The Art of Leisure: Why the Outside World Thinks This Blog Is Useless

Both poetry and technology are activities of leisure. You can't [directly] procure food, clothing, or shelter by penning a haiku or friending someone on Facebook.  These are specialized tasks designed to take up time after physical needs are already met.  After all, Plato initially expelled poets from his hypothetical Republic because he perceived they were ultimately useless to government and potentially undermined its efficiency. And the very label "nerd" seems to imply a kind of uselessness: it's not the same as calling someone smart or tech-savvy. We have a whole subculture built on the idea of spending "too much time" using technology, but there's not a hard and fast idea of spending too much time, say, jogging or biking. These are leisure activities too, after all, but because of their value to physical exercise they are distinct as useful. Apparently, exercising your mind doesn't count.

Society tends to scorn people, like poets and nerds, who they perceive as ignoring what's most important about life. In our culture, people who care about things like poetry, or new kinds of technology that's dubbed a "time-waster," are cast aside as somehow completely useless.  As someone who blogs about both, I obviously don't believe that's true, but I do think it's interesting that these very different areas of interest share this same scorned quality.

There is, of course, another side to the coin. Plato expels the poets early in the Republic, but later he admits them again. He realizes that poetry can further the cause of justice after all. [It is, of course, much more complicated than that, but we'll have to reserve an in-depth discussion for another day.] Poetry can shed light on important social issues that would otherwise go unnoticed. It's why so many of the most important poets have come out of subgroups that are oppressed in one way or another. Poetry can be a way for the voiceless to speak.

Technology, too, can have an unforeseen effect. Long before any inkling of a business model, Twitter made, and is still making, a real difference in Iran during the turmoil surrounding its contested election. What we can learn from this is that the things which the larger world brands as useless often play a bigger, more important role, than anyone could have imagined.

People should be encouraged to pursue lines of thinking that have no apparent, immediate use, because often the best uses are unforeseen. It's the same argument that is made to promote scientific research that has no obvious utility. Experimental science, computer technology, poetry, space travel: these are all things that have arisen out of apparent uselessness, that we have done after more immediate needs have been met. And it is what we do after procuring food, shelter, and clothing that really defines us as humans. Like it or not, it's so-called leisure activities that make us extraordinary. And it's because these endeavors are just that: extra-ordinary.

What do you think? Am I comparing apples to oranges with poetry and science? Are the types scorn each comes under fundamentally different? Are these not, ultimately, leisure activities after all? Sound off in the comments, or feel free to drop me a reply on Twitter.

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