I’d Prefer Not To: An Ode to Jenny Odell’s Refusal

Going through Jenny Odell’s third chapter about refusal I was intrigued by “Bartleby The Scrivener”, a short story about a man who repeatedly utters the phrase “I’d prefer not to” to every action demanded by his employer (a lawyer). With this, Jenny Odell highlights the reactions of his employer, being very surprised in a way. I went along as to read the this short story about Bartleby and there’s more to it. In my essay I talked about how Bartleby’s passivity within society parallels with Odell’s point on “resisting the attention economy”. I also went to talk about the other character’s reactions to Bartleby and how that also has meaning in society. Jenny Odell knew Bartleby was “resisting” society in his own specific way.

“Part of the reason why it is odd that the lawyer is confused and ultimately shocked by Bartleby’s behavior is because he doesn’t know the reason for his actions. Odell states, “He not only will not do what he asked, he answers in a way that negates the terms of the question.” In doing this she suggests that the lawyer can’t deduce anything from Bartleby because Bartleby doesn’t “battle on the same plane”.”

This is a quote from my essay where I describe the unknown feeling the lawyer feels. Whether we like it or not, the concept of something being unknown tends to be fearful. With Bartleby having the power to give off this unknown feeling to the lawyer is a way Bartleby has control over him in a way, mentally. This gives him a passive presence and leaves me thinking “it’s important to be aware of the passive existence in our world and understand how it works.

I’d Prefer Not to: An ode to Jenny Odell’s Refusal

The Ambiguity in the Digital World

Dock leading into still lake waters, Angel Casanova October 2020

In our world today we are taken over by technology. The sociology aspect about it is drastic in terms of the way people act and react to things. In this essay I go into how the use of technology can affect our metal and physical health. Although there is no real cure to this cycle of technology use, we must learn to live within it. I reference multiple time a book by Jenny Odell called “How to Do Nothing”. In her book she makes many different points regarding where we spend our attention and how we could focus it to benefit ourselves to feel more fulfilled. I talked about margin when trying to refuse the digital temptation, where I reference some of Odell’s work on refusal. We are socially and financially vulnerable when it comes to refusing the digital temptation. Towards the end I referenced a story from Odell’s book about a man who refuses the terms in society in an interesting way. His passive actions lead him to a third space in society where there is a new perspective on everything. Maybe there is an alternative perspective in this whole technological world.

The Ambiguity in the Digital World

Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Forwarding the Argument

Angel Casanova 

E110 Seminar in Composition

Prof. Joe Harris

           In the third chapter of Odell’s How to Do Nothing, she expands on a social experiment where a new recruit at work was simply not working. We would take this as someone being lazy and unproductive. However, the surrounding employees became “uneasy” (64), and “urgent inter-office emails” (64) were sent out. I find it very interesting to me how something so simple could disrupt a working environment like this. To put this in a larger perspective, when we deviate from the social norm or what is expected from us we are seen as outcasts. One way I would look at this is by taking things from a different perspective. When doing things abnormal you can begin to form outside opinions that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to form if you were following the social norm. Another way to look at this would be a threat to order. Take this work environment for example: when you are doing nothing, you are committed to no activity which leaves you with the potential to do anything. This creates a “sense of the unknown” (64) and that could instill fear within a working environment or even society.  

             Today we’ll see something trending on twitter and it will have our attention for a few days or circulate throughout the media for a few days. Even something catastrophic will be considered as trending. These blow up for a few days and then are gone, Odell refers to these as “waves of hysteria and fear” (59). The crazy part is, we create it by sharing or retweet it or even just stating your opinion on the matter about the situation. All while media companies try to keep up with each other like an “arms race” (59) making things worse for the public. But who do they care, they abuse our attention to make money from it. I think that while it’s important to voice your opinion it doesn’t really do much for the overall effort. There is no real action taken by typing some words on Twitter or Facebook. These aren’t thoughts from reflection and reason but a “reaction driven from fear and anger” (60). And this more a reason to just step back and take a second to think about the world around you.

           Furthermore, spending too much time on social media puts us in “other people’s reality” (60). We are flooded with so many of other people’s opinions that our thoughts begin to stem from those. We are shunning out our own voice and thoughts. We are essentially drawn out of our own reality and we don’t even notice it. Odell writes that things like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. are “fears with no basis in reality” (62). Because we are living in other people’s reality from overexposure to social media we are prone to have these fears, it gives them a reality to exist in. If we can come to terms with our own reality then we can overcome these fears.

           Odell talks about these communes that were a safe space to go away from the digital world in the 60s and 70s. While there, people would focus on a more individualistic community, and in some communes, they would work together. They were designed to help the company’s employees perform better for more profits. While at the communes people “opened up new perspectives on the society they had left” (55). These new perspectives were created from simply removing themselves from society itself. These people moved out and disconnected from the digital world to focus on themselves, a similar concept to what Odell was speaking about in the first chapter. Putting these people back into mainstream society could “illuminate problems and alternatives that aren’t visible from the inside” (56). Having more people like this could solve huge problems in society today. Through all the media we give our attention to, most of what we opinionate is based on that. Our actions may be a result of this too. May we get a chance to disconnect from this and we could open our eyes to a new perspective and could identify problems that we were blind to before. A new perspective can guide us to a better way of living in society. If more people begin to do this it will be able to make change 

Odell’s Project: How to Do Nothing

Angel Casanova

E110 Seminar in Composition

Prof. Joe Harris

            What we are faced with today is a reality crisis. Everyone is caught up in social media and sports media and media in general so much that the attention we give to the real people and real things in our life is limited.  Odell hints at this when speaking on the Labor Union movement saying, “we are left with 24 monetizable hours that are sometimes not even restricted to our time zones or our sleep cycles.” (15) While we have the time for leisure and free will, we are brainwashed to always have the urge to do something and be productive. There are many different ideas and concepts that Odell bounces around throughout this first chapter. Overall, she seeks to question what we believe to be productive and how we could change that to benefit us to live a fuller life.

            One concept I derived from reading this first chapter was the ability to make something from nothing. Think of this not as creating something new but using what already is and changing the meaning of it, similarly to Odell’s art. While people question the action of doing nothing it is “neither a luxury nor a waste of time” (4), but a path to enlightenment and meaning. Nothing could be described as stepping back from your everyday routine or simply observing the world around you. This could allude to the example Odell gives about the guests sitting down on a cliff to watch the sunset peacefully. Such an act did not require much thought or action, just an observation of the world around them.

            However, observation does not have to be just “visual” (7), Odell focuses her argument on more of an auditory standpoint. She references a composer, where she speaks about “deep listening” (7) as a way of not necessarily hearing but giving your full attention to what you are perceiving and make sense out of it. In addition, this deep listening makes you more receptive to the things around you as you pass them. Odell uses her bird watching as an analogy, where she naturally listens to the bird sounds and when she hears them, they register to her “like speech” (8). The more attention you give to something the more you will notice about it. You won’t just acknowledge its existence, but it’s shapes and edges and familiar sounds so much that the slightest change will alarm you because you have invested so much time into it. The same can be said about our lives, where we choose to put it will determine the amount of control we have on our lives.

            This desire to always do something and be productive can control our lives. The amount of time we put into work, social media, and friends proves we try to fulfill the time we have in a day. Odell calls this the “attention economy” (22). Time in our society today has become more of an “economic resource’ (15) rather than our free will. We associate productivity with a return on investment unintentionally. I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying “time is money”, I heard it many times from my coaches growing up. They stressed the importance of gaining skill and that wasting that time doing nothing was a bad thing. However, Odell proposes we should practice this nothingness in hopes it gives us a sense of what is essentially real. She lists three things we can benefit from doing nothing as “an antidote to the rhetoric growth” (25). One of these is our connectivity, more specifically our ability to empathize. We do mostly everything online and most of our communication is online. Because of this we don’t receive the 90% of communication that’s nonverbal which hinders our ability to empathize. This limits the amount of human connection we can make in the real world.

As quoted, “I began to think of this as an activist book disguised as a self-help book.” (xxii) I think Odell wants us to use this book as a call to action. She wants us to be more aware not only of our existence in this world but how it affects the “cultural and ecological devastation” (xxii) surrounding us. By doing nothing we are taking a step back from our daily lives and becoming more aware of how our actions contribute to this devastation. Consequently, we can change our perspective on things that will affect our actions and behaviors. Not only does this help the individual, but it can also help the masses. Sort of like a virus (in a good way) that spreads among our environment and could possibly spark a movement.