Maybe it's not laziness
Recently I've been feeling overwhelmed. I have so many interests, so many things I want to read, or learn, or practice. My list of books to read keeps growing, and I am already exhausted from the little I have actually read so far. This acutally stems from the inordinate emphasis I place on the intellectual realm: things to be learned, knowledge to gain, skills to acquire. And most of this, on a computer. It has estranged me from my physical self and my surroundings. I realize the need to get away from the screen, to spend more time just being in nature, and to stretch my body a little. I "should" get up earlier, do some stretching, take in the morning air, and spend some time in contemplation of the wonders of the world.
But I don't, and it is hard to make the decision to change overnight, due to the force of habit.
When I talked about this to the LLM, it said something along the lines of:
You put your finger on it correctly: it is not laziness, it is habit. [Much belaborated in the verbloated style characteristic of LLMs.]
And I think to myself: what a passive-aggresive way to suggest that it may be laziness. It's also strange, if it is not laziness, why need to mention it at all, even in the negative?
Yes, it may be laziness. I am, after all, an incredibly lazy person. For some reason, I had never thought at it that way, however. There's a lot of things I haven't done, and it's in part due to laziness. I've been lazy for my whole life and only in recent years is that starting to change. So it may very well be laziness.
Here's the problem, though. I don't really believe in "laziness", at least not as a force of (human) nature.
The "neoliberal" doctrine would have us think that humans are lazy creatures by nature, and so that nothing would ever be achieved unless they are coerced to work. That you need to starve people in order for them to be motivated to do any work whatsoever.
The child who does not well at school is usually called "lazy", the system that offers no incentive for them to study dry facts never called into question.
I have always tried to evade working wage jobs, and when I have done so, it has been a painful experience. They would say it's because of laziness on my part, not because the repetitive work I might do in a company holds no relationship with my well-being or that of my community, besides just being a bunch of hours I trade for an amount of tokens I can trade for goods and services.
The way I see it, laziness is but an appareance, it is a word that gets used to point the finger at the person for not doing something, while in reality, there is always an underlying reason for them not to be incentivized to do it.
In the exteme case, it may be downright apathy, a general unwillingess or inability to do anything at all. This is usually due to depression or burnout, both of which seem to be consequences of the life we are forced to live, the cities we are forced to live in, and the impoverished food we are rationed in exchange for wage labor.
We are coerced into spending our energy not in an endeavour that means something for us, personally, but rather to create profit for the owners of a faceless, soulless corporation, which tries to squeeze the most money and labor out of both it's workers and it's customers.
We are conditioned in childhood not to value learning, but to dread it, being forced to memorize dry facts that have nothing to do with our lives and which only seem to be there for the purpose of filling exams and getting ranked for our ability to do so.
We are expected to go running in circles around the park for the sake of running. Or to go lift heavy objects and put them back down on the floor, repeatedly, without performing any work and instead paying for being granted the priviledge to do so.
So, I guess the LLM is right: it's not actually laziness. Laziness is just what teachers and bosses say so that they can blame you for the faults of the very system of which they are part. Perhaps because they are the ones directly responsible to keep humans toiling in meaningless work.
A more positive way to say this is that I do believe that if people are given tasks that are meaningful to them, that will benefit their immediate surroundings, their community, their culture, then they will happily spend all their energy in it, often without expecting much in return. But because we live in an extractive system where work is meant to benefit people at the top, then we are drained of our energy and our motivation, and we dread having to do stuff that doesn't seem to improve the world or our communities. Everything is done for profit, and so everybody must scramble for tokens. You end up coercing others to do the stuff you don't care to do, or get coerced into doing it.
Humans are not lazy creatures.