Posts Tagged workforce participation

We love this quote from the write up of Jeffrey Smart’s (aged 89) latest exhibition.

Life, happiness and activity, as Aristotle suggests, are all the same thing. There is a higher experience of transcendent joy, but happiness in general consists in being active; that is, exercising agency and initiative, fulfilling our vocation, acquiring and practising skills, enjoying the freedom to think and to make.

This is why retirement is so dangerous. People imagine they want more leisure, but they confuse leisure with idleness. The former is a state of freedom from material necessity that should allow one to pursue activities of intrinsic interest; but idleness is a lack of activity, and even the dull routines of work are more energising than having nothing to do.

Rethink retirement. If not a dangerous concept, it is at best outdated.