Are you lazy?
To preface this piece, I wanted to create a video to stimulate the thought process around
this question:
How does social media affect people being less ‘present’ in their bodies?
I was stewing on the idea about how easy it is in our age to get distracted.
How that distraction easily feels more preferable than the work involved in creating something.
This is the greatest issue with creativity today.
It’s not that we’re lazy.
It’s that we find fascination in many.
An example of this: I was doing research on Rod Serling for my script for my video on
the Twilight Zone and found a link to an Amazon page for a product which was a novelized companion
to episodes from the series.
Before long, I found myself itching to watch the twilight zone rather than continue with
my research.
In my head, I knew that this would lead to me binging away the rest of my daily energy
into as many episodes as I could, but in my heart, I knew I’d just turned my back on
creating yet again- and it adds to this feeling that I think many an artist know well- the
ache of letting an idea go on unwritten.
It’s a creative guilt that I feel builds up over time the longer an artist goes on
without creating something new and each time another opportunity to create escapes them.
This very piece is a spawn of this realization.
The urgency to write, right now.
To add to this anecdote: I was watching an interview with Rod Serling- I’d spent about
an hour and a half or so watching interviews and talks with him- and I’d found myself
constantly pausing to quickly look up certain words that he uses in his rather elevated
syntax.The very idea that I am able to do that- pause what I’m doing, use a hotkey
to open up a temporary tab and in the time frame of just a few seconds and a few taps
of some buttons, learn the meaning of a word or a phrase that I did not know as well before,
then jump back into what I was doing with this new context into what I am watching.
It’s truly a fascinating thing that I think the creatives and legends of times since passed
would marvel in.
One would think that with such knowledge literally at our fingertips like never before, it would
be easier to create.
In some ironic way- it is not.
Now I can’t claim to have lived in the BCs or the 1000s, or the 1950s.
Yet somehow, I get the feeling that the creative greats of our past would find the time we
live in today exponentially frustrating and challenging when juxtaposed with at least
what I perceive to be a simpler time.
But perhaps this opinion is simply the result of my millennial tendencies.
It has just crossed my mind that perhaps the reason why I don’t know these terms and
words is because I never needed to memorize or mentally notate their meaning.
Unlike the literary greats of the past who never had the luxury of a quick google search,
I have in essence, a connection to an infinitely vast database of knowledge- almost like a
second brain.
Perhaps it’s because of this that my generation is regarded as ‘stupid’ by the older ones.
Perhaps in this sense, there’s some truth to that.
Instead of focusing on a qualitative learning experience, we engage in a much more multitudinous
mental focus.
We’re given the luxury of being scatterbrained.
Whether that truly is a luxury and something positive- I don’t know.
In past mentioning a second brain, I just thought of the idea that many of us are perceived
as not using our own.
In some ways, when I look at my work on YouTube (and because I created it), in my mind, I’m
no more an expert than another person with an internet access.
I’m simply utilizing the second brain- this luxury that we all currently have access to.
And my learning experiences came exclusively through self-directed practice and YouTube
tutorials.
I suppose my point here if any, is to reiterate the idea that I believe we as a species are
evolving into a much more technologically dependent kind of organism.
The notions that this idea sets forth in the realms of morality, spirituality, and humanity
are curious.
I think this is what is at the core of a typical episode of Black Mirror.
What do we do with this newfound luxury, and how do we conquer the new unforseen struggles
that come with that new environment?
I do think that our traditional bodily requirements will grow to become obsolete as virtuality
begins to take over.
Truly, what’s the difference between a synthetic reality and the currently perceived “real
world” if the perception of both are the exact same?
Is it wrong to experience a human emotion in a virtual world, just because it manifested
in one?
And going back to things like The Matrix- who’s to say that we aren’t already living
in one, or that we have been in one ever since our current understanding of the dawn of man?
Still- it’s something that seems impossible to prove or disprove so we’ll leave it at
that.
This is an uncharted territory.
And where ‘the human experience’ transcends from here, will be of great interest to see
in the next few decades.
Going back to the concept of ‘laziness’- well, what does that exactly mean?
What is it to be lazy?
We know that it’s inherently a negative trait to be attributed- but why do we all
experience moments like this?
In doing a quick search for ‘why people are lazy’ I found an interesting anecdote:
“People are also poor calculators.
Tonight they may eat and drink indiscriminately, without factoring in the longer-term consequences
for their health and appearance, or even tomorrow morning's hangover.
The ancient philosopher Epicurus famously argued that pleasure is the highest good.
But he cautioned that not everything that is pleasurable should be pursued, and not
everything that is painful should be avoided.
Instead, a kind of hedonistic calculus should be applied to determine which things are most
likely to result in the greatest pleasure over time, and it is above all, this hedonistic
calculus that people are unable to handle.”
The main takeaway from my brief search is that laziness starts where there is no passion.
And I think that makes a lot of sense.
There are many things in the world that I can do, but there are few things relative
to that possibly infinite number that I would actually like to do.
So the next thing that I wonder is- are we stepping forward into a future society where
doing things that we don’t want to do becomes less and less of an option while simultaneously,
things that bring us pleasure take a significantly more prominent center role?
A saying that I hear a lot is “find something that you love to do, and you’ll never work
a day in your life’.
And there’s truth to that, isn’t there?
I’ve never understood people who claim to be genuine in saying “I love to work”.
The struggle I think many of us find ourselves in, is the fact that we often have to do the
things we don’t want to do in order
to live.
So again, I wonder- in a future world where our consciousness is uploaded to a virtual
world that we can perfect infinitely to our own personal likings, where our real bodies
serve as contributing batteries to the planet, or don’t exist at all if you wanna go that
route- are we stepping into an age where these past ideas of the importance of discipline
become archaic?
And yet another question this brings: what does that mean for our humanity?
If we can create our own personal paradises- would we appreciate them?
How would the human experience as we know it be affected by infinite gratification?
Would we find ourselves in a place where we begin to crave pain and suffering simply because
it’s something to feel that isn’t pleasure, where we could program our virtual worlds
to be just like the broken reality we know today?
Is that something we’ve already unconsciously done?
A quick search on the objective definition of laziness says that laziness is the quality
of being unwilling to work or use energy or simply, idleness.
Combining this with the ever-expanding luxuries of our technological advancements, it just
seems practical to be lazy.
I know how inherently wrong that last sentence sounds, but if putting effort into something
that can be equally produced in infinitely more efficient stores by a supercomputer is
a reality we’re heading for, why waste the energy once that becomes our reality?
Another probable infinite mystery: if we can live in a virtual reality where we are by
every aspect of the idea, immortal, and therefore time has no meaning, would we ever get to
creating that thing we’ve been too distracted to finally sit down and focus on?
Is this thought pattern the beginnings of an inkling into what some call a higher being,
others call extraterrestrial, and others still, call supernatural?
Ourselves?
Interstellar is a film that comes to mind here because there’s a part of the movie
that calls into question the idea of extraterrestrial and “higher” beings who exist in a 5th
dimension.
What if that’s us?
In the opening of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling states that there is a fifth dimension, and
yes it is a work of fiction- but as a concept, how much do we really know?
Perhaps I’m going a little too off-base here.
But what if I’m not?
And if this is true- what does that mean for creativity?
What does that mean for art?
In the pursuit of creating something meaningful, did we create something that eradicates all
meaning?
One thing seems clear here, and it’s that our society is currently in a very awkward
transition between the past and the future, the old and the new.
We are flying at an ever-increasing rate towards something in the darkness while holding on
to the beliefs of our past.
Whether those beliefs will become virtually meaningless when we get to where we’re going,
remains to be seen.
What about you?
What do you think?