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The Value of Doing Nothing

Thursday, September 28, 2017 14:41

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“The Value of Doing Nothing”

by Franklin Sanders

“Nothing from nothing leaves nothing

You gotta have something if you wanna be with me…

Don’t you remember I told ya, I’m a soldier

In the war on poverty, yeah.”

- Billy Preston & Bruce Fisher, “Nothing from Nothing,” 1974

“When Hannibal crossed the Alps, invaded Italy and inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Romans at Lake Trasimene in 217 B.C. the Romans had their backs to the wall. They elected Quintus Fabius Maximus dictator, unchallengeable general of all their armies, and he immediately got busy doing – nothing. He knew that Hannibal’s supply line stretched all the way back to Carthage. Time was on his side, and against Hannibal. All Fabius needed to do was harass Hannibal, cut his supply line, and wait for Hannibal to make a mistake. The longer he waited, the more certainly Hannibal would run out of supplies and make some mistake. By waiting Fabius robbed Hannibal of the advantage of the offense, and forced him (with his weaker forces) on the defensive, unable to concentrate and use his forces to their full advantage.

It took fourteen long years, but Fabius won by waiting. Because of this performance Fabius was awarded the surname “Cunctator” – the Delayer. Ennius wrote, “Unus homo nobis cunctado restituit rem” – “One man by delaying restored our fortunes.”

At the first, however, he was not so popular. The party in Rome that demanded immediate action accused him of every failing from stupidity to cowardice. Fabius’ genius lay in ignoring them, and doing nothing. Like every other successful general in history, Fabius knew the possibility of victory always improves when you pick the time, ground, and occasion of the battle, forcing the enemy to react to you. Doing nothing until conditions run your way stacks the deck in your favor. n short, doing nothing works far better than doing something, until the right opportunity appears.

There’s doing nothing, and then there’s doing nothing: Modern life has made us all victims of a metastasized version of the Protestant work ethic. Rather than making work redemptive, it makes it all-consumptive. It whips us constantly to keep us slaving – keep busy there, don’t stop. This perverted work ethic sends us down the wrong road, both in human and strategic terms. There come times when doing anything is worse than doing nothing.

Actually, there are several kinds of “doing nothing.” Often doing nothing amounts only to waiting for our dispositions to bear their fruit. But the “doing nothing” I mean is never born from lack of imagination or paralysis or cowardice. We deliberately choose it as the response best fitted to our circumstances. It is not a merely passive strategy, but an active choice. It’s beginning to turn out that “doing nothing” isn’t really as unoccupied as onlookers might assume.

Another kind of doing nothing: If you’ve ever met or spoken with my wife, you know she is a wonderful person. However, she has a small blind spot where I am concerned. Whenever she walks into a room where I am huddled over a book reading, she shortly will say, “Since you’re not doing anything…” and assign me some errand.

I will grant that while reading I am not making much noise, nor are my arms and legs moving violently. But I dispute that mere lack of physical motion correctly leads to the inference that I am “doing nothing.” To Susan it appears that I am not working, but actually my mind is running in high gear, working at its highest speed, even if I’m reading nothing but P.J. O’Rourke. In fact, strong doses of P.J. O’Rourke tend to make me work much better, even though they have little or nothing to do with the gold and silver markets.

To Susan, my reading is ‘doing nothing.” Maybe your fishing or napping looks that way to your wife. Or maybe her shopping or folding clothes looks that way to you. But you see, “doing nothing’ accomplishes quite a bit, because it’s exactly when we pick up and ponder new ideas and apply old ones to new places. It only looks like we’re doing nothing.

The last kind of doing nothing: There’s one last kind of doing nothing that differs from the others. Times come when doing anything is positively wrong, positively wasteful, positively stupid, and positively premature. At those times you can only do your nearest duties, building the future and waiting for history to unfold. There’s no help for it. Things must run their course to a bitter end we can do nothing to avert.

You can imagine that I fret quite a bit about the world I see around me. Corruption in the church leaves me furious. The tyranny building in civil government alarms and enrages me. Most of all I abhor the lethargy and laziness and inability to think on the part of those whose job it is to keep those institutions honest – the people of this country.

I get anxious. I fret and chafe. I want to do something. To be honest, I’d be more worried about myself if I could view that rottenness without resenting it. So as a faithful friend of mine reminds me when our present situation’s irretrievability stirs me up too much, I ought to forget all that and go do nothing with my wife. At times, it is positively better to do nothing than something. It is positively better to hug your wife, to go for a walk with her, to play with your children, to read or fish or nap than to ride off in the sunset to crusade against the world’s incurable folly. Because however much the world believes you are doing nothing, however much you might think you’re doing nothing, you’re actually doing the most important thing in the world.”

- http://www.24hgold.com/

Source: http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-value-of-doing-nothing.html

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