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For my Anthro Theory class, we're up to Max Weber, and have been assigned readings from his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which happened to have been the very first reading I was ever assigned in a college setting, back in Fall of '98. (That was the Symbolic Anthropology class that I audited at Columbia, immensely important in my personal history as it was my first academic experience after dropping out of high school and having prepared myself for a life of Emotional Disturbedness.)

So I dredged up my copy of old P.E.& S.o.C and I'm reading through it and noticing that the first time I'd read it, I'd underlined all sorts of things in pencil and scribbled all manner of notes in the margins. It's mighty amusing to revisit the state of mind that prevailed for me during that period in my life.

I just came across the following underlined:

... more sleep than is necessary for health, six to almost eight hours, is worthy of absolute moral condemnation... Thus inactive contemplation is also valueless, or even directly reprehensible if it is at the expense of one's daily work...

And, scribbled next to it in the margin,

SHUT UP!!!!

Because those days, I was accustomed to sleeping much longer than the "six to eight hours", and spending the waking hours engaged in little more than "inactive contemplation"... much like the sort found in, hmm, this very blog...

Waidaminnit...

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:19 AM | shower me with attention