avarice, emulation, vainglory
and the appetite for power over
others."
  Much of the tempo of modern
life is filled with the frenzy of do-
ing something in a hurry. An in-
credible perpetual motion enner-
vates us, sets up an action that
often leads, in the final analysis, to
nothing. New York Times colum-
nist Russell Baker has noted that
"You have to be fast nowadays.
things go by at such a rate!
  "Zoom! Zoom!
  "And they're gone.
  "Nuclear reactors falling out of
the sky. Zoom!
  "(Or is it 'Thunk!')
  "Two days later, forgotten. Peo-
ple get bored fast."
  For the champion of creative do-
ing nothing, there is a lushness
about some of the words that
describe the condition. You can roll
them over your tongue like a tan-
talizing mouthful of alphabet soup:
in-do-lence, lass-i-tude, som-no-
lence, lei-sure. The words
themselves encourage you to take
your time pronouncing them. No
hurry. Savor the syllables first,
then let them slip slowly from your
lips in a relaxed whisper.
  Like everything else in life, doing
nothing in the proper fashion re-
quires a certain equipoise. Too little
or too much can be harmful. There
are degrees of doing nothing that
indicate various qualities of the
state. Quite often they involve sim-
ple semantic shadings rather than a
recognizable alteration of behavior.
  Idleness seems to be the most
common and transient of the states
for it indicates a high degree of
temporariness, a brief time spent
between one action and the next.
Laziness is a little more dangerous
because it usually implies a
recognizable character defect-
something that is more than
transitory. Indolence adds a further
negative connotation in the sense
that it involves a deeper form of
laziness, an unresponsiveness to
outside stimuli. Slothfulness
represents the nadir of doing
nothing. Its counterpart in physics
is entropy, a phenomenon the dic-
tionary describes as "that ultimate



state reached in the degradation of
the matter and energy of the un-
iverse."
  Such degradation has inter-
mittently become a hot political and
social issue whenever arguments
flare up over governmental welfare
policies. The public, some people
argue, rewards people for doing
nothing by paying them not to be
employed. Economists and
sociologists point out that there are
people in this country who are
third generation welfare recipients.
"They wouldn't take a job if you
gave it to them," cry those critical
of the present system. Meanwhile,
young men doing nothing because
no one will offer them a job stand
around on street corners or prowl
the avenues and back alleys of our
central cities. Whenever they do
decide to do something it is general-
ly anti-social or against the law.
  The patron saint of all who
plump for a more relaxed approach
to life is Oblomov, Russian novelist
Ivan Goncharov's 19th century
anti-hero, who spends a great por-
tion of his life wrestling with the
question of whether he should get
out of bed or not. (A contemporary
descendant is Dagwood Bumstead,
the comic strip character who is
forever retreating from his respon-
sibilities to catch a snooze on the
couch.)
  While Oblomov was the product
of a leisured class, others have used
this unwillingness to become an ac-
tive participant in society as a form
of protest. The hobo jungles of the
Depression years in this country
were populated by those who
voluntarily checked out of a society
that had showed them too little op-
portunity or too much hostility.
  The Aquarian generation of the
sixties had an even broader follow-
ing and manifested a rebellion
which had a rejection of the
capitalist work ethic as one of its
major features. During this period,
layabouts loitered conspicuously in
public places, thumbed their noses
at "straight" society, and were a
common sight from San Francisco's
Haight-Ashbury district to Amster-
dam and Hamburg. Their



antecedents, a much more pathetic
lot, were those captives of cheap
wine and despair who could be en-
countered sprawled along skid
rows, such as the Bowery in New
York or West Madison Street in
Chicago.
  These people lacked the option
that is essential to making doing
nothing a creative act-they did
not have the ability to resume some
form of productive activity at will.
There can be no meaningful
idleness unless it is something done
in reaction to an activity that the
idler is retreating from and has the
option of returning to at any point
he wishes. Doing nothing thus, in
the purest sense, becomes a
Platonic exercise, something which
should always be considered as an
active option to doing something.
  For those whose intellectual or
moral sensibilities are such that
they abhor the condition, there is
no way to successfully explain the
therapeutic value of doing nothing.
They are probably incapable of ex-
periencing the exhilaration that
comes from achieving a complete
realization of the state. Creative do-
ing nothing does not involve total
detachment from the respon-
sibilities of the world. It is rather an
opportunity to sort out what is im-
portant and what is not. It is a
chance to let one's mind roam to
any of the far reaches of con-
sciousness it chooses.
  Physically, it provides the body
with a temporary relief from the
load it has been carrying. The idea
is to let go, to float freely. The mind
wanders and the body relaxes. The
juices of energy flow back into the
muscles and joints again. The
numbness of fatigue wears off.
Ideas suddenly crackle in the mind.
Perspective either returns or alters
to the point where things and
events can be put in their proper
place.
  After a while, you reach a critical
point. A decision must now be
made-to end the idleness, or con-
tinue doing nothing. Like
Oblomov, we are faced with a
choice.
  I think I'll lie down for a moment
before I make up my mind.



June 1978/Wisconsin Academy Review/35