Chapter List

1. Introduction 1
2. The Protestant Work Ethic A Dialogue 5
3. A Portrait of an Idle Fellow 13
4. The Modern Family Man and His Pursuit of the Idle Existence 15
5. The Trouble with Money 30
6. My Dirty Little Secret: Confessions of an Urban Slob, Part 1 34
7. Warning! The Contents of this Work Ethic may be bad for your health! 39
8. Silly Poem 45
9. The Working Life A View from the Trenches 46
10. Home Education: Choosing Otherwise 54
11. Exercise 62
12. Feckless and Drunk: Confessions of an Urban Slob, Part 2 64
13. Excerpt from my diary. September 1988 67
14. A Bedroom Farce (One Mans Adventures with Home Brewing) 69
15. Just Say No, Thank You 79
16. The Idle Life 89
17. Nearly Walden Life in the Longest Village 90
18. Idling Abroad 98
19. A Fishy Story 108
20. Surfing 109
21. Realisation A New Idlers Perspective 112
22. An Idle Spirit 117
23. The Spice Who Loved Me 123
24. Survival Strategy Solutions for the Office Workplace 127
25. A Beginners Guide to Failure 135
26. Dating is a Pleasure: Confessions of an Urban Slob, Part 3 136
27. Whats it all about, Alfie? 139
28. A Life Changing Experience 143
29. An Idlers Allotment Year 148
30. Gee, Im a Tree! 159
31. Food for Idlers 162
32. Diogenes 181
33. Ringolevio 183
34. Resources for Idlers 186
Introduction

Idleness does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized as industry in
the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class.
Robert Louis Stevenson

The traditional view of idling has always had negative connotations. To describe someone as idle is
to conjure up a picture of a lazy, indolent slob, lying around on the sofa all day and barely moving
except to reach for a beer. So, you might well be asking, how can we say that idling is for everyone?

'Idling' is perhaps a provocative word. Are idlers lazy? Well, undoubtedly some are! More to the
point, though, they're people who believe that there's more to life than mortgages, hire purchase and
shopping at Tesco so they won't bust a gut to pay for it. You're unlikely to see an idler cooing over
expensive penthouse flats in estate agents' windows, or filling their home with the latest gadgets. As
a result, you're also less likely to see them putting in long days at work. They're probably spending
time with friends and family, or in an art gallery, or on their allotment. In fact, idling is about
spending time in the manner of your own choosing, and whether that's on the sports field or on a
deckchair should be up to you.

We don't necessarily advocate working or not working. What we do advocate is avoiding jobs that
suck your soul dry and leave you whimpering for mercy at the end of each day. Life isn't about
sitting in an office for eight hours each day and being told when you can get up and walk around!
Rather, according to the idler, life is about only doing work that you enjoy and that leaves you
plenty of time for all the other things that make life colourful and interesting.

People regularly turn up on the forum on the Idle Foundation website full of enthusiasm for the
concept of idling but keen to ask, 'is it really possible?'. Very many of our members have indeed
made the jump to freedom, so it can be done but it is not always easy to break away from all the
conditioning which tells you that you must 'get a good job' and spend the best years of your life in
the hamster wheel, producing and consuming.

But why would anyone want to live that way? The answer is perhaps 'job security', that holy grail of
many a modern worker. But job security, if it still exists, is usually taken to mean a job that is yours
for as long as you want it, provided that you adequately fulfil the wishes of your employer.
basically, do as you're told and you'll be alright!

In the short term this situation may be acceptable, simply as a means to an end, but how long can a
man or woman with a hint of individuality endure such circumstances? If the job has no significant
spiritual or creative meaning beyond the pay cheque and yet swallows up the majority of your
waking time, then it seems inevitable for the thoughtful soul that there will be some sort of a
backlash.

It is sad to say that the backlash is too often directed within. Years of repression and indoctrination
at the hands of teachers, careers advisors and possibly parents not to mention the pressure from
society as a whole to conform to a norm have neutered your responses. Instead of thrusting your
boss' smug face into the wall in umbrage at his barking orders at you (as if you were a misbehaving
dog!) you direct your fury within, resulting in stress, high blood pressure and depression amid the
realisation that this work life/security rubbish is one big sham. You conclude that while wage
slavery might allow you to exist, you are not really living.

Now comes the trap. You think that you are in too deep to change things. The kids need clothes, the
mortgage needs paying, the bills are coming thick and fast and you can't breathe. You are going
under for the third time, but you still refuse to reach for that life buoy that bobs along inside of you.

Your inner voice constantly tells you that you are on the wrong path; it screams at you to stop, but
you suppress it. As others suppressed it in you in days gone by, now you involuntarily beat it down
yourself. They have beaten you down. You are unable to contemplate a life beyond the promise of
security, in work and in following orders. In short, you have been brainwashed.

How does that make you feel? Just how much self-esteem do you garner from this situation that is
your working life? Do you ever recall those dreams that you had in younger days about what you
might do or be, in relation to what you did with your time? Did you even begin to pursue those
ambitions, or were you thrust onto a treadmill of toil before you had time to realise what was
happening?

Regrettably you have become a bystander in your own life, and all you do now is grudgingly
endure; awaiting the day you might retire, hoping that fate might grant you a few more years
afterwards, until death ends it all.

You need to take control. Realise that in a life worth living there is no security. A life worth living
involves taking chances. You must see life as a great adventure; an exhilerating and sometimes
scary roller coaster ride, a gamble risky by definition of circumstance, spinning on a globe in a
seemingly endless and desolate universe.

Break free from the idea of security. Resolve instead that no more will you go to bed dreaming of
what might have been. Re-ignite those ambitions of your youth. Find a way to live the life you've
always wanted, free from the bogus and counterproductive controlling influence of 'security'.

This is a time when governments have allowed consumer spending and debt to spiral out of control,
and now they're expecting us to work extra hard in order to pay for the consumerist excesses of the
recent past. It is an endless circle and it may well be that our happiness depends on stepping off the
merry-go-round before we get any more dizzy than we already are. Don't buy into the deification of
'hard-working families' peddled by politicians: ask yourself whether happy families, and happy
individuals, might be more important.

It may take time to bring about change. it may require some degree of understanding from your
family during that period of transition where you go from being a drone to being the ruler of your
own hive, but you can do it. You need to do it, if you are not to look back on your life with regret
and shame at the way in which you surrendered to the system. When you have done it, it might well
seem to you that it is the wage slave, stumbling through a mediocre life because he does not stop to
ask questions, who is lazy; not the idler who seeks to live life as he or she wants to.

This book has been produced to help those who would like to make the leap. Written by a number
of idlers, it contains both theory (why idling makes more sense than the work ethic/materialism
paradigm) and practice (examples and suggestions for overcoming the barriers to freedom). There is
also much art and humour celebrating the life of the idler.

We hope that you will find this volume both useful and entertaining. Let's make a start on changing
the world from the comfort of our deckchairs.
The Protestant Work Ethic A Dialogue

Bakunin Once upon a time
Jura Really? Are you sure thats how you want to start?
Bakunin Quite sure. Once upon a time
Jura Its just that
Bakunin Yes? Its just what?!
Jura Well, its a bit of a clich, is it not?
Bakunin Its classic and timeless and, more importantly, whos leading this dialogue?
Jura Fair point.
Bakunin Once upon a time, long before Christianity had started on the long upward
struggle to dominate the religious lives of Europe and America, manual work was done by
slaves
Jura The Christians had slaves.
Bakunin Well, yes. But their slaves werent taken as defeated enemies and transferred
hundreds of miles from their homes
Jura Yes, they were.
Bakunin Okay, they were. But it was different because Classical civilisations generally
held the notion that slavery was acceptable and right, whereas the Bible said that the
owning of one man by another was immoral.
Jura But it didnt stop them, did it? Rich Christians still transported slaves after
abandoning such archaic notions as <does quote fingers> immorality in their desire
to acquire money and wealth, did they not?
Bakunin Can we save the righteous indignation for the bits about the Protestant Work
Ethic and perhaps move on?
Jura Im just saying, is all.
Bakunin - <continues huffily> As I was saying, slaves did the manual work. The Greeks
and Romans were all about the acquisition of wealth. Wealth could provide a buffer for the
privileged elite from the cold, harsh reality of the real world. No-one who mattered, that is
those with money, gave much credence to such silly notions as wealth being used to do
good work for the whole of society, or that wealth and morality were mutually exclusive.
The Greeks in particular were so enamoured of the pursuit of Universal Truths that they
considered the actual application of physical labour to suitable only for the lower classes.
The application of practical skills, such as carpentry and the like, or the theoretical study of
engineering, were not considered to be appropriate for citizens. <pauses> Sorry, am I
boring you?
Jura - <looks up from cleaning nails with a paperclip> No, no! You continue, please!
Bakunin So we move on, many hundreds of years. All across Europe cities were
growing and populations along with them. The Church had a powerful hold on peoples
lives and it had decided that idleness could lead to sin. Work could be a means to preserve
ones morality and it could also provide a safety net to ones eternal soul. All men are
equal in Christianity with one tiny proviso; If any will not work, said St. Paul, let him
not eat.
Jura Ooh, a quote. Have you referenced that?
Bakunin Its anecdotal, I dont need to reference it. Anyway, to continue. What was
carried over from the Classical period was the notion of class. Manual work was still done
by the lower layers of society, even if they werent technically slaves. Freedom came at a
price. People were economically dependent upon land owners in order to eke a living, but
as time moved ever onwards and trade increased, leaving towns more powerful, there was
a new economic alternative to the earlier feudal system.
Jura Are we going to get onto the Protestant Work Ethic at any point?
Bakunin Im setting the scene and providing a little background. Its informative.
Jura Its not why people are reading, though.
Bakunin Fine! The German economist and sociologist, Max Weber, was the first to
name the Protestant Work Ethic in his work published in the early Twentieth Century
Jura Why did it take them so long to come up with a name?
Bakunin <pauses once more to take a deep breath> and central to this new work
ethic were submission to the needs of the economy, the decreasing importance of personal
gratification and a developing idea of the religious duty of personal industriousness. This
development was a direct result of the religious and political upheavals that took place
during the period in the Sixteenth Century, known as the Reformation.
Jura Ah, the Reformation.
Bakunin Youd like to add something?
Jura If I may. The movement began as an attempt to reform the Catholic Church. Many
western Catholics were troubled by what they saw as false doctrines and malpractices
within the Church, particularly involving the teaching and sale of indulgences. Another
major contention was the practice of buying and selling church positions and what was
seen at the time as considerable corruption within the Church's hierarchy. This corruption
was seen by many at the time as systemic, even reaching the position of the Pope.
Bakunin Did you just wiki that in an effort to look knowledgeable?
Jura Possibly
Bakunin It didnt work. As I was saying, as proto-capitalism became the dominant
economic force, a new culture was developing, in which hard work, regardless of the
purpose or validity of that work, was considered to be vital to the well being of the
community and this led to the condemnation of those who were considered to be idle or
lazy. Rich tradesmen and merchants, who could support the church with donations, needed
a religious doctrine that supported the notion of work as a duty and before you could say
Ulrich Zwingli along came a reform movement.
Jura Ulri Ulrik Zing Swing Forget it. It was a conspiracy, then?
Bakunin Possibly, who knows? What it definitely was, though, was opportune. One of
the man influences for this change was the Augustinian friar, Martin Luther.
Jura The bloke what nailed the 95 Testes to the door of a church in Germany?
Bakunin Theses, not Testes, you pinhead. Luther became a leader of the fledgling
Protestant movement after growing disillusioned with the hegemony of the Catholic
Church and the Vatican. One of his central beliefs regarding work and labour was that they
defined social structure and that the structure was immutable and dictated by God.
According to Luther, every person was assigned to a social class by God and that class
dictated which sort of job they could do.
Jura Youd think Hed be busy enough with all of the answering of prayers and stuff
without getting involved in social engineering.
Bakunin Quite. There was an upside and a downside to this revolutionary idea. On the
upside, since God defined a persons role in life, then all professions were of equal spiritual
value and all people were equal in the eyes of God. This also meant that manual labour,
and those who undertook it, should no longer be considered to be less worthy.
Jura Nice, very socialist. So Luther thought God was just a big Karl Marx in the sky?
Bakunin Err, no. Mostly because Karl Marx hadnt been born yet, but also because of
the following; The downside was that, as God defined social status, to attempt to move
between social classes was to go against the laws of God, and additionally it was
acknowledged that work was now a way to praise Him.
Jura Yikes!
Bakunin Youre not kidding. He also said that any professions that existed merely to
make money were immoral, and he disappointed strongly with the accumulation of wealth
that was not used for the good of the community.
Jura Ah, socialism again.
Bakunin Still no. Luthers reasoning was that too much money, as with too much spare
time, inevitably led to sin. Oh, and he had a real bee in his bonnet about monks, as well.
Jura Really? Little, inoffensive blokes with the tonsures and the chanting? Butts of the
Whats worn under the habit joke?
Bakunin Yes, them. Apparently they didnt do anything to support their local
community and didnt produce anything of worth. This was also a sin according to Luther.
Shall we move on again?
Jura Yes, lets.
Bakunin The next stage in the development of this new way of thinking about work
came when Luthers teachings were hastily mashed together with the beliefs of the French
theologian, John Calvin
Jura Ooh, ooh! I know him! Hes the bloke who does the underwear!
Bakunin No, thats Calvin Klein, and before you ask, no, its not the little boy with the
tiger from the cartoon strip either, although that Calvin is named for our Calvin. Central to
Calvins new doctrine was the concept of the Elect, those who were chosen by God to
inherit eternal life. There was, according to Calvin, two distinct signs that meant a person
was one of the Elect, the first being the nature of ones relationship with God. Basically, if
you felt that you were one of the Elect and that you had a close relationship to God, then
you probably were. If you doubted this, then you werent. The second sign was success in
ones life. If you were hard working and successful this meant that God valued you and
you were one of the Elect.
Jura So the Elect were kind of like Gods fan club? Did they get badges and posters and
stuff?
Bakunin They got much better than that. They got to go to heaven whilst everyone else
was damned.
Jura Lucky them. So how did you get to join this little social circle?
Bakunin You didnt. Calvin believed that a persons station was pre-ordained by God
before they were born and that no action a person took could alter this destiny.
Jura That seems a little unfair.
Bakunin Welcome to the real world. Anyway, Luther and Calvin didnt see eye to eye
on a number of things which lead to a rift and the setting up of rival branches of the
Protestant Church
Jura SPLITTERS!
Bakunin Calm down. Although Calvin thought that a person was pre-destined to be one
of the Elect or not, he did not believe, unlike Luther, that social standing was fixed by God.
He saw it as the religious duty of every person to aspire to the highest profession that they
could achieve. He saw no obligation to follow in the family trade, for example, if a person
could move onto something better. And by better, we are of course talking about a higher
income.
Jura Ah, filthy lucre, Mammon, money makes the world go round and all that stuff.
Bakunin Yes, and this led to the second way in which Calvin and Luther did not agree.
Luther, as I mentioned, thought that to aspire after wealth was a sin but Calvin saw wealth
as a means to an end. Wealth could be used to further Gods plan on Earth.
Jura What did that involve? Building a big theme park or something?
Bakunin I cant help but feel probably not.
Jura So what? Helping the poor and needy?
Bakunin Hah! Not likely. If you remember, one showed that one was of the Elect
through success in ones life. One was not expected to help others into that position as if
they were Elect they would succeed on their own and if they werent, they were damned
and beyond help.
Jura Ooh, thats cold.
Bakunin Welcome to the wonderful world of religion. In many ways these exciting new
ideas represented a kind of spiritual survival of the fittest and in keeping with the theories
later espoused by Charles Darwin regarding biological evolution, the rules were cruel and
arbitrary. Only the best would be saved and only God could say who they would be and
that decision was irreversible. Predestination was a harsh mistress.
Jura Better to have loved and lo
Bakunin <interrupts> Im not sure I get your point.
Jura Me neither.
Bakunin Hmm Of course, things weren't all bad. If you were successful, you were
obviously of the elect and thus were free to throw yourself ever more deeply into the world
of business and trade. Material reward was linked to spiritual reward and the more
successful you became the more apparent it was that you were predestined to receive those
rewards. Parables from the Bible regarding such archaic notions as rich men, camels, and
the eyes of needles were conveniently overlooked. On a much wider scale, the success of
the Northern European Protestant nations would have seemed to a contemporary observer
to confirm all of these new beliefs.
Jura A kind of self-fulfilling prophecy? So were back to the conspiracy theory, then?
Bakunin Again, thats your decision to make. Calvin's ideas were not accepted
immediately. As it was the rich and successful who suggested that being rich and
successful was a sign of God's good graces, there was some initial cynicism regarding
their motives and they were accused by some of hypocrisy and self-interest in their
insistence of the godliness of trade.
Jura Really? People can be so cynical.
Bakunin Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, you know.
Jura Surely you mean TV sitcoms?
Bakunin Are you finished? Whether or not the ruling classes formed a new work ethic
that required workers to acquiesce to the needs of their industrial leaders regardless of
conditions or pay, the fact is that for the first time religion and work were now in a
symbiotic relationship that placed workers in a submissive position to the needs of the
economy.
Jura - So why does this notion still dominate today? Have we not moved on in the last 400
years?
Bakunin You dont need me to answer that. What hasnt changed is the dominant style
of paternalistic management that presumes that workers will not be able to function
without constant guidance and supervision. There is still a presumption that hard work and
self-sacrifice are needed to preserve the economy, and that poverty and degradation will be
the end result of a failure to adhere to this belief.
Jura So its not all about religion any more?
Bakunin No. The power has shifted from one group to another, but the underlying
notions are still there. The concept of the elect still exists to this day. There are
groups amongst our modern society that would tell you that some people are born to fail
and that there is no way out of the poverty trap and that they should accept their place. It
may not be couched in the language of the saved and the damned but the premise is
the same. The carrot of promotion and advancement is still dangled in front of workers in
an effort to drive them to work harder, but the language is now materialistic rather than
spiritual. The promise of a reward for hard work is no longer heaven but instead a bigger
house and a faster car.
Jura BRMMM!!! BRMMMM!!! SKREEEEEEE!!!
Bakunin I think youre missing the point. Again. What has remained constant is that it is
the poor who are both the source of the wealth acquired through the grace of God and the
buffer that separates the 'elect' from the harsh realities of life. The teachings of the
Protestant Work Ethic have all along confirmed to the capitalists who run the world that
since most of us are doomed anyway, they are not morally culpable for the damage they do
to the world and that writing off large sections of society is as acceptable to the economic
right-wing of our own time as it was to the the original supporters of Calvin and Luther.
Jura <swaying> Sing it, Brother! Is that it?
Bakunin Yes, rant over.
Jura Not quite. How did you start?
Bakunin Ah, of course. <clears throat> And they all lived happily ever after.
Jura Did they?
Bakunin <snorts> Did they fu
Jura Language! There might be children reading.
Just Say o, Thank You

Traffic cop: Licence, Lady.
Maude: Oh, I dont have one, I dont believe in them.

Harold and Maude

Imagine youre at an event of some sort, a wedding say; yes a wedding that will do, full of meaning and
hidden tales. The happy couple have cut the cake, the proud parents have put aside their usual bickering
and feel the warm tingle of many shaken hands. The punch has provided Auntie Prue with more
alcohol than she would normally consume in a year and she is slowly preparing herself to create an
acceptably embarrassing spectacle on the dance floor. Couples are putting a brave face on and trying
not to show any doubt about the whole concept. Singletons are feeling particularly single. Everybodys
clothes itch and there is some good-natured weeping. In short its an ordinary wedding.

Youre just sitting down to the first course of the professional catering when suddenly a man, a jilted
former-lover of the bride lets say, bursts in through the aged and peeling double-doors of the
community-hall function-room, waving a serious looking handgun around and gibbering
incomprehensibly. Panic sets in quickly and once he has the undivided attention of the room he utters
his well-rehearsed first line:

Right, He says, with more than a hint of wildness in his voice, everyone against the wall.

Now, confronted by this kind of situation, most of us react in one of two ways. We either comply
immediately and scramble straight over to the wall where we wait for further orders and pray that we
come out of the whole thing alive, or if we think ourselves the Bruce Willis of the day (especially if
weve had a couple of drinks and are trying to impress the bridesmaids) we launch ourselves at the guy,
provoking him to shoot us before he even knows what hes doing, or more likely we trip over the first
chair in our path and fall in a humiliated pile of limbs, which no longer feels such the hero.

Not the true idler though, who being too polite for the fight-or-flight response as generally adopted will
instead follow a middle path the path of least activity. The idler will keep their head while all around
are losing theirs and remain in repose whilst assessing the position.

I said, comes the voice again against the wall. The gun is pointed more pointedly at our idler
friend.

What the thinking idler knows, of course, is that things are never as clear-cut as they appear. Most
people think that if someone with a gun utters a command then they are telling you what to do. Indeed,
the gunman himself makes this same mistake, whereas the idler knows that in reality, gun or no gun,
people can only ever in fact present you with a choice. The real power lies in retaining the freedom to
make that choice. If the situation was different, if the gunman was running amok say and killing
indiscriminately, then the choice might be different, but even if the choice is more limited it still
remains a choice. In this case our idler reasons that an over-emotional jiltee will not go to the length of
shooting an unthreatening bystander (or sitter) simply because they wish to finish their soup.
No comes the reply, thank you.

Now, this is thinking outside of the gunmans box and he is unlikely to have prepared a response for
this eventuality. Most likely he will crumble completely and sink into blubbering self-pity. Our idler, of
course, will pat him gently on the shoulder, take the distasteful weapon away and offer him a glass of
punch.

So, what is the point of all this imagining? Well, most of its pointless to be honest, Im just enjoying
myself, but there is a message here too.

Being at ease is not easy in the modern world. As idlers we know that we need to relax, to take the time
to enjoy our lives and the lives of those around us. To slow down and immerse ourselves in the glory of
'being' without which the endless toil of 'doing' becomes meaningless. We know it in our minds and we
know it in our hearts, in fact we know it in our very marrow - for though beauty is but skin deep, Idle
goes to the bone (sorry, couldnt help myself!).

But what hope has the idler got in the culture we find ourselves living in? The vested interests of the
few keep the rest of us enslaved in a not-so-merry-go-round of constant activity, and the god of
Economic Growth, that we are all taught to worship unquestioningly, reduces most of us to little more
than cattle, farmed for our puny worth and of little value beyond our ability to produce and consume,
produce and consume. Deadlocked by debt and fed on a slow drip of sugary soulless pap and
aspirational propaganda, we scratch around for what little scraps of human dignity we can hold on to.
Its all a bit grim. Youd think there must be some deeply cynical bastards out there running the show,
and youd be right, but the picture is more complicated than that.

The real origin of our predicament is deeply systemic and its source lies in the hard-wired fears of the
traditional ruling classes. Now, imagine that you have been born into this kind of environment. Youre
packed off to boarding school where along with the 3 Rs you are also taught that you are a member of
that elite group of genetically superior people onto whose shoulders fall the great and crushing
responsibility of Being In Charge. The masses wriggle about below you, blissfully unaware of how
difficult a task it is to keep a society together and stave off the forces of anarchy that are ever at the
gate, threatening to overtake the world with chaos. Although your schooling and family background try
to foster in you a certain inherent confidence in your suitability for this role, still theres always that
nagging doubt that youre only human really, just like the rest of them, and that perhaps your abilities
might not be up to the task. Eating away at you is the terrifying thought that if the whole house of cards
comes crashing down then its going to be your head on the block, just like cousin Francois. By Christ
youd need a brandy.

Inevitably, if you are in this spot youre going to spend quite a bit of time thinking about ways to keep
control of the situation, and that is precisely what the Patrician, the Boss, the Man (call him - and its
usually a him - what you will), has been thinking about for several thousand years. The model that he
evolved has been working well enough for most of that time, give or take a revolution or two, and can
be seen operating in every culture that doesn't still live in a jungle. We know it today as Command-
and-Control and its prevalence cuts across all religious and political boundaries in all countries of the
world. No matter where you go, said that great philosopher Ray Winstone in Quadrophenia, theres
always some cunt in stars and stripes trying to push you about. Indeed. Wherever there are people
gathered together in one place, there is always someone with a big stick making them stand in line, and
behind him of course there is a hierarchy of bigger sticks making sure that those lines are aligned on at
least a national if not a global level.

It was all going swimmingly until something bad happened, that is if the word bad adequately
expresses the festering hell of the First World War. Suddenly it was realised that things had become a
tad tricky. Theres something about losing most of your family and half of your community that makes
people think about stuff, and what they were mostly thinking about was how the existing control
systems of Church and State had let things get into such an unholy pickle. Folk wanted answers and
when the answers they got consisted of lots of important people shrugging their shoulders then,
understandably, they wanted change.

The Man had of course been thinking and plotting away about all this and as ever was one step ahead
of anything the vulgar minds of the public could come up with. If violence was out of fashion then
what was needed was an altogether subtler and manipulative form of mass-control, one that wouldnt
result in hordes of them running at you with bayonets. Any megalomaniac with a military backing can
rule a country through brutality, but if you are to keep control within the confines of a little concept
called democracy then you need to be much more insidious than that. Where mind games become of
more necessity than guns you need an altogether cleverer breed of psychopath pulling the strings.
Luckily for the controllers, the British had this down to a fine art.

One of the interesting things about Aldous Huxleys futuristic novel Brave New World is that youre
never sure whether he is satirising the world that he depicts there or supporting it. The key to
understanding this ambiguity is firstly in realising that as an upper-class intellectual writing after the
Great War he would have been part of the unofficial think-tank that was trying to create a new
paradigm of control and he therefore had a great interest in social experimentation, but secondly he had
also been to America and seen at firsthand the misplaced worship of material success that happens
there. By the time the novel was published in 1932 many of the ideas it explores, particularly around
the use of eugenics, of which Huxley was a proponent, were losing their lustre in the light of world
events - events that were leading inexorably to another War-to-end-all-wars-this-time-we-promise. The
genocidal horrors of that war, of course, put the kibosh on any thoughts of genetic social engineering
for a good while, but other elements outlined in the book were more appealing and, after the dust of the
Manhattan Project had settled, Operation Bumble-Puppy was launched on an unsuspecting populace.

Many have noted the prescience of Huxleys novel with regard to our modern consumer society, but I
would argue that he merely expounded the prevailing ideas of his day, concerning control, and that we
shouldnt be surprised that our world, which is based upon those ideas, should have come to resemble
it. If you havent read the book, the basic idea consists of keeping everyone sufficiently distracted with
sex, sport and shopping that they never think to question the system under which they exist, which can
therefore maintain an incredible amount of control over every aspect of their lives. Mood-altering drugs
and psychological conditioning create a population who willingly surrender themselves to the
common good of endless productivity that is fuelled by endlessly consuming. The resulting culture is
of course the wet dream of the ruling class, absolute compliance and absolute control. Post-war
societies were eager to adopt these ideas and after the hardships of the forties the new Modernism,
where anything new, plastic and streamlined was fetishised and anything that smacked of the past was
equally demonised, was embraced by a shell-shocked people desperate to forget the past and believe
that the world could be a better place. At the same time the spirit of the war-effort was kept alive and
along with the Calvinist work ethic was enlisted in the name of Progress to keep everyone busily
contributing to the dream of the shiny happy future that was being sold to us.
So far so good for the controllers, but what nobody thought about at the time was that all this
productivity, which has to be fuelled not only by human effort but also by the massive exploitation of
natural resources, is completely unsustainable in the real world. What no-one, not even Huxley,
predicted was that a constant and exponential profligacy in the use of non-renewable greenhouse-
pumping materials primarily oil - would lead us to the double-whammy of Climate Change and Peak
Oil that now threatens us globally. Almost everyone is now waking up to the fact that our frenzied
plundering of resources is taking us to the brink of our own destruction.

We know that we must drastically change our way of living if we are to create any kind of future at all,
but quite how we go about this is less clear. Of course the Earth doesnt really mind how we do it, so
long as we treat her better then she will keep letting us live on her. If we want to go around killing each
other then thats our business, just more food for the earthworm, similarly if we want to enslave
ourselves and live in abject misery then thats one for us. All she requires is that we get our act together
one way or another. Its our choice.

As individuals we could choose not to bother and just wait around for some authority figure or other to
come along and save the day, and sooner or later they probably will, but this will most likely involve
the same old methods that were all too familiar with. To the idler the oppression that inevitably comes
with the kind of top-down hierarchy we are used to has become, frankly, unendurably boring. An
ordered life in this sense is not really a life worth living at all. Whats the point of saving humanity if
were just going to go on with the same spirit suffocating, repressive, mechanical existence that has led
to our present, all-pervasive, global death wish?

What choice we will make remains to be seen, but its clear that our glorious leaders have let us down
again and again. Command and control worked well for a while, when most of the population were
illiterate and uneducated, but we have simply outgrown it as a species. Democracy as we know it has
failed us too. As the stakes get higher, and the area of control gets ever more extended, those drawn to
the power get ever more corrupt. If we are to face the grown-up future of mankind with a grown-up
attitude to the planet, and all its inhabitants, then we need to slough off these outmoded structures of
Command-and-Control, which are patently no longer fit for purpose, and replace them with new
structures that reflect the changing times in which we live. Nobody wants all out anarchy; even
anarchists wouldnt want it if they saw what it really looked like, but there are systems being developed
right now that will allow us to regulate ourselves through self-control, respect and mutual
understanding.

We are at a rare point in our history when we have both the opportunity and the ability to change our
system of organisation to one based on the sharing of knowledge, resources and responsibility directly
with each other, through technical and organisational structures and services, rather than under the
controlling direction of an elite.

Theres just one little stumbling block to all this though, and its this were crap at it. The system
were used to has so thoroughly conditioned us into its thinking that even those of us who espouse a
different way, an altered destiny, find it hard to actually live out any other principles in our day to day
existence.

Given any particular circumstance the average human will either try to assume control (often
complaining that we have to do everything around here whilst simultaneously preventing anyone else
from getting a look in), or they will simply absolve themselves of any responsibility and passively do
what they are told (often complaining that the Man is oppressing them whilst simultaneously being
complicit in The System which they so vocally oppose). Now, the deepest beauty of the ordinary
person, and our ultimate saviour, is that on the whole we just want to be left alone to live out our lives
not bothering anyone and without anyone bothering us, but unfortunately it is exactly this trait which,
in a world where a minority of soulless busy-bodies have created circumstances that are intolerable, can
result in apathy and an inability to face the changes which are necessary to create a future that we
would want to be a part of. Compliance to the status quo is such an easy route that we all find ourselves
slipping into its seductive arms despite our best efforts to the contrary. Getting out of the mainstream
requires the kind of constant self-awareness that we just cant seem to manage on our own. Lucky then
that we are not on our own, in fact theres millions of us, and left to ourselves we mostly just want the
same few simple things that everyone else does. A roof over our head, enough to eat, cultural and
intellectual stimulation, the society of our peers when we want it and privacy when we dont and a
belief in our childrens future. If all us idlers were to decide to mind each other and to support our
fellow humans in whatever ways we can (and to accept their support in return), then we may be able to
head out on a different track, one that doesnt regard us as a malleable mass of uncritical and unfeeling
robotnics, but a path full of joy and laughter and the poetry of life.

Well, OK thats all very nebulous and philosophical, but what can we idlers actually do in our own
present realities to help the situation? Of all the unlikely people it was Nancy Reagan that had the
answer, Just say no she told me when I was a kid, and she was right. Martin Luther King agreed and I
saw what the Civil Rights movement had achieved when inspired by his words. Mohandas Gandhi
expanded on the idea just say no, politely he seemed to be saying, sitting in his dhoti humbly spinning
cotton. Of course thats not as easy as it sounds when youve got someone jamming a rifle butt into
your teeth but this is where you have to make a choice. Stick to your gunlessness no matter what it
costs you, or make a fully conscious compromise and live to not-fight another day. Either approach
might be acceptable to the idler depending on the circumstances, there may even be a time to raise up
ones umbrella in defence of ones honour (though for the idler violence is always a somewhat
embarrassing last resort), but unthinking compliance, like unthinking retaliation, is simply not an
option.