Lectures / 06/05/2009 7:30 pm

Uselessness as a relevant category. What happens if we choose not to be useful?

For an achievement-oriented society happiness depends on success, on success moreover in a narrow sense: good marks, more prestige, more money. In this way all activities are informed by their (future) usefulness – we become active for the sake of a distant goal and are hardly ever give the chance of arriving in the present.
An achievement-oriented society regards anything that is not potentially useful as its worst enemy and people who indulge in activities not for the sake of their potential profitability but for their own sake as dreamers out of touch with reality. But activities that yield no practical profit are not automatically pointless, as can be seen from the such examples as playing games and the artistic practices resulting from game playing.  
Are we capable of resisting the urge to subject even the useless to the omnipresent drive for profitability? (= Art is necessary in order to …) Is there anything left that is accorded the privilege of being useless?

In cooperation with "I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT"