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Comment by hbosch | Hacker News Reader

> It seems today that Western society's whole goal is to increase our option for idleness.

Can you please invite me to your Western society that celebrates idleness?

In my Western society, we spend the first 22 years of our lives training to work for another 40 years before we can comfortably enter "idleness" at around age 65 for most people.

I think that for a long time "idleness" is stigmatized as "uselessness", and that by doing nothing you are not contributing to the wellbeing of the colony/civilization/society. That's likely even more true for a burgeoning settlement or young country, but still true today in almost every culture in the world.

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well, it used to be like that in less civilized times, except you'd be spending your first 6 years of life training for work and then work for the rest of it, be it another 6 or maybe 30. no weekends and winters sucked really, really hard.

It's still like that today. If you don't believe me, try applying for work when you havn't been working for the prior 6 months.

You will for certain be questioned on it, and even then it seems you're considered a low quality candidate even if you have a reasonable explanation.

With 12 months or more, it's guaranteed to be a major topic during your interview process, and even afterwards it can derail job offers and require even more discussion about it.

Preindustrial peoples generally worked less than we do, and life expectancy after childhood was not markedly different; if you survived early childhood, unless you were born in a particularly bad time (like the Black Plague), you could expect to live into your 60s or 70s.

Pre-civilization peoples (if by civilization we mean agriculture and settlements) seem to have worked even less.

> Can you please invite me to your Western society that celebrates idleness?

You don't need an invitation to visit Western Europe, but I'd wait a few months.

Sorry if we didn't answer your call in August, we were on vacation. We're working again now, though. Just don't call during lunch.

The kinds of greeks and romans who wrote stuff down that people kept were into σχολή and otium, respectively.

a sixteenth century telling of an anecdote from about a millennium earlier: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k70135b/f1013.image.r=...

> "Eſope vit ſon maiſtre qui piſſoit en ſe promenant, quoy donq, fit-il, nous faudra-il chier en courant."

Could you please translate that? I can make up for my poor standard of modern French with Google Translate, but it doesn’t have an option for 16th century French.

Aesop saw his master pissing while walking around, will we therefore, he said, have to shit while running?

Thank you :)

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