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Pop open a can of beer, pull up a deck chair and let's talk about laziness in America.

Did you hear about that Philadelphia teacher who was suspended earlier this year for calling her students "lazy whiners"? Have yous seen that in the past few months in that location has been a spate of books published for lazy Americans, including The Lazy Gourmet and The Lazy Intellectual? Have you tried Lazy Cakes relaxation brownies, tasted Lazy Magnolia beer from Mississippi or heard Bruno Mars' tricky new Lazy Song?

Even when we're relaxing, we're multitasking: A UC Berkeley student thumbs his mobile device. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

And expect hither. This is the contempo American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It says Americans are working less (26 minutes a day less than in 2007) and goofing off more (sleeping and watching Tv are on the increase).

Are we becoming a lazy nation?

Maybe the answer is found in how we choose to spend our leisure fourth dimension. In this contend, equally in so many others, we are two nations — those who believe that a mean solar day off should be used to improve ourselves and those who want to apply their down time to do aught.

In the same style that "what nosotros practise" determines who we are, "what we don't practise" also matters. And — help yourself to another beer — the question of how we use our leisure time gets at the center of the American experience.

Laziness Promotes Invention

In earliest America, laziness was considered past many to be a vice. Or at to the lowest degree a luxury. This was the egalitarian New World where hard work could make dreams come up true — if you didn't spend also much time dreaming. The Founding Fathers never foundered: They were e'er on the get.

"Determine never to exist idle," Thomas Jefferson said. "It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing." Jefferson was such a multitasker, he famously kept books inside reach at Monticello then he could read while he waited for guests to gather for dinner.

Benjamin Franklin let it be known early on how he planned to use his days off. "Leisure is the time for doing something useful," he said. "This leisure the diligent person will obtain, the lazy one never."

But by the fourth dimension the 20th century rolled around, some people were kickoff to argue that a little laziness was non all bad.

"Laziness promotes invention," the Los Angeles Times reported in 1910. The commodity related the story of a kid who was assigned to monitor a water pump powered by a steam engine. His task was to watch a piston rod ascension, and when information technology reached a certain betoken, he was to open up a valve, release the steam and allow the procedure to start all over again.

"Now this boy was substantially lazy," the story explained. "He establish this occupation monotonous in the extreme. And so it happened ane day that his primary came and constitute no boy, although to his astonishment the pump was working perfectly. The lazy boy had procured some pieces of iron, and with these he had fabricated the engine work the valves automatically, thus giving him his freedom. And this was the starting time invention of an automatic steam engine."

This was during the era of William Howard Taft, who was president from 1909 to 1913. Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith says Taft "despised the political demands of the presidency, and became notorious for nodding off in Cabinet meetings and other events — in one case sleeping though an open motorcar tour of New York City. Of course, his excessive weight and accompanying slumber apnea may have had something to do with it."

Equally Americans prospered, and increased industrialization led to more luxurious leisure fourth dimension, some people believed that off hours provided an opportunity for cocky-improvement, through practice or reading, for example. "After you lot have worked six, viii, ten or fifty-fifty twelve hours day, practise non call up your remaining hours can exist wasted in pleasure," John Candee Dean wrote in the Indianapolis Star in 1920. "Practice not waste matter your fourth dimension at the 'movies,' at the theater or in the street. If you lot will apply all your spare time well, you can not only become financially contained, but also a man of education."

A more than productive couch potato?

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Others believed that leisure time was the perfect fourth dimension to do nothing. And in 1928, a couple of Michigan cousins in the furniture business capitalized on this national strain. Using orange crates, they designed a chair that tilted dorsum in a daybeddish way. They took suggestions for the name of their new objet d'sloth: the Sit-Due north-Snooze, the Slack Back and the Condolement Carrier. Somewhen they settled on a name that reflected the delighted self-image of some Americans: They called their presently-to-be-classic recliner the La-Z-Male child.

Americans began to accept summertime vacations. But oftentimes they didn't want to do anything. At a pre-summer meeting of resort operators at the Academy of New Hampshire in 1948, there was a full general lament, co-ordinate to the Boston Globe, "that many vacationists never get across the luxurious laziness of lounging on a porch where they can contemplate the beauty of a mountain, or a lake, or a peaceful village."

And at the epicenter of 20th-century American lazitude was the idiot box ready. In 1950, a few Zenith Goggle box models featured the first remote control devices — called Lazy Basic. In 1954, Swanson created the "TV dinner." Lazy Americans saturday in recliners, ate prefab dinners and enjoyed shows about other lazy Americans, such as Chester A. Riley in The Life of Riley and Maynard Thousand. Krebs in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

But ever there was a parallel American voice that was alarmed by donothingness. In 1973, the rate of increment in American productivity had slowed downwardly then much, the Department of Commerce launched a $10 one thousand thousand advertisement campaign to encourage Americans to be more productive. "Americans didn't get rich past goofing off," was one of the ads.

That year Harry Bernstein wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "Some persons believe there is a greater tendency today to care for work more casually than in the past and that this represents a basic attitudinal change in workers, a new 'the hell-with-information technology' feeling."

Lazy In The 21st Century

By the time the 20th century rolled around, some people were beginning to contend that a petty laziness was non all bad. Library of Congress hide caption

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Library of Congress

Over the acting decades, the boxing over how we spend our leisure time turned into an all-out war between ii extreme camps — those who employ information technology and those who snooze through information technology. The divisiveness continues today. Some Americans exercise religiously; others grow more obese. Some go to night schools; others are diverted by video games. Some believe that computers and the Net have made us lazier; others aver that engineering science has increased our productivity.

And the contend, in very American manner, has gotten fifty-fifty more than complicated. "In the 21st century," says Sloan Gaon, CEO of the eatery-delivery website Dotmenu.com, " 'being lazy' is nigh getting what you want, when you want information technology, delivered to you."

In fact, President Obama — himself a multitasking Jeffersonian type — waded into the outcome in 2009 when he warned graduating seniors at Arizona State Academy that too much piece of work in the pursuit of fancy trappings is not a good thing. "A relentless focus on the outward markers of success," Obama admonished, "can lead to complacency. It tin can make you lazy. Nosotros as well often let the external, the material things, serve as indicators that nosotros're doing well, even though something inside u.s.a. tells us that we're non doing our all-time; that nosotros're avoiding that which is difficult but as well necessary; that we're shrinking from, rather than rising to, the challenges of the age. And the matter is, in this new, hyper-competitive age, none of united states — none of us — can afford to be conceited."

And so we are left on this Independence Day Weekend 2011 wondering what to do with our independence. Should we be lazy or leisurely or neither? "Laziness, often interchanged with leisureliness, has a negative connotation that suggests a person hasn't bought in to the commonsensical agenda," observes Daniel 50. Dustin, chairman of the Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department at the Academy of Utah. "I think leisureliness refers to a step of life that is not governed by the clock. It tends to run counter to the notions of economic efficiency, economies of scale, mass production, etc. Yet leisureliness to me suggests slowing downward and milking life for all it is worth. I see it as a skillful thing."

Sounding a little Franklinian, Dustin says, "Our infatuation with time-saving devices does not suggest to me so much that we are lazy as it suggests that nosotros identify a nifty bargain of accent on doing things quicker and more efficiently to relieve time. Indeed, I call up Volition Rogers said something to the issue that we rush through life to save time, but we take no idea what to do with the time we save."

Lazy Cakes — brownies laced with melatonin to promote relaxation — are just one signpost of slacker culture. herbalcity.com/lazycakes hide caption

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herbalcity.com/lazycakes

Businessman and blogger Fred Gratzon, on the other paw, sees the usefulness in laziness. "One can be lazy and reach zero. Nonetheless, one can as well use his or her God-given laziness to accomplish a not bad deal."

If you lot call up about information technology, says Gratzon, creator of the LazyWay blog, "all progress in society, since the beginning of time, has been driven by lazy people looking to avoid work. For example, the kickoff guy to put a sail on a gunkhole was looking for a manner to avert rowing. The guy who first hitched a turn to an ox was looking for a fashion to escape digging. And whoever harnessed a waterfall to grind grain was too lazy to pound information technology with rocks. These types of people were considered lazy by their peers. But information technology was this laziness — this most sublime quality — that gave the world these advances.

He adds, "Those who declare laziness a vice must be jealous. And when a politician — or anyone — condemns laziness and claims he or she is 'working difficult' to solve a problem, he is simply albeit that he is not smart plenty or creative plenty to find an easier — lazy — way of accomplishing what needs to exist done."

Permit's think well-nigh that for a while. Desire another beer?

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2011/07/01/137531711/lazy-in-america-a-brief-social-history

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