Laziness is a big problem everywhere these days. Some people think parents
, friends and governments should provide everything they want. Obvious
laziness is easy to see all around the world where recent rising living standards
have brought on large scale indolence. Why has this happened and how can
stagnant individuals become motivated?
Let us first recognise that laziness is usually regarded as a negative character
trait, even by lazy people. Most lazy people don’t want to be lazy. If you
question lazy people they usually say other people caused them to become
lazy. If you observe a “lazybones” in their home environment, you will find
this to be true. Other people and external factors do indeed facilitate and
encourage laziness. This phenomenon is self-delusion par-excellence.
Parents are the worst offenders. They spoil their children rotten. They wash
their clothes, cook their meals and make their beds. Parents seldom let children
lift a finger anywhere they go. How often do we hear the expression “Little
Emperor or Little Princess” in the East and “Mummy’s Boy or Daddy’s Girl”
in the West? Modern parents breed dependence into their offspring rather
than independence. They are doing this before a backdrop of an increasingly
complicated and competitive world where kids desperately need basic physical
and social skills as they are more likely to live far from parents in the future.
Instead of inculcating abilities and a “can do” attitude from an early age,
parents soften their little darlings like marshmallows over a slow flame until
they abrogate any form of personal responsibility or selfimprovement.
School teachers also often note that the wealthier a student’s family, the
less able is the student in most areas. Many parents think their head-waiter like attendance upon children means they will have more time to study
and get better grades in exams. Anecdotal evidence suggests many teenage
boys spend inordinate amounts of study time playing computer games while
adolescent girls often text friends continually while pretending to be hard
at the books. University research shows student mobile phone and computer
usage during study time to be a major contributor to poor grades during
primary, secondary and tertiary study. And don’t think this “spoiled brat”
syndrome is confined to parents and children. You can find similar levels
of overdependence and insecurity within husband and wife teams, brothers
and sisters as well as classmates and coworkers. The phenomenon exists
anywhere you find a willing facilitator near a willing manipulator. Strangely,
neither party really wants to play their role but they do so out of misplaced
affection or just blatant manipulation.
Another particularly bad facilitator of laziness is the modern media. Twenty
or thirty years ago, people read books for leisure and research. They used
their imaginations to colour and fill out an author’s narrative. Nowadays, the
lazy can Baidu or Google anything and within nanoseconds and be ready to
cut and paste an assignment while pretending to genuine research. Not using
your imagination is simply another form of mental laziness. Television has
become the greatest drug of addiction for the lazy. It has turned whole
generations into diabetic couch potatoes who simply gaze into the middle
distance when nothing takes their fancy on TV.
But what can be done to motivate these slowly decaying static individuals
who don’t really want to be lazy? The answer is twofold. One, never facilitate
lazy people in the first place; no matter how much you love them. Two, don’t
be manipulated into facilitating them ever again. Let them make their own
beds, cook their own food and wash their own clothes. Let them stand up
on their own two feet, open the door and step outside. Facilitators and manipulators will both be better people for it. As Chairman Mao
Zedong said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”
In this case, the step must be made by two people at the same time.
In conclusion, we can see that laziness and lack of motivation are just physical
symptoms of a deeper malaise. The cause of laziness is mental, not physical,
in the minds of two or more people. It is a tacit agreement between the willing
facilitator and the lazy manipulator unwittingly designed to prevent the latter
acquiring meaningful life skills and the former from getting away. If there is one message to take away from this, it is: The only way lazy people exist and
persist is if we let them.
Tags:Expat Rants & Advice Relationships General
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