This is pretty much how I felt when I first found out.

So apparently back in February of 2014 David Spencer, who had this particular article republished elsewhere on this site also had it republished on the Guardian. I have no idea why I never noticed this before but it’s absolutely huge that Abolish Work even got a quick mention on such a big name site.

This also explains why my picture of John Stuart Mill is one of the first ones (the fifth to be more precise) you see on a Google image search (I was curious, okay?) and why my article on John Stuart Mill and work consistently gets hits.

I just happened to notice that in my statistics today I got a few hits from the Guardian and figured someone in the comment section just briefly mentioned it. Apparently it was a much bigger deal than that!

Here is the specific section of the article in case you are curious, lazy or were having trouble finding it for some reason:

Yet another advocate of shorter work time was JS Mill. He dismissed the “gospel of work” proposed by Thomas Carlyle in part because it drew a veil over the real costs of work, including slave work that Carlyle sought to defend. Instead, Mill advocated a “gospel of leisure”, arguing that technology should be used to curtail work time as far as possible. This stress on technology as a means to shorten work time was later to feature in Bertrand Russell’s 1932 essay, “In Praise of Idleness”.

I’ve got a few projects keeping me busy this week but I’ll try to return to semi-regular posting before the week is over.

Happy slacking!