Essays in Idleness

Now that we are in the “age of science” (i.e. scientism) so deeply, we are harassed by “health experts,” both private and government. The private ones can sometimes be muted straightforwardly, by turning off the Internet, and choosing one’s walks carefully. Except, one soon learns that this isn’t so simple. There is an “Internet of things,” and the “advertising industry” — which is voraciously evil — has bought up most viewing angles, indoors and outdoors; including any that are especially attractive, to use as a lure.

“I think that I shall never see,” — my papa used to quote Bennett Alfred Cerf — “a billboard pretty as a tree. Perhaps if billboards do not fall, I shall not see a tree at all.”

Given the worthlessness of most commercially available products, the advertisers must still leave a fragment of our attention to what is uncommercial, or they wouldn’t be able to fill us with neurosis when this is constantly interrupted. But one’s mindfulness of what is good, true, beautiful, is to be invaded by the makers of audio and video noise, with various techniques of attention-grabbing. I consider all non-musical noise to be viciously polluting, including the violence that might be necessary to shut it down.

With each passing year, the governments’ share of this advertising increases. There are more and more things each government will advise us against, or try to prevent (unsuccessfully), ranging from the harmless to the unnecessary. In almost every case, what we are warned against is dwarfed by the harm of the constant warning.

Truly, every bureaucracy, public and private, is staffed with snake-oil salesmen, and their administrative staff.