39. The Redemption of the NEET

"for the one who would be free"

39. We’re back

A followup to my Shelf-Building Sermon, this Sign-Carving Discourse covers the topic of NEETdom - that is to say, the topic of freedom. Without further ado:

It's a beefy 23 minutes, which will be a deal-breaker for some, but I'm still rather excited about the format. Those familiar with essayists like Petrarch, Emerson or Eliot may recognize an attempt at a certain genre, in which a topic of contemporary relevance is covered by means of conversation with historical thinkers who have addressed the topic. In this case, those thinkers include Aristotle and Nietzsche, with some unnamed references to the ideas of Pieper (Leisure: The Basis of Culture) and historian Arnold Toynbee.

The Sign-Carving Discourse is meant to be watched, but if you prefer a transcript, I’ve included one below. There are also captions on YouTube.

Videos drop early at my patreon.

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VLOG_02: The Redemption of the NEET

A sign-carving discourse for the one who would be free

1. The discourse begins

What is NEETHAUS?

I'll try to provide an answer. But in answering, I'm obliged to note that I can only speak for myself. This bears saying because NEETHAUS is a collaboration between me and the other house resident, @princevogel.

When I moved in six months ago, a collective endeavor emerged, and that endeavor needed a name. As I recall it, I liked NEETHAUS, and Vogel liked it a bit less, but I just started saying it and it kind of caught on. So that's one way to describe where it came from. But what does it mean?

People who spend a lot of time online will notice the reference to an acronym, N.E.E.T.: Not Employed, in Education or Training. Thus, the exoteric meaning of our house name. We are, for the moment, NEETs, and this is our house. This answer will suffice for some.

Of course, there is an inner meaning to the phrase, and to find it, there's no better place to start, than from the words of my housemate's favorite philosopher. I speak of course of the oft-misunderstood Friedrich Nietzsche.

"I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yea-sayer.”

— Friedrich Nietzche, The Gay Science

2. Negation and affirmation

So we begin our discourse with a tension. NEETdom is defined negatively, by what the NEET is not. He's not employed, not receiving an education, and not in vocational training. This ethos of negation clashes with what we're hearing from Nietzsche. He urges us not to NAY, but to a YEA. To not be defined against; to not be a reaction; rather, to affirm.

Can we rescue the NEET from his negatory disposition? Can NEETdom be affirmed to any advantage? Can we find within it a true spirit, rather than empty and stagnant 'no'?

We will try. And to make our attempt we must grapple with the NEET. We know what he's not, but to rescue his more elevated spirit, his telos, we must ask what he is.

3. The NEET in common understanding

Perhaps we should start with how he seems. Stand closer to the NEET. See him in the mind's eye.

He is basement-dwelling. Pimply, perhaps. He knows not the touch of the sun. Common folk might stand at a distance because of the smell. For you see the NEET doesn't work, and not for any good reason. A NEET is not unable to work. He's not a retiree. He's not disabled or homeless. The NEET has time to play video games or post stupid bullshit on the internet. And if society is our collective project, the NEET is worse than a non participant, he's a freeloader, and a loser.

4. NEETdom as bumhood

Now, some may contest this specific account of the NEET, but perhaps it is not far off as a description of a certain stereotype. But anyway—why all the negativity?

There's something very American about this idea of the NEET. Americans work. We, or at least the majority of our elites, or at least the folkways they've maintained, descend culturally from the English Puritans, who worked their freezing, self-abnegating fingers to the bone to build this nation. We're supposed to work. We're supposed to have jobs. We try to live in a society where everyone is employed. Unemployment—'un'-employment, another negation—is to be minimized. The President wears no ermine robe, but the outfit of a professional—of slightly better make, perhaps, adorned with a lapel pin—but broadly presented, he looks like many professionals do going to their jobs.

Of course, this perspective on work and employment is idiosyncratic to our time and our current culture. Things have often been very different.

5. The leisure of aristocrats

It was not the case among 18th century European aristocrats, for example, that everyone had a job. To have a 'job', to work for money, was unthinkable, at least as unthinkable as work is to the NEET!

I'm reminded of a certain Austrian diplomat of the 19th century, one Klemens von Metternich, the 'butterfly minister' who advocated Austria's interests against Napoleon during Napoleonic Wars. Metternich was sort of like the Henry Kissinger of his day, and equally controversial. He's remembered for his political acumen, but in his young adulthood, Metternich studied medicine.

Why? This had nothing whatsoever to do with any career. It wasn't to be 'useful', and it wasn't supposed to be. He also played stringed instruments, and he studied medicine in the same spirit of diversion. In this cultural backdrop, many of an aristocrat's engagements were pursued for their own sake or to ennoble the spirit. (Note that word: 'noble'.) These activities were for bettering yourself, and mere usefulness was considered vulgar.

Even so, one may object that the NEET is not, in fact, a pheasant-shooting man of letters. He is not well bred. He does not wear mink. "The same standards don't apply," says our objector. Perfumed Austrian or French gentlemen might be forgiven for dilly-dallying, as part of a massive elite cultural performance surrounding the delicate alliances and arrangements of the scenes that compose their society's cultural and political center, forming bonds that help them act as a cohort, keeping things genteel.

But the NEET is no such gentleman. He's just a guy. And forgiving, for the moment, any tall-poppy envy or 'how dare you'-type thinking that might animate such an objection, perhaps there is something fair to reckon with here.

We aren't all literal aristocrats. I'm certainly not. Such aspirations might endanger the NEET when they act as mere cover for a license to be idle, and idleness can indeed be harmful.

On a collective lens in which we think of people as something that should be useful to society, laziness and indolence harm by creating nonparticipants, wastrels, freeloaders. And on a purely individualistic lens wherein we set aside the NEET's alleged obligations to his society, it might still be contrary to his interest to think himself an aristocrat when he really just wants to dick around.

Fair enough. So is our NEET doomed, consigned to eternal derogation, until and unless he seeks employment? Never! He deserves better. To defend him, we must plunge deeper into the history of Western thought, on the concept of leisure. In so doing, we may discover not only how leisure benefits society, but the soul of the individual.

6. Aristotle’s kings

One notable view from the classical world is that of Aristotle. In the Politics, he describes leisure as “the ends of work” in the same way that peace is “the end of war” (Aristotle, Politics, VII.15, 1134a14-15). But this idea of leisure plays a more substantial role in his overall worldview than as just a substrate for recreation, whether it be the recreation of pimply gamers or indolent bluebloods.

Aristotle’s overall project in the Politics is to contemplate: what social order produces the best state? Everyone plays some role in society, but who should rule? To Aristotle, leisure helps answer the question.

While work is “necessary and useful,” leisure is “noble” (VII.14, 1133a31-32). Thus, Aristotle argues that those who govern should not live the lives of tradesmen, or what he calls vulgar craftsmen—what the modern NEET might call a workcel—because “lives of these sorts are ignoble and inimical to virtue.” He continues: “leisure is needed both to develop virtue and to engage in political actions.” (VII.9, 1328b39-1329a2)

How far the leisured have fallen into disrepute! Where we see sloth and uselessness, Aristotle saw the possibility of the kind of excellence we hope for in the great and powerful. To Aristotle, the virtue that lends itself to success and kingship is a craft, and it's a craft that takes dedication to cultivate. It's too hard to be both a literal craftsman and a "craftsman of virtue"—and it's the virtuous who must govern the state. If anyone else does, we all suffer.

Now, we may be raising hackles at this point. Is anyone who works condemned to vice and bad character? Not necessarily.

First, as far as I can tell, Aristotle's view is not that those who work lack of virtue, but that those who work likely lack the virtues necessary for rulership. A working person may in theory have access to a great number of virtues, maybe most virtues, but nevertheless lack those in this specific area.

And if this too seems denigrating, there's a second caveat that may be worth making. In the modern era, free time is more widespread than Aristotle might have ever imagined. You probably have more weekends off than a Greek slave did in 300 BC. This free time, in theory, is yours, to apply to the seeking of virtue of of any kind.

And as far as the virtues involved in rulership, you probably also have more political franchise than such a slave. Not just through voting, but through the many ways you have the chance to influence your society. Small though these powers may seem, they are powers, and it’s up to you to exert them in a righteous way.

But what of the NEET? You have weekends off, but his whole life is a weekend. Is he all-the-more suited to the reins of kingship, for all the free time that he has?

7. Kingship and self-rule

It may strain credibility for us to offer kingdoms his way. But I will argue that, however questionable his appointment to the seat of highest power, it is particularly in the NEET's interest to become kingly. Here, the NEET represents a special case in a challenge faced by all people. We are all, in some sense, appointed to the governance of at least some portion of our own time and life. None of us may shrug this heavy crown, until and unless we are imprisoned or locked away, all choice stripped from our unready hands. And even then, an Epictetus or a Seneca would say that he who captains his soul is freer in captivity than the one who is spiritually lost, but possessing of material freedom.

This is all to say that anyone who seeks to choose and truly express the agency of the soul, indeed aspires to govern. He aspires to rule. Whether or not he seeks kingdoms, he seeks the throne of his own life. And he governs better when he has the virtues of governors, which are called the kingly virtues.

8. Freedom amplifies

But this power, like so many, is double-edged, and hangs from a thread like the sword of Damocles. For while the NEET has more of the free time which Aristotle argues is necessary for learning to captain one's soul, his position is proportionally more dangerous. He is appointed to the governance of his own time and life to a proportionally greater extent. With so much freedom over his schedule and activities, poor self governance is all-the-more disastrous. Loosed from the docks of employment, and the anchors of obligation, he is all the more exposed to the storms of the soul.

And thus we can set before us the essential spiritual opportunity and danger faced by the NEET. He stands poised at a path to glory and a path to ruin. Will he really develop great virtue? Or will he merely develop the techne of League of Legends, the phronesis of Starcraft 2?

Essential spiritual questions demand a certain heroism, the fair defeat of an intimidating foe. A special act which triumphs against a ruinous default. And in this case, the default we're worried about arises from the likely misuse of the NEET's essential resource: his free time.

9. Free time as respite

Now, generally speaking, to most people—to the employed—free time is a respite from the strain of work. It's a time of decompression. It's enough to not be working. Under the duress of often meaningless and draining activity, no one can be blamed for blissing out and watching TV.

There's nothing wrong with joyful relaxation, of course, but the key word there is 'joyful'. If chilling is joyful, there can be no harm in it. But how often does the taste turn—first bland, and then bitter? How many work for a lifetime, dreaming of golfing, sizzling on a sandy beach, just to find that these aren't really that fulfilling when they become available?

While a person remains bound by circumstance, and before they've had a chance to face the full challenge of freedom, it's understandable for their most positive self-directed notions to be, in essence, a reaction to and a negation of present constraint. This is a stage of a greater development. An acorn isn't defective, simply because it's not yet a tree!

But people often become stuck. Even when we're technically freed from labor and when we're not actively expected back on Monday, a certain anxious hunger for relaxation can remain. Like an animal repetitively deprived of food, we eat to excess, even once sustenance is freely available. It's like there remains some traumatic remnant of the boot on the neck. And too often we jealously hoard our relaxation and hedonism in fear of never having enough, far past the point of recovery and enjoyment.

One remembers the circus elephant who grows to maturity, chained to a stake in the earth. The elephant initially pulls against his bonds, but eventually learns the pointlessness of resistance and no longer needs a chain to remain rooted in place. For he's become chained well enough by his own despair.

So, corresponding to the negative orientation of the NEET and the positive orientation we're seeking in this discourse, we can describe two concepts of free time. Free time in a negative sense is a reaction to the strain of employed life. It is hedonistic, avoidant, aimed at recovery. It is a free time of negation. But in the positive sense, free time can host the aspiration towards a truer self development. This free time is spent to expand possibilities and not merely ameliorate the wounds of what's already occurred. It requires some version of the kingly virtues of which Aristotle spoke. It is a free time of affirmation.

10. The fate of the NEET

I believe that NEET's fate rests primarily on how he relates to the time he's fortunate (or unfortunate) to have. Insofar as his free time is intended to negate, so shall his life be a negation, and insofar as it affirms, so shall he be an affirmer.

RECAP

We are nearly at our destination. To make sure we arrive in full, I'll briefly recap what we've covered thus far.

• We began with the idea that NEETdom is a negative ethos. We hope to redeem the NEET with a positive one.

• We noted that the NEET is derogated as a bum or freeloader, but that non-employment does not in itself necessitate that he is a bum or freeloader.

• We found some skepticism of certain overeager pressures to work, by considering European aristocrats. And while the NEET may lack orchards in Burgundy, his free time affords him the opportunity to become more spiritually aristocratic.

• We fleshed this out by looking at the views of Aristotle. Using his lens we considered how free time might be necessary, though surely not sufficient, for the development of kingly virtue.

• And kingly virtue is necessary for anyone who chooses, and anyone who acts, for insofar as we choose, we are the governors of our own lives. And this needs have little to do with piles of rubies or armies of pikemen.

• With kingship in the balance, we noticed how the NEET is particularly poised between spiritual opportunity and danger, because of his extensive access to that most volatile reagent: free time, which is so ruinous when abused.

• And last, we began to see how the NEET risks being tragically bound by a hunger for respite and decompression, haunted by a fear of employment, perhaps shame at his unemployment, and an inability to move beyond these wounds. If he succumbs to them, he will never rule himself or anything else, awash on seas of internal toil.

Now, we may finally ask: how can he bypass this fate? What must he become?

11. The way out

I will describe the ethos that I believe is necessary for the NEET's transformation and spiritual victory. This ethos is not a description of how things are, but an aspiration. Even if every living NEET turns out to be a waste of space—though I believe not all are—I will stand by the assertion that a path remains open to becoming something greater.

Secondly, the ethos described here is extremely difficult to fulfill, perhaps heroically so. I'm not going to try to provide a complete solution, but rather a frame in which to grapple with the problem. Even if no NEET has fully attained this state, I hope to at least prove by evocation that there may be something worth attaining.

Because, of course, if there's nothing to attain from this bold clash with the self, there's a good chance that all men are doomed. For the challenge of NEETdom is the challenge of freedom itself—or rather, what I call the challenge of two freedoms.

12. The challenge of two freedoms

The first freedom is the release from constraint, from oppression, from external control. It is often essential, but it will always remain a negation.

The second freedom, a subsequent freedom, can only come from self knowledge and self-ownership. For it is a freedom not from society, but within oneself. This freedom is an affirmation. For the NEET of negation to become a NEET of affirmation, he must attain both freedoms, and the latter is the greater challenge.

To attain the second freedom, the NEET must do more than take shelter from a life of work. He will chill, he will relax, he will play League of Legends... But having fed that need, he must face whatever alienation may have previously invaded him from the frictions of employment and circumstance. He must conquer any remaining fear of work.

To fully alter his course, the NEET must finally recognize a truth within his spirit: that however deep his fatigue, recovery is not a final good, and it will never fully satisfy. It is ultimately far better to use your time—that is to say, your life—pursuing or enjoying something of positive value. And if in a given case a vigorous love of golfing or sunny beaches does fulfill the outstretching of the soul, then of course there's no harm in it. But if the taste does turn sour, there's a greater challenge ahead. For the NEET is not truly free—indeed, no man is truly free, but merely avoidant—until he is an affirmatory being, developing towards a sovereign aliveness of action.

As Nietzsche intoned,

“Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.

Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.

Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

The affirming NEET finds his "FOR WHAT?", and that thing is his own principle.

He will never find it at the whim of a frenetic hunger for constant employment, nor from fear of being thought a bum, nor the desire to shelter from effort, or from sacrifice, or from difficulty. He finds it by finding himself. And if he nurtures it with time and sincere labor, he may attain a self-development, which gives rise to wholesome expressions of deep, rooted, and incredibly personal ability.

If he withdraws from the flock of society, it is not forever, for the route of the affirming NEET is a withdrawal-and-return.

He will return to the realm of men bearing the fruits of his adventure into a place of shadow. And when we see him in the midst of this journey, we must no longer declare him a non-participant, but see him as one who will participate in the future, on novel grounds only made possible by a sovereignty that stands on two feet.

He has overcome negation. He has finally said: Yes!

And this, as far as I'm concerned, is the point of NEETHAUS.

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Until next time…