Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 14:35:11 -0400
From: Stirling Newberry <allegro-AT-thecia.net>
Subject: Re: PLC: TUNA -- Trendy Usage of Nonsensical Additions


At 11:52 AM -0700 12/2/97, deaun moulton wrote:
>On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, Stirling Newberry wrote:
>>
>> Ah but that is why I constructed it the way I did. Work doesn't make lazy
>> people unhappy, they only need think that it would make them unhappy if
>> they did it.
>
>Certainly this is not "natural" but an affect of a capitalist society?
>One that is being resisted all by people who are returning
>to more self-sufficient life styles...e.g. the growth in the
>"do-it-yourself" home improvement industries and co-op farms.  Also, the
>increased interest in Emerson over the last few years....

Actualy if you observe pre-capitalist societies one finds that they have
definitions of lazy too in most cases. They differ from technological
socities in some interesting ways. For example "closure" is much more
important to some societies than others. Capitalism was well under way
before "punctuality" became part of the work ethic and so on.

But since laziness is in the eye of the beholder - let me be more specific
- I am talking about that state where the middle brain has recognised,
logically, that something ought to be done, but that the will (forebrain)
is still resisting movement. That is - laziness from the perspective of
being caught in a cycle of being aware that it is time to get up and feed
yourself - but not being able to gather the resolve and do something about
it.

While the pressures that might make one come to the conclusion that it is
time to work migh be culturally determined, the state of mind itself is not.


>
>If you are suggesting that happiness is a product of a labor of some kind
>and that we are not "naturally" aware of this sensation until it is proven
>(shown, required, ) well then, maybe....but I think that the possibility
>of the experience exists without the imposition of outside authority.  The
>same child who watches TV rather than plays outside and still discovers
>that (s)he can make Mario jump through pictures has had the experience of
>accomplishment without the imposition of authority from the outside.

I'm suggesting that the part of the brain that figures out what needs to be
done is not the part of the brain that triggers doing it, and the two can
be in conflict.

Stirling Newberry
business: openmarket.com
personal: allegro-AT-thecia.net
War and Romance: http://www.thecia.net/users/allegro/public_html




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