Why doing nothing can be a powerful catalyst

In 2018, the late anthropologist David Graeber published his best-selling book Bullshit Jobs, a savage critique of the futility of modern labour, especially the utterly pointless and mentally depleting jobs that bring little to no self-worth to the workers who slave at them for most of their lives. Around the time Graeber’s book came out, Shoji Morimoto, a Japanese man in his late 30s, quit his bullshit job in the education industry and started a “Do-nothing Rental” service. “I’d like the world to be one where even if people can’t do anything for others, even if they can make no contribution to society, they can still live stress-free lives,” he writes in Rental Person Who Does Nothing, his recently published memoir. He isn’t like “Pro-Ogorareya”, a 20-something man on X, who lives off others by offering himself up for odd jobs, as random as accompanying a client to a bar because they want company. “You could say my lack of individuality has become my ‘product’,” Morimoto adds.