"Doing Nothing"

Crtd 05-10-09 Lastedit 14-08-20

"Doing Nothing"

"One day of doing nothing, undisturbed:
that is one day of immortality."
Chinese proverb

What is doing nothing? The African adult male can be said to "know", but few of them would be able to explain the obvious. Where doing nothing is a less obvious, but on the other side not necessarily immoral thing to do, like in Chinese culture, one gropes for words, like in the proverb above. Where it is immoral and taboo, like in western culture, the issue of course is no decent subject and not dealt with at all, unless in the framework of how to pester people out of the state of doing nothing.
This page is an heroic and doomed attempt to write to westerners in a not condemning way about doing nothing, to explain the idea, at the same time, I hope, as an invitation to consider it. After all, let me tell you some well kept western secrets: to start doing nothing is better for health than to stop smoking, it is the best remedy against global warming and involuntary unemployment. Many western professional activities aim at earning money by making other people's lives difficult, abolishing these types work it will have a beneficial effect on everyone. But let us quickly go to Africa.
Sorry. You can not quickly go to Africa. You can arrive quickly on African soil, but then you have done nothing yet to really come nearer to understanding, let alone practicing, the art of doing nothing. On this page, I can only bring you a short way by going from one anecdote to the next example.

In 2004 I finally moved to Africa for good. "What are you going to do there?" people usually asked. I did not have any particular plans. Life is very very cheap there, so my savings would be good for the rest of my life. What could I answer? To save my image as a decent westerner, I could list some things. Being an philosopher and author, I could say not to be going to change anything: reading, thinking and writing. I could list some "important" public duties and responsibilities, not too far beyond traceable truth. But in every option is an unbearable load of design labor. After a while, I found an answer satisfying me: "As little as possible". You get a laugh, and the issue is closed. Of course, I should tell the westerner, erroneously considered as closed. Wrongly, because troubles are only starting.
As most people have experienced: when you keep giving the same answer to repeated questions of others, you will start to believe your own shit. I have heard this even from lawyers, priests and politicians - of all confessions.

Picture: Project "Doing Nothing", Day One

As a result of taking my own answers too seriously, instead of as a way to get other people where I want them, I started a project: doing nothing. On the first day, I took the picture above. To a westerner, it looks like a good start. But any experienced African will see: I poured cool pineapple wine, looked for my panga (by the way, an utterly inappropriate tool to cut a cigar), put a hammock, looked for my camera, positioned it, set it to self timer, pressed, ran to my hammock, took cigar and panga, tried to look relaxed while making a movement as if I was cutting, then ran back to see if my picture had succeeded.

From the viewpoint of a African professional in the field of idleness this is absolute rubbish, a neurotic piece of comic theatre, not even a start to a first attempt of doing nothing. Behind the facade of idleness hides a restless fanatic using his pathological energy to create a bizarre image.

The basic axiom of the traditional African Theory Of Idleness is:

Working is not a pleasure and is to be avoided wherever possible because it puts man in unnecessary danger.

The basic axiom of the traditional African Morality Of Labour is:

Be satisfied with what nature pleases to give you by herself. Do not tempt nature by a restless groping for more than it is ready to give, you are even likely to annoy nature and get punished for it. Do not have the temerity to think you can control nature and steal her goodies out of her pocket by working and sweating! If you are not to have it, do not even think of it. If you are to have it, it will be made to fall in your hands (for instance, a car accident will happen right in front of you and thus you will be given the opportunity to rob the dying bodies).

This sums up traditional African philosophy. We shall come to the reshape by modern developments later. Now about "Doing Nothing": when nature gets at you, ready to punish you, what you should make clear to nature is that you did nothing. Then, you will be forgiven. Needless to point at why from the African point of view, westerners have such bad lives and most of them are on pills: they do things all the time, and get punished. Africans even feel they have the full right to partake in the deserved punishing of the doer by getting at him and beg, steal, sabotage, extort and rob, all morally righteous trades if applied to such degraded fools as doers, people spoiling their time with purposive activity.

Some readers might think all this is immoral. But really: it is just another type of morality. The African knows the Good and the Bad (in my view even is superior in handling these headers for justification). It is only the listing that differs.