commit 0fd6e2e4247eb8b99d4a2b045b64c87a4e7981ca
parent 2041074faa79e1149558f0b07a089025e2ade740
Author: FIGBERT <figbert@figbert.com>
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2025 15:12:25 -0800
Add How to Do Nothing review
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diff --git a/content/reading/how-to-do-nothing.md b/content/reading/how-to-do-nothing.md
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+title = "Bad Book Good Ideas"
+date = 2025-02-22T15:15:00-08:00
+[extra]
+book = "How to Do Nothing"
+author = "Jenny Odell"
+finished = 2025-01-07
+rating = "★★☆☆☆"
++++
+
+I was assigned Jenny Odell's *How to Do Nothing* as part of the [Three
+Books] program. I didn't take a COLLEGE course in [the fall], so I have
+relatively less of an idea if the program was taken seriously, but from
+my perspective it was comprised of a) an email that told me it existed,
+b\) a free book that was—I think—presented to me on my arrival to campus,
+and c) no further mention of it ever. A long while later I decided to
+read it.
+
+There are discussions of great merit in *How to Do Nothing*—but they are
+both poorly executed and tied to other beliefs that I disagree with,
+which ultimately has created a work that mirrors the program that
+recommended it: a core of goodness enveloped in the overgrown vines of
+bad.
+
+To address the former portion of my critique, I will turn to the common
+adage that the hallmark of true understanding is being able to explain
+something simply. Jenny Odell has not done that here. This book is a
+wandering text with no driving argument. Whatever tidbits of knowledge
+are to be found within it are sprinkled throughout at random intervals,
+and then repeated, each time as if she has forgotten about any previous
+mention. I felt as if I was reading a first draft the entire time.
+
+To the latter half of my critique, what arguments are articulated in
+*How to Do Nothing* are themselves something of a mixed bag. There are
+portions that I resonated with strongly:
+
+> I am personally unsatisfied with untrained attention, which flickers
+> from one new thing to the next, not only because it is a shallow
+> experience, or because it is an expression of habit rather than will,
+> but because it gives me less access to my own human experience.<br/>
+> *p. 119*
+
+> Poswolsky writes of their initial discovery: "I think we also found
+> the answer to the universe, which was, quite simply: just spend more
+> time with your friends."<br/>
+> *p. 34*
+
+But they are often followed up with just terrible addenda. I suspect it
+comes down to the following fundamental disagreement between myself and
+Odell:
+
+> ...I find existing things infinitely more interesting than anything I
+> could possibly make.<br/>
+> *p. 5*
+
+This is what leads her to follow up potentially interesting
+suppositions:
+
+> The first half of "doing nothing" is about disengaging from the
+> attention economy; the other half is about reengaging with something
+> else.<br/>
+> *p. xvii*
+
+With nonsensical conclusions:
+
+> That "something else" is nothing less than.... bioregionalism...<br/>
+> *p. xvii*
+
+This exchange in particular is typical of a type of thinking in the book
+that I do not understand in the slightest, which prizes non-humans over
+our own species and asceticism over greatness. That stance smacks of a
+particular branch of Christian thought that sees "lesser" states as
+inherently more "pure." The plant is prized over the person because it
+is incapable of sin. The mendicant over the industrialist, because why
+seek out anything in this world when the world to come is what matters.
+This view does not move me. Let all of the righteous acts that Odell
+proposes be done at scale as a testament to our glory.
+
+> One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it
+> are contagious. When you spend enough time with someone who pays close
+> attention to something... you inevitably start to pay attention to
+> some of the same things.<br/>
+> *p. xxiii*
+
+> There is no such thing as a clean break or a blank slate in this
+> world.<br/>
+> *p. 53*
+
+> "The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell
+> his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer."<br/>
+> *p. 55*
+
+There are no limits to what we are capable of. Attention is the tool by
+which that potential is made manifest.
+
+[Three Books]: https://college.stanford.edu/three-books/three-books-archive
+[the fall]: @/posts/stanford-quarterly-reflection-01/index.md
