In Praise of Idleness 赞美闲散（英文版）

Nobel laureate and philosopher Bertrand Russell wasn’t just daydreaming when he penned this classic. He declared: "拼命劳作已是老皇历，现代社会不需要奴隶制" (Slavish hard work is outdated—we’re not in the slave era anymore!). His radical idea? Cut the workday to 4 hours, freeing humans to actually live instead of grind. Russell argued that “过劳并不高尚——是无谓”overwork isn’t noble—it’s nonsense. “休闲不是偷懒，而是解放”Leisure isn’t laziness; it’s liberation. With modern tech, we could all thrive on minimal work, yet we’re stuck in a cycle of "productivity theater."（“生产力”剧情） He quipped: If everyone worked less, we’d avoid both burnout and unemployment (no more "busywork factories"!). 在大模型、AI、机器人大行其道的今天，我们目睹着讽刺的一幕：一些人筋疲力尽地“过劳”，另一些人却在忍饥挨饿，还有一些人选择了“躺平”。技术驱动的产能过剩与产品丰富度越高，财富分配机制的公平性就越需经受考验。贫困已非宿命，几代人劳碌不息更不该是常态。

罗素英语写作就是得了便宜，难怪有个诺奖。罗素的闲散（4小时日工作，其他时间快乐追求知识）社会像简单游戏模型一样，要是人人都玩的确解决很多问题，但是一方面天性难移积重难返，另一方面少数派只会被污名化又是新的阶级。

那些动不动写一两千页书的都来看看，这本35页的的内容和思辨不亚于一部啰里八嗦的长篇巨著。

躺平在家的我突然想每天学习4小时，不多也不少。

I am wondering whether praise, itself, is a kind of enslavement “ For ages, the rich and their sycophants have written in praise of “honest toil”, have praised the simple life, have professed a religion which teaches that the poor are much more likely to go to heaven than the rich, and in general have tried to make manual workers believe that there is some special nobility about altering the position of matter in space, just as men tried to make women believe that they derived some special nobility from their sexual enslavement. ”

Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labours of the many. But their labours were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good.

罗素一百年前写的东西，放到现在来看完全是预言并且完全不过时。虽然他在文中写到了文科在生活中的实用较少，但文章本身的时代已经超越了社会和时代。 罗素在论文集中一直反驳俄罗斯共产主义和集权政府，但全文读下来能感受到他是强烈的共产主义者，想必看到现在的中国他一定觉得实现了很多梦想。

虽然题目标得英文版，但其实里面是有翻译的。

Precise and concise.