02-24-2017, 03:29 AM
Can people have the structure and purpose of a job while doing leisure? Sure. That is how academics and creative people have lived, earning their way by doing what many of us consider fun.
Yes, there have been creative people who led miserable lives (Modest Mussorgsky, Vincent van Gogh, Virginia Woolf) due to their own demons. So what. So can anyone. There have been dissolute heirs -- and laborers. There have always been drugs, booze, and venereal disease, snares for the foolish and reckless.
I'll go further. Ask people about their vacations. The happiest reports of their vacations will involve qualities associated with desirable work habits -- planning, scheduling, budgeting, priority-setting, and research. They had some idea of what they wanted to do, and just as importantly, what they didn't want to do. I want to see something new and different, or at least refreshing.
Yes, there have been creative people who led miserable lives (Modest Mussorgsky, Vincent van Gogh, Virginia Woolf) due to their own demons. So what. So can anyone. There have been dissolute heirs -- and laborers. There have always been drugs, booze, and venereal disease, snares for the foolish and reckless.
I'll go further. Ask people about their vacations. The happiest reports of their vacations will involve qualities associated with desirable work habits -- planning, scheduling, budgeting, priority-setting, and research. They had some idea of what they wanted to do, and just as importantly, what they didn't want to do. I want to see something new and different, or at least refreshing.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.