Why Sky Is Not Working

Not Working

'A PROBING EXPLORATION OF THE CREATIVE AND IMAGINATIVE POSSIBILITIES OF INACTIVITY' FINANCIAL TIMES 'To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world.' Oscar Wilde More than ever before, we live in a culture that excoriates inactivity and demonizes idleness. Work, connectivity and a constant flow of information are the cultural norms, and a permanent busyness pervades even our quietest moments. Little wonder so many of us are burning out. In a culture that tacitly coerces us into blind activity, the art of doing nothing is disappearing. Inactivity can induce lethargy and indifference, but is also a condition of imaginative freedom and creativity. Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen explores the paradoxical pleasures of inactivity, and considers four faces of inertia - the burnout, the slob, the daydreamer and the slacker. Drawing on his personal experiences and on stories from his consulting room, while punctuating his discussions with portraits of figures associated with the different forms of inactivity - Andy Warhol, Orson Welles, Emily Dickinson and David Foster Wallace - Cohen gets to the heart of the apathy so many of us feel when faced with the demands of contemporary life, and asks how we might live a different and more fulfilled existence.

The Falling Sky

A now classic account of the life and thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami, The Falling Sky paints an unforgettable picture of on indigenous culture living in harmony with the Amazon rainforest and its devastating encounter with the global mining industry, in richly evocative language, Kopenawa recounts his initiation as a shaman and first experience of outsiders: missionaries, cattle ranchers, government officials, and gold prospectors. A coming-of-age story entwined with a rare first-person articulation of shamanic philosophy, this impassioned plea to respect the rights and traditions of indigenous peoples is a powerful rebuke to the accelerating depredation of the Amazon and so many other natural treasures threatened by climate change and development.

The Judiciary, Department of Justice