What Is Naptivism

So what is a Naptivist?

Someone who engages in various types of activism aimed at challenging negative attitudes to napping in particular, and downtime, rest and renewal in general.

When it comes to napping, or stopping of any kind, our culture has an attitude problem.

We associate napping, or doing nothing for while, with slacking despite the fact it has the opposite effect. And we pile on the praise for those make a habit of overriding their fatigue and keep working – despite the fact that fatigue can be as dangerous as being drunk. Lip service is given to the mantra ‘work smarter not harder’, rewarding those who show the greatest ‘face time’ at work with the promotions and pay rises. And we subscribe to economic and business models of never-ending growth that only lead to depletion of vital reserves – personal as well as earth energy.

Australian poet Michael Leunig describes the type of sickness this can give rise to … As his character ‘Curly’ puts it “I believe the world is sick with exhaustion and dying of restlessness. While it is true that periods of weariness help the spirit to grow, the prolonged ongoing state of fatigue to which our world seems to be rapidly adopting is ultimately soul destroying as well as earth destroying. The ecology of evil flourishes and love cannot take root in this sad situation. Tiredness is one of our strongest, most noble and instructive feelings. It is an important aspect of our conscience and must be heeded or else we will not survive”