Thesis: The way an elite class pursues and practices leisure both reflects and forms the highest spiritual good of a civilization.

An unscholarly approach.

Ancient concept of otium

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otium

The role of leisure in the life of ancient elites

• Martial leisure, preparing for war, the hunt, cultivation of the body. Sparta, the Mongols, the Rus, nobility.
• Greco-Roman philosophical / contemplative leisure
• Christian leisure: Augustine and monasticism

Otium in the Renaissance

Petrarch

Productivity as a modern spiritual discipline

Self-help, productivity porn, Cal Newport, immaterial productivity (most people are alienated from their labor in a physical sense.

In the world of busyness, leisure is subversive and approaches the heretical.

The disappearence of contemplative leisure among the modern elite

Alternatives to productivity: food, travel, philanthropy, status display

Employment and enslavement

• Selling one’s time, being on the clock, Graeber and BS jobs
• Taleb
• Keynes’ failed predictions about leisure

Leisure as alternative to employment

• Ancient understanding of this
• Illich, the right to useful unemployment

Useless contemplative leisure in Against Nature