How To Do Nothing

It was past 10 PM when Shubhangani, Swathi, and I stepped into Goobe’s Book Republic in Church Street this Tuesday. We had met at 6:30 PM in Blossom Book House and had been chatting non-stop all of the night. We had had Blini Creamy Mushroom and Blini Chicken Taco at Blini Bistro where we also had left a love note inside the Russian doll on the shelf. We had had two rounds of tea from the small Paragon stall outside the big Paragon restaurant and been arbitrarily kicked out off the snake and ladder play area of Rangoli Art Centre. The weather too was cold.

Goobe’s was warm.

The first book I picked up was How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. It was ₹1200 something so I didn’t buy it. We went through all the lanes till 10 minutes to 11. And the bookshop was to close in that 10 minutes. Till then all I was sure to purchase was an illustrated book on make-up that Shubhangani picked up — Art of Make-Up — which was just ₹10. How do we purchase a book for ₹10? So I took another book in Essential Managers series which made the total ₹399.

But the book I really wanted to read was How to Do Nothing. For many reasons. And so I read How to Do Nothing.

The privilege to do nothing

If it wasn’t for a woman author, many people wouldn’t even think about opening a book titled “how to do nothing”. They would go, “Oh, here’s another white man telling us about how he does nothing while people around him do all the work for him“.

And as Truce on Goodreads points out:

What I appreciate about Odell’s approach is that she earnestly considers race and class in the how and why of resisting the attention economy. When reading Digital Minimalism, I found Newport had some stark blind spots — he says little of race and class, and women were conspicuously absent from his book. In contrast, Odell’s references are wonderfully diverse; yes, she references Thoreau a lot, but she also draws wisdom from Audre Lorde, labor movements, and environmental justice, among many other things. She provides historical context to all this, as an antidote to social media’s tendency to keep us forever anxious about the present.

Right from the beginning where Jenny Odell addresses the question of what kind of privilege it takes to follow the rest of the book, I was reacting with the “hard relate” button.

Those words of caution must probably be repeated here. The topics that this book deals with are not for those who consider themselves as, and/or are, struggling.

For others, like me, this book offers much.

Saying no to anarchist communes

The next objection people will have with a book named “how to do nothing” is “Oh, here’s another book on living a secluded life of no relevance to society“. And Jenny Odell doesn’t just address this question, but also offers a cogent criticism of Utopian ideas like anarchist communes.

It would be wrong to say that the idea of living in a commune has never crossed my mind. I’ve visited the tourist area of Auroville once. I’ve spoken to people about commune life. It’s always been a fascination for me, just like a nomadic lifestyle.

But I’ve never considered it a serious idea. Forget communes, I’ve found that even anarchist online groups are problematic.

The way all anarchist groups operate is the same. There will be a hidden power structure. It would mostly be centered around whoever started the group. If not that, it’ll be the most vocal “seniors” in the group. Unconsciously or consciously everyone follows the “consensus” built around these power structures. In rare cases that these power structures do not directly influence decisions, they will influence processes just enough to shape the decisions according to what they see fit.

[This is a reductionist take. There’s a lot more of complexities which leads to poor decision making in anarchic groups related to information, skills, communication, resources, and so on. Also read: The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman]

Jenny Odell doesn’t just bring out these contradictions of anarchist communes, but also relies on Hannah Arendt to say:

She diagnoses the age-old temptation to substitute design for the political process. Throughout history, she observes, men have been driven by the desire to escape “the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents”. Unfortunately, she concludes, “the hallmark of all such escapes is rule, that is, the notion that men can lawfully and politically live together only when some are entitled to command and the others are forced to obey.”

“Design” solutions are often just brahminism

This substitution of the political process with design can be seen in a lot of places, if we start looking for it.

One example is policy-making. Policy-making is the idea that if the laws and regulations are framed just right, our problems can be solved. Say, “if we bring a right to healthcare, healthcare will be solved”.

Another example is the idea of reform of educational spaces by creating the magic curriculum/pedagogy. Like, “if we include humanities in medical colleges, doctors will be more humane”, or “we need better courses in public health to improve fairness and deliver justice”.

The common thread in these solutions is that there’s a sense that if we can design the system right, we can fix the problems.

It is all a design problem.

There are some situations where design is indeed the problem. But more often than not, those who say that design is the problem are saying “I know better, and if you just listen to me things will be solved” and coming up with their own “perfect design”.

If at all this design gets adopted, it inevitably fails, and then they blame it on implementation. They say that the design was not correctly implemented.

And someone else will come up with a new design.

And this cycle will continue forever.

The brahminism is in not pausing to reflect. When the cycles of design change keeps repeating forever, perhaps the problem is not with design, the problem is elsewhere.

One such “elsewhere” is political process. And that’s what Hannah Arendt refers to above.

Techbro example to make it clear

In his 2009 essay “The Education of a Libertarian,” Thiel echoes Skinner’s conclusion that the future requires a total escape from politics. Having decided that “democracy and freedom are incompatible,” Thiel’s gesture toward some other option that is somehow not totalitarian is either naive or disingenuous:

Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom.

For Thiel, only the sea, outer space, and cyberspace can provide this “new space.” As in Walden Two, the locus of power is carefully hidden in Thiel’s language, either disappearing into the passive voice or being associated with abstractions like design or technology. But it’s not hard to infer that the result in this case would be a technocratic dictatorship under the Seasteading Institute. After all, the masses do not interest Thiel, for whom “[t]he fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.”

Not leaving, but staying in refusal

Jenny Odell is not speaking about running away from the world to do nothing. Jenny Odell is speaking about staying right here and refusing to do things that we are being forced to do.

This question has tormented me forever. Do you become part of the system and perpetuate its problems, or do you leave and stay in a bubble elsewhere?

JO’s answer to this forms the core argument of this book. JO shows a path to subvert the system by perpetually refusing its framing. In the attention economy, this means, refusing our attention from being controlled by the system, and instead choosing to pay attention to other things.

Turns out, attention is all you need!

People who do nothing

JO goes further into bioregionalism and ecology. To paying close attention to the world, people, animals, and plants around us. To living in oneness with that environment.

I’ve seen such people. The Jenu Kurubas in Nagerhole live like that. The first few times when I used to go to haadis in mobile unit from VMH, I used to be surprised at how most of the people would just be squatting on the floor looking ahead. Just sitting. Sitting and doing nothing.

I don’t romanticize. I question whether these are better ways of living. But there is a lot to learn from them. Their philosophy surrounding nature, work, life, death, and many other things. They perhaps show us how our life would have turned out if capitalism wasn’t flowing in our veins.

Not surprisingly, JO’s acknowledgements chapter starts with thanking Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.

What it means to me

Every book has its set of readers. If I had picked this book up maybe 7 years ago, I would not have made any sense of it. At that time I was still naively invested in technology and technosolutionism. I was waiting to build anarchic collectives. I was getting things done. I was spending most of my time online. And I would have felt like Christine who said

“I do not understand how this book is so highly rated. The authors argument is impossible to follow. The book all over the place using historical references with long excerpts of quoted text. I gave up.”

or like Eva who said

Woman discovers trees and then shares the experience in a language that the rest of us use to write grant proposals.

But I’m proud that I liked this book. I’m happy that I am changing.

I’m eager to read Hannah Arendt and Audre Lorde for the full text of the long excerpts.

But I’m also eager to do a whole lot of nothing with my attention.