LDS Freedom Forum

Fact is that, ever since human beings settled down into societies where one man works for another, earnest sorts have warned of the perils of idleness and promoted the alleged virtue of work, work, work, and more darned work until you drop.

"You" is the operative word. As often as not, the biggest promoters of work have been landed gents, philosophers, wealthy factory owners, preachers, and other fine folk not noted for getting their own lily-whites dirty...

I'm vigorously, 100%, in favor of idleness. We need more idleness. I'm working hard to put the cause of idleness on the map. I don't want Congress to go forcing it upon us, mind you. But I want each of us, voluntarily, in our heart of hearts, including me, to become more attuned to personal idleness, in fact and in philosophy....

Nowadays, our culture heroes are pale, stooped men and women with coke-bottle glasses and incipient autism who work 20-hour days—entrepreneurs and high-tech geniuses who work harder than Victorian factory serfs. Wow. Progress, eh?

And never mind what they produce. Don't ask, "Does it benefit us? Do we really need it? Does it improve life?" Just ask, "Can I get some of that?" We know the consumer price index better than we know our neighbor down the street. The Dow-Jones industrial average gets more attention than the local fishing pond. We don't &^%$#@!ing care that our new vehicle is going to cost us $60,000 once we've finished paying the interest on it; we just gotta have it. We know what's happening on Slashdot or MySpace more than we know what's happening in our own neighborhoods. And we work, work, work, work, work to support all this vast, glorious, glittering just-gotta-have-it prosperity....

For good or ill, modern society just ain't set up to accommodate dreamers and poets and pure back-to-the-landers and parents who want to take their kids to work (and not just to insert the little darlings into the company day-care center.) So it's a little hard to create what you want. Genuine change is always hard on the pioneers.

You can work for yourself, of course. But in this go-go-go age, it's very hard not to end up pushing yourself so hard you have even less rest than before. (As the old entrepreneurs' joke goes, "I'm in business for myself, so I only have to work half a day. And I even get to choose which 12 hours!")....

Mosiah 4: 27
27 And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run bfaster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order.

Alma 8:1 And now it came to pass that Alma returned from the aland of Gideon, after having taught the people of Gideon many things which cannot be written, having established the border of the church, according as he had before done in the land of Zarahemla, yea, he returned to his own house at Zarahemla to rest himself from the labors which he had performed.