Action is not the best policy. Dynamic Inertia has solved all Matthew Fort’s problems
Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness,’ wrote the Reverend George MacDonald, Scottish minister and author of those Victorian children’s classics At the Back of the North Wind (1868) and The Princess and the Goblin (1872).
Not the kind of thing you expect from a vicar – particularly a Scottish one.
Idleness, whether sacred or not, is all very good as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough.
I’ve nothing against idleness, but it does suggest a degree of sloth, self-indulgence and selfishness. We need to weaponise idleness. We need Dynamic Inertia.
Dynamic Inertia is based on the simple principle that doing nothing is often as creative, effective and productive as doing something, and almost invariably less contentious.
Physical inertia is to be deplored – it’s indulgent and tedious. But inertia of the body is not the same as inertia of the mind.
You can be inert in body while your mind is in full flow. In 1679, James Weldon, baker to the Earl of Devonshire, wrote to John Aubrey, the biographer of philosopher Thomas Hobbes, ‘He was never idle; his thoughts were always working’ – the very definition of Dynamic Inertia in all but name.
The actual expression was first used much later, in very different circumstances, 50 years ago, during the Spaghetti House Siege, which took place between 28th September and 3rd October 1975.
After a robbery of the Knightsbridge restaurant went wrong, the three crooks took the staff hostage for six days in a storeroom. Two gave themselves up; their leader, Franklin Davies, shot himself in the stomach. They were all jailed.
One of the negotiating team, when asked to describe the state of the situation mid-siege, replied, ‘We’ve entered a state of Dynamic Inertia’ – ie doing nothing, watching and waiting.
The siege ended peacefully, with all the hostages saved.
By contrast, remember the end of the Waco Siege in 1993, when the invasion of the compound by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ended in the deaths of 86 people. Dynamic Inertia might have produced a very different outcome.
Europe would have been a whole lot happier if Napoleon had been content with the quiet life on Elba rather than legging it and having a last hurrah at Waterloo, with 50,000 casualties.
Vladimir Putin and the rest of the world would be better off if he had practised Dynamic Inertia rather than invading Ukraine.
We’re encouraged to believe that the world belongs to the action heroes; that action is superior to inaction; that action is a manly kind of thing; and decisionmakers, risk-takers, business dynamos and political masters are the kinds of people we should look up to.
We elevate the Elon Musks, Jeff Bezoses and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world. They are held to be admirable because they have built empires – irrespective of whether the empires they have built have actually benefited us more than they’ve benefited them.
Actions, we’re assured, speak louder than words. Well, do they really? Their cacophony often drowns out the still, small voice of calm.
The internet was a whole lot better in the quiet, theoretical stage than it’s turned out to be in its Hydra-headed, trolling, fake-news, narcissistic, dreary social-media reality. Sir Tim Berners-Lee should have dreamed his dream and stopped at that.
Dynamic Inertia is just as important in our own humdrum lives. Every year, between Christmas and New Year, I go through all the papers that have accumulated in my in-tray over the previous 12 months.
All those matters at the time demanded my immediate attention. I was threatened with dire consequences if I didn’t deal with them right away. Some called for thought and consideration above and beyond the quotidian.
The demands piled up: the renewal of the household insurance; in-bond wine offers; missives from the local council; notifications of building proposals; gas/ electricity/ water/ phone tariff changes; parking fines; threats from the Inland Revenue … the tedious silt of modern life.
But the world progressed in its ineluctable way whether or not I dealt with these ‘matters of urgency’. And so, come that pause between the years, into the wastepaper basket go letter after letter, warning after warning, notification after notification.
Each one of those letters, warnings and notifications represents an investment of my time, energy and thought. Or they would do if I had paid due attention to them.
Instead, thanks to Dynamic Inertia, I have been freed from hours of pointless activity.
And I have turned my energies to more productive matters – such as writing this article.
Matthew Fort is author of Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa
