Idle Hands: A Symposium On Lust, Vice And The History Of The Hand

The Idler Academy presents an evening of discussion and debate on hands in history with psychoanalyst Darian Leader and Tom Hodgkinson. In his new book, Darian argues that our contemporary addiction to i-phones and gadgets is perfectly natural: we have always wanted something to do with our hands, whether that’s play with worry beads or fiddle with fans. Leader also says that there was an special effort on the 18th and 19th centuries on the part of the authorities to keep our hands busy, as a result of the old adage, “the devil finds work for idle hands to do”: “Idleness itself was now created as a new concept,” writes Darian, “with devotional literature linking it to vice, and lust appearing, as one author put it, ‘at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease’.” The history of civilization is a history of what humans do with their hands. Inventing tools, writing records, operating machinery, learning to type, to text, to swipe: mankind’s progress to modern society has been a steady evolution of how we use our hands. Why do we play with our fingers when nervous? What causes us to doodle while concentrating? And what about masturbation?