Obviously, that creates tension, but it may also be what helps you survive.” “I just find it to be such an inspiring example, not only of refusal and resistance, but existing in a way that’s at odds with the surrounding value system. “Useful for what? My uselessness has been very useful to me because I have survived.” “Who are you to call me useless?” said Odell, summarizing the story. It’s the wrong shape, too big in inconvenient ways, so the carpenter doesn’t cut it down because it’s not useful.īut later, the tree comes to him in a dream to ask him a question. In the story, a carpenter comes upon a gnarled old tree. To Odell, Old Survivor is a real life example of the “useless tree” in a Taoist story attributed to the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou. The book is an exploration of how to withdraw our attention from the forces that would monetize it- tech companies, for instance, or work - and asks us to reexamine our participation in social media. Old Survivor appears in the introduction of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. It has a physical aura about it, like you can put your hand on it and know that it's been living for that entire time,” said Odell. And what I find so amazing about that is… it's not abstract. In the 19th century, it would have kept growing as grizzly bears, Coho salmon, and California condors disappeared from the East Bay. Odell writes about how Old Survivor would have grown alongside generations of Ohlone people, living, growing old, dying.

How to do nothing odell