Learning Laziness
Sitting peacefully doing nothing
Springtime is coming
and the grass grows all by itself.
- Zen poem (Anonymous, as quoted by Roland Barthes)
In coming to terms with a postwork society, among the greatest challenges for the individual is the question of what to do with oneself. It seems, at first glance, a simple matter: “whatever I damn well please!” But as anyone who has spent significant time unemployed (whether by choice or happenstance) can attest, the limitlessness of possibility quickly becomes tyrannical. When the world is one’s oyster, time tends to slip away; there’s always more nothing to do. Without the structure and routine of work, an uncomfortable monotony slips in — rendering even pleasurable activities as banal repetitions, robbed of joy. The personal projects once of intense ambition “if only I had the time” lose their lustre, perpetually put off to the next rainy day. This tendency even seems to begin early in life. By the end of summer vacation, children often grow weary of their freedom, yearning for the structure and stimulation of the school year routine. It seems that, without work, it is difficult to hold onto any concrete sense of identity But is this a naturalistic statement, or merely a product of socialization (or both)? A key component of this malady is our unwillingness to engage in (or incapacity for) idleness, imagination, and play. In its simplest form, we are seeking a diagnosis as to the difficulty in creating space, time, and motivation for nonwork activity. Is this, as is claimed, a product of the intrinsic need for work? Or do we simply lack the skills of laziness?
An industrial capitalist economy requires a great mass of labourers to conduct the menial tasks either presently impossible or cost-prohibitive to automate. To ensure the availability of such a fungible, ostensibly willing labour force, various forces of capitalist society converge. In light of the infeasibility of mass forced labour under threat of violence, economic pressures — the risk of poverty for example — provides a crucial component of behavioural reinforcement. Similarly, however, a mechanism that operates essentially as operant conditioning is only so useful as a means of social control. The optimal goal, therefore, is the construction of ideal capitalist subjects: individuals who have internalized and embraced the characteristics that make for good workers — whom see work as virtue. As Weber initially observed, the Protestant work ethic has been recruited in this pursuit, eventually divorced from its original religious ethics and modulated to suit the needs to capitalism.
Taylorist mechanization of production processes requires reliable, predictable, synchronized activity of essentially interchangeable human components. As such, there is a necessary proscription against idleness, self-direction, and creativity. Those human components of a production process who do not function as effective automata — whether inactive, too fast or slow, or performing their tasks in an irregular way — are coded as malfunctioning and will be subject to repair or replacement. The very texture of time must be changed in order for all components of the system to function in harmony; each process must occur at a rate commensurate with the next, lest the smooth flow of materials and productive energies face a bottleneck. All the while, the watchful eye of management panopticizes the production environment, instilling Foucaultian discipline within the workplace.
The creative mind of the industrial worker, however, remained largely their own possession. Monotonous work requires little intellectual-emotional engagement, leaving these faculties as the realm for play — even in some limited form. The interstitial spaces — between activities, between places — can be the site of daydreams. When we drive so much as to have become the car, or find ourselves in the dream factory of the train station, we are free to explore the possibilities of inner space. But whereas Fordist society depended on consistency and constancy, post-Fordist production now requires an ever-accelerating and all-encompassing share of worker engagement. Creativity, emotional labour, and libidinal energies are needed of the postindustrial worker, requiring a different mode of control. Rather than attempting to eliminate creativity and sociality from the worker, this new mode of work seeks to harness them. In Bifo’s terms, the very soul of the cognitariat is lashed to the plow.
As Byun-Chul Han (2015) remarks, Foucaultian disciplinary society is inadequate to fully leverage the soul — requiring more than a subtly compelled subject yields. Rather than the proscriptive should of disciplinary society, the control subject is defined by can. The extreme abundance of opportunity that accompanies consumerist society predisposes the individual to excessive positivity. Rather than contemplating whether one should buy that new gadget, the primary decision-making mechanism is if one can. Reducing or eliminating barriers such as these are key to neoliberal capitalism — ensuring the free flow of smooth streams of capital.
It’s here that we find a clue as to our incapacity for laze. Between the overabundance of consumer goods and commodified experiences, there is little room left for inactivity. The period in which one is not-working is not simple inactivity, but rather a container to be filled. What’s more, as Frayne (2015) points out, much of our time not already designated to work is spent in a state of readiness for or recuperation from — or both. In this mode, it becomes difficult to put work fully from our minds and engage fully in any — or no — activity. The unbearability of incomplete idleness without the skills of laziness gives rise to an insatiable need for stimulation. Boredom of this kind takes on an anxious character, like the unsettling nature of too-quiet an environment. An efficient and well-honed industry has come into existence to meet this need, stamping out standardized, commodified consumable entertainment products. Modern laziness, as Barthes (2010) puts it, is reduced to a mere “cutting up” of time; the discomfort of the unlazy individual is less palpable when filled with a plentitude of diversions. Leisure time has become highly structured and standardized, but retains the appearance of free play owing to the sheer variety of these diversions.
In a mental-spiritual space already filled with commodities, both creativity and enjoyment suffer. Fantastical tales are subsumed into fanfiction, exploration into experience, and play into gaming. Consider, as well, the work-like qualities of many of these diversions — the ‘grind’ of the massively multiplayer online game, binge-watching, and the like. There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with any of these things, but they require little participation of the subject — similar to McLuhan’s hot media. Without this active participation, the subject is hollowed out, making a space for commodities. Even our intrinsic tendency to daydream when idle is invaded by commodified content — like Fry from Futurama dreaming an underwear commercial. The dynamic range of fantasy is restricted, consisting of assemblages of culture industry products and IKEA shopping sprees. Peter Coffin deploys the notion of the cultivated identity in his book Custom Reality and You (2018), referring to the capacity for commodified consumables, entertainment products, lifestyles, and political allegiances to be transformed into markers of identity. By leveraging what is then taken as an intrinsic personal attribute, the cultivated subject can be made to obey cheerfully and without recognition of their servitude. Super-fans gain status by consuming all the content: seeing all the canonical material, buying all the merch, acting as an evangelist — serving as a viral marketing agent to spread the commodity’s popularity.
The sheer volume and availability of these stimuli diminishes the comparative weight of any individual item, creating an accelerating hedonic treadmill. Without the time and concentration to fully engage, the act of savouring becomes impossible — even of one’s own home environment — as the plentitude of stimuli adopt an anesthetic quality. These amusement-bites become so empty that the act of switching between them becomes an activity in itself. In this state of hedonic lassitude (Fischer 2010), it is not uncommon for an unidle subject to be watching a video while playing a game while listening to music while scrolling endlessly through social media and still somehow feeling bored. Many are now trapped in a state of chronic hedonic depression — as Han describes: “exhausted by their own sovereignty”. Frayne again: “Crippled by choices and troubled by the scarcity of our free time, we often do the only thing that seems feasible — we do nothing.” (p. 174) This kind of nothing-doing feels even worse; being fully accustomed to perpetual activity, a time-wasting guilt creeps in, adding anxious paralysis to an already scattered existence. The blurred lines between work and leisure has led to a state where we are never truly at leisure — leaving no space for real rest, real enjoyment, real appreciation.
Why, then, are we complicit in this mode of existence? Why do so many valorize the lifestyle of the harried robot, or at least accept it as a self-evident and immutable truth? As discussed previously, the self-conception of the capitalist subject is key to producing this behaviour. Similar to Mark Fischer’s notion of capitalist realism, I suggest a related idea: work realism. The ideology of late capitalism constructs the individual to accept the present state as the natural endpoint of historical progress — the best and most ‘free’ system of political-economic social structure. The subject of such a society thus sees themself as a free, rational, objective decision-maker whose drives and desires are their own. But agency is strictly limited by these environs; the cultural narratives, institutions, social norms, physical environment, and essentially every other facet of the social field is suffused with capital. So saturated we are with this conditioning that we become willing — eager even — to believe even demonstrably nonsensical and contradictory notions. As Ellen Goodman observes: “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and house you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”
Ideology, then, constitutes a form of shared delusion. Normalcy is defined through unquestioning adherence to this narrative, with both concrete coercive forces and psychic corrosion potentially arising out of deviance. A failure to sustain performance to these standards, and the dysfunction that results from such intense cognitive dissonance is pathologized — termed with depression and anxiety, and those who suffer stigmatized as lazy slackers. Those experiencing isolation, alienation, and burnout are coded as possessing an individualized problem, the solution to which being also individual in nature. A “wellness” industry has emerged to capitalize on this need, marketing a diverse range of lavishly-priced snake oils, impoverished pop psychology, and the eviscerated remains of Eastern spiritual practices. The aim of these products is not, however, wellness-for-its-own-sake, but rather an instrumental wellness — to improve productivity by helping subjects cope better with the deleterious effects of neoliberal capitalism. Similarly, psychiatric industry professionals (as well as amateur pharmaceutical entrepreneurs and enthusiasts) deal primarily in anesthetic drugs to reduce the experience of discomfort. These affect-control mechanisms, in concert with the leisure-industrial complex discussed above, serve to lessen the individual’s intrinsic revulsion to the status quo, easing the maintenance of delusory thinking.
Childhood development is likewise affected by an overdetermination of norms congruent with this delusory construct, inhibiting the growth of postconventional moral reasoning. Adherence to authority, emulation of contextually successful role models, and an orientation toward extrinsic reward/punishment motivation are a key component of the ‘hidden curriculum’ of state education, and of the ideological state apparatus (Althusser 2014) more generally. Childhood — increasingly in the contemporary context — is highly structured. Moral panics about stranger danger and risk-preoccupation, in concert with the neoliberal imperative to optimize the child achievement-subject (Han 2015), have affected norms related to parenting and the role of a child. Rather than imaginative free play and spontaneous sociality, late modern childhood is largely comprised of edutainment, prescribed-play toys (with marketing tie-ins!), playdates, and an unfathomable deluge of screens. Without the imaginatively fertile space of empty, unprogrammed time, the skills of laziness have little opportunity to develop. Having no need to create amusement in an otherwise boring situation — whether by the convenience of digital ‘babysitting’ or a pure lack of ‘free’ time — primes the child subject for an adulthood of essentially the same.
What, then, is to be done? As I have alluded to, we would benefit from learning the skills of laziness. Real laziness, ironically, requires more effort than the harried activity of leisure; to play — or even at times to simply to sit quietly — in the absence of entertainment necessitates creativity, improvisation, risk, and emotional investment. Given the overwhelming noise of neoliberal idlelessness, this is as much a task of mental sanitation and discipline as it is of relaxation. Whereas modern laziness is the cutting up of time, true laziness is an inability to say “I” — emptying the self of every desirous impulse. The ontology of Eastern spiritual philosophy in its non-dismembered (re-membered?) form provides a template for such an attitude. As Calhoun (2014) observes, Taoist philosophy contains prescriptions for non-action — based in the idea that force of will does not necessarily result in positive outcomes. This adage holds implications for both the destructiveness of breakneck consumption behaviour and the neoliberal impulsion to productivity. Some forms of Zen Buddhism orient their meditative practice toward emptying of the mind, rather than the ‘mindfulness’ practice popularized and appropriated by the wellness industry. By appreciating true inactivity as the human resting state, temporal dissection loses its apparent virtuousness. Out of this whole cloth, the potential for alternative pleasures arises — creativity, imagination, play, holistic sociality, and the potential for democratic participation.
But while there is obvious value in abstention from diversionary activities and from the lifestyle of idlelessness, it is impossible without adequate time to be free. Fortunately, even within the work realism of the late modern West, there is still some room for agency. The “downshifting” (Frayne 2015) lifestyle entails working as little as feasibly possible, or intermittently working to finance periods of unemployment — for personal projects, travel, or simply to appreciate living. Sadly, however, economic necessity and other concerns negate this option, making it possible only for the relatively-privileged. For idleness to become available as a viable pursuit more generally, a structural shift would need to take place. Although current economic pressures (at least in North America) are trending toward longer hours of work and less pay, this trajectory could easily be reversed. Automation technology holds the potential to obviate many — if not most — paid jobs. Assuming all of society’s needs are met by a steadily decreasing number of person-hours, it should be practically possible for the average subject to work less, and for many to not work (as we currently understand it) at all. Within existing socioeconomic structures, this would constitute a crisis, but an altered model — including a universal basic income, for example — could facilitate the transition to a genuinely post-work world.
Untethered from the necessity of work, as well as from the ideological valorization of idlelessness, the possible uses of one’s time expand enormously. Beyond the pure enjoyment of unharried leisure, the creative human spirit could take form in innumerable ways. The creation and appreciation of art-for-art’s-sake would likely flourish in a society not driven by acquisition and competition. For much the same reason, the democratization of democratic thought has such an uncoercive society as a precondition. Of course, work would still occur in this scenario — but it would take on the characteristics of leisure. Intergenerational community labour has long been part of human culture, creating benefit both through the solidarity-building effect of shared effort as well as the product of the work itself. These postwork activities closely resemble play, which itself serves a valuable purpose. Through play, enrichment and learning takes place, facilitating prosocial thought, creativity, and a greater sense of wellbeing. In this light, the value of play rivals that of work at any wage.
From within work realism, it seems a utopian fantasy — but a culture of playfulness may yet arise. While the structures and ideals of late modernity render idlelessness as both necessary and virtuous, the concreteness of this reality is becoming increasingly dubious. For those with the privilege and desire, laziness — and its attendant pleasures and possibilities — is already a vital pursuit. Made available to the masses, a lifestyle of laze could give rise to a society of unprecedented creativity, solidarity, and democracy — a worthy aim indeed.
References
Althusser, L. (2014). On the reproduction of capitalism. London: Verso.
Barthes, R. (2010). The grain of the voice (pp. 338–344). London: Vintage Classic.
Calhoun, R. (2016). The Libertarian Virtue of Slack. In N. Ford, Abolish Work: A Lazy Exposition of Philosophical Ergophobia (pp. 217–221). Berkeley: LBC Books.
Coffin, P. (2018). Custom Reality and You (1st ed.).
Fisher, M. (2010). Capitalist realism. Winchester, UK: Zero Books.
Frayne, D. (2015). The refusal of work (pp. 157–188). London, UK: Zero Books.
Han, B., & Butler, E. (2015). The burnout society. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
