Of Laziness and Progress

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."
- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

Note that Heinlein says "progress" not "new products on the market." "Progress" is a word with many interpretations.

Nonetheless, more progress is made in technology during periods of strong competition, including war. And more progress is made by lonely souls who work by themselves than by people in groups.

I have never met a lazy man. I have met several who have said they were lazy, therefore tried to find easier and faster ways of doing things. But they were industrious persons.

I have also met people who have given up on life, who essentially have considered themselves doomed to live out a negative kind of fate that has been laid out for them and from which they felt they can't escape.

"Lazy" was created as a derogatory term for someone whose problems they can't face and we don't intend to help with.

A person who uses the term "lazy" to describe someone is selfish and self-centred, an egotist who wants the world continually turning their way.

Not one among us knows what goes on in the mind of any other of us. We don't know the restrictions under which they live or the burdens they carry. Maybe they should not hold to these restrictions or carry the burdens. But they do.

Describing that person as lazy does nothing to help. It only hurts.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to clarify how little we know about each other, thus how incapable we are to judge them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl