In 1999 I wrote two short, topical essays a month for the Web site FEED. I thought, then, that I'd re-examine these pieces a year later to see what had been on my mind and to see if I still agreed with what I'd written. Here they are. Take a look at my 1999 Journal for this month, below, and join me in the Wicked Pavilion to discuss it.

Editor's note:

Josh Glenn came to the philosophical conclusion that it would be better to be idle for the rest of June 1999 and so he only wrote one piece for FEED that month.

June 18, 1999

Not so long ago, New York Times editorialists were singing the praises of the Walt Disney Company for "taking a stand against censorship." Michael Ovitz and his empire had valiantly refused to cave in to the Chinese government's demand that they cease backing Kundun, Martin Scorsese's biopic about the exiled Dalai Lama. Since Disney was—and still is—eager to expand its enterprises into China, its recalcitrance was widely seen as a principled act of selfless courage. Yet, according to a report published in the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, Disney will likely announce that its latest, much-anticipated Asian theme park will be built not in Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur (as was previously expected), but in Hong Kong, or perhaps Shanghai. A victory for business against politics? Sure. A crippling defeat for China's nascent "cultural sovereignty" movement? Maybe. But what's most significant about the prospect of a Chinese Disneyland is the triumph of the modern American notion of "leisure" over the ancient Chinese ideal of "idleness."

Visiting an amusement park—Disneyland being the exemplar of the phenomenon—is an instance of "recreation": something fun and relaxing one does when free from work. But as political philosopher Sebastian De Grazia points out in his classic work, Of Time, Work and Leisure (1962), it's important to distinguish between "leisure activities" which are performed for their own sakes or ends, and those which merely restore or re-create the energy which has been drained from us by our occupations. Because "amusement" and "recreation" are made necessary only because of work, visiting a theme park may produce a feeling of relief, but it's not an action which intrinsically occasions "felicity," or true happiness. De Grazia concludes that what passes for "leisure" in the United States—a country that prides itself on working hard and playing hard—is really just a slightly preferable manifestation of work itself.

Chinese scholar Lin Yutang, author of The Importance of Living (1937), would have agreed with De Grazia. In a chapter entitled "The Importance of Loafing," Dr. Lin scoffs at the "American vices" of efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for success, which "steal from [Americans] their inalienable right of loafing and cheat them of many a good, idle, and beautiful afternoon." Shaking his head at the American go-getter, who strives for perfect efficiency even in his so-called "leisure," Lin suggests that Americans would enjoy living more if they could only learn to be "idle"—to drink, smoke, and loll in easy-chairs, like the Chinese do. East would meet West soon enough, he predicted, because the rapidly developing "machine culture" would bring with it increased amounts of free time for all—at which point the ancient Chinese "cult of the idle life" would "invade" the Occidental world.

Alas! How wrong he was. Lin's felicitous "Chinese Philosophy" was anathema even in the very country it extolled, as it turned out. (So much for the stereotype of the indolent, long-fingernailed, opium-smoking Chinaman!) Denounced as a member of the hated intellectual "leisure class"—how he must have shuddered at that particular choice of phrase—he was soonforced to flee to Hong Kong, where he died in 1976. If the gods are as cruel as they are rumored to be, you can bet that Disney's latest amusement park—each attraction carefully designed to restore the depleted energy of China's new middle class—will be built upon his grave.