Chapter 5: You are a self-organizing system As far as I can tell from my notes, this chapter starts off really interesting but then falls flat after that. The reason why it starts off so interesting is because Smart quotes Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin, for those who don’t know, is a notable anarchist communist thinker who…
Chapter 3 Up until now I’ve only had some minor complaints about Smart’s attempt to scientifically justify laziness. The biggest being that he’s not giving us any citations and almost never gives references to the studies that would help prove his point. Even when he mentions certain studies he doesn’t go into their methodology, sample…
This chapter focuses on noise and its benefits to the brain as well as returning to the resting brain. And as far as the resting brain goes, it’s pretty interesting: When you activate your default mode network by doing nothing, it becomes robust and coherent. So, somehow our brains seem to violate the second law…
Chapter 1: That Loathsome Monster Idleness The previous chapter set the stage for the rest of the book in a fairly interesting and engaging way, let’s look at how Smart follows up on that effort. First, Smart talks about the history of our attitudes towards idleness all around the world. From the attitudes stemming from…
Introduction I got this book at the New York Anarchist Book Fair a year or so ago. At the time I wasn’t doing terribly well on finances and I went back and forth on what looked like a really good book. The seller was offering it for a decent price (between $10-15, I can’t remember…
Here we are, the last chapter, it’s all been building(?) up to this, let’s see where Levison is left after so many failed attempts at being a working stiff. Um, apparently pretty damn depressed is where Levison is left, not that I can blame him, of course. But take a look at this: There’s no dream…
When Levison returns to Seattle the world has changed in the time has been gone. The internet (remember that still being a tiny thing, kids?) has now led to people being able to do their own businesses and get a lot of money without doing as much work to make that money. Sounds like a…
Today we’re gonna finish up chapter four and we start off this sixteen page journey with Levison commenting on how William quit. As if he’s surprised that yelling, lecturing and generally treating poorly someone who doesn’t want to be there anyways would result in anything much less. The ideal thing would have been for Levison to…
Levison is pretty well established at the fish processing job last we saw. He’s de facto the head of the crew because some of his roommates from earlier left and also probably due to the amount of time he’s been there. We can only hope that this doesn’t go to his head too much. Even the…
Drug deals, welders going insane and Levison almost leaving Tony before they even going to the pub? Sounds like it’s time for the next part of chapter four! Levison begins telling us about the sort of job Tony does. It’s a one-year contract and he’s making more money than God in Alaska because of the…