Social psychologists call this inability to rest “idleness aversion,” which makes it sound like just another minor behavioral foible; but in his famous theory of the “Protestant work ethic,” the German sociologist Max Weber argued that it was one of the core ingredients of the modern soul. It first emerged, according to Weber’s account, among Calvinist Christians in northern Europe, who believed in the doctrine of predestination—that every human, since before they were born, had been preselected to be a member of the elect, and therefore entitled to spend eternity in heaven with God after death, or else as one of the damned, and thus guaranteed to spend it in hell.
Early capitalism got much of its energy, Weber argued, from Calvinist merchants and tradesmen who felt that relentless hard work was one of the best ways to prove—to others, but also to themselves—that they belonged to the former category rather than the latter. Their commitment to frugal living supplied the other half of Weber’s theory of capitalism: when people spend their days generating vast amounts of wealth through hard work but also feel obliged not to fritter it away on luxuries, the inevitable result is large accumulations of capital.
It must have been a uniquely anguished way to live. There was no chance that all that hard work could improve the probability that one would be saved: after all, the whole point of the doctrine of predestination was that nothing could influence one’s fate. On the other hand, wouldn’t someone who already was saved naturally demonstrate a tendency toward virtuous striving and thriftiness? On this fraught understanding, idleness became an especially anxiety-inducing experience, to be avoided at all costs—not merely a vice that might lead to damnation if you overindulged in it, as many Christians had long maintained, but one that might be evidence of the horrifying truth that you already were damned.
To rest for the sake of rest—to enjoy a lazy hour for its own sake—entails first accepting the fact that this is it: that your days aren’t progressing toward a future state of perfectly invulnerable happiness, and that to approach them with such an assumption is systematically to drain our four thousand weeks of their value. “We are the sum of all the moments of our lives,” writes Thomas Wolfe, “all that is ours is in them: we cannot escape it or conceal it.” If we’re going to show up for, and thus find some enjoyment in, our brief time on the planet, we had better show up for it now.
Early capitalism got much of its energy, Weber argued, from Calvinist merchants and tradesmen who felt that relentless hard work was one of the best ways to prove—to others, but also to themselves—that they belonged to the former category rather than the latter. Their commitment to frugal living supplied the other half of Weber’s theory of capitalism: when people spend their days generating vast amounts of wealth through hard work but also feel obliged not to fritter it away on luxuries, the inevitable result is large accumulations of capital.
It must have been a uniquely anguished way to live. There was no chance that all that hard work could improve the probability that one would be saved: after all, the whole point of the doctrine of predestination was that nothing could influence one’s fate. On the other hand, wouldn’t someone who already was saved naturally demonstrate a tendency toward virtuous striving and thriftiness? On this fraught understanding, idleness became an especially anxiety-inducing experience, to be avoided at all costs—not merely a vice that might lead to damnation if you overindulged in it, as many Christians had long maintained, but one that might be evidence of the horrifying truth that you already were damned.
To rest for the sake of rest—to enjoy a lazy hour for its own sake—entails first accepting the fact that this is it: that your days aren’t progressing toward a future state of perfectly invulnerable happiness, and that to approach them with such an assumption is systematically to drain our four thousand weeks of their value. “We are the sum of all the moments of our lives,” writes Thomas Wolfe, “all that is ours is in them: we cannot escape it or conceal it.” If we’re going to show up for, and thus find some enjoyment in, our brief time on the planet, we had better show up for it now.
- Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, 2021
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