Art of Doing Nothing

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Flâneur

walker

One who walks outside aimlessly, sometimes people watching. This is me a lot of the time, just strolling around. Sometimes life feels like a walking simulator to me. There is an unstated goal of just noticing how things are, updating perceptions of the outside world, passively observing life going by. Avoiding being an active participant in anything is liberating, I can distance myself a bit from reality. It's a lot more exciting when walking around in foreign countries, new sights and sensations.

Meditation

In the Buddhist tradition, meditation is temporary relief from one's monkey mind, which is always capricious, restless, jumping around. Hard to channel purposefully, as the monkey mind seeks stimulation. Breath control techniques similar to those which induce sleepiness can help tame the monkey.

I find it too difficult and do not meditate much, if at all. The best time for me is before going to bed, as it is difficult to sleep with a poor mental state.

Anti-praxis

plot

A term that is associated with unconditional accelerationism (U/ACC), it can be thought of as a way to think of outcomes as separate from institutions. What this means is de-centralized emergent behavior, without greater organizations trying to push towards some objective. In contrast to praxis, which can be state-sponsored, deliberate actions intended to produce a first-order effect, anti-praxis is concerned with the failure of praxis to achieve an intended outcome.

It is seeking alternate ways, bypassing organized systems, to achieve second-order or higher effects. It offers a third way out of a binary bias: malicious compliance, civil disobedience, retiring from the rat race, etc. Within the context of U/ACC, this could mean embracing and internalizing hyper-capitalism in an effort to destroy capitalism.

Further reading.

Enlightenment

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.

So much of daily life is passively observing and updating worldviews. While most of this does not result in any change in course of action, some are more inclined than others to seek truth for its own sake. Everyone enters this world full of other people's bullshit and perspectives force-fed to them, it is the individual's duty to find their own perspective, or risk being an NPC or someone else's useful idiot.

Wu wei 无为

Translated as "inaction" or "effortless action", a Daoist philosophical thought that influenced early Chinese statecraft. A failed state will intrude in the affairs of every person, while a successful state blends in with the background, almost invisible. In sharp contrast to Western-style totalitarianism, which rules by fiat, coercion, manipulation, wu wei emphasizes that less interference or meddling in others' affairs is better, none is ideal.

In everyday life, wu wei can be thought of as not forcing yourself to do anything, but finding alternate means to achieve a desired goal. How many people make New Years resolutions and then never follow through with them? To quote Bruce Lee:

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves… Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Starving Leviathan

Hobbes's Leviathan makes a case for authoritarian government, on the condition that a social contract is established. As we see time and time again, the implicit social contract is never well established and is often reneged by tyrants.

Consider for example the American dream, which involves a family home, a stable career, children and education. All of these are either unattainable or replaced by lower quality options: a run-down cramped apartment, precarious job, the death of courtship, and degree mills. Leviathan robs the middle class through a panoply of taxes: income tax, sales tax, excise tax, tariffs, while the rich hire tax accountants to legally evade tax. A majority of tax income comes from a shrinking minority of taxpayers, who derive little to no benefit for their contributions.

Quitting a high stress, high pay job, can be a rational response to this political situation and a "fuck you" to the system.

Bed Rotting

Dostoevsky starts the first half of "Notes from Underground" with a treatise on the protagonist delivered from bed. The desire to do absolutely nothing is a hallmark of major depressive disorder, a complete withdrawal from social life. It is also a rational response to over-socialization, too many scheduled activities, pressure to participate in the performative dances demanded by modern society.

N.E.E.T.

neet

NEET is an acronym that means Not in Employment, Education, or Training. NEETs are generally low status men who have a parasitic relationship with society. A society with too many NEETs is unhealthy and will likely collapse if it hasn't already.

A closely related term may be "hikikomori", Japanese shut-ins withdrawn from society. It is less about the low socioeconomic status, and more about the lack of ambition, striving, or working towards any goal at all, which is central to the NEET identity. This defeatism is a death of the spirit, and a common characteristic of modern society's alienation, coldness, impersonal, nihilistic cultural milieu.