In the moment, not quitting in some ways feels heroic, like you’re martyring yourself to your own capacity or grit. In fact, you’re actually limiting yourself, because you’re not walking away from things that are failing.

A little bit of Escapology from Lindsay Crouse who quit her job this year and has published a book called The Case for Quitting:

Staying [as opposed to escaping] is a decision, too. I’ve heard people say: “I really want to quit, but I can’t.” I think you have to ask yourself: why can’t you? If you think you can’t quit your job because you need money, have you actually run those numbers? Maybe you have, and you don’t like them. That’s fine, but you need to own that choice to stay.

If you want to leave your relationship, but are afraid of starting over, own that. Maybe you just want to get married. Down the line, tell yourself that was a decision you made, and you knew what you were getting into. Otherwise, you can quit and do your future self a favour – your partner, too. Who wants to be in a relationship without investment?

Being only one foot in is a very passive and kind of cowardly way to live your life. You need to ask yourself: “Am I hoping that this doubt, or deliberation, is just going to abate?” That question helps you reframe the situation – and the answer is no. You have to act: either own it or leave, but don’t think that these problems will just disappear. Maybe you can put up with them, but is that the life you want?

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Quit with the best of them by reading New Escapologist Issue 19.

It’s not entirely our fault, as individuals, that we’re unhealthy or suffer a low quality of life. It’s that public policy currently nudges us away from making the obvious healthy choices when it should do the opposite. And we shouldn’t be at risk of random agonising deaths from, say, cars and guns, when such things could be spirited out of our lives if only the political will could be summoned to do so.

Lucky for me, Devi writes quite regularly in the Guardian, meaning I get little top-ups of her writing. This week she speaks of AI and what it might be doing to our brains and the world.

AI bores me as a topic, but it might be of interest to Escapologists dreaming of a low-work future for all and who might advocate (or not) for the automation of everything.

[we’re] moving closer to a world where we don’t have to see anyone, move anywhere or use our brains, seemingly at all. And [that’s] wonderful for the tech companies and those looking to cut costs by replacing humans with automation, but certainly not for the rest of us.

I agree, but only inasmuch as there’s no collectively arrived-at vision for a world after work. We may well be sliding into a future where we sit around with phones and laptops like the people in WALL-E. But in those circumstances, at least putting down those devices and doing some something would be a choice instead of something we’re economically bullied into. We shouldn’t have to “do” when we don’t want to. People should decide to get off their arse, not be cattle-prodded into it each morning by a job they despise. We just need to find the imagination to see beyond the world of work.

As an academic, Devi is worried specifically about “generative” AI and how it’s currently used:

As we look to the future, will thinking, reading, writing and actively using our brains become activities from a bygone era? If we stop using our brains to think, socially interact, concentrate or problem-solve, what will be the impact on our quality of life and our chances of ageing healthily? Will we see a rise in chronic disease linked to the brain?

And, maybe just as importantly, does anyone even care? It’s certainly not the concern of tech companies, which are in an arms race to go faster. And so we’re heading in that direction and being told it’s all wonderful. Yes, it is wonderful for certain tech companies. And probably terrible for the mental health and wellbeing of the rest of us.

We do seem to be automating the wrong things: students using AI to write essays when the whole point is to use the brain, publishers using AI to write books when the whole point of books is human connection and to send human thought into the future.

At the same time, I quite like the idea of putting the whole economy on automate. You could have bots buying from other bots in service of GDP (if people insist on that mattering) while we get on with things that matter, no longer motivated by money. The economy could be forced into a data centre where we don’t have to think about it anymore. We do something else instead, even if it just comes down to lazing about and exploring our inner realms.

What it comes down to is: I don’t want work and money to be the motivators for how we live. I don’t want artists to be forced to work primarily so that they can escape destitution. Instead, we can all make art for its own sake and as a means of connecting to each other. Can’t we? We need to find the imagination of what to do after AI, what to automate, and what to reclaim for ourselves. That should be the new system of public policy nudges we should be looking for.

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Connect with real human thought by reading New Escapologist Issue 19 and/or by anonymously mocking your useless workplace in our Workplace Woes section.

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Strike back by reading New Escapologist Issue 19 and/or by anonymously mocking your useless workplace in our Workplace Woes section.

On the free will that comes with minimalism:

Classical economic theory holds that consumers know what is best for themselves and act rationally in their self interest, a perspective that remains influential today. Paradoxically, it is anti-consumers, not mainstream ones, who come closest to this ideal: they are more likely to make active, informed choices … are less swayed by advertising and fads, and are less likely to feel trapped in consumption or to [try to] use it as a means of escape.

It’s a false means of escape: a delicious and enjoyable one usually, but it’s important to remember the difference between escapism and Escapology. Focus on what matters.

Many people perceive living simply as limiting; [but downshifter Syd Fredrickson] said it has always made her feel unusually free to make uncommon choices, question conformity, act spontaneously and express herself through her words and appearance. All her adult life she has watched people around her pursue careers they didn’t like or stay in jobs they hated because they would not risk ending up with a lower income. “They would say their lives were all hollow and crazy… They just thought it was too scary to do something else,” she said.

Sound familiar?

On how non-consumers might spend their time:

[Even though we need collective action at the policy level to actually save the planet,] it is still reasonable to reduce your consumption for personal reasons alone. [And] there are many more roles that individuals can play. A world that stops shopping needs new products and services, new theories of how an economy can function, new ways of making meaning in our lives, new models for doing business, new habits, new policies, new protest movements, new infrastructure. As Kris De Decker said, “We need to rethink everything.”

In other words, when you reduce your interest in materialist consumption you don’t merely absent your money and time from the system but you also open up some of the bandwidth needed for the Great Project of rethinking everything. Isn’t that cool?

On innovation vs. the profit motive:

Traditional economists have long claimed that innovation is driven by the profit motive, but that, too, does not appear to be the way that it actually works. [The research of Eric von Hippel] found that many innovations don’t even originate in businesses, but rather among everyday people, who often share their ideas freely. … The inventor [or hobbyist] takes satisfaction not from making money but from creating something useful and gaining standing in the community. Similarly, scientists themselves tend to invent the scientific instruments that are most important to the advancement of science, often profiting little or not at all from their inventions.

New Escapologist is written, decorated, and published by such people. Get it here.

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New Escapologist Issue 19 is available to order NOW! NOW! NOW!

The latest Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report finds that 90% of UK workers are unhappy.

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Strike back by reading New Escapologist Issue 19 and/or by anonymously grassing up your useless workplace to our Workplace Woes desk.

From an unmade Star Trek episode written by Jeff Lint, related to us by Steve Aylett:

Lint describes a series of hypervivid visuals to be superimposed over Kirk’s sweating face — he undergoes a sort of 2001 Stargate experience unachievable by weekly television budgets of the time. McCoy sees the treacly release of enzymes in redemption orgies of polarity breakdown, all matter flushing with an eternal blush of realisation. Spock, eyebrow raised, watches fiery loops reconnecting in escalating scales … Scottie, with orthogonal schematic blossoms flurrying over his face, begins laughing and shouts that the ship can handle anything. Uhura calmly gives Kirk a week’s notice, her thoughts elsewhere.

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New Escapologist Issue 19 is available to order THIS VERY MINUTE!

Workplace Woes is an opportunity for readers to anonymously let off steam about their jobs, past or present.

Letters to the Editor is a place to tell your escape story in brief, to talk about your unusual or creative living conditions, to recommend a book or a film to your fellow Escapologists, to suggest proven money-saving tips, or to say something about an item from a previous issue.

Please keep your Letters and Woes to 300 words or fewer (or allow yourself to overrun on the understanding they’ll probably be trimmed). Items for either format can be funny or anger-inducing or informative or all of the above.

It’s always particularly nice to receive Woes from the worlds of retail or hospitality or from the outdoorsy professions (e.g. from farming or the construction industry), but if your story is simply office-based then that’s good too!

Thanks everyone. Over to you.

The idea that a less consumerist society would be better stems from the fact that everyone today knows somebody who stepped off the money-in, money-out treadmill, simplified their life and ended up happier.

That’s us! We’re setting the example! We’re making them think!

But would everyone stepping off the treadmill really make for a better society? Mackinnon, a journalist, looks to the fall of the Soviet Empire:

What is most extraordinary about the collapse is that civilisation did not, in fact, come to an end. We find neither massive starvation nor strikes and food riots, neither the destruction of society nor its explosion.

and:

92 per cent of the nation’s potato harvest came from dachas and gardens … By night, people would enjoy the fruits of their labour, playing cards, debating and drinking. In this extreme economic catastrophe, they were seized by the strange exhilaration of disaster. There were endless parties in the dachas. … There was hardship but also excitement,” [said someone who was there], “it was like they’d been let out of prison.”

A better life? Well, according to that one guy it was like being let out of prison.

JB Mackinnon is not saying that the fall of the Soviet Empire was a right old hoot. He’s saying that, even in such an extreme example, a mass exit from consumer society was not the end of the world. Today, in the West, nobody is planning to take away our consumer privileges in such a sudden and total way. It’s just an illustration that maybe, we can do perfectly well with less in pursuit of better lives individually and to save the world collectively.

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New Escapologist Issue 19 and the anniversary edition of Escape Everything! are both available now.

Today sees the 50th Anniversary of the first broadcast of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.

The classic BBC sitcom charts the antics of a middle-aged office worker who snaps, will take no more, and escapes.

Reggie was the original Escapologist and I used to watch the series over breakfast when plotting my escape.

You can watch watch the series and read the original books by David Nobbs.

EDIT: From a Radio Times item this afternoon about RP’s enduring appeal:

Adapted by David Nobbs from his own novels, [the series] saw Perrin reacting with escalating eccentricity to the madness of middle management … Dictating rude letters, having hippo hallucinations, pumping loganberry essence into the river where his boss is fishing. Things like that.

Ronnie Barker said of the source novel that he laughed 283 times and cried twice, and there is a darkness to the premise – after all, the lead character is driven to the point of faking his own death in order to reinvent himself. The phrase “doing a Reggie Perrin” soon entered common parlance.

[Screenwriter Simon Nye says:] “We love any character who questions the status quo or shines a new light on the way we live our lives. Reggie Perrin does that, despite just wanting a normal life full of love, sane relationships and honesty. Maybe we are all a bit Reggie, all aware that modern life is basically absurd and makes fools of us all.”

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New Escapologist Issue 19 and the anniversary edition of Escape Everything! are both available now.