We’re taking it easy! In episode 103 of Overthink, Ellie and David take a leisurely dive into laziness, discussing everything from couchrotting to the biology of energy conservation. They explore Devon Price’s idea of the ‘laziness lie’ in today’s hyperproductive society and search for alternatives to work through Paul Lefargue’s 19th century campaign for ‘the right to be lazy.’ They also look into the racialization of laziness in Ibn Khaldun and Montesquieu’s ideas on the idle tropics, and t...
Hello and welcome to Overthink, the podcast.
Where two philosophers aim to help you feel better about yourself by pointing out how your personal problems are tied to big ideas and social issues.
I'm Ellie Anderson.
And I'm David Pena Guzman.
People say increasingly that laziness is not a thing.
I feel like at this point in my social circle, the word laziness is just kind of anathema.
You can't use it to refer to yourself or to other people.
And I think this is part of this new movement that treats laziness as just a misnomer.
There's a recent book that came out by the social psychologist Devin Price that I looked at in preparation for this episode called Laziness Does Not Exist.
And this was was based on a viral essay that they had written arguing precisely this.
Love, a book whose thesis is neatly contained in the title Laziness Does Not Exist.
And, you know, I love anything that will rationalize my own disinclination to do work to myself.
So I wish I.
Well, I want to read it now, but I also wish I could have recommended it to my younger self because I think younger David needed to hear about the inexistence of laziness.
Oh, I think my like, pathological self writing 50 things to do over the summer when I was nine years old, because I was just overcome with this feeling of not doing enough stuff.
Needed to read this too.
And one of the really interesting examples that Price gives in developing their argument is the case of depression.
So, of course there are lots of different types of depression, but they're taking sort of a paradigmatic case of major depressive disorder where, you know, somebody has a really hard time getting out of bed in the morning, they're sleeping all day, they're canceling plans with people or not even making them to begin with, they're missing deadlines at work or not showing up to work.
And Price says this looks like laziness from an outside perspective, but actually fighting depression is itself a full time job.
And that just means that there's no energy left over for doing anything else.