep, work, pleasure, relationships—bemoaning the cultural skepticism of idleness while reflecting on the writing of such famous apologists for it as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Johnson, and Nietzsche—all of whom have admitted to doing their very best work in bed. It’s a well-known fact that Europeans spend fewer hours at work a week than Americans. So it’s only befitting that one of them—the very clever, extremely engaging, and quite hilarious Tom Hodgkinson—should have the wittiest and most useful insights into the fun and nature of being idle. Following on the quirky, call-to-arms heels of the bestselling Eat, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, How to Be Idle rallies us to an equally just and no less worthy cause: reclaiming our right to be idle.
Download or read book The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers written by Mark T. Conard and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2008-12-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2008 No Country for Old Men won the Academy Award for Best Picture, adding to the reputation of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who were already known for pushing the boundaries of genre. They had already made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, all Coen films explore "the life of the mind" and show that the human condition can often be simultaneously comic and tragic, profound and absurd. In The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers, editor Mark T. Conard and other noted scholars explore the challenging moral and philosophical terrain of the Coen repertoire. Several authors connect the Coens' most widely known plots and characters to the shadowy, violent, and morally ambiguous world of classic film noir and its modern counterpart, neo-noir. As these essays reveal, Coen films often share noir's essential philosophical assumptions: power corrupts, evil is real, and human control of fate is an illusion. In Fargo, not even Minnesota's blankets of snow can hide Jerry Lundegaard's crimes or brighten his long, dark night of the soul. Coen films that stylistically depart from film noir still bear the influence of the genre's prevailing philosophical systems. The tale of love, marriage, betrayal, and divorce in Intolerable Cruelty transcends the plight of the characters to illuminate competing theories of justice. Even in lighter fare, such as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, the comedy emerges from characters' journeys to the brink of an amoral abyss. However, the Coens often knowingly and gleefully subvert conventions and occasionally offer symbolic rebirths and other hopeful outcomes. At the end of The Big Lebowski, the Dude abides, his laziness has become a virtue, and the human comedy is perpetuating itself with the promised arrival of a newborn Lebowski. The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers sheds new light on these cinematic visionaries and their films' stirring philosophical insights. From Blood Simple to No Country for Old Men, the Coens' films feature characters who hunger for meaning in shared human experience—they are looking for answers. A select few of their protagonists find affirmation and redemption, but for many others, the quest for answers leads, at best, only to more questions.
Download or read book Emotions Everyday Life and Sociology written by Michael Hviid Jacobsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the emotions that are intricately woven into the texture of everyday life and experience. A contribution to the literature on the sociology of emotions, it focuses on the role of emotions as being integral to daily life, broadening our understanding by examining both ‘core’ emotions and those that are often overlooked or omitted from more conventional studies. Bringing together theoretical and empirical studies from scholars across a range of subjects, including sociology, psychology, cultural studies, history, politics and cognitive science, this international collection centres on the ‘everyday-ness’ of emotional experience.
Download or read book The Praise of Folly written by Desiderius Erasmus and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays written by Bronislaw Malinowski and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malinowski presents in this book his definitive statement of the theory of functionalism. As the essential clue to the understanding of human behavior, primitive and civilized, he analyzes the functional principle that culture is an examination of the fundamentals of anthropology for the purpose of constructing a general system to explain the facts of culture by this principle. Originally published 1944. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
