Leisure as a Form of Resistance

Subverting the Mechanical Mind With Intrinsic Goods

Over a decade ago, Timothy Wilson and his colleagues at the University of Virginia conducted eleven studies exploring people’s willingness to sit quietly and simply engage with their own thoughts. As it became clear that sitting still with oneself is difficult, Wilson and his colleagues added a curious twist to their experiment. They wanted to find out how uncomfortable a random sampling of the population might be with quiet. For example, is the unease of sitting still, quiet with one’s own thoughts, comparable to the discomfort of receiving an electric shock?

To answer this question, the researchers left participants alone for fifteen minutes to let their minds wander. The only instructions were stay in their seats and remain awake. The room was unadorned and free from all distraction apart from one thing: a device built around a 9 volt battery that administered an electric shock. Participants had previously been given the shock and then asked how much they would pay, out of a $5 allowance, to avoid another shock. Most people said they would pay one or two dollars not to be shocked again.

Wilson et al explained that before leaving each participant alone in the room, they “went to some length to explain that the primary goal was to entertain themselves with their thoughts and that the decision to receive a shock was entirely up to them.”[1]

The results of the experiment are, well, shocking. When left alone in the room the prospect of being shocked proved more desirable than sitting still. Many of the participants were so uncomfortable just sitting still thinking that they turned to the only distraction available: physical pain. 67% of men gave themselves at least one shock during the thinking time, while one man (an outlier whose data was excluded from the final average) chose to shock himself one hundred and ninety times. Females seemed to have a better capacity for sitting still, as only 25% of the women chose the stimulus.

I don’t know if there were other variables that might explain why so many participants preferred pain to stillness. However, the study does seem to support something that we have probably all experienced: our bias for doing over thinking is so strong that most of us would rather engage in harmful behaviors instead of having to be still. St. Paisios once observed that when people have unrest inside of them then they become comforted by more unrest and thus find it difficult, for example, to study without rock music in the background.[2] Still others will seek solace in self-harming and addictive behaviors simply to escape from the unpleasantness of being still with one’s own thoughts.

In this cultural condition, being quiet, being still, and pursuing the pause, can be a form of resistance, asserting rebellion against our cultural fixation with utility. Let’s look closer at this.

Gratuitous Living in a Time of Utility

The classical Christian tradition has made a distinction between intrinsic and instrumental goods. Intrinsic or basic goods are the things we enjoy as ends in themselves and not merely as means. A basic human good is something that derives its value from itself and forms a constituent aspect of human flourishing. The most obvious example of a basic human good is virtue: virtue is its own reward, not something that derives value merely as a tool to other ends. Though virtue brings with it a host of practical benefits, those benefits are not where virtue derives its value. To virtue we might add things like health, creativity, attentiveness, marriage, etc. These conditions are all constitutive of human flourishing and thus good in and of themselves—though not the highest good.

Additionally, there are humanizing activities and practices that are intrinsically good, such as painting, bird-watching, making crafts, playing chess, dancing or watching ballet, writing or memorizing poetry, making or listening to music, offering or enjoying hospitality, etc. A well-ordered reason can perceive that these activities are not mere proxies for the satisfaction of desire, nor simply means to other ends; rather, these activities are intrinsically valuable given the type of creatures we are.

The mechanical mind—whether in its capitalist, Marxist, or technocratic manifestations—has always been uncomfortable with intrinsic goods.[3] This was portrayed in Diane Glancy’s poetic memoir, A Line of Driftwood, when some of her characters look askance at the northern lights because of their total uselessness.

The Polar Lights prowled like polar bears.
The men watched the lights.
What good were they?
We could not hunt the lights.
We could not eat them.[4]

Though this is imaginary, Glancy captured something of the modern mindset, which easily falls into the trap of assessing everything by how useful it is.

Or consider a scene from Huxley’s Brave New World where the director of a would-be utopia explains why hatred of natural beauties was being programmed into the lower classes.

Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes.[5]

The masterminds in Huxley's dystopia hated flowers because of their gratuity—their total inefficiency in serving the machinery of the state. They could not conceive of things or conditions that are good in and of themselves but only recognized goods that could be operationalized for economic or hedonic ends.

This utilitarian mindset is easy enough to recognize in a story like Brave New World, yet in the real-life dystopia that we are living in, there are more subtle means of assaulting intrinsic goods. Instead of trying to destroy primroses, landscapes, and other intrinsic goods, the modern economy of utility seeks to operationalize them – to turn things that are intrinsically good into tools, techniques or resources. Thus, even when we revive ancient practices that might offer a corrective to our fixation with utility, it is common to leverage these practices for their instrumental value. For example, we are encouraged to listen to Mozart because it’s good for the brain, to practice mindfulness in order to perform better at work, to teach Latin so students can achieve higher SAT scores, to hike in order to lose weight, to read classic novels to boost emotional intelligence, etc. Even slowing down to a more humane pace is now trendy because of its usefulness, as indicated in books such as Carl Honore’s The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter, and Live Better In a World Addicted to Speed.[6]

The perversity lies not in recognizing the usefulness of intrinsic goods; rather, the misconception lies in the underlying assumption that usefulness determines value. This assumption drives the worldly mind to seek, whenever possible, to transform intrinsic goods into mere cogs within the machinery of utility. When approaching things that cannot be instrumentalized for pragmatic ends, we often become like the men Glancy imagines who look upon the Northern Lights and wonder, “What good were they?”

The over-eagerness to instrumentalize everything leads to profound confusion about what it means to be a human being. Are men and women merely instruments, with a purely derivative value?

When the utilitarian mindset seeps into our thinking then we may begin approaching human beings, especially perhaps members of the opposite sex, as objects to be operationalized for hedonic purposes. Or if our imagination doesn’t tend in that direction, we may suppose that value is contingent on much we can get done, leading to the slavery of workaholism and burnout.

When we suppose that our value depends on how much we can accomplish, it’s easy to ignore the messages from our body telling us, “Slow down!” Often when we do slow down to pause, we find it hard to stop thinking of everything we still need to do. Or maybe we think, “Once I get everything checked off my list, then I can relax.”

Sometimes religious cultures can be the worst culprits in driving people to exhaustion. I will never forget when one family invited me out to dinner. The wife was struggling with exhaustion, and with good reason: she was working a full-time job, pursuing two master’s degrees, running her own business, plus spending all her free time helping her husband, a pastor involved in full-time Christian ministry. The overwork was seriously impacting her health, both physically and mentally. During dinner I noticed she was reading a book. Curious, I asked if I could see it. The book, written by the Christian celebrity David Cerullo, suggests that when our lives are open to the Spirit, He will bless us so we can accomplish more things, need less sleep, get more money, have more energy, etc. More, more, more![7]

Without implying any judgment on my friend, this type of Christianized overwork is quite common. In what amounts to a kind of implicit Pelagianism, we often imagine that our value in God’s eyes depends on rushing about doing the Lord’s work, or constantly being available lest we miss an opportunity to build for His kingdom. But like St. Martha in Luke 10:41, we only end up being troubled by many things. Part of the solution is reframing what counts as “God’s work” and “spiritual activity.” Sometimes the best way we can serve God is to suspend our fixation with tangible results and submit to the pause, even if that means “doing nothing” in the world’s eyes.

Consider a scene from James Hilton’s 1933 classic novel, Lost Horizon. After a British missionary, Roberta Brinklow, finds herself mysteriously taken to Tibet with two Englishmen and an American, she makes inquiries about the lamas, the monks in Tibetan Buddhism.

Suddenly Miss Brinklow came to life out of a mute preoccupation. “Aren't you going to show us the lamas at work” she fluted, in the tone which one felt had intimidated many a Cook's man. One felt, too, that her mind was probably full of hazy visions of native handicrafts, prayer-mat weaving, or something picturesquely primitive that she could talk about when she got home.[8]

When told that the lamas are rarely seen, she returned to her original question, demanding that her host describe the monk’s work.

Miss Brinklow, however, was not yet to be sidetracked. “What do the lamas do?” she continued.

“They devote themselves, madam, to contemplation and to the pursuit of wisdom.”

“But that isn't doing anything.”

“Then, madam, they do nothing.”[9]

In Miss Brinklow’s mind, contemplation and the pursuit of wisdom did not count as valuable because, in the end, it amounted to not “doing” anything.

Throughout the modern West, millions of people are turning to Buddhism to recover peace, stillness, and a slower form of life. What is truly sad is when someone has been driven to exhaustion by the church, only to find in eastern mysticism a slower and more peaceful spiritual experience. This is tragic because Christianity itself offers a path to a more contemplative and leisurely spirituality. But this requires reframing what we think is “God’s work.”

The fourth century Christian mystic, Evagrius Ponticus, warned his fellow monks of a slothfulness that sometimes masked itself in frenetic spiritual activity. Summarizing Evagrius’s insights, R.J. Snell noted that, “The slothful might very well be busy doing things. Evagrius claims, in fact, that the slothful are often in a frenzy of pointless action—now this, now that—in their disgust at the actual work given to them by God.”[10] Evagrius invites us to reflect that often the work God has given us to do involves burrowing deeper into the mundane and ordinary, including the slow and seemingly unproductive rhythms of daily life. Echoing Evagrius, James Stewart suggests that our results-driven approach to Christian work may be masking over laziness, disguising a slackness toward that “one thing needful” (Lk. 10:42) to which God has called us.

Beware the professional busy-ness which is but slackness in disguise… We are driven here, there, everywhere by the whirling machinery of good works…. Laziness? The word, we protest, is not in our vocabulary. Are we not engrossed from morning till night? Do we not conspicuously spend our days under the high pressure of an exacting life? But God, Who searches the heart, knows how much of our outward strenuousness is but a rationalization of a latent slackness.[11]

In her book A Theology of the Ordinary, my friend Julie Canlis showed how much Anglo-American evangelicalism has problematized the ordinary, charting in the wake of William Carey’s famous words, “Do Great things for God; expect great things from God.” This striving for greatness was the mindset of many preachers in the Second Great Awakening, most notably Charles Finney. By putting a premium only on tangible results, Finney convinced countless Americans that the only way to serve God wholeheartedly was to do spiritual work that could be quantified in pragmatic terms. “Your faith, heretofore growing by slow degrees, was seen to be too slow, too ordinary, lacking immediate and measurable results.”[12]

Canlis challenges us to adopt a more biblical understanding of daily life. What if we really believed that sometimes the best way we can serve God is by “doing nothing” by worldly standards – going about our ordinary lives, minding our own business, accepting our limitations, and living quietly in the way Paul enjoined in 1 Thess. 4:11 (“aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you”)? If we believed that, Canlis suggests, then our perception of what counts as “God’s work” and “Christian ministry” would be revolutionized. We would experience a new dignity in the ordinary, and we might understand that sometimes the best way to serve God—and, I would add, offer a radically counter-cultural message—is actually by doing less.

This is a hard lesson for Americans, as our results-driven culture orients us to be obsessed with the bottom line. But spiritual work isn’t only happening when we do things with tangible results, whether leading someone to Christ, organizing discipleship groups, campaigning for Christian candidates, or planting churches, as important and necessary as such activities may be. Perhaps the most important spiritual activity occurs when we simply allow ourselves to be quiet with God, experiencing His presence as a form of leisure. Then genuine leisure—not just as an activity, but as a state of mind—can be offered as a form of resistance against the mores of a culture that cannot conceive of non-instrumental goods. That said, a little brush-clearing work is needed concerning the term “leisure.”

Leisure and the Non-Finality of Daily Care

According to the 20th century Catholic philosopher, Josef Pieper, “leisure is a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality.”[13] Many may be unfamiliar with this older meaning of leisure that Pieper described. It is a sign of the times that the idea of leisure has almost entirely collapsed into mere amusement, while modern terms that most closely approximate the older concept (e.g., terms like meditation or mindfulness) possess a self-referential quality quite at odds with the more classical outward-focused understanding.

Pieper laid out a philosophy of leisure in his classic Leisure, the Basis of Culture. Originally published in 1952, this short book was Pieper’s response to moves in the post-war era towards a society of “total work.” In the emerging prosperity of post-war capitalism, no less than the collectivist visions of Marxist societies, human flourishing had come to be defined by productivity. There was a corresponding danger that rest would be seen as merely the cessation of labor, valued for its restorative function in enabling man to return to work. For still others, rest offered an opportunity for recreation, as if the purpose of work is simply to buy time for play, a common misunderstanding that persists to this day.

Pieper argued that the answer to all of these—the cult of total work, the notion that we rest merely to return to labor, or the infantile cult of youth with its idolizing of recreation—is the classical and medieval concept of leisure.

We don’t use the term “leisure” much anymore, and when we do it tends to differ little from idleness or recreation. Yet Pieper taught that the older notion of leisure is more akin to contemplation, to the type of receptive stillness that we might find in an artist or spiritual mystic. To be leisurely in this older sense is to adopt a frame of mind that is open to the bedrock ordering of things, an attitude of “inward calm,” and a willingness to slow down and listen to the permanent things. Leisure might take form in any number of activities as well as non-activity. It might be found in the type of receptive stillness that is a precondition for appreciating works of beauty. It might be found in close relationships, such as a husband and wife sitting still holding hands, each enjoying the other’s company without needing to say, do, or expect anything. Or it might also be found by simply sitting in your backyard with a rosary while quietly watching the clouds pass by. In each case, leisure involves a turn from producing to receiving, from using to enjoying, from what is useful to what is permanent, from what is only instrumentally useful to what is intrinsically valuable.

Leisure might take form in any number of activities as well as non-activity. It might be found in the type of receptive stillness that is a precondition for appreciating works of beauty. It might be found in close relationships, such as a husband and wife sitting still holding hands, each enjoying the other’s company without needing to say, do, or expect anything…. In each case, leisure involves a turn from producing to receiving, from using to enjoying, from what is useful to what is permanent, from what is only instrumentally useful to what is intrinsically valuable.

At root, Pieper argued, leisure “is a form of silence. Leisure amounts to that precise way of being silent which is a prerequisite for listening in order to hear; for the only the listener is able to hear. Leisure implies an attitude of total receptivity toward, and willing immersion in, reality; an openness of the soul, through which alone may come about those great and blessed insights that no amount of ‘mental labor’ can ever achieve.”[14]

Leisure is the natural opposite to sloth, or what the ancients called acedia. The restlessness of sloth reflects what Pieper termed, “that deep-seated lack of calm which makes leisure impossible.”[15] Sloth can be hard to recognize in contemporary society because we have an abundance of tools that enable us to keep busy while simultaneously being slothful. The contemporary sluggard can avoid challenging work, act without intention, and engage in aimless, unfocused behaviors, while still feeling continually active through the pseudo-busyness afforded by digital distractions. If Pieper were alive today, he might well observe that common recreations and chosen pastimes—everything from computer games to an endless diet of stimulating images, posts, and messages—may sometimes mitigate against work, but always mitigate against genuine leisure.

Following the tradition represented by Evagrius, Pieper argued that sloth was the source for both “leisurelessness” (the incapacity to enjoy leisure) as well as the ultimate cause of “work for work’s sake.” In both cases, what is lost is the learned ability to be still that is the precondition for a contemplative life.[16]

Pieper understood that for a culture addicted to noise and the cult of busyness, the contemplative life—whether expressed in philosophy, poetry, art, or the spiritual vocations—will initially come as a shock and will be deeply unsettling. For modern man, conditioned by the utilitarian values of the industrial revolution and the illusion that there is no final telos beyond either daily care or hedonic distraction, true leisure is shockingly disruptive and must be embraced as an ascetic discipline.

The act of philosophizing, genuine poetry, any aesthetic encounter, in fact, as well as prayer, springs from some shock. And when such a shock is experienced, man senses the non-finality of this world of daily care; he transcends it, takes a step beyond it.[17]

Practicing leisure, with its turn from the tyranny of the urgent, finds its most fitting fulfilment in the beatific vision, in which God Himself becomes the supreme object of restful enjoyment.

One person who came to enjoy the happy presence of Christ even in this life, and a corresponding sense of the non-finality of this world of daily care, was Brother Lawrence, remembered through the beautiful little book, The Practice of the Presence of God. A simple monk in seventeenth-century France, Brother Lawrence transformed all his work—whether chores in the kitchen, work repairing sandals, or a journey to purchase wine—into leisure through intimate communion with Christ. By constantly talking to Christ, and offering every task up to Him, Brother Lawrence’s entire life was bathed in Divine Love and assumed a sabbatical quality even amid work.

With his mind fixed ever on Christ, Brother Lawrence became free from worry about the affairs of this world including things that impacted him, such as when he was tasked with work that seemed impossible given his low ability. He did not even dwell on whether he was going to heaven or hell since “whatever happened to him would be according to God’s will, so he was not at all worried about it.”[18] His only desire was to be in the presence of Christ, which he achieved by talking to Him constantly. “When he had some outside business to do, he did not think about it at all in advance. When the time came for action, he found clearly in God what he must do at that moment. For some time he had acted in this way without worrying beforehand.”[19]

In a letter to a nun, Brother Lawrence explained more about this simple practice that afforded so much inner freedom.

I began to live as if there were only He and I in the world. I sometimes considered myself before Him as a poor criminal at the feet of his Judge, and at other times I regarded Him in my heart as my Father, as my God. I worshiped Him there as often as I was able, keeping my mind in His holy presence, and recalling it whenever I found it had become distracted from Him. I had no trouble with this practice, which I continued in spite of all the difficulties I found in practicing it, not becoming troubled or worried when I was involuntarily distracted.[20]

When asked about his method, Brother Lawrence would encourage others to simplify their lives. In the context of the monastery, that meant easing one’s schedule through less private devotions, and more time to simply be present with Christ.[21] “At first we often think we are wasting our time,” he warned, “but we must continue in our resolve to persevere in this way as long as we live, in spite of all the difficulties.”[22]

Further Reading

• What's the Use? Robin Phillips on Choosing Gratuitous Nature over Modern Pragmatism

• When the Machine Stops

• Toolkit of Digital Boundaries for Healthy Living How I Reclaimed My Life From the Machine

• Spiritual Listening and the Power of Silence

Notes

[1] Wilson, Timothy D., David A. Reinhard, Erin C. Westgate, Daniel T. Gilbert, Nicole Ellerbeck, Cheryl Hahn, Casey L. Brown, and Adi Shaked, “Just Think: The Challenges of the Disengaged Mind” Science (New York, N.Y.) 345, no. 6192 (July 4, 2014): 75–77.

[2] Saint Paisios of Mount Athos, Spiritual Counsels, Volume 1: With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man (Thessaloniki, Greece: Holy Hesychasterion, 1996), 197.

[3] See Robin Phillips, “Robin Phillips on Choosing Gratuitous Nature over Modern Pragmatism,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 35.2 (April 2022), https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=35-02-026-v.

[4] Diane Glancy, A Line of Driftwood: The Ada Blackjack Story (New York: Turtle Point Press, 2021), 17.

[5] Aldous Huxley, Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited (New York: Harper, 2004 [1932]), p. 31.

[6] Carl Honore, The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter, and Live Better In a World Addicted to Speed (HarperOne, 2013).

[7] “God doesn’t want you to suffer lack. He intends for you to have more than enough. More than enough energy. More than enough time. More than enough joy for living. And more than enough financial resources so that you can give to others out of the abundance of what He has given you.” Cerullo, David. Blessed: Experience God’s Blessings in Your Life Today (Inspiration Ministries, 2009). From the book’s back cover: “God is good, and out of the depths of His love for you, He wants to bless you with more than enough! More than enough energy. More than enough time. More than enough joy. And more than enough financial resources for you to bless others through the abundance of what He has given you.”

[8] James Hilton, Lost Horizon (Pocket Paperback ed., William Marrow & Company, 1933), 96.

[9] James Hilton, 97.

[10] R.J. Snell, Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire (Kettering, OH, Angelico Press, 2015), 11

[11] James S. Stewart, Heralds of God (Pickle Partners Publishing, 2017).

[12] Julie Canlis, A Theology of the Ordinary (Wenatchee, WA: Godspeed Press, 2017), 7.

[13] Pieper, Leisure, 46.

[14] Josef Pieper, Josef Pieper: An Anthology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 140.

[15] Pieper, Leisure, 45.

[16] This, incidentally, is precisely why, if you have a family member who remains glued to his or her phone, you will not solve the underlying malaise by simply making the person get a job or forcing him or her to help with household chores, as beneficial as such activities will likely be for the person. Rather, the person who is addicted to an electronic interface needs first to recover the ability to enjoy leisure, especially that aspect of leisure that is most undermined by an environment of constant digital noise, namely the learned ability to be still. For tips on healthy ways to limit electronics in the home and bring stillness into the household, see Robin Phillips and Joshua Pauling, Are We All Cyborgs Now?: Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine (Basilian Media & Publishing, 2024), chapters 30 & 31.

[17] Pieper, 81.

[18] Abbé de Beaufort, 40.

[19] Abbé de Beaufort, 41–42.

[20] Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 81-82.

[21] 57 & 60.

[22] Brother Lawrence, 58.