Laziness is undoubtedly a feeling that we are all familiar with. Sometimes you lie down or sit back in an armchair and it seems that nothing will ever make you face the horrors of gravity, stand up and walk again. It's even worse if you're on a long trip and you feel like you don't remember exactly when you arrived, when you're coming back, what kind of work you're doing and what could make you wake up at the crack of dawn once again and go to the office. Perhaps, in my memory, those ten-week summer vacations are the strongest in my memory, during which you forget that you ever went to school, you concentrate only on avoiding the heat, you go out at night, you do nothing at all, and no one can convince you that children have so much energy that they don't need any rest.
Honesty also requires us to admit that we all sometimes enjoy laziness (or at least idleness and slacking off), and even that we should allow ourselves regular "excursions into laziness" (which, I guess, everyone who isn't Jordan and Bryant does). I say this primarily because work has "eaten" their lives for Westerners, so laziness could be used for a deeper contact with oneself. Nevertheless, at some point, that enjoyment would have to stop, by itself, and we would feel some kind of discomfort, more emotional than moral in nature, probably due to the accumulation of undirected energy.
It is certainly justified to say that laziness can become a flaw, and even a rather prominent personality trait, that is, we regularly see some people reacting to various life situations with laziness, just as one's diligence, enterprise and willingness to take initiatives can be expressed. You can often meet people who are very energetic, who could do a lot, but they don't have a goal or focus, or they are annoyed by something, so they waste their days and wait for someone else to finish the work for them. And as for more complex relationships, I always remember how Professor Timotijević conveyed to students the records of Austrian enumerators among Serbs in Vojvodina from the end of the 18th century: "Men smoke, drink and shoot. Women do everything."
THE RICH, SPOILED, LAZY
Laziness is known to people only thanks to being pampered. While we lived closer to nature, in small groups, laziness was unthinkable, or even unattainable. For thousands of years, people lived so hard, in want and constantly surrounded by dangers, that no one knew the relaxation that would lead to laziness. For almost the entire population, laziness led to hunger, and hunger to death, just as in nature lazy bees, swallows or trout die of hunger, freeze or are eaten. Laziness is a kind of privilege for the extremely powerful and dangerous, those who sleep in winter, take a terribly long time to digest each meal or are not interesting to anyone.
I don't know if there are clear arguments for such a thing, but it seems logical to me that laziness is closely related to greed, that getting rich led to the spread of laziness and that it was completely inevitable that, say, the Roman slave owners fell apart in laziness and decadence. This could especially be the case among the generations of heirs, those who did not acquire wealth through work and do not have built-in discipline and zeal, those whose focus on enjoyment is a sure path to ruin. And today we often see how this can happen in a much shorter period of time, how someone's "meteoric rise" can easily lead to a deep moral decline.
There are also more internal reasons for someone to be lazy. For many, energy and vitality decline with age, and for some it happens that they can no longer discover purpose and enjoyment in what once seemed like a passion or vocation. It is difficult to say what is the chicken and what is the egg, but what looks like laziness from the outside is often just one of the symptoms of depression, which leaves a person without willpower and without the capacity to enjoy, his whole life can become meaningless, and then he does not start even the simplest activities.
Because of all this, the fact that laziness was considered one of the mortal sins should not be confusing, that it was necessary to highlight it in this way, to single it out in a list of only seven, to incorporate it into the central parts of the commandments and canons, and even as a clearly defined grouping in Dante's Purgatory. One idea is that idleness is a sin because work develops what God has created, or at least represents a commitment to creation. Another says that laziness is dangerous because the devil can take advantage of idle time and "insert" sinful thoughts into the mind of the laziness, which is invoked by countless unbelieving parents and teachers.
Culturally, the fact that we have at least one religion that could be called the religion of work, where laziness (together with untidiness, impreciseness or ostentatiousness) has become the object of harsh condemnation by the entire society is also very important. It is also interesting that Protestantism arose as a protest against the opulence that Luther saw in Rome in 1508, although the reconstruction of the city, initially entrusted to Michelangelo and Raphael, was just beginning, as well as the fact that it is considered to be the "spirit of capitalism" based on it, for which today you must neither take sick leave, nor remain in a different state, nor be sad, and least of all you must act lazy.
THE TRAP OF SHORT-TERM PLEASURES
When we say that someone is a poltron, we don't necessarily mean laziness so much as sycophancy, but we also don't mean that the Italian word armchair means a comfortable chair, an armchair, from which it could be concluded that a poltron is a person who has sacrificed integrity and honesty for the sake of comfort, perhaps even that, once you feel comfort, you can no longer resist it and are ready for various forms of humiliation in order not to lose it. And while there is no doubt that laziness and comfort may be closely related, we haven't really learned much from it, as the meaning and role of comfort in our (psychic) lives now eludes us.
Modern research on dopamine as a "hormone of motivation" seems to confirm some important observations from everyday life. Namely, it shows that laziness is often a consequence of "cheap dopamine", a reward that we get without any effort, such as sweets and other foods full of sugar, using social networks, especially if people react to what you "posted", watching pornographic films, playing video games and various forms of addiction. We perceive this as a reward, usually a short-term pleasure, but because of this we begin to lose motivation, we stop putting effort into what could bring us long-term fulfillment and pride in an achievement. At least one reason why we become lazy is our dependence on pleasures that are within reach, last a short time and make us reach for them again and again.
EXPENSIVE TRAMP AND ANTIDOTES
The old sages didn't know how to take pictures of the brain and count the molecules in the blood, but they still tried to teach us that the basis of a fulfilling life is in the ever-present challenge and that, if life itself doesn't bring it, you have to "invent" something that will motivate you to fight and win. Every routine - always the same job, only one language, weights of the same weight, walks of the same length, always the same co-workers - opens the door to boredom and laziness, so we must constantly expose ourselves to new efforts. Success and fame are especially terrible enemies here, because a person can be made to feel that there is no reason to develop further, that he has already achieved everything.
An alternative definition of laziness could therefore be that it is the cessation of efforts to beat yourself over and over again every day. Perhaps you should set new goals, or explore new methods, or become less dependent on praise from others or on the type, frequency, and size of rewards. One way is that, whatever you do, whatever brings you success and comfort, you have to introduce yourself to some compulsory activity that you do not like at all, it is boring to you, you would never engage in it of your own free will, but you know that from doing it, discipline will grow and it is an antidote to laziness. In schools, for example, it was Latin, precisely because we all hated it and believed it was useless.
It seems to me that few young people at the beginning of their careers in science, art or sports understand that what awaits them is a kind of asceticism, i.e. that success is based on enormous renunciation, and that most of the most important scientists have never even heard of. And one of the reasons why, in terms of contributions outside the sphere of technology, and especially in the artistic sphere, our age cannot be compared with the 19th century, is that we would create thanks to support and overlook that it must be created despite obstacles. The creators whose work has reached us were talented people, but more importantly, in most cases they were fanatical workers whom no one understood.
If laziness is our dark side, then we should passionately fight against comfort, from the banal level that embodies the contrast between lounging in armchairs and constantly walking uphill, through work - since even the most inspiring jobs become routine with age, not to mention repetitive - to nutrition and enjoying quick pleasures in general. We have to fight against what in us causes us to give up morality for the sake of conformity and the "line of least resistance", because it's easier that way, and relationships with close people, in which we often and easily give up the risks that come with honesty and commitment.
And so maybe we can reject the concept of sin, but we should not overlook that laziness, little by little, kills the important capacities of our personalities, because most of us agree to trade them for a little comfort.
The author is a psychologist
