Who Has Never Killed an Hour?
By: Carbon Radio
Tags: Future, Design, Climate Change, Sustainability, Environment

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.” — Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Why is it that doing nothing is associated with carelessness, waste, and sadness? In an era fraught with environmental degradation, the simple act, or non-act, of an individual doing nothing seems to be useful if only for the reason that doing nothing does less harm to the planet than doing most activities. If we consider, a typical American portfolio of potential weekend activities, doing none of them, in most cases, would yield the lowest net carbon footprint. There is no supply chain for doing nothing, while even just reading a book requires the death of trees. Meditation is very similar to doing nothing in that you don’t need any objects or transportation to practice meditation. And perhaps there are activities associated with service and environmental stewardship that would have net positive impacts on the planet. So, at least from an environmentalist’s perspective, shouldn’t doing nothing have some inherent societal value?

What does it mean to waste a day? Is this a reference to our productivity? Our daily contribution to society? Our individual personal maintenance and development? Isn’t there enough activity happening in our bodies at a cellular level to let our active minds off the hook for a period of time? Does doing nothing need to result in some sort of rejuvenation or an epiphany to be valuable?

If we consider this conversation through a sociological lens (use our sociological imagination), then we can analyze the non-act of doing nothing with three major theoretical frameworks — Structural Functionalism, Social Conflict, and Symbolic Interactionism. The Structural Functionalism and Social Conflict frameworks provide a macro-level lens, and the Symbolic Interactionism framework provides a micro-level lens.

Structural Functionalism considers society through a macro lens as a complex system with interrelated parts that maintain some level of stability. In this regard, doing nothing may be just as important as doing something to maintain stability or some sort of equilibrium in society. In the context of Structural Functionalism, society is often compared to a clock or the human body. If we consider both of those examples, it is easy to find comparisons. Not every part of a clock is always moving, and not every part of the human body is always active. There are times in both contexts where many parts will be doing nothing, and if they were doing something, then they might be disrupting the stability or equilibrium within the system.

Social Conflict Theory considers the distribution of resources and power within society through a macro lens. Furthermore, this theory sees social conflict over resources and power as the basis of society. If this is true, then doing nothing only serves to perpetuate the existing resource and power structures that exist in society. In the context of environmentalism, for example, doing nothing will of course do less harm to the environment than doing something, but doing nothing does not challenge the current power and resource structure in a way that would ultimately lead to a sustainable future. Therefore doing nothing is not only unproductive in the economic sense. Doing nothing is also unproductive in the environmental sense, as no change to the societal system is achieved by doing nothing.

Symbolic Interactionism considers at a micro level the relationships among individuals in society. The non-act of doing nothing is inherently void of interaction. Symbolic Interactionism seems to require some level of consciousness and engagement, which means at the very least an individual would have to be meditating and observing and thinking. Even the simple act of saying “Hello” is doing something and gives meaning to an interaction. If we again consider how this theory might become meaningful in an environmental context, some level of intention is required. In other words, if we think about what it would mean to influence social change in the context of this theory, we’d have to look at every interaction between individuals and society. This means that a simple “Hello” is a potential opportunity to influence change. As an environmentalist thinking about how to apply Symbolic Interactionism, every action has to become intentional. As in the context of Social Conflict Theory, the non-act of doing nothing has zero influence on society when considering through the lens of Symbolic Interactionism.

In summary, only when looking through the lens of Structural Functionalism does the non-act of doing nothing have potential value to society in the context of environmentalism. When looking through the lenses of Social Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interactionism, the non-act of doing nothing clearly does nothing to influence society in the context of environmentalism, at least not in a positive way. This analysis is not only useful when considering the value of doing nothing, but also when considering the value of doing something.

Environmentalists can use these sociological frameworks to consider every decision from what they eat to where they live to what they do for work. Considering these sociological frameworks will undoubtedly make environmentalists more effective when strategizing how to influence society.