Thread by @Helenreflects

Piece by Tom Hanks on how the pandemic indicates playing solitaire is no longer in the cards, seeing how short and precious our time is.
Is he trolling or what? On the assumption he's not joking, here's my defense of solitaire in the light of pandemic 1/

wsj.com/articles/tom-h…

What's Tom Hanks' reasoning? "If in the past year you played solitaire, even a single game, you wasted that time. Take it from me: I played many hands of the game and have nothing to show for the effort" - I don't see how the pandemic could have affected this judgment 2/

"Covid-19 has taught us that life and health are precarious...Our time is limited and finite. Solitaire squanders what is precious. Don’t ever play solitaire again." - no kidding, Tom Hanks. This isn't exactly news. Philosophers have long pondered over this 3/

For example, Martha Nussbaum's "The Fragility of Goodness" examines how ancient Greek philosophers and playwrights already pondered over the question of luck, and how most of the conditions for a well-lived life lie outside of our control 4/

cambridge.org/core/books/fra…

Folks like Aristotle, Plato and other ancient Greek philosophers realized that a lot of what makes for a good life (wealth, health, even precious relations) are outside of our control and due to luck. You CANNOT just manage your way out of that by playing no solitaire! 5/

Tom Hanks seems to buy into (no surprise) that somehow if you work hard and diligently, then you can insulate yourself from bad luck or at least "optimize" the time allotted to you to the best extent. But folks like Aristotle and Plato realized that this is just delusional 6/

I find the whole idea of optimizing our time here an unacceptable impingement of HR thinking on our own lives. You have zero obligation, to yourself or others, to be an "optimal" person at all times. It is totally fine to waste time with a harmless game like solitaire 7/

Several philosophers have defended the idea that it is fine to be useless. I did a thread in praise of uselessness earlier here (Russell, Wolf, Zhuangzi) 8/:

https://twitter.com/Helenreflects/status/1372205439664934913

(related grumble: I also don't like the idea of optimizing your time that is translated into relationships and doing "meaningful" stuff), as we're now also made to feel guilty for working too much and not paying enough attention to the stuff that really matters 9/

Here's a piece by Neil Levy that challenges the "deathbed perspective" namely that you would gain utter clarity about what "really matters"
This is just BS and buys into the weird neoliberal optimizing our lives things 10/
aeon.co/essays/why-is-…

Take e.g., the deathbed regret "I should have worked less".
When I was a postdoc (up into 4 years post-PhD) I worked myself to bits. I was constantly exhausted. Did that reduce wellbeing, cause tensions w friends and family, yes. But could I just magically work less? 11/

The work was necessary to achieve what I wanted. To push extra guilt on people that they should micromanage and time-optimize every aspect of their lives so as to insulate themselves from disaster (e.g., pandemic, unexpected illness) is just delusional 12/

If the pandemic taught me anything then it is that it is okay to waste time, to be suboptimal, because a lot of how well our lives are going is just not within our control, and you can't magically not have a pandemic impact your life by ditching solitaire 13/

So, it's a Saturday. If you can afford to, just waste time. Do whatever you like. Watch a Netflix show. Play solitaire. Doomscroll on Twitter. Don't feel pressure to optimize your life. Your life is not some project to be micromanaged. Give yourself permission to just be. /end