Ouch! That was certainly, and unnecessarily, venomous. I can only hope that @MorallySuperior does not use that kind of language in public.

Look, I greatly admire words that begin with the letter L (Note 3). The English language uses them to add a depth and resonance to a slow life. I savor words such as loafing, languid, lassitude, leisurely, lounging, lethargy, lackadaisical, lay-about, and the phrase lolling about.

As you clearly see though, the word laziness is intentionally absent from that list. Even I, chief of all indolents, recognize that laziness carries the connotation of dishonorably shirking one’s duty. In turn, that makes everyone’s life harder as they must pick up the slack.

Shirking one’s duty, dear friends, is not at all what the Indolence Movement is about—quite the opposite in fact. Yes, lounging on the sofa is always my supreme goal, but when duty calls and work is necessary and unfortunately unavoidable, then one should adhere to Nike’s admonition of “Just do it.”

If one take’s the King’s shilling then one must do the King’s work and he allows no slackness. So my point is not to be a shirker, but rather to minimize those times when one actually needs to do work in the first place. See the difference? Don’t slither out of responsibility, but only engage in toil when there are few, if any, options to avoid it.

In fact, a loafer can be the very best of workers. Since his overarching motivation is to rapidly return to a state of leisure, he will roll up his sleeves, work efficiently and effectively, and often finish early. So, @MorallySuperior, calling an indolent “lazy” is presumptuously judgmental and is, frankly, uncalled for.

Most definitely yes! Sir Winston Churchill was once asked, by an Oxford undergraduate, the secret of his success in life. Without hesitation he replied: “Never stand up when you can sit down and never sit down when you can lie down!”

Additionally, Tom Hodgkinson’s book How to be Idle: A Loafer’s Manifesto provides a fine blueprint for the lay-about and, of course, Ivan Goncharov’s 1859 novel Oblomov stands as a true masterpiece in the genre of fictional indolence. Oblomov was a member of the fading Russian landed gentry and was so given over to sloth that he would have his man-servant wake him in the middle of the night just so he could enjoy the sensation of falling back to sleep. Now that’s the spirit!

And let’s not forget the great English economist John Maynard Keynes, who, in 1930, wrote an article entitled Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. In this fine work he predicted that in 2030 people in advanced economies would only need to work 15 hours a week. Lots to debate there but, for obvious reasons, I hold this document in the very highest regard.

Great question! In the 5th grade I started delivering newspapers in the Chicago area. By the 8th grade I was doing two routes a day during the week with quite extensive deliveries on the weekend. I was such an eager beaver that I was always up before the sun. This dear reader, for better or worse, was the pinnacle of my working career.   

In high school I flipped burgers, cleaned barns, shoveled gravel for a contractor, and performed the most unpleasant manual labor. It did not take me long to realize that endless toil was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Heck, I didn’t even want to be doing it in my teens, twenties, or thirties for that matter. 

Fortunately, I figured out that if I were a true gentleman about things that a new path was possible. A gentleman you ask? How so?

Well, you see, I quickly realized that people love to drone on about how hard they work and how this level of supreme effort reflects a good character and a strong moral fiber.

This thinking, I learned, stems from a variety of sources. Some of it from Judaeo-Christian teachings and beliefs, some of it from lessons instilled by teachers, and some of it from a widespread societal adherence to hallowed and misty maxims about how hard work is an honorable virtue. 

Maybe it goes back even further with cavemen grunting, in a proto-language of sorts that “Work good, loafing bad.” Either way, these unfortunate views regarding work became the controlling societal ethos and mankind has suffered ever since. 

Thus, when facing an over-achiever, I decided to be polite, stand to the side, and let them charge ahead in their quest for self-actualization and its attendant bragging rights. Who was I, after all, to stop them as they took the world to Hell in a hand-basket by working 70 hours a week? 

Also, to be fair, my inclination to do very little in life was an unexpected gift bestowed upon me by the Fates. They blessed me, for some reason, with an unfailing skill for discovering ever new ways to do absolutely nothing. In other words, I did not have to work very hard at not doing much.

Thus, by the age of 18 I had answered the Siren’s call of a low-energy life. Fortunately, instead of bashing my ship upon the rocks as did so many sailors in Greek mythology, I found the Siren’s call to be just the right thing—definitely a match made in heaven!

Well, the best advice of course is to either inherit money or to marry it. This way one has a stronger assurance of not having to toil daily in the vineyards. 

Failing that however, I counsel the upcoming generations to constantly leverage technology to enhance and enrich inactivity.

Technology has, of course, relieved mankind of many dangerous and repetitive tasks. Innovations such as diesel engines, word-processing programs, robotics, and power tools were godsends to those living in drudgery…or at least they were for a while. 

That said, we fell into a trap. Instead of rejoicing that we no longer needed to do these tasks, we unfortunately replaced them with new ones. So, with a bovine obedience, we still trudge off to work just as we did decades ago. Somewhere we lost the plot and so I warn young people that while technology is a marvel, there will be people who will only use it to add work to our schedules. 

The news is not all grim however, as there have been great successes in harnessing technology in the furtherance of indolence. I think of the young folk who, over the past 30 years, have deftly employed a number of torpor-inducing tech gadgets such as the PlayStation, Xbox, and other gaming consoles to enhance their free time.

These productivity tools for the indolent, as I call them, have afforded millions of young men and women innumerable hours on the sofa where they have enjoyed a level of idleness that was unimaginable even just 50 years ago.  

As contradictory as it sounds, one needs a lot of energy to bring one’s A game to inactivity. I have always found that Entemann’s chocolate covered donuts, for example, are a good fuel for serious loafing. 

This is not, of course, to give second place to Krispy Kreme or Dunkin Donuts as they are also excellent nutritional options for the lay-about.

Well, thank you for your confidence that I carry enough intellectual weight to understand your question, much less answer it, but here I need to be completely transparent.

While I would like to brag to you that I spend all my time pondering history’s great philosophical questions, the truth is that the last two books I have read were about the antics of the band Van Halen during the David Lee Roth era. Currently I am reading a book entitled Lowlife about the underbelly of New York City between 1850 and 1950, and I am also an avid Philadelphia Eagles football fan. Does that perhaps answer your questions? 

Fair question, and the answer must be one of three things: 

Either I am leading a double life as a high-energy workaholic (doubtful, but theoretically possible), I am an Artificial Intelligence bot (very possible within ChatGPT), or I am a rich hipster tech bro who is sitting at the donut shop dictating all this to a good speech to text program that I wrote myself. The bookmakers are not giving odds on that last one so you have to pick! 

Well, I trod reluctantly into such a topic, but first I need to ask you a question.

Scholars believe the book of Proverbs in the Bible was written by more than one author and found its final form between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. 

Within its chapters I can find at least a dozen condemnations of a leisurely lifestyle with words such as “sluggard” frequently employed…and when I say “condemnations” I mean really strong denunciations.

Most famously, in chapter 6 of Proverbs the author admonishes the sluggard to “look at the ant.” The idea here, of course, is that a slothful person should follow the example of the industrious and ever-diligent ant who is always working at something or another.

Now I will concede that 2500 years ago these frequent and sharp reminders were probably useful for Iron Age peoples to get things done. Remember, back then there was still a lot of work to do! 

The Eiffel Tower had not yet been built, the Panama Canal had not yet been dug, there were no heated car seats, and fiber-optic internet access was far in the future. 

But mankind has now finished those projects, so I suggest we form a committee: You and King Solomon on one side of the table, while on the other one will find Winston Churchill, John Maynard Keynes, Oblomov, and me. Maybe we could come up with a much more amenable work-life balance? I mean Proverbs, for some reason, gets intensely serious when it comes to work doesn’t it? Couldn’t we tone it down a notch or two? I’ll leave it for your consideration. 

Ok, its nap time. Thank you for joining me and remember, I am always here to encourage you to do absolutely nothing. It is, I promise, all it’s cracked up to be!