Laziness

For the computer science concept, see Lazy evaluation.

Laziness (also called indolence) is a disinclination to activity or exertion despite having the ability to do so. It is often used as a pejorative; related terms for a person seen to be lazy include couch potato, slacker, and bludger.

Despite Sigmund Freud's discussion of the pleasure principle, Leonard Carmichael notes that "laziness is not a word that appears in the table of contents of most technical books on psychology... It is a guilty secret of modern psychology that more is understood about the motivation of thirsty rats and hungry pecking pigeons as they press levers or hit targets than is known about the way in which poets make themselves write poems or scientists force themselves into the laboratory when the good golfing days of spring arrive."^[1] A 1931 survey found that high school students were more likely to attribute their failing performance to laziness, while teachers ranked "lack of ability" as the major cause, with laziness coming in second.^[2]

Religious views

One of the seven deadly sins in Catholic thought is sloth, which is often defined as spiritual and/or physical apathy or laziness. Sloth is recommended against in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 6:12), and 2 Thessalonians 3 and associated with wickedness in one of the parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 25:26). In the Wisdom books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, it is stated that laziness can lead to poverty (Proverbs 10:4, Ecclesiastes 10:18). According to Peter Binsfeld's Binsfeld's Classification of Demons, demon Belphegor is thought to be its chief demon.^[3]

See also Protestant work ethic, conscience, catholic social teaching and Rerum Novarum.

Economics

Economists have differing views of laziness. Frédéric Bastiat argues that idleness is the result of people focusing on the pleasant immediate effects of their actions rather than potentially negative long-term consequences.^[4] Others note that humans seem to have a tendency to seek after leisure. Hal Cranmer writes, "For all these arguments against laziness, it is amazing we work so hard to achieve it. Even those hard-working Puritans were willing to break their backs every day in exchange for an eternity of lying around on a cloud and playing the harp. Every industry is trying to do its part to give its customers more leisure time."^[5] Ludwig von Mises writes, "The expenditure of labor is deemed painful. Not to work is considered a state of affairs more satisfactory than working. Leisure is, other things being equal, preferred to travail (work). People work only when they value the return of labor higher than the decrease in satisfaction brought about by the curtailment of leisure. To work involves disutility."^[6]

Animals

It is common for animals (even those like hummingbirds that have high energy needs) to forage for food until satiated, and then spend most of their time doing nothing, or at least nothing in particular. They seek to "satisfice" their needs rather than obtaining an optimal diet or habitat. Even diurnal animals, which have a limited amount of daylight in which to accomplish their tasks, follow this pattern. Social activity comes in a distant third to eating and resting for foraging animals. When more time must be spent foraging, animals are more likely to sacrifice time spent on aggressive behavior than time spent resting. Extremely efficient predators have more free time and thus often appear more lazy than relatively inept predators that have little free time.^[7] Beetles likewise seem to forage lazily due to a lack of foraging competitors.^[8] On the other hand, some animals, such as pigeons and rats, seem to prefer to respond for food rather than eat equally available "free food" in some conditions.^[9]

Particular societies

From 1909 to 1914, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease sought to eradicate hookworm infestation from 11 southern U.S. states. Hookworms were popularly known as "the germ of laziness" because they produced listlessness and weakness in the people they infested. Hookworms infested 40 percent of southerners and were identified in the North as the cause of the South's alleged backwardness.^[10]

It was alleged that indolence was the reason for backward conditions in Indonesia, such as the failure to implement Green Revolution agricultural methods. But a counter-argument is that the Indonesians, living very precariously, sought to play it safe by not risking a failed crop, given that not all experiments introduced by outsiders have been successful.^[11]

Related literature

• Honore, Carl (2005). In Praise of Slowness : Challenging the Cult of Speed. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 0060750510. 
• Lafargue, Paul (1999) [1883]. The Right to Be Lazy. Ardmore, Pennsylvania: Fifth Season Press. ISBN 1892355035. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy. 
• Corinne Maier:
  • Hello Laziness! - Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay, 2005, ISBN 0-7528-7186-2
  • Bonjour Laziness! - How to Work as Little as Possible (Just Like the French), 2005, ISBN 0-375-42373-7
  • Bonjour paresse - De l'art et la nécessité d'en faire le moins possible en entreprise, 2004, ISBN 2-84186-231-3
• Russell, Bertrand (2004). In Praise of Idleness; and Other Essays. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415325064. 
• Steinbeck, John (2000) [1951]. The Log from the Sea of Cortez. London: Penguin. ISBN 0141186070. "Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world, and the world against itself" 
• Hodgkinson, Tom (2004). How to Be Idle. London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 0241142512. 
• Carle, Eric (2007). "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," Said the Sloth. New York: Puffin Books. ISBN 0142408476. 
• Goncharov, Ivan (2006) [1859]. Oblomov. New York: Bunim & Bannigan. ISBN 1933480092. 

See also

• The Big Lebowski, an iconic 1998 film featuring "The Dude", an unemployed slacker with a laid-back approach to life that inspired the religion Dudeism
• Juan Tamad (literally Lazy John), a Philippine folklore character.
• The Idler, a magazine devoted to idleness as a lifestyle
• Acedia, a state of listlessness or torpor
• Procrastination, the delaying of fulfilling tasks
• Senioritis, the decreased motivation to study which is said to effect those nearing the end of their studies
• Larry Wall, the three chief virtues of a programmer: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3394
• Deferred gratification

References

1. ^ Leonard Carmichael (Apr., 1954), Laziness and the Scholarly Life, 78, The Scientific Monthly, pp. 208–213, JSTOR 21392 
2. ^ Harry Howard Gilbert (Jan., 1931), High-School Students' Opinions on Reasons for Failure in High-School Subjects, 23, The Journal of Educational Research, pp. 46–49, JSTOR 27525294 
3. ^ Defoe, Daniel (2003). The Political History of the Devil. New York: AMS Press. p. 338. ISBN 040463544X. 
4. ^ wikisource: That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen
5. ^ Cranmer, Hal (April 5, 2002), In Defense of Laziness, Ludwig von Mises Instute, http://mises.org/daily/928 
6. ^ von MIses, Ludwig, Human Action, http://mises.org/humanaction/chap7sec3.asp 
7. ^ Joan M. Herbers (1981), Time Resources and Laziness in Animals, 49, Oecologia, pp. 252–262, JSTOR 4216378 
8. ^ Bernd Heinrich and Elizabeth Mcclain (Mar. - Apr., 1986), "Laziness" and Hypothermia as a Foraging Strategy in Flower Scarabs (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae), 59, Physiological Zoology, pp. 273–282, JSTOR 30156041 
9. ^ Elkan R. Gamzu, David R. Williams, Barry Schwartz, Robert L. Welker, Gary Hansen, Larry A. Engberg and David R. Thomas (Jul. 27, 1973), Pitfalls of Organismic Concepts: "Learned Laziness"?, 181, Science, New Series, pp. 367–369, JSTOR 1736630 
10. ^ Ronald L. Numbers (Jan. 15, 1982), Review: The War against Hookworm, 215, Science, New Series, pp. 280–281, JSTOR 1688243 
11. ^ Karen A. Laidlaw and Ronald E. Seavoy (Mar., 1979), The "Ethic of Indolence": Another View, 10, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 190–193, JSTOR 20070277