[T]here's a type of thinking that is more under threat than any other kind: the thinking that happens when we're relaxed or idle. Martin Heidegger made the distinction between calculative and meditative thinking. Calculative thinking is focused, activity-driven and outcome-oriented; meditative thinking is more relaxed, internal and expansive. When we're busy, we employ calculative thinking. When we're consuming reality TV or YouTube videos of dancing cats, we're not really thinking at all. Meditative thinking only happens when we are neither producing nor consuming; in other words, when we are idle. My concern is that the twin drives to produce and consume are squeezing idleness out of our lives; and idleness is important because it is the origin of meditative thinking.

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