We appear to be so afraid of idleness that we’ve created elaborate ways of doing just about everything — except nothing, that is. We have lost touch with the ancient art of just sitting down to do absolutely "no thing" but think.

Our ability to be occupied or tuned in at all times has become acute and all-encompassing, spreading, especially for young people, into just about every facet of life.

When I went off to college back in the late 1960s, my accessories were pretty standard for the times: a portable manual typewriter and a record player from the pre-stereo days.

No phone. No laptop. No television. No iPod. No video games.

We would appear disadvantaged compared to today’s students. How did we ever keep up with the academic and social demands of the day? Fortunately, we didn’t worry too much about keeping constantly busy and occupied.

High-tech gurus for years have been predicted that the lifestyles of the young and restless would someday be digital — with everything — text, photos, music, Internet — connected to their personal computers. Cell phones now can send photos and text in addition to voice.

In a recent Forrester Research survey, 27 percent of college-age young people said they "could not live without" their PCs, while 22 percent said they just had to have their cell phones. Their televisions and video games were in the single digits.

Of course, it doesn’t do any good to have all the latest technological gadgetry if you can’t use it — simultaneously. Enter the multi-tasking generation.

In a society dominated for centuries by the Protestant work ethic, we have somehow concluded that we need to start training our children early on to be busy, busy, busy.

Of course, many parents are getting the message from experts and word of mouth that Johnny and Jenny may get into drinking, drugs and delinquency if they are not pushed to get involved some of the gamut of activities available to young people today.

That’s OK, it is healthy for children to play and for early teens to explore their potential talents. There’s dance, sports, skateboarding, gymnastics among all sorts of other activities.

In fact, studies indicate that about 80 percent of middle and high school students take part in organized activities after school and on weekends, and most of them have something scheduled nearly every day.

And surprisingly, children apparently don’t mind being pushed into that piano class or soccer team. according to the study by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion research group.

Almost nine in 10 students agree they need to be pushed by parents into things that are good for them, even if they might complain. Three out of four students say their day-to-day schedule during the school year is just about right, not too hectic, according to the study by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan opinion research group.

What’s worrisome, however, is that most young people, almost nine in 10, go along with their parents’ obsessive nudging of them into things that are "good" for them. At a young age, they’ve already bought into the ideology that busy is good and idleness breeds the devil.

So, it’s off to college with one hand on a mouse, one hand on a remote, a cell phone wedged between ear and shoulder and music earphones squeezed in there somehow. All that and schoolwork, too, as they "stop thinking and finish their education," and prepare for the workaday world.

And it doesn’t get any better there because we have to stay busy working too much, whether we want to or not. I wonder if we really need to work so many hours a day, so many days a year and so many years of our lives.

More than 70 years ago, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell recognized the problem in his essay "In Praise of Idleness."

"I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous ...," he wrote. "Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others."

His version of the proverb went like this: "Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do."

If we spent as much time preparing our young people to "do nothing" productively as we do concocting a vast menu of activities and work, we just might find there also is some virtue in idleness.

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Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.