Stop having hobbies

[Anonymous No.13260888]

>I am shocked by the question when I come up against it. I have no hobby. Not that I am the kind of workaholic, who is incapable of doing anything with his time but applying himself industriously to the required task. But, as far as my activities beyond the bounds of my recognised profession are concerned, I take them all, without exception, very seriously. So much so, that I should be horrified by the very idea that they had anything todo with hobbies – preoccupations with which I had become mindlessly infatuated merely in order to kill the time – had I not become hardened by experience to such examples of this now widespread, barbarous mentality. Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.
>Incidentally the expression ‘free time’ or ‘spare time’ originated only recently – its precursor, the term ‘leisure’ (Muβe) denoted the privilege of an unconstrained, comfortable life-style, hence something qualitatively different and far more auspicious – and it indicates a specific difference, that of time which is neither free nor spare, which is occupied by work, and which moreover one could designate as heteronomous. Free time is shackled to its opposite...What is more, and far more importantly, free time depends on the totality of social conditions,which continues to hold people under its spell. Neither in their work nor in their consciousness do people dispose of genuine freedom over themselves.
>Boredom is a function of life which is lived under the compulsion to work, and under the strict division of labour. It need not be so. Whenever behaviour in sparetime is truly autonomous, determined by free people for themselves, boredom rarely figures; it need not figure in activities which catermerely for the desire for pleasure, any more than it does in those freetime activities which are reasonable and meaningful in themselves. Even fooling about need not be crass, and can be enjoyed as a blessed release from the throes of self-control.

[Anonymous No.13261331]

>humor leads to Auschwitz
oh Adorno, you silly fella

[Anonymous No.13261347]

>>13261331
Work will set you free

[Anonymous No.13261354]

>>13260888
>Boredom is a function of life which is lived under the compulsion to work, and under the strict division of labour. It need not be so. Whenever behaviour in sparetime is truly autonomous, determined by free people for themselves, boredom rarely figures
Why does Adorno think this is the case? I'd say that boredom will become more commonplace than ever if people will no longer be obligated to work and have everything taken care of.

[Anonymous No.13261362]

>>13260888
>Work-Life Balance
>Life is Work
>Life is affirmation
>Work(life)-Work(life) Balance

[Anonymous No.13261404]

>>13261354
Consider someone who has never worked or known work. This person will develop habits of time-use that are tailored to this mode of life, a life without work. Hence “leisure” is not differentiated as such, but as the default. Whatever form boredom can take for such a person, it would be very different from the one you likely have in mind. That is to say, work would more “boring” for them than the lack of it.

[Anonymous No.13261422]

>>13261404
>Consider someone who has never worked or known work
This implies that such a person can even function or thrive at anything, since there has never been a moment in human history where someone didn't have to work to survive. Both in animals and in humans, a total lack of work or any outside stressors causes organisms to collapse in on itself. It's a highly unnatural position to be in.

[Anonymous No.13261425]

>>13261354
That was basically what life was like for the aristocratic classes in the Greek states.

[Anonymous No.13261436]

>>13260888
>Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.
lmao relax
>Whenever behaviour in sparetime is truly autonomous, determined by free people for themselves, boredom rarely figures; it need not figure in activities which catermerely for the desire for pleasure, any more than it does in those freetime activities which are reasonable and meaningful in themselves. Even fooling about need not be crass, and can be enjoyed as a blessed release from the throes of self-control.
so, hobbies

[Anonymous No.13261442]

>>13261422
I think you are confusing several things with work. Here we’re talking about productive/professional labour. Not just physical or emotional work.

[Anonymous No.13261447]

This guys seems to have misunderstood the definition of hobbies.

[Anonymous No.13261450]

>>13261425
yeah and look at what happened to them

[Anonymous No.13261453]

>>13261422
Work stress varies by job

[Anonymous No.13261485]

>>13261442
No, i mean all forms of work that are forced by forces beyond one's control, which therefore alienate oneself from work because you cannot decide for yourself whether you want to do it or not. There has never been any moment in history, even among the most decadent empires, where anyone has ever been completely unalienated, either by outside forces or by purely biological drives.

[Anonymous No.13261490]

>>13261453
Even a relatively stressless job is still alienating according to Marxist doctrine.

[Anonymous No.13261499]

>>13261485
You're on the wrong track. "Deciding what work you want" is symptomatic of the problem. Tigers don't decide to be predators, they just do it. Aristocrats don't decide to be aristocrats, they're born into it, just as peasants are born to till the earth.
The modern idea that "you can be anything" is the most toxic idea of work that has ever existed. You can do anything - because it doesn't matter what you do, all of it is equally meaningless.

[Anonymous No.13261514]

>>13261485
You are stil confusing several things, condensing multiple concepts and ideas into a singular one causing linguistic confusion. What you’re saying is not wrong, but that’s not the matter nor the subject at hand. We’re talking about work as in productive labour, societally perpetuated work. As in, a 9-5, where you have a salary or wage, were you pay taxes, a profession, a job. Im not talking about an abstract totalizing notion of work. In the case where such work as the one above does not exist, life is different for that person (even when other forms of work do exist).

[Anonymous No.13261523]

>>13261499
And how will work/action be any more meaningful under communism, then? If anything, the tendency towards 'full automated' communism will just make everything we can do even more meaningless, because there's ultimately no use for any human work.

[Anonymous No.13261528]

>>13260888
>can't stop thinking od Auschwitz
Rent free

[Anonymous No.13261539]

>>13261528
Dumb meme. Adorno explicit states that preventing another Auschwitz is the whole point of his work.

[Anonymous No.13261558]

>>13261539
In which moment after the war the West was in situation in which Auschwitz could happen again?

[Anonymous No.13261569]

>>13261523
I don't advocate communism. I'd be more inclined to say that feudalism or a caste system is closer to ideal. The works of the peasant, the merchant, the priest, and the soldier all had dignity and spirituality.

[Anonymous No.13261570]

>>13261422
Work =/= activity

[Anonymous No.13261578]

>>13261539
he should have ended up in auschwitz, just to see that nothing out of the ordinary was going on there.

[Anonymous No.13261581]

>>13261570
The point still stands that a position where one is truly free to 'do' whatever one wants is completely unnatural, both for humans and any other organism.

[Anonymous No.13261583]

>>13261558
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make. No one ever imagine something like Auschwitz was even possible to begin with. The same way no one expected 9/11 or imagined Trump becoming president or any other number of historical events. You can’t predict such things. And wouldn’t the fact that there hasnt been another possibility of an lotner holocaust a positive point for the work of people like Adorno? The fact that we exist in an age where such an act doesn’t cross our minds intellectually (which is not true btw, re:/pol/).

[Anonymous No.13261586]

>>13261569
Ah yeah the fucking peasants were really dignified weren't they? Fucking neck yourself you despotic faggot.

[Anonymous No.13261592]

>>13261539
Doesnt he know that worse things than Auschwitz have happened? Like, what makes Auschwitz so much worse for him than starving millions of Ukrainians or Chinese to death? Why does he regard that as the single most evil thing ever that has ever occurred, while brushing away all others.

It's not because they were Jews, right?

[Anonymous No.13261598]

>>13261586
They were, though. They were not the lowest caste. You are thinking of the laborers.

[Anonymous No.13261608]

>>13261586
Feudal peasants actually had more leasure time than workers under capitalism or communism. You can chastise feudalism for its poor health issues, but that's more a matter of technology than anything inherent to the system.
And even Engels admitted that the dissolution of the guild system caused far more alienation.

[Anonymous No.13261621]

>>13261583
>antisemitic rethoric
>the night of the broken glasses
>antisemitism in mein mein kamp
>a large etc
Where they blind then? It was pretty much obvious Hitler would do something against the eternal enemy he was talking about in his speeches

[Anonymous No.13261657]

>>13261583
>6 million Jews dead is the most horrible thing to have ever happened and all of philosophy must hitherto devote itself to never letting that happen again.
>20 million chinks starving to death due to systemic incompetence? Ukraine being genocided under Stalin? Constant indiscriminate terror of civilians under Lenin? The entire earth living in the shadow of a looming nuclear apocalypse? Eh, no biggy, just necessary on the path to utopia.

[Anonymous No.13261662]

>>13261592
I don’t think he ever referred to it as the most evil thing ever but regarded it as the vilest thing to happen in recent times.

I dont see how he’s being a jew and subsequently feeling personally horrified by such an act to his “people” and subsequently motivated to act against it a bad thing? Isn’t the current /pol/ sentiment motivated by the fact that the white race is “under attack”? Is it surprising or wrong that it would be white people who are motivated by this and not anyone else? Why shouldn’t jewish intellectuals act out against anti-semitism when it clearly affects them?

>>13261621
Anti-semitism waant new or particular to Hitler. And you can make the case that people were “blind” to it, just look at the Chalmers policies towards Hitler’s Gemrany before the war.

[Anonymous No.13261673]

>>13261657
Okay, Adorno made contradictory and idelogical claims. Im not professing either validation or acceptance of his work. Simply that criticizing him for thinking of the Holocaust too much is dumb considering that he explicitly puts it at the center of his work.

[Anonymous No.13261684]

>>13261581
>truly free
define truly free, theres always a form

[Anonymous No.13261695]

>>13261662
>I don’t think he ever referred to it as the most evil thing ever but regarded it as the vilest thing to happen in recent times.
Oh, so it's not the most evil, just the most vile. This is just a matter of semantics, the point still stands; why Auschwitz in particular, and not one of the many other atrocities of the 20th century? Why is gassing 6 million people like cattle worse than denying 7 million people food to the point they have to resort to cannibalism and/or die?

If it's really because he's a Jew, then it would make him a massive hypocrite, as it would seem that he's not really concerned with the emancipation and wellbeing of the human species, but just a very small part of it. and for the record, i'm not a /pol/tard, i just despise Adorno for pretending that the Nazi camps stand alone in terms of evil, when they were rivalled or even surpassed by the atrocities of other actors in WW2 and afterwards.

[Anonymous No.13261715]

>>13261684
Truly free as in no longer suffering from any of the four forms of alienation as Marx and Engels defined it. In particular alienation from 'himself'

[Anonymous No.13261719]

>>13261715
>Truly free as in no longer suffering
ok, your argument is invalid

[Anonymous No.13261724]

>>13261719
Ok molyneux

[Anonymous No.13261739]

>>13261719
That's not what i said, dipshit

[Anonymous No.13261752]

>>13261695
>Oh, so it's not the most evil, just the most vile. This is just a matter of semantics
You’re the one stuck semantically here. Vile or evil doesnt make a different, the qualifier there was “in recent times”, as oppose to “ever”.

Nevertheless, you are reacting entirely emotive. It is very likely that there is no such contradiction in Adorno’s work as the one you speak about. I dount that Adorno considers it the MOST evil thing ever, but that it’s tragedy is immediate and relevant for the west and subjectively to him.
>then it would make him a massive hypocrite, as it would seem that he's not really concerned with the emancipation and wellbeing of the human species
Yet, when has he put this as point or purpose of his work in general? I think your are creating strawman manifestations of Adorno’s ethos. Where is the textual evidence that places this as Adorno’s effort? He might’ve said, I confer, but i’ve nevr come across it myself.

[Anonymous No.13261795]

>>13261695
>>13261752
To add further context Adorno saw Auschwitz as a Zivilisationsbruch – an unprecedented ethical and metaphysical break. Such a break refers to a particular cultural mileu in where such an event would be able to be consider as a break. That is to say, if a whole platoon of warlords get killed in an undeveloped corner in Africa, as sad and tragic as that is, it doesn’t represent the same kind of shock as when a well educated, rick white kid comes and shoots up a school in Vermont. This is a matter of perspective of cours, this only represents a break for people within the society that did not see itself capable of such actions.

[Anonymous No.13262354]

>>13261347
This

[Anonymous No.13262367]

>>13260888
Pretty sure he did have hobbies
https://youtu.be/8t4pmlHRokg

[Anonymous No.13262901]

>>13261752
>Yet, when has he put this as point or purpose of his work in general?
"The premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again. Its priority before any other requirement is such that I believe I need not and should not justify it."
https://josswinn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/AdornoEducation.pdf

[Anonymous No.13263066]

>Making music, listening to music...these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.

interesting pose for a guy that fundamentally misunderstood the process of composition

[Anonymous No.13263071]

>>13263066
>interesting
no it isn't
why do people have such issues using this word correctly?

[Anonymous No.13263180]

'ate music
'ate hobbies
'ate fun
'ate Auschwitz
'ate Germans

love Jews
love blonde women
love dead Germans

easy as

[Anonymous No.13263212]

>>13261592
Neither ukrainians nor chineese were G_d's Choosen.

[Anonymous No.13264185]

>>13261795
>an unprecedented ethical and metaphysical break
Such as Freud's descriptions of most major aspects of Western culture being negative symptomologies of Christianity?

[Anonymous No.13264923]

>>13263180
Proper Frankfurt lad right here

[Anonymous No.13266111]

>>13264923
>>13263180
>love blonde women
is this a reference to something specific?

[Anonymous No.13267162]

>>13261354
boredom is an anxiety generated by the perception of wasted leisure time, which itself is created by the alienated nature of capitalist work. leisure time is organized by the same logic as work time and carries the same requirements of efficient production, i.e. the need to maximize fun while away from one's job. or at least organize it in such a way so as to not disrupt one's primary role a worker (exercise, get enough sleep, don't overindulge in drugs, don't go outside the effect range of travel back to said job, etc)

[Anonymous No.13267173]

>>13261422
hunting and gathering are functions of hunger. one is satisfying an instinctive urge on one's own terms. work would be having to report to a foreman who organizes a foraging crew and then pays you wages after, for which you can exchange for shelter and other goods

[Anonymous No.13267176]

>>13261485
by this logic wild animals have jobs

[Anonymous No.13267185]

>>13267162

>Boredom is an anxiety

No it isn't

[Anonymous No.13267191]

>>13267162
>boredom is an anxiety generated by the perception of wasted leisure time
children get bored; I really don't think it's because of that

[Anonymous No.13267196]

>>13261695
it was the industrial nature of the death camps that single them out. a famine is a famine, those happen all the time. what happened to the kulaks wasn't that different from what happened to the boers or the irish before them. but the holocaust saw the application of efficient industrial methods to the extermination of a group of people. it exposed the dark absolute of taylorism-fordism

[Anonymous No.13267206]

>>13267191
that's because children of a certain age are already learning the rudiments of the industrial division of labor via their parents, school, and media. do infants get bored?

[Anonymous No.13267214]

>>13267185
is boredom a pleasant sensation to you?

[Anonymous No.13267227]

>>13267214

No, but you're contorting its definition to fit your analysis of its cause

[Anonymous No.13267286]

>>13267227
how would you define boredom?

[Anonymous No.13267308]

>>13267206
how do you know these things

[Anonymous No.13267344]

>>13267308
how do you learn your native language? nobody sits you down and lays out grammar for you, you pick it up based on the usage you're exposed to (hence dialects/accents). the same thing with the value system you internalize in your youth. that kind of learning is total and automatic rather than a subject to be memorized (which, ironically, is an industrial approach to education)

[Anonymous No.13267349]

>>13267308
also pre-industrial people don't experience boredom as such, the same way they don't develop depression or stress-related illnesses. this is documented

[Anonymous No.13267360]

>>13267196
The slaughter by the Germans in the Ukraine was efficient. Death camps, whereby people are carted hundreds of miles to a central location, cleaned, fed, logged, housed, ad infinitum is not efficient.

[Anonymous No.13267362]

>>13267349

Actually depression and schizophrenia are observed in every culture, even isolated peoples

>>13267286

As a symptom of depression

[Anonymous No.13267365]

>>13267344
4chan classic! always point that what you're advocating is not <thing with negative connotations> even though that thing hasn't been brought up!

[Anonymous No.13268849]

Seems like he has a different understanding of the word hobby.

>Making music, listening to music, reading with all my attention, these activities are part and parcel of my life; to call them hobbies would make a mockery of them.

So he is against what we would call distractions
He would rather related things he enjoys doing to working on a craft more or less, rather than calling them hobbies.

[Anonymous No.13269012]

>>13260888
unironically based

[Anonymous No.13269273]

>>13261436
God I hate it when otherwise well-rounded philosphers act like this, it's obvious he just doesn't want to be a part of the dirty going polloi with their "hobbies."

[Anonymous No.13269306]

>>13261485
>alienate
"You keep using that word"

[Anonymous No.13269381]

>>13269273
i haven't read Adorno but that doesn't seem to be what the quote implies.
To me it looks like he's rebelling against the connotations that the word "hobby" has. Joyous activities and interests shouldn't be opposed to productive hours and clasified as "hobbies", but instead we should have something more akin to a "joie de vivre" where private life is not relegated to a secundary role but has a function by itself.