I think being lazy is good. As most of the problems that we face today are because of over enthusiastic active people. Had the Megasthenes’, Vasco Da Gama’s and Columbus’s stayed at home we would have had a much better society today. Watched Helena Norberg’s Ecomomics of Happiness some days back. For the last few days I was thus observing how consumerism has taken over our mind, soul and body. And what I saw and realized out of observation and self-realization was quite alarming.
Helena Norberg-Hodge (hereby referred as HNH) made her case as she demonstrated how globalization is actually disrupting the carefully grafted local communities, cultures and traditions which has developed over some thousands and millions of years. She demonstrates how the so called messiah called ‘Globalization’, who was supposed to be the panacea of society’s ailments has actually increased manifold the problems of poverty, communalism and other social evils. Most of our society’s problems are because of causes which were sown in the last century with the advent of mass production, industrial revolution, globalization and the mad drive to promote consumerism.
So what has laziness got to do with all this? You must be wondering. It’s elementary Watson! I would say. Would it not have been for Marco Polo, who had this incurable overenthusiasm, Europe would have never come to know of Chinese Silk and Oriental pleasures. And mind it that Europe was also not in a great mess either. Had overenthusiastic people had just stayed home, all these local communities would have prevailed, and the world would have been a greater place to live in.
Population:
Population is another by product of this bubble called globalization. Had people lived in their small habitats, they would have by themselves kept reproduction under strict control because they knew that resources were limited. And then globalization created a mirage of the plenty and the greedy as humans always were, we starved voraciously eating up the natural resources of the earth.
It is said that having sex is like jogging for 20kms. It is so much of exercise. I think God made this a natural inhibition for people to avoid sex. Had people not been so active, the world would have seen a lot less population today.
According to mythology, in ancient Sparta, shortly after birth, a mother would bathe her child in wine to see whether the child was strong. If the child survived it was brought before the Gerousia(the Spartan senate) by the child's father. The Gerousia then decided whether it was to be reared or not. Every community would have developed such natural ways of eugenics and every community would have population of healthy, intelligent people.
Wars and Conflict:
It was all those over enthusiastic kings who caused all this trouble we have today. Alexander came to India all the way from Macedonia. What was his dire need for all that trouble? He could have easily stayed at home and enjoyed life. He should be called Alexander the fool, instead of Alexander the Great. How can a person who let go of endless worldly pleasures and took himself and hundreds of his subjects to despair and pain and took the world to disharmony be anything but a fool. But we call such characters as great and people who actually laid back and enjoyed life as lazy and underachievers. All wars and conflict happen because of over active people. Had Osama Bin Laden been lazy, the twin tower would have been safe today. Had Americans been a bit more lazy, the twin tower wouldn’t have been constructed at all. And people would have been happy raising wheat in their wild wild west homes.
Science and Technology:
Had Newton been lazy, he would never have wondered why the apple fell from the tree. He would have just left it alone and enjoyed his siesta under the tree. And has his or Edison’s or Einstein’s inventions really made the world a better place to live in? No. James Watt caused a hell lot of sound and air pollution with his steam engine. And the overenthusiastic man went on laying railway tracks to the world’s end. Who wanted to travel that much? Was it really required? We say that all we do is to ultimately to quench hunger in our stomach. ‘Sab kuch iss paapi pet ke liye’, we say in Hindi. Well I don’t think we needed railway tracks all over India to feed ourselves. I don’t think we needed electric bulbs when we anyways sleep for 8 hours every day. We could as well sleep from sunset (7 pm ) to sunrise(5 am). Had you been lazy enough, you could have slept through 1-2 hours of darkness, and you could have very well avoided the bulb. One may argue that not everywhere in the world do we have sunlight for that many hours in a day. Well, had it not been for the overenthusiastic man nobody would have gone that far to live at such god forbidden places.
God created a perfect world for everybody. But the only mistake he did was made humans over enthusiastic. Why do you have to achieve any great ness in life? The only aim that every individual should have to try to achieve happiness. And in this mad hunt to achieve achievement we forget to achieve Happiness.
(*just kidding.)
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