Critical War
Critical Jobs
Critical Mass
Critical Timing
Critical Thinking
Critical Elections
Critical Scheduling
Critical Information
Critical Infrastructure
Critical Transportation
Critical Communication
If life becomes critical, then step away from the exploding volcano and then “stop and smell the blossoms”.
Except for volcanos, and the like we must realize the critical, is made by us, between us, for us and either makes a profit or precludes one.
In 1932 Bertrand Russell observed in his essay “In Praise of Idleness,” “I think that there is far too much work done in the world,” adding that he hoped to “start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing.”
Backtrack to the 1920‘s, when Calvin Coolidge gave a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, famously proclaiming that “the chief business of the American people is business,”
So now the great wilderness of our inner life has been negated and/or marginalized by the demands of the church of work, or the “real world,” which of course is anything but.
To transform ourselves into bipedal products, mirrors the monetization of souls we have overlaid on all of our earthly relations. Look at the volume of seminars many of us are paying richly for. Seminars that teach us how to market the self, so it may be sold to the highest bidder.
But wait it gets deeper, don’t forget Filippo Marinetti, perhaps the Futurists’ most breathless spokesman. Who, in 1913 proclaimed “We will glorify war…. the only cure for the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, as well as contempt for woman. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice. We will sing of great crowds excited by work.”
He explained that Futurism was about the “…acceleration of life to today’s swift pace.” This shift from slowness to speed, from the solitary individual to the crowd excited by work, would in turn force other adjustments. The worship of speed and business would require a new patriotism, “a heroic idealization of the commercial, industrial, and artistic solidarity of a people”; it would require “a modification in the idea of war,” in order to make it “the necessary and bloody test of a people’s force.”
106 years later this loudly rings of the context which comprises our current social and global matrix.
To me, this is a ring which, calls out to the Sovereignty of my Soul, to take some idle time. Not leisure time for leisure time costs money, just idle time, nothing to do nowhere to go time. time to consider what is unjust, and what I might do. The time to share laughter and joy for no reason. The spaciousness to give my inner life it’s due.
This is where idleness becomes dangerous ….but….
……“You stand firmly graced by your right to the sunset, firmly graced!”, says Appalachia Rising, in their song Spirits Cradle;
May you recognize and enjoy your firmly graced experience, in idle joy and remember how Maria Rilke put it:
“Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.”.
Shantparv aka Peter
