Life, by contrast with inert matter, is usually regarded as essentially
busy, active, and dynamic. But maybe life is not different from
inert matter. Perhaps life, just like inert matter, does the minimum -
and we would gain a deeper understanding of life if we saw it
not as trying to busy itself, but seeking to be idle.
Perhaps human life, human society, technology, ethics, law,
and religion have all arisen as an attempt to minimize effort.
If so, the imperative of all life, and of human life, would not be
'Keep Busy' and 'Do Something', but 'Keep Still' and 'Do Nothing'.
This is the speculation of Idle Theory.
The Idle Life Model
- the simple physical model of life used in Idle Theory.
Central to Idle Theory is a physical understanding of life as alternating
between two states: busy and idle. While busy, a living creature
works to maintain itself. While idle, it is either inactive or
engaged in some non-maintenance activity. Depending upon their
physical constitution and the environment in which they find themselves,
all living creatures operate somewhere on a scale which extends from
being nearly continuously busy at one extreme, to being nearly
continuously idle at the other extreme. That is, some creatures must
work very hard to stay alive, and others hardly at all.
Those creatures which, even working continuously, are unable to
maintain themselves, disintegrate and die.
Applied to the theory of evolution, this approach to life argues
that during times when all creatures must work harder to survive,
the least idle are the most likely to die, and the most idle are the
most likely to survive. Natural selection favours the idlest.
The fittest creatures are the idlest creatures, who survive to
pass on their genes to subsequent generations.
Outline of Economics
- The primary purpose of economic systems is to free people from work.
Human life, in Idle Theory, is another variant of natural life.
Human life, historically, is taken to have been hard.
The uniquely human response was the development of tools.
These tools speeded up human work: a knife enabled materials to be
cut more quickly; a bag allowed materials to be transported more
rapidly. And since they expedited work, the use of these tools
increased human idleness. The inherent purpose of an economic system
is to free people from work.
Part-time Free Agents
- while humans are constrained to necessary work, they are not
free to choose to do as they like.
Increased idleness means, on the one hand, increased chance of
survival, but it also gives humans idle time in which to engage in
activities other than self-maintenance. It is in this idle time that
humans can do as they wish, rather than as they must, and they can
think, talk, and play - i.e. act as free moral agents. In Idle Theory,
humans are seen as part-time free moral agents, only free to the
extent that they are idle.
Idle Theory only concerns itself with tools, tool trading
systems, codes of conduct and laws which serve to increase
human idleness. It cannot address the question of what humans,
to the extent they are free moral agents, should do in their
idle time. To this extent, Idle Theory is a restricted theory.
The Rosy Vision
- modern Western society optimistically assumes that human life is
perfectly idle.
Idle Theory's critique of modern Western ethical and economic
thought is that these optimistically assume that humans are completely
free agents, that human life is perfectly idle, and human trade
is concerned with distributing pleasurable luxuries.
Idle Theory is set out in a series of linked essays, most of
which are indexed in either
Evolution Index
or Human Life Index.
The essays are subject to changes and additions. This site
will always be in construction.
Version: 10 May 2007
The fair breeze blew,
The white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first
That ever burst
Into that silent sea.
(S.T.Coleridge)
