= Laziness =

======================================================================
= Laziness =
======================================================================

Introduction
======================================================================
Laziness (also known as indolence or sloth) is emotional
disinclination to activity or exertion despite having the ability to
act or to
exert oneself. It is often used as a pejorative; terms for a person
seen to be lazy
include "couch potato", "slacker", and "bludger". Related concepts
include 'sloth', a Christian sin, 'abulia', a medical term for reduced
motivation, and 'lethargy', a state of lacking energy.

Despite the famed neurologist Sigmund Freud's discussion of the
"pleasure principle", Leonard Carmichael noted in 1954 that "laziness"
is not a word that appears in the table of contents of most technical
books on psychology". A 1931 survey found high-school students more
likely to attribute their failing performance to laziness, while
teachers ranked "lack of ability" as the major cause, with laziness
coming in second. Laziness should not be confused with avolition, a
negative symptom of certain mental and neurodevelopmental disorders
such as depression, ADHD, ASD, sleep disorders, substance use
disorders and schizophrenia.

Psychology
======================================================================
Laziness may reflect a lack of self-esteem, a lack of positive
recognition by others, a lack of discipline stemming from low
self-confidence, or a lack of interest in the activity or belief in
its efficacy. Laziness may manifest as procrastination or vacillation.
Studies of motivation suggest that laziness may be caused by a
decreased level of motivation, lack of interest, and confidence which
in turn can be caused by over-stimulation or excessive impulses or
distractions. These increase the release of dopamine, a
neurotransmitter responsible for reward and pleasure. The more
dopamine that is released, the greater intolerance one has for valuing
and accepting productive and rewarding action. This desensitization
leads to dulling of the neural patterns and affects negatively the
anterior insula of the brain responsible for risk perception.

ADHD specialists say engaging in multiple activities can cause
behavioral problems such as attention/focus failure, perfectionism,
and pessimism. In these circumstances, laziness can manifest as a
negative coping mechanism (aversion), the desire to avoid certain
situations to counter certain experiences, and preconceived ill
results. Lacanian thought says "laziness is the "acting out" of
archetypes from societal programming and negative child-rearing
practices." Thomas Goetz, University of Konstanz, Germany, and John
Eastwood, York University, Canada, concur that aversive states such as
laziness can be equally adaptive for making change and toxic if
allowed to fester. An outlook found to be helpful in their studies is
"being mindful and not looking for ways out of it, simultaneously to
be also open to creative and active options if they should arise."
They point out that a relentless engaging in activities without breaks
can cause oscillations of failure, which may result in mental health
issues.

It has also been shown that laziness can render one apathetic to
reactant mental health issues such as anger, anxiety, indifference,
substance abuse, and depression.

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 more
positive long-term consequences. 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." 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."

Literary
======================================================================
Laziness in American literature is figured as a fundamental problem
with social and spiritual consequences. In 1612 John Smith in his 'A
Map of Virginia' is seen using a jeremiad to address idleness. In the
1750s this sort of advocating reached its apex in literature. David
Bertelson in 'The Lazy South' (1767) expressed this as a substitution
of "spiritual industry" over "patriotic industry". Writers like
William Byrd went to a great extent and censured North Carolina as
land of lubbers. Thomas Jefferson in his 'Notes on the State of
Virginia' (1785) acknowledges a small portion of the people have only
seen labor and identifies the cause of this indolence to the rise of
"slave-holding" society. Jefferson raised his concerns what this
deleterious system will bring to the economic system. Later by the
1800s the rise of Romanticism changed attitudes of the society, values
of work were re-written; stigmatization of idleness was overthrown
with glamorous notions. John Pendleton Kennedy was a prominent writer
in romanticizing sloth and slavery: in 'Swallow Barn' (1832) he
equated idleness and its flow as living in oneness with nature. Mark
Twain in 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' (1885) contrasts realist
and romantic perspective of "laziness" and calls attention to the
essential convention of aimlessness and transcendence that connects
the character. In 20th century the poor whites were portrayed in the
grotesque caricatures of early southern laziness. In Flannery
O'Connor's 'Wise Blood' (1952) and 'Good Country People' (1955) she
depicts spiritual backwardness as the cause for disinclination to
work. The lack of any social function which could be valued equally
with a luxurious lifestyle was closely portrayed through lives of
displaced aristocrats and their indolence. Jason Compson, Robert Penn
Warren and William Styron were some of the writers who explored this
perspective. The lack of meaningful work was defined as a void which
aristocrats needed to fill with pompous culture; Walker Percy is a
writer who has thoroughly mined the subject. Percy's characters are
often exposed to the emptiness (spiritual sloth) of contemporary life,
and come to rectify it with renewed spiritual resources.

Christianity
==============
One of the Catholic seven deadly sins is sloth, which is often defined
as spiritual and/or physical apathy or laziness. Sloth is discouraged
in and 2 Thessalonians, and associated with wickedness in one of the
parables of Jesus in the 'Gospel of Matthew' (). In the Wisdom books
of 'Proverbs' and 'Ecclesiastes', it is stated that laziness can lead
to poverty (, ). According to Peter Binsfeld's 'Binsfeld's
Classification of Demons', Belphegor is thought to be its chief demon.

Islam
=======
The Arabic term used in the Quran for laziness, inactivity and
sluggishness is كَسَل ('kasal'). The opposite of laziness is Jihad
al-Nafs, i.e. the struggle against the self, against one's own ego.
Among the five pillars of Islam, praying five times a day and fasting
during Ramaḍān are part of actions against laziness.

Buddhism
==========
In Buddhism, the term 'kausīdya' is commonly translated as "laziness"
or "spiritual sloth". 'Kausīdya' is defined as clinging to unwholesome
activities such as lying down and stretching out, procrastinating, and
not being enthusiastic about or engaging in virtuous activity.

Southern United States
========================
From 1909 to 1915, 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.

Indonesia
===========
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
had been successful.

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. Beetles likewise seem to forage lazily due to a lack
of foraging competitors. 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.

External links
======================================================================
*[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-jachimowicz/laziness-is-more-complex-_b_6802854.html
Jachimowicz, Jon. "Laziness Is More Complex Than You Think".
'Huffington Post'.]

License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laziness