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Does Laziness Exist?
For a long time now, I have believed that laziness is a term that really should not exist in any dictionary. I stumbled upon a brilliant article by Devon Price titled “Laziness Does not Exist”. As I was reading through, I enthusiastically started commenting before being overcome with guilt. Do you ever feel bac about “over responding” to a story?
Rightly so, Devon Price informs us that laziness does not exist. However, the experience is still real for the subject. I agree that laziness doesn’t exist “objectively”, but it does as a social, and affective construct. By affectively, I mean that laziness is a representation of a state referred to in neuroscience as interoception. This is the minds way of making sense of internal sensations alerting us to the state of our physiology; what Lisa Feldman Barret refers to as our “body budget”. While The subjective experience is real, we can’t objectively distinguish between laziness, depression, fatigue and other affective constructs.
I once described procrastination as not having enough energy (motivation) to finish the task at hand. In this sense, laziness can be seen as a weakness and not a “wickedness”, or moral failing. Often simply reframing the task conceptually is enough. As an example, I lack the energy (motivation) to go to the gym if I consider it exercise. However, if I think about in terms of mindfulness meditation (the euphoria…
