One of the useful functions of retirement must surely be to relive one’s youth. In between comes a time of working-to-support-a-family-and-pay-a-mortgage, which can be irksome to the spirit. It’s easy to forget how hard it was to become adult: to find somewhere to live and pay a month’s rent in advance plus a month’s deposit and find a non-irksome job if possible. I love the word “irksome”. I was looking for a synonym for “pesky”, the epithet I usually apply to my mobile phone. I try to minimize its irksomeness by keeping the same old one. It belonged to my daughter several years ago but is still far too modern for me. My grandparents had a candlestick phone, with no dial. You had to pick up the receiver and wait for the operator, then request the number. It was considered bad form to jiggle the receiver rest up and down to attract attention. Any phones more modern than that, I treat with suspicion. My grandfather treated even that one with suspicion. He’d bellow impatiently at callers in monosyllables: “Yes? Yes?”, hoping to discourage any further audacity. Poverty had compelled him to let out most of the house and he found it irksome to answer the phone on tenants’ behalf. I and other descendants in the male line have continued the tradition of barking into the mouthpiece, or that pinhole that passes for a mouthpiece these days.
Every generation extols that Golden Age before the great decline in values, but on closer examination we see that it merely harks back to the days of our youth. But let’s tear ourselves away from that topic and consider “not doing” some more. TV commercials foster covetousness and the urge to earn more, which requires constant hustling, as opposed to sitting on a bench watching the world go by; or squatting on one’s heels in the shade of a dusty pueblo. I like the old-fashioned word “constitutional” that I read in Conrad today, meaning the brisk walk that a gentleman takes for no other purpose than to keep fit and breathe some fresh air. “Not doing” certainly includes constitutionals.
This is my thesis: that a sane person will revert to a state of not-doing when the needful has been done. Not-doing doesn’t mean being a couch-potato, in fact it includes whatever is necessary for the retention of sanity—something which will vary for each individual. The small child keeps constantly busy, perhaps talking to its teddy-bear or imaginary friend. I do pretty much the same. It’s called blogging. I keep the house clean, because it’s a joy to do so, providing constitutional exercise and pleasure to the eye when it’s done. But once the house is in its optimum state, I’m not going to change it. The walls can stay the same colour with the furniture in the same position. I’m satisfied with the friends I have and don’t seek more, or even to see the existing ones more often. I’m satisfied, even with my natural and inevitable bass line (or baseline) of mild dissatisfaction, that gets me out of bed in the morning, dissatisfied with further sleep.
We have it completely wrong. Our much-vaunted technology angers the gods. Well it certainly angers Nature, as does our promiscuity. Technology has no use other than to support a higher population. We allow “labour-saving” and aspirational goods to tempt us, but they have to be paid for with the inanity of call-centres replacing the holy rituals of hanging out washing for the joy of seeing it billow in the open sky. I recall in Borneo sarong-clad women washing clothes on rocks in the river. I wasn’t on a tourist trip goggling at quaintness, but there to stay with relatives rooted there, of those tribes. The women in the river were only a generation away. The Industrial Revolution would never have started there. No, it started here in this land of cold winters, in the dying years of the colonial slave trade. A new slavery was born from yoking men, women and children to newly-invented machines. I am of the people who did that, suffered that, though I hold more proudly my possible Aboriginal blood from Australia. (I’m a direct descendant of Archbishop Sumner of Canterbury, but I take no pride in that.)
The way they taught me history, I never questioned its insane cruelty, except when directed to do so. They taught us the Black Hole of Calcutta and the Indian Mutiny, but never the Massacre of Amritsar, when General Dyer got his Gurkhas to shoot thousands of women and children like fish in a tank. My teachers avoided any implication that the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire were intrinsically bad: not from cunning but blindness.
The obvious flaws of the Soviet Empire and Communism were convenient to prevent us, the prisoners of capitalism, from attempting escape: most of us, that is. Islamism is equally convenient, since to non-Muslims it’s related to an alien religion. The Cold War was a kind of cartel: not to keep prices high, but to breed a complacency where there was no incentive for either side to clean up their act, seeing that the “enemy” was so much worse. The same today. If Islamism didn’t exist already, the West would have had to invent it. Perhaps they did.
I don’t have any solutions to offer. I have strong opinions but don’t offer them as something of any value. That is not why I write. If I were to leave a tiny legacy to the world in written form, it would defy the classifications of the Dewey Decimal system. I do have something to say, but its essence is not a set of ideas to save the world. If I could show by example rather than content a body of self-expression derived from independent thinking, it will be enough to call it my life’s work.
We don’t need more ideas. We need clear-sightedness, so as not to drown in dross and imitation of dross.
PS on 15th July 2018: on the smartphone you can literally know where you are, because it offers GPS, in the form of a “you are here” map, so I understand. But I’m not smart enough to use them.
a wayfarer’s notes 
Vincent,
Your post seems to speak directly to the goals of the slow movement.
My career over the last few years has been focused on down shifting. Although it has only been successful in part, due to an ongoing pressure to pay a mortgage, it has resulted in a closer family, more focus on community and a somewhat simplified lifestyle.
It is difficult to avoid covetousness with a 16 year old daughter, but with limited disposable income, she has learned to avoid asking for unnecessary luxuries.
To the extent that technology can be used to simplify my life without adding burden, I have welcomed it.
I spent my 20's as an avid consumer of technology, and I guess I have become less enchanted with it today. I am a computer programmer and an artist. And as such, I have learned to make use of technology in ways that have enriched my life and made me more productive.
My Uncle who spent all his life on a farm, recently left to live with a more urban girlfriend. He is 85 years old.
He recently sent me a picture of himself in a tuxedo! Something I thought I would never see. He is going the other way (speeding up). He will be visiting me in December. And I will be anxious to see how his new lifestyle has affected him.
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Today's cartoon Nov. 30th
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Hola Vincent, I retired the day after I begrudgingly realized I was stuck with being born!
Since then, all uphill!
Such is real life.
What, prey tell (prEy), does an Englishman know about 'dusty pueblos'?
Interestingly, a 'constitutional', as I know it, refers to 'relieving' oneself of oppressiveness one has brought on oneself, lol, life is hard.
Oddly enuf, this fine post has a striking kinship to Anonymous Julie's latest, and some others, must be that time of…what? life?, year?, what?…well, I don't know what, but 'something'.
Hustling?, I gave that up soon as I could walk, but then it overtook me again and I succumbed for a time and a time, then shrugged it off and was relieved, but poorer for it worldwise, but worldwise is by interpretation, only one way was I poorer.
You have heard, 'nail on the head', you hit it there, blogging and the imaginary friend! But just to clarify that, some become quite real in that field! And who's to say, anyway, thank God for such.
Now, being dissatisfied with 'further sleep', that is extremely telling, and I, my friend Vincent, know it well! And I will tell you that it is a failing taking place on the 'other side' where they are supposed to be 'informing you' and 'preparing you' for the coming day, you are right to be dissatisfied!
That is where over half the problems are!
Yes to the technology supporting the population increase, necessity is the mother of invention, but, 'anger the gods', I would say what seems to be them 'angry' is them having a hard time due to our feats of power manipulation. I hold proudly, as you said Vincent, my rejection and refusal (within my sane abilities) of that 'increase' of power. I agree with the 'cold' place being responsible, and that being 'up' geographically, is metaphorically the brain vs body location, the brain, cold, controls the outer circumstances and oppresses the body. I agree much with this paragraph! And the next related one, which is true here as there, it is not 'our' responsibility, we didn't know any better, such is their manifest destiny! And the next, lesser of two or more evils, making one seem saintly! As to invention…if I could only tell you what is probably the truth, maybe later.
And yes, yes, Vincent, so it is, there are ideas enough, clear-sightedness and understanding of what is here, that is the means to solution, but solution comes slowly at first, we just have to speak our right. God bless you Vincent, a soldier in the army of Peace, I admire you my friend!
Needless to say, Vincent, a powerful and wonderful post this is! Thanks till later! Magnificent writing and power of mind!
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Just forgot to clik the email box, I would like to hear what is said.
Thanks, I enjoyed it, more time later Vincent.
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Just figured out how to keep it on the same page (the cartoon that is)
The Slow movement…i checked out that link! I'm all for slowing things down too! great post Vincent.
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Charles I have not checked out the link to the Slow Movement yet – perhaps I am too slow – but I will. Its title seems to speak for itself anyhow. Your life and mine have a lot in common, down to the programming. I am sure that I too use technology in useful ways but my point is to expose its desensitizing effect, like a world perceived passing us by in a blur through closed car windows. The big metaphor of slow movement (yes I will check!) must be to walk instead of drive.
My new word (after “irksome” in current post) will be “elemental”. Shall we start an elemental movement? Not me: my movement is always to move on. Thought is swift whilst body plods.
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Kathy thanks for the appropriate cartoon. “Can” does not have that slang meaning in UK. I bet you don't use “bog” in US as a synonym of the same. Though it's many years since I heard it. In fact “Where's the bog?” instantly evokes chaotic student parties of the early 60s.
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Dusty pueblos, Jim? I never came across the phrase, just made it up. I have never been to Mexico but in various media have learned that Mexicans squat motionless under their sombreros in the heat of the day and under gaily-woven ponchos in the colder evenings; muttering “mañana” when requested to do anything.
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O Jim, I do you wrong and all my friends out there, to call you “imaginary”. I meant “invisible friends” of course.
Thank you for such a detailed commentary on various issues raised by the post.
“I would say what seems to be them 'angry' is them having a hard time due to our feats of power manipulation.” Precisely! And this is the meaning of the myth in which Prometheus steals fire from the gods. How he is punished for that!
And thanks for your many fulsome remarks and incisive comments.
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I just checked out that Slow Movement website. Its tone is interestingly consumerist: presenting its ideas so reasonably to a reader supposedly needing to be converted gently to a more sensible way of life.
I haven't found anything in the content that I'd disagree with, but I just feel that it's—perhaps inevitably—permeated with the very cultural values which it would, if pushed to a logical conclusion, overthrow.
Which is to say I find myself a revolutionary at heart. Not to throw bombs, like the turn-of-the-century anarchists so brilliantly portrayed in Conrad's The Secret Agent (what a book! so relevant to this day—I'll be mentioning it more) but to cast verbal squibs chaotically and unreasonably and subvert all and every possible movement. For where the movement begins, its detractors assemble their ranks and its supporters have to start defending. Freedom and originality are compromised.
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Vincent,
It does seem that when people go and organize around any well meaning concept, they take all the fun out of it.
I have recently been debating a group of secular humanists, (albeit half-heartedly, as I feel they are too stubborn to accept my insights), regarding their focus on all things secular and their apparent disinterest in humanism.
They organized around a set of principles, which they either do not believe in, or have begun to ignore.
I seek like minded individuals, but often find that they do not believe what they preach as much as they would have you and I believe.
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hello Vincent and Happy Sunday,
you said: “I bet you don't use “bog” in US as a synonym of the same.” your right I never heard that word and if i did i wouldn't know its meaning. thanks for sharing that with me. I also learned a lot from the comments in here..so very good.
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