"... perhaps because they’ve borne the brunt of capitalism more than other groups of Americans. Tricia Hersey, a performance artist and the founder of the Nap Ministry, an Atlanta-based organization... says she discovered the power of naps during a draining year of graduate school at Emory University, an experience that inspired her to bring the gospel of sleep to fellow African Americans whose enslaved and persecuted ancestors were never able to properly rest.
She argues that rest is not only resistance, it is also reparation.
Ms. Hersey now leads events across the country focused on the transformative power of rest, and she has influenced other Black intellectuals, including Casey Gerald, the author of the transcendent essay
'The Black Art of Escape.' In it, Mr. Gerald reflects on a year he spent in what he calls a 'disappearing act,' lying flat in Texas, ignoring the calls of friends and admirers to join them in the fray of protest politics, which he’d come to view as a sure path to self-annihilation. 'Claim your inheritance,' Mr. Gerald enjoins. 'Miss the moment. Go mad, go missing, take a nap, take the day, drop a tab. You’re free!'"
From
"Work Is a False Idol" by Cassady Rosenblum — "a writer who recently quit her job as a producer at 'Here & Now,' a National Public Radio news program, and is living with her parents in West Virginia" — (NYT).
Objectively, on the substance, this post would get my
"laziness" tag, but I'm wary of connecting it to a racist stereotype. Does that mean the
essay has a racism problem? Or does that reveal that the stereotype is propaganda that manipulates people into not using their power to resist?
Posts
59 comments:
Well, I would just say that Black Americans have been sleep walking for years. And this is proven out by their voting for the same people, offering the same lip service, and getting the same results year after year. And then getting angry about it but finding the solution to be to do the same thing over again. And again. And again. Honestly, I'd need a nap, too.
An exhausting year at grad school at Emory is enough to start up a new sleepy religion? Good thing the rest of her life hasn't happened yet, if she thought a year of grad school was exhausting.
Some of the younger generations of Black Americans, those in the news or trending in thought, think Black people are different from other humans. It'll be interesting when most of them come to find out at some point that...we're all the same. On the other hand, it's more lucrative these days thinking like a segregationist.
Have blacks really borne so much of the "brunt of capitalism"? Seems more like they're bearing the brunt of socialism. In all the places in America where blacks are in the greatest despair, there are extremely high levels of government dependence. And those places don't strike me as the ones where blacks in general need MORE time off from work and other responsibilities.
"... perhaps because they’ve borne the brunt of capitalism more than other groups of Americans."
I would say "... perhaps because they’ve borne the brunt of socialism more than other groups of Americans."
I am not being glib, I am serious.
Slavery wasn't based on the free exchange of goods and services. Or is capitalism to blame for both the suburban home owners AND government housing?
good Lord.
Capitalism is not a form of government. It is a system of commerce. A system of commerce that has the ability to lift everyone out of poverty.
I think this echoes the experience of women who finally got to have those corner office jobs and discovered it wasn't any fun. Reading folks like Cheever, Updike and Marquand should have informed people that rich white guys have their problems too.
My husband totally endorses the Nap Ministry and he's as white as they come. His paternal great grandfather got knocked down by his slaves when he tried to tell them the Emancipation Proclamation didn't apply in Missouri.
I'm sure Ms. Rosenblum's parents are thrilled.
I've had to put rest first and foremost, up there with good nutrition. Because of the nature of drive sharing, I'm my own boss, I notice how easy it was for me to just go home when I felt I might fall sleep on the road. I had no problem justifying it. So, it was either slim down my week driving goals, or go to sleep earlier, even if that meant not watching the RedSox Yankee game until it's interminable end. I needed to prioritize better.
I believe laziness is a relative term. It's closer to sloth than rest. We need proper rest. Since adjusting my sleep schedule I've noticed an improvement in the quality of my diving. The apps, Allstate Drivewise tracking and the drive sharing app riders feedback tell me so. I can't dilute myself into believing I'm doing fine when I'm not. It's the acceptable tradeoff I've made with the intrusive technology in exchange for... having peace of mind.
Objectively, on the substance, this post would get my "laziness" tag, but I'm wary of connecting it to a racist stereotype.
The Matrix has you. . .
I'm all in on this map project. I need to go sign up.
Years ago I was part of a project called "Nap for Humanity" it has no agenda beyond napping.
The concept was that our carbon dioxide footprint (though not our carbon footprint) odds decreased when we are asleep.
I'm amused by the person who thinks the are saving the world by acting like a child and sponging off their parents.
Work us man’s curse for Original Sin. Ye shall toil and sweat of the brow and all that from the eloquent King James Bible. So like BLM these new activists are not just working agin whitey but against all the black people with solid faith in Judeo Christian tradition.
Tune in, turn on, drop out.
Today seems to be the day for sends-ups chez Althouse. This one is a doozy.
"the power of naps during a draining year of graduate school ... inspired her to bring the gospel of sleep to fellow African Americans ... [because] rest is not only resistance, it is also reparation." Naps/sleep as reparations? it's all so charmingly child-like, yea infantile in its resistance/reparation quotient. But, OK, whatever.
Then it gets better:
"on a year he spent in what he calls a 'disappearing act,' lying flat in Texas, ignoring the calls of friends and admirers to join them in the fray of protest politics, which he’d come to view as a sure path to self-annihilation. 'Claim your inheritance,' Mr. Gerald enjoins. 'Miss the moment. Go mad, go missing, take a nap, take the day, drop a tab. You’re free!'" Okey-dokey. Hard to hear all those 'calls of friends and admiriers' when you're lost in nappy-time with your nice fluffy blankey at hand. And that's posing quite the choice, not some wimpy echo, for his target audience (to the extent you can target anything lying down taking a nap) because, surely, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. So go all-out -- even go missing (not that you'll actually be missed)! The 'drop a tab' thing is a not-good, double-bad echo (dare I say a cultural appropriation?) of the Ken Kesey/Tom Wolfe classic, which anyway was terrific because it was the opposite of that silly napping time stuff.
Does that mean the essay has a racism problem, asks the hostess. I'd say it has a dumb-as-a-brick problem, but that's just me.
I've arrived at the conclusion that some portion (just the activist?) of black people, ultimately, do not want to live within white culture.
The question then becomes, how do white people live with them?
the gospel of sleep to fellow African Americans whose enslaved and persecuted ancestors were never able to properly rest
You know who else in history were never able to properly rest? Pretty much everyone, everywhere, always. After the discovery of agriculture, work, constant, unremitting hard work, was the nearly universal lot of humanity, whether you were slave or free. Look at the faces of people from the 19th century, (and remember, if you had your picture taken you weren't really at the bottom); these folks were haggard by the time they were 30. It takes nothing away from the moral abomination of slavery to say that life used to be very, very brutally hard for everyone, unless you were a member of the very upper strata of society. One needs only remember what life was like in Massachusetts mill towns, or in Colorado silver mines, or laying railroad tracks, or sailing clipper ships, or just washing the laundry for your family, beating the rugs, making dinner, cleaning the dishes and making sure you pushed down the despair over the death of your 3rd infant in 5 years, to understand that "naps" were not high on the agenda for free people, either.
Look, I am all for naps. I encourage napping. For everyone. But it is a luxury, we should all be grateful and recognize that it was purchased for us by generations of hard work and innovation largely financed and promoted by... capitalism.
She seems to be saying that it is being demanded of her that she participate in society in a certain way and say certain words in a certain way as happened under slavery. Back then the slaves "lay down on the job" because it was slavery, not a job, and she seems to be paralleling the condition of being faced with the demands of black activists with being faced with the demands of slave-owners. At least, she is saying: "do as we did back then in slavery days when unreasonable demands irrelevant to our future were made by an overwhelming power. Lay down your weary song, lay down."
> "Go mad, go missing, take a nap, take the day, drop a tab."
Tune in, turn on, drop out.
Truly nothing new under the sun.
> "a writer who recently quit her job as a producer at 'Here & Now,' a National Public Radio news program, and is living with her parents in West Virginia"
Ah, yes, living off the labor of your parents. What do we call it when we steal the labor of others? There's a term for the people who's labor is stolen. It's right on the tip of my tongue... what _is_ it?
Slave.
Sure, but these are her parents so they are probably supporting her out of love. However, I have it on good authority that there is no such thing as consensual slavery. All labor thievery is slavery. Giving it away isn't a thing. It can't happen. This woman has made slaves of her parents.
Wow, this "slave" tool is powerful. You can wield it against almost anyone. And twist it to fit nearly any situation. It would be terrible if a political group started wielding this tool against their ideological enemies.
Nestled comfortably on the scenic Shavers Fork River outside Elkins, WV in Lower Cheat, Cassady Rosenblum lives jobless with her immediate family in the home of her dad, medical doctor Bret Rosenblum along with mom, Susan, and brother Forrest, who dropped out of work to go to grad school and to marry Molly Tobin at Spruce Knob next month. All can now enjoy "observing bears and eagles on the Shaver’s Fork" because Dr. Bret can now work from home. Surely this is "Almost Heaven." And as hillbillies are primed to say at the drop of a hat, "Them what has, gets."
Sounds to me like she culturally appropriated the Siesta.
I love naps, and more folks should take them. I even sometimes had a very short head down nap at work for a few minutes, but usually not - usually waited until I get home (at 7-ish, from 8-9ish morning). Some folks wake up quickly and refreshed from naps, some folk don't.
Market capitalism is based on Free Will, and the free choices of individuals. It is also, unlike all other real-world econ systems, a positive sum system. Everybody can win. In fact, in every deal both sides "win", they are better off than any real alternative they have.
But ya, those who work smart and work hard make more deals of more value and have more money to buy more stuff - from producers who were working to produce in order to get the money.
12 and 12 page 48.
"To avoid falling into confusion over the names these [personality] defects should be called, let's take a universally recognized list of major human failings— the Seven Deadly Sins of
pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth."
I call them the exaggerated exercise of proper instincts. These things have a spectrum and family and close friends know when the line is crossed. Link text
I am a great proponent of naps. But in what way is your (putative) ancestors' inability to get enough rest tied to YOUR restedness?
And furthermore! So this piece is by a woman who "decided" (shouldn't probably be in quotes; she probably did actually decide this - but it just seems so reflexive, like a planarian or something) to quit her job and no longer worship at the altar of work... so she (presumably of necessity) moves in with her PARENTS?!
Good Lord. I say go ahead and use the "laziness" tag. (Feel free to attach it to this comment as well, as I'm being lazy in using all caps for emphasis instead of going to the hassle of italics. But this is cutting into my nap.)
From "Work Is a False Idol" by Cassady Rosenblum — "a writer who recently quit her job as a producer at 'Here & Now,' a National Public Radio news program, and is living with her parents in West Virginia"
A producer? Here & Now has more than one? From its very genesis, National Public Radio has been a make-work program custom-made to provide a few otherwise unemployables -- overwhelmingly female, Jewish, Northeast corridor, liberal-arts grads from Brandeis and Bryn Mawr -- with comfortable lifestyles while they wait for either Daddy to croak or an up-and-coming junior partner in the family firm to take them to wife, but Ms. Rosenblum's former job description must have been exceptionally nebulous and slippery. NYT describes her as a writer -- radio programs need writers, that's a given since the golden days of golden voices, -- so what was Rosenblum doing as a producer? Fetching medium cloud Caffè Americanos at $125K per annum? That such a woman who has lived luxuriantly on money expropriated from the lower-middle class schlub caste chooses to write about the evils of capitalism is amusing if it were not so predictable.
Don't be deceived into thinking her retirement (i.e. retreat to early adolescence at the expense of Daddy's actual retirement) involves some form of Hillbilly Elegy lifestyle, every third person in the Harper's Ferry area is a high-octane Washington lawyer or lobbyist.
Laurel writes, "I've arrived at the conclusion that some portion (just the activist?) of black people, ultimately, do not want to live within white culture."
The history of Liberia is instructive.
Lem writes, "...let's take a universally recognized list of major human failings— the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth."
Reads like the description of an Open Society Foundation internship program.
My comment was here and now it's gone...humor and irony not allowed?
Was I cancelled?
Being retired, I have something close to sixty years of foregone naps owed me. Not sure I'm going to catch up, but, by golly, I'm trying.
Since probability theory is a scam, it's perfectly logical I should read this in between Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberal" essays.
BNM!
ACAB! (Alarm clocks are bastards)
In fairness, demoralization and lassitude often go hand in hand. So it’s entirely possible for a stereotype to be valid, but not for the reason everyone assumes. Why bust your ass for a system that you believe marginalizes you?
And, yes, I understand the catch in that line of thinking. And they probably do as well.
and is living with her parents in West Virginia
I do not envy her parents.
I recall Dad would walk home from work, eat lunch, take a 15-minute nap on the couch, then walk back to work. Naps are great.
"In the United States, Black activists, writers and thinkers are among the clearest voices articulating this spiritual malaise and its solutions... perhaps because they’ve borne the brunt of capitalism more than other groups of Americans"
I don't know what the ellipsis is leaving out but if your profession is writer, thinker or 'black activist' it isn't capitalism that's your problem, it's your profession.
In China, everyone naps. At my school, we can't schedule any classes or meetings between 1-2 because all the students (and most of the staff) are napping. But that means that the students don't tire out at 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Indeed, they're still going strong well into the evening. And these students (they are all graduate law students) don't ever party. All they seem to do is work, and go to the gym. So, I don't think there is a correlation of any kind between napping and being lazy. On the contrary, napping seems to facilitate really hard, nose-to-the-grindstone work, at least among the motivated.
Work is man’s curse for Original Sin. Ye shall toil and sweat of the brow and all that from the eloquent King James Bible.
Really? And what is it for God, who after all WORKED for six days before man was even created.
And what are we to make of God's directives BEFORE Original Sin: "God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth. . . . The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it" (Genesis 1:28, 2:15).
Subdue, dominion, cultivate, care -- these are words of WORK.
In fact, work is part of the dignity that God gave to humanity. God did not want or expect us to remain in a state of infantile dependency, but to share in His own ability to work and build. What Original Sin did was to distort and pervert the good of work into drudgery.
Now, why couldn't this essay have been written by an unemployed black person living with their parents? Sounds like Ms. Rosenblum is trying to make money off of sleepy black people.
It's amusing to me, for some reason, that the evil capitalist job she left was in... public radio. I don't see regular rest from labor as resistance or as reparations. I do see it as wise. It's the biblical practice of Sabbath keeping.
That guy's story is WTL, so I gave up. Hard pass on the WV doctor's daughter's whine.
As a newly married man in 1977, I got in the habit of taking a nap on the sofa in the afternoon, after work. Say, from 5 to 540 or so, while my wife fixed dinner.
For a while, I thought I had discovered the secret of having more energy, but Mother Nature is crafty. What I discovered was that if I happened to be out and about at naptime, it was very hard to stay awake and alert.
Had to go cold turkey.
Now I almost never nap. In the recliner, dog across my lap, once in a while, but not on a regular schedule.
This entry is drowning in stereotypes. Just to throw an anchor to those playing race cards, I’ll offer that Winston Churchill, the whitest man in the history of the twentieth century, was a master nap-taker.
Be like Churchill, black Americans! Throw off your chains!
'In China, everyone naps.'
Sometimes it's cultural and/or climate related.
I couldn't get dinner in Spain 40 years ago before 8pm because it was so damned hot in the summer, everyone conks out until then...
I don't mind if people are lazy. I can be lazy too sometimes. Just don't expect me to give you a living. If you want something, get off your lazy ass.
Lem (1:55pm):
According to Thomas Aquinas, you're half right (or maybe 3/7ths right) in calling the Seven Deadly Sins "the exaggerated exercise of proper instincts". As I recall - it's been years, so don't ask for a reference - he divides the seven sins into three groups of (mostly) three each:
One category is 'Love Excessive', too much of a good thing, just what you described. These are Gluttony, Avarice, and Lust. We all need food and drink, material possessions, and love, but some of us go way too far in pursuing them, or pursue them in the wrong ways, and that's a deadly sin.
Another category is 'Love Perverted', things we shouldn't be doing at all in any amount: Pride, Envy, and Wrath.
The third category is 'Love Defective', doing less than we should of whatever we should be doing, and that's Sloth. There's only one sin in this category because if you're not doing it it hardly matters what it is that you're not doing. Aquinas has found a clever way to divide the magic number 7 by the magic number 3 and makes it come out sort-of-even.
This is all essential background for Dante's Comedy. Also, you don't have to be Christian, much less Catholic, to find it a a pretty good classification of behavior to be avoided. There is in fact a very similar list in one of Horace's Satires, written ~50 years before Jesus started preaching.
I'll be honest - I'm sick and tired of hearing about "cultures" and skin color and race.
It's boring. Just be.
For some reason, this put me in mind of Lily Von Shtup's exhaustive performance of "I'm Tired." Even members of the Master Race could use a good nap.
Bearing the brunt of capitalism for some 62 years now (since my first real job at age 16). Just don't know how I can stand up under the load. But I'll keep trying.
Actually I haven't had it so bad; for the most part I enjoyed the work that I did and the tasks that I had. Work aka "earning your bread under capitalism" is not the be all and end all of existence. And not everybody is lucky enough to find satisfying work--or in some cases any work at all. And there has to be some safety net for those who can not find work, but who are willing to work. But mostly this "feelz" about the "brunt of capitalism' is codswallop.
"Objectively, on the substance, this post would get my "laziness" tag"
Why?
tasking naps when you're exhausted and less functional strikes me as a really good idea. I try to do it myself
Pedjt used to call Biden "sleepy Joe" now Joe is complaining he can't sleep.
I've got an idea, why don't we all buy him a My Pillow and send them to the white house?
He'll sleep better and the money will go to Ahmedabad workers.
John Henry
activists, writers and thinkers
I appreciate the clarity involved in keeping activists and writers separate from thinkers.
Why isn't this "cultural appropriation" of the Mexican siesta?
“WORK!!!”
—- Maynard G. Krebs, early hipster…
""Objectively, on the substance, this post would get my "laziness" tag"/Why?/tasking naps when you're exhausted and less functional strikes me as a really good idea. I try to do it myself."
Because it engages with the issue of stigmatizing naps, whether the bottom line is that stigmatizing is justified or not and because it goes beyond simple napping to recommending a "lying down" mode of existence in objection to work!
It amazes me that anyone thinks telling the world you're tired is a compelling argument for anything.
It amazes me that anyone thinks telling the world you're tired is a compelling argument for anything.
Moms have been using it as a fundamental for - well, ever, I think. Me included. "I'm tired! Do what I say!"
This aside - again I declare my support for napping. But I wholeheartedly agree with the commenter above who points it that the branches
of EVERY HUMAN BEING'S family tree will be heavy with weary people. Leisure, especially in the quantity and quality in which we enjoy it (so much so that we complain about having to, oh, take out the trash), is a modern invention.
“God worked six days…” Of course. He always sets the good example first.
Siestas of all cultures help humans. I read that the several places on earth where more people lived to 120 all shared 5 things, and one of them was that taking naps and/or meditating were normalized and expected. Since I grew up on the Mexican border, after lunch naps were a regular feature in our house,and an imperative for my mama.
Just stop whining so much and get to it!
May All Be Well.
May All Thrive Now.
So now nappy hair is a black thing?
Objectively, on the substance, this post would get my "laziness" tag, but I'm wary of connecting it to a racist stereotype.
Is this a good time to remind one and all that the slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” necessarily implies that if you have the ability to work then you must, necessarily, work up to your ability or the whole system falls apart? And if the motivation involves flogging, beatings, or sticking a gun in your ear, is there anything less that can be counted on to get everyone to fulfill their responsibility to work up to their ability?
Wild chicken—remember when Hillary Clinton said she was “no ways tahred” in a horrible faux black accent? She agrees with you! Is she the antidote to those who say black folks need a nap?
So napping is good. And we all know, "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Embiggening the idea just a wee bit further, I propose that being in a coma must be "living the dream." And the sweet, sweet surcease of all labor and care that is death must be our ultimate goal.
Or maybe I just need a nap.
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