Needed Downtime

Byung-Chul Han, "The happiness of idleness" (Google Translated0

We're working our butts off. But according to the Korean-German cultural philosopher Byung-Chul Han, idleness is the basis of all happiness.

We are increasingly like "active people who roll like a stone, they obey the stupidity of mechanics," as poet Paul Celan wrote. Since we only perceive life for the purpose of work and performance, we understand inactivity as a deficit, which must be remedied as soon as possible. Human existence is completely preoccupied with activity. This makes it exploitable. We lose the sense of inactivity, which is not an inability, not a refusal, not a pure absence of activity, but an independent ability.

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han (1959) made his international breakthrough with the book The Tired Society (2010), in which he argues that Western man has become a 'performance subject' who exploits himself. Since then, Han has written many books on the problems of modern Western society, including most recently The Palliative Society (2022), Infocracy (2022) and Vita contemplativa. On inactivity (2023), of which this text is a pre-publication.

Inactivity has its own logic, its own language, its own time, its own architecture, its own splendor, yes its own magic. It is not a weakness, not a lack, but an intensity which, however, is not perceived and is not recognised in our society focused on activity and performance. We have no access to the realm and wealth of inactivity. Inactivity is a shining form of human existence, which today has faded into an empty form of activity.

In capitalist relations of production, inactivity returns as embedded outside. We call it 'free time'. Since it serves to recover from work, it remains bound by the logic of work. As a derivative of labour, it forms a functional element within production. As a result, real leisure disappears, which does not belong to the order of labor and production. We no longer know that sacred, festive rest, which, according to William Shakespeare, 'unites life intensity and contemplation, even manages to unite when the intensity of life is increased to exuberance'.

Inactivity is not a weakness, but equity

Our 'free time' lacks both intensity of life and contemplation. It's a time we kill to keep boredom out. It's not a truly free, lively time, but a dead time. Intensive living today mainly means performing more or consuming more. We have forgotten that it is precisely the inactivity, in which nothing is produced, that constitutes an intensive and glorious form of life. Against the compulsion to work and perform, a policy of inactivity must be introduced, which can generate a real leisure time.

Game

The inactivity forms the humanum. The proportion of inactivity in what we do makes this truly human. Without a moment of hesitation or restraint, action slips into blind action and reaction. Without rest, a new barbarism arises. Silence deepens speech. Without silence there is no music, only noise and noise.

Play is the essence of beauty. Where only the scheme of stimulus and response, of need and satisfaction, of problem and solution, of preconceived goal and action prevails, life languishes to survival, to naked animal life. Life only gets its shine through the inactivity. If we lose the inactivity as power, we look like a machine that only needs to function. True life begins at the moment when the concern for survival, the need of mere life comes to an end. The ultimate goal of human endeavors is inactivity.

Silence deepens speech, without silence there is no music

It is true that action is constitutive of history, but it is not a culture-forming force. Not the war but the party, not the coat of arms but the ornament is the origin of the culture. History and culture do not cover each other. Not the roads that lead directly to the goal, but wanderings, extravagances and detours form the culture. The core of the culture is ornamental. It has its domicile beyond functionality and usefulness. With the ornamental, which frees itself from every purpose and utility, life insists that it is more than survival. Life gets its divine luster from that absolute decoration, which does not embellish anything. As Samuel Beckett writes, "The fact that the Baroque is decorative does not say everything. She is decorazione assoluta, as if it had freed itself from every preconceived goal, including the theatrical, to develop its own law of form. It no longer decorates anything, but is nothing but decoration.'

The party

On the Sabbath, every activity must rest. No business should be done. Inactivity and lifting of the economy are essential to the Sabbath feast. Capitalism, on the other hand, even makes the party a reality. Parties become events and spectacles. They lack the contemplative peace. As consumptive forms of the festival, they do not establish a community. In his essay La société du spectacle, Guy Debord calls the present time a time without celebration: 'This epoch, which shows itself to its own time as if it were essentially a speedy return of multifarious festivities, is just as much an epoch without celebration. What in cyclical times was the moment when a community participated in the luxurious waste of life is impossible for a society without community and without luxury.'

In a life that languishes in survival, luxury disappears

A time without celebration is a time without community. It is true that people swear by the community everywhere today, but that is a community in the form of a commodity. It does not allow us to arise. The unleashed consumption isolates and separates people. Consumers are lonely. Digital communication also appears to be a communication without community. Social media is accelerating the breakdown of the community. Capitalism turns time itself into a commodity. As a result, she loses all festivity. With regard to the commercialization of time, Debord notes, "The reality of time has been replaced by the advertising of time."

Another constitutive feature of the party, in addition to community, is luxury. It abolishes economic coercion. As a heightened liveliness, as intensity, the party has something luxurious, that is, something that goes off the beaten track, which deviates from the necessity and necessity of mere life. Capitalism, on the other hand, absolutizes survival. In a life that languishes survival, luxury disappears. Even the greatest achievement doesn't make it. Work and performance belong in the order of survival. There is no such thing as acting in luxury form, because acting is based on a defect. In capitalism, even luxury is consumed, it takes the form of a commodity and loses festivity and luster.

The useless

For Theodor W. Adorno, luxury is a symbol of unadulterated happiness, which is negated by the logic of efficiency. Efficiency and functionality are forms of survival. Luxury puts them out of action. He writes: "The unleashed technology eliminates luxury (...) The express train that hurtles across the continent in three nights and two days is a miracle, but traveling in such a train has none of the faded splendor of the Train Bleu. What made the pleasure of traveling: first waving goodbye from the open window, then the good care of friendly tip recipients, the ceremonial of the food, the incessant feeling of being spoiled and devoid of anything – all that has disappeared, including the elegant people who used to stroll on the platforms before departure and for whom you search in vain even in the foyers of the most prestigious hotels.'

True happiness is due to the purposeless and useless, the deliberately cumbersome, the unproductive, the taking of detours, the excessive, the superfluous, the beautiful forms and gestures that have no use and serve no purpose. Compared to going somewhere, rushing somewhere or marching, walking around is a luxury. The ceremonial of inactivity means: we do something, but for nothing. This for nothing, this freedom of purpose and utility is the essence of the inactivity. It is the basic formula of happiness.