Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 835-837

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.
The ‘Busy’ Trap
By TIM KREIDER
New York Times
June 30, 2012

 I wish I could say that was the happy ending of my childhood story. Instead, it was the beginning of a rather torturous developmental period. My new outlook on life, which could be summarized as “Don’t tell me—I want to figure it out myself!” was not an attitude that went over too well in school. For many years I struggled with wanting to please my teachers—listening to directions and following the rules—but feeling creatively unfulfilled and unchallenged. At times I had an instinct to speak up and offer an alternate explanation, or an urge to try something a different way, but I quickly learned that only ‘undisciplined and obnoxious children’  challenged authority and caused disruption. These were not the kinds of students that teachers favored. I learned to ignore the pangs of my creative spirit, which only seemed to bring me misery when answered.
The Educational Value Of Creative Disobedience
By Andrea Kuszewski
Scientific American

This is one of the subtler ambiguities of play. On one side we have the imaginative, empowered, visionary play of the strategic manager, on the other, the collective, embattled and fatalistic play of the workforce. For all the hype about creativity and collaboration, they are only encouraged to play within the rules of the corporate plan, rather than cogitate freely about their productive life and its meaning.
Pat Kane
The Play Ethic