Economy and Mental Health: Discussing Jenny Odell’s Overview of “Bartleby”

In Jenny Odell’s work “How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” she references a multitude of different literary works, plays, novels, philosophical articles, online pieces, etc. She uses these to back her argument of trying to resist the economy and to show what it is the economy does to a person. In her work she mentions the story of Bartleby, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” written by Herman Melville. Odell uses this story to show her perfect example of resistance, mentioning Bartleby’s infamous line, “I’d prefer not to”. She goes into detail about how she loved this story and puts Bartleby on a pedestal. What Odell fails to mention is how Bartleby gets to this point.

In my writing, I take a look at why it is Bartleby declined so fast, and how his story is a story of depression and what the economy can do to a person. I also discuss the fact that Odell has ‘cherry-picked’ the story and she fails to mention a key part of the story, which is bizarre as to mention this fact would only help her cause. In my writing I state: “I spoke briefly earlier about how Odell ‘cherry-picked’ parts of Bartleby, the Scrivener in an effort to try and help support her argument on resisting the economy. During her explanation of the story she does not at all mention this theory of depression taking over Bartleby, she only mentions the part that she feels will help her case.”

Hopefully by reading my essay you learn the importance of mental health and what happens if you allow your mental health decline. Please take the opportunity to read my essay and see what it is Odell is missing from her analysis of the story.

https://dabridge.medium.com/economy-and-mental-health-discussing-jenny-odells-overview-of-bartleby-63b7d63b7e9a

Diving into Jenny Odell’s Criticism of Retreats

In Jenny Odell’s book “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy”, Odell speaks on many different topics about self-help and how our current society/economy does not allow for us to simply get away from it all. How we are trapped in this cycle of capitalism and we cannot escape it. One of Odell’s focuses was on the idea of retreats and the impossibility of them. She dedicated an entire chapter of her book to this very idea of retreats and the impossibility of them based on the idea of ‘doing nothing’.

In my essay you will see some examples and the extent to which Odell speaks about retreats along with my defending of retreats based on personal experiences. I speak about my personal experience with retreats and how it affected my life, as well as how retreats ultimately come down to a mindset. I do this by talking about something that was said to me on my retreats, “retreats are a state of mind and if you tell yourself to be open to the ideas that a retreat has to teach you, then the retreat will ultimately ‘work’”.

Enjoy!

View at Medium.com

https://medium.com/@dabridge6205a67fbe

Writing 4: Odell’s Catch-22

Odell wants us as readers to think about retreats as something that cannot be truly achieved/accomplished. Personally I think that retreats are entirely possible and quite honestly work wonderfully. I can attest because during my junior year of high school I attended a religious school retreat that occurred from Tuesday night to Friday night and it was quite honestly one of the best experiences of my life. So much so that I went back during my senior year to be a leader of the retreat and had an even greater time during my second trip. It was a life changing experience that taught me things about myself and others that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life. 

To get the message across short and simply, this portion of the essay is essentially going to be a counter from me on what it is Jenny Odell is saying in this second chapter of her book,“How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy”. Odell seemed to try and create a blanket statement over retreats based on some experiences and stories that have been told about other retreat facilities/experiences. In the beginning of the chapter she mainly mentioned/spoke about a place called ‘Camp Grounded’ along with mentions of Burning Man. Camp Grounded started as a way for geeks, tech wizzes, etc. would be able to learn a more healthy lifestyle with computers, offering a chance to step back and disconnect for a while in order to detoxify themselves. She compares the camp to Burning Man in the way it is set up, which she then goes into more detail about how that is indeed true because the camp founders/owners were ‘old-school Burners’. Odell also talks about how Burning Man was originally a way to get away from corporations and the wealthy, but has now also been taken over by them. Odell talks about the ‘downfall’ of Camp Grounded by saying,“the direction that Camp Grounded was headed in when Felix passed away was not without its similarities.” speaking about Burning Mans’ downfall,“ Initially insisting that camp was not a networking event, the camp’s parent company, Digital Detox, at some point began offering corporate retreats to the likes of Yelp, VMWare, and Airbnb” (Odell 33). Odell’s criticism here does not really make sense to me. She is complaining that Camp Grounded has essentially ‘sold out’ when in reality they have expanded. The camp opened up more to corporations that have a lot of employees who would/could benefit from this type of camp. The corporations that Odell mentions here are all corporations, companies that have many employees that would/could benefit from this camp.

To circle back to what I was stating in the beginning about retreats. In my personal opinion they really only work if you let it. To fully experience a retreat you must allow yourself to be open. When I went on my retreat I was told to put myself out there and become vulnerable,  This retreat is called Kairos (which means ‘‘God’s Time’’) and what it does is takes the students of Seton Hall Prep and takes them to a religious retreat center for the week, disconnecting them from the world. While not required to, it is highly encouraged by the directors and the student leaders to give up your phone for the retreat as it only helps the experience. The ultimate goal is to allow the students to become more in touch with God and more importantly themselves and the people around them. I cannot express just how much this retreat changed my life, I have a new understanding of life, God, friends and family and it is all thanks to this retreat. This retreat saved me and allowed me to become a better version of myself. That is why I am openingly and strongly countering what it is that Odell is saying.

In my opinion I believe that Odell has this view because she hasn’t gotten a chance to fully experience a retreat. She mentions a couple of them that she has visited, intentionally and once by accident (I am speaking of the trip she took to Sierra Nevada). To Odell, these trips that she took served mainly as research, which ultimately doesn’t allow her to experience these retreats in full. Whenever she enters the retreat to collect data, information, etc. on the idea and purposes of retreats she has already ruined the experience. She has entered a ‘catch-22’ scenario. Only when she decides to go on a retreat with the sole purpose of trying to better herself, find herself, etc. and not for the purpose of research may she fully understand retreats.

Writing Two: Thoughts on Preface and Chapter 1

In Jenny Odell’s book,“How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” she talks a lot about the idea and the difficulty to truly ‘do nothing.’ She speaks about trying to get away from the world and truly experience nothing. Odell originally started writing this book as a response to President Trump winning the 2016 election and it started morphing more into a self-help type book rather than a political statement.

Jenny Odell started this book after President Trump was elected, and kind of wrote it by accident, according to her. Odell stated that she originally intended for this to be a speech to an art convention that would lift everyone’s spirits. She wrote out the title and began talking about the idea of ‘nothing’. Odell talked about how she would go to the Rose Garden in Oakland, California to relax and do nothing. She says that her feelings could be described by a passage from Gilles Deleuze’s Negotiations and proceeds to give the passage in her own book. She then goes on to say,“ ‘Nothing’ is neither a luxury nor a waste of time, but rather a necessary part of meaningful thought and speech”(Odell 4). I personally think that this line helps sum up a large part of what Odell is trying to say in her book. She is saying that doing nothing is supposedly hard to do nowadays, when really it is not that hard to do nothing.

Later on in the same chapter she goes on to talk about what her father did for a living and how he took two years off after being tired and angry with his work. During this time he learned how to play the flute, studied more about his field of work, read books, rode his bike daily, went fishing, etc. After some time, he finally realized that he had more of a problem with himself than his work. He took some time to work on himself, and by society’s standards, ‘do nothing’ and he came back out on the other side a more open and creative person. He was able to go back to his original job, and with a renewed perspective and more energy than before he rose higher in his field. Odell says that she included this story in her book because, “This got me thinking that perhaps the granularity of attention we achieve outward also extends inward, so that as the perceptual details of our environment unfold in surprising ways, so too do our own intricacies and contradictions.” (Odell 11).

While Odell is mainly concerned with helping others help themselves, she clearly has some political/economic agendas with her book. All the while trying to help others by saying to ‘do nothing’ and to ‘step back’ from life, she starts to criticize our current society in America. She criticizes corporations and media outlets for what they are doing to our society. She starts to complain about capitalism and how it has turned people into drones of the system. She also goes on to back the teachings/writings of Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, a Marxist theorist and quote him on his description of labor. She talks about the ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) system, where you’d be allowed to work from wherever, whenever. So long as you completed your tasks and got results. She then complains about how this ruins the old system of 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of sleep, and 3 hours to ‘do what you will’ system. Odell has a problem with the ROWE system because it breaks down the boundaries between work and personal spaces and time. She credits this system to have good intentions originally however she then proceeds that this is another plot of capitalism.

Personally, I see Odell as a Marxist supporter in this first chapter, the subtitle of the book alone gave me this feeling. She is trying to sell this as a self-help book and is writing about how capitalism has made us into drones that are incapable of being ourselves. I am on board with the idea of stepping back and focusing on yourself to help better yourself, which is why I have not completely dismissed this book as some sort of marxist propaganda book. I am personally an avid believer in the things that Odell have said that will indeed help people, going on a walk or bike ride through a park or woods, going out into nature, etc. However she’s trying to slip in this idea that capitalism is bad, while I agree that capitalism has its flaws, I would greatly appreciate that if she wishes to make that argument, do it directly and do not try to hide it in a book that could truly help others.