The Virtue Of Idleness

[CVX]

I wonder if that hard-working American rationalist and agent of industry Benjamin Franklin knew how much misery he would cause in the world when, back in 1757, high on puritanical zeal, he popularised and promoted the trite and patently untrue aphorism "early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"?



It is a sad fact that from early childhood we are tyrannised by the moral myth that it is right, proper and good to leap out of bed the moment we wake in order to set about some useful work as quickly and cheerfully as possible. Parents begin the brainwashing process and then school works yet harder to indoctrinate its charges with the necessity of early rising. My own personal guilt about feeling physically incapable of rising early in the morning continued well into my 20s.



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