Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price

Our culture’s hatred of the “lazy” is all-encompassing. It bleeds into how we view relationships, child-rearing, body size, barriers to voting, and so much more.

He won’t apply to jobs, he sits on the couch all day, and he hasn’t washed a dish in weeks—he must be lazy.

Even if someone’s inaction strikes us as totally self-defeating or pointless, within the context of that person’s life, it makes sense.

What need are they trying to meet by acting this way? What challenges or barriers are getting in the way of their making a change? What hidden struggles (such as physical disability, mental illness, trauma, or oppression) might explain the difficulties they’re facing? Who might have taught them to act this way? Do they have other options? Are those options really attainable for them? What kind of help might they need?

I used to vape nicotine, and for years I felt embarrassed by how wasteful and stupid the habit was. Then I asked myself: What situations make me vape more? What do I enjoy about doing it? I realized pretty quickly that I was using vaping as an appetite suppressant, and to give myself a little jolt of extra energy, the same way I might use caffeine. Once I realized this, it was pretty easy to replace vaping with eating snacks and drinking more coffee.

Maybe I had trouble sleeping the night before, or I’m about to come down with a cold and I just don’t realize it yet.

Maybe I just learned that my employer-provided health insurance won’t cover any gender-transition-related expenses, and so I’m feeling really excluded and undervalued.

The Laziness Lie is rooted in capitalism and a particularly harsh breed of Christianity, and it preaches that salvation comes from hard work.

It leads us to assume that there is more virtue in doing something than there is in doing nothing, no matter what that “something” is.

I’m reminded of a quote often attributed to Irish statesman Edmund Burke that’s often shared with children when they first learn about the Holocaust: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It’s a powerful statement about the necessity of standing up against evil, and I think a lot of kids connect with the words when they first hear them. Leaders of all stripes call on this quote to justify some of their boldest actions. Doing something is better than doing nothing, after all. At the very heart of the quote and its popularity is the Laziness Lie lurking within it: it says doing nothing is akin to condoning evil.

There’s a problem with this quote, though: Edmund Burke never appears to have said it.

no one knows where the quote...

Burke’s actual words are far less individualistic: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

If standing by and doing “nothing” is the same as permitting evil, then almost any action you take in an attempt to fight evil can be seen as justified.

all that’s needed for harm to persist in the world is for evil people to think they’re doing good.

When you get less done during the day than you anticipated, you feel guilty. You have trouble enjoying your free time. You believe you have to “earn” the right to a vacation or a break. You take care of your health only in order to remain productive. Having nothing to do makes you feel “useless.” You find the idea of growing old or becoming disabled to be incredibly depressing. When you say no to someone, you feel compelled to say yes to something else to “make up” for it.

Throughout this book, I’ve outlined the various ways in which overexertion is damaging to a person’s health, their well-being, and even the quality of their work. While all of this is true, saying it over and over again can have an unfortunate implication: It might seem like the purpose of taking care of yourself is just so that you can do better work for longer.

When I first wrote the essay that became this book,

https://tomatomagica.tumblr.com/post/695048476369764352/why-laziness-doesnt-exist ?

As a result of following the advice in this book, your bedroom might get messier, your in-box might start to develop a backlog, and people might stop praising you so much for your work ethic.

my pet chinchilla, Dump Truck.

FUCK yeah

Like most pets, Dump Truck has never done a “productive” thing in his entire life. All he does is eat, sleep, and destroy the various wooden toys I put in his cage.

It has permeated almost every piece of media we consume, from the largest blockbuster films to the most intimate-seeming YouTube channels.