I am fascinated to read not one, but two articles that, within a week of each other, have appeared in an online journal billing itself as a news outlet “for business people in the new global economy.”
I am wondering: what is this trend that seems to be emerging, whereby people who think, talk and write about global markets are pushing the “idleness is good” agenda…?
I don’t necessarily want to plug this online outlet but I do want to put it forward as interesting case study: “Like Wired in the 1990s and The Economist in the 1840s, Quartz [said magazine in question] embodies the era in which it is being created. The financial crisis that recently engulfed much of the world wasn’t just a cyclical decline or a correction or even a bubble bursting. It was a breaking point. And its shockwaves exposed a fundamentally changed economic order with new leaders and ways of doing business.” …This is how they describe themselves in their About section. And perhaps they just might be genuinely attempting to see business & economics (and the human factor that circulates within each) through another lens – given their propensity to publish pieces with titles such as this:
The psychological importance of wasting time
and this:
The transformative power of doing absolutely nothing
…So let’s see if this does continue as a mere “flavour of the month” phenomenon, of if a real paradigm shift is actually under way…!
The Sanctimonious Sect of Nothing Is Sacred 