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Something for Nothing
iStockPhoto/Getty Images
‘Idleness’ is rewarded by one university.
The University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany, is rewarding people for doing absolutely nothing. The school recently offered $1,900 “idleness grants” to three lucky applicants. The goal was not necessarily to encourage people to stay in bed all day; instead, it was about refraining from doing something that might have negative consequences for others. Participants were able to choose what they stopped doing and for how long, whether it was not talking for several days or producing no plastic waste for a month. Officials hope the program makes people consider the dangers of society’s focus on material success. “This thinking was leading us into the ecological crisis—and social injustice—we are living in,” Friedrich von Borries, creator of the project, told CNN. “We wanted to turn that upside down—giving a grant not for the ‘best’ and for ‘doing a project’ but for doing nothing.”