The Philosophy of Laziness
Why people who do nothing with their lives might be wiser than you think
Many of you have probably heard the phrase non-doing, or the ancient Chinese term Wu-Wei.
As a central concept within the heart of Taoism (Daoism) it has become a popular philosophy today not only in the east, but also the western world.
As a practice it is commonly understood to be a state of being in which a doer is no longer driving the body to accomplish goals and daily routines.
Instead, the body becomes an empty vessel and operates in a way that can only be described as a “flow state”, or a state of consciousness in which the subject of experience simply goes with the flow of life or a situation, unperturbed by a thinking entity within the body who carries the burden of making choices.
Lao Tzu often described our lives like an infinite, eternally flowing river. Human beings (or at the very least, our egos) are like fish in this river and we ultimately have two choices.
We can choose to flow with the current, or against it. Become one with the water, or turn the water into an adversary.
Given a careful inspection of one’s life and their own personal relationship with it, I believe most people will find this statement to be true.
We can either chase our dreams upstream, and thereby risk resistance, turbulence, fatigue, frustration, anger, etc. along the way; or we can let go of this tension and effort and instead remain in a state of allowing, like Nietzsche suggests, by saying YES to the universe and all that it throws our way.
This isn’t to say that going with the flow is the correct way to live life and swimming up river is wrong. There is no right way to exist.
We are completely free to make either choice, and this is coming from a guy who doesn’t even believe in conventional freewill! (I’ll leave freewill for another article.)
There is only one substantial difference between these two states: one of them requires zero mental effort.
Simply put, our two choices are this: chase our desires, which require effort and risk (along with excitement, adventure and feelings of vigor and narcissistic vanity), or let go of desires entirely and be free of this perpetual feeling of needing to do something, which plagues our consciousness at every waking moment. After this we can relax, be lazy, go with the flow, and risk alienation from all of our peers due to differing values and societal expectations, all without the voice in our head telling us to “get up and go do something!” or that “you’re worthless!”.
Stamp your name into a minuscule section of a finite universe, or fade into the background — and dissolve into everything. Both have repercussions.
Like every real choice in life, there will always be pros and cons… but now I would like to pivot this in a different direction.
We just covered the conventional meaning of Non-doing and its implications in practice, but I would suggest that the intended meaning of Wu-Wei does not stop there.
There is another dimension to it, one that the western world seems to have edited out of the original concept.
Inaction.
This is not the same as the flow state we discussed earlier. It is something related, but different.
Inaction is exactly what it sounds like. Not non-doing, but literally doing nothing. (Except for actions necessary for survival. When hungry eat, when tired sleep.)
This is something that can be observed happening by almost every other species in the animal kingdom, except of course, the human animal.
We can’t stand inaction.
We named it boredom, but the rest of the animal kingdom treats it like paradise.
Therein lies a clue to the separation of man from the natural order. We hated nature’s game so much, we walked away. Why? See my previous article The Irony of Self Awareness for more on this topic.
Rather than overcomplicate my viewpoint with amateur explanations I’ll instead present you with a quote from one of my favorite philosophers, Emil Cioran. This one paragraph encapsulates the point I’m trying to make better than I ever could.
“A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything. Was boredom unknown to them? This is indeed a question raised by a human, a busy ape. Far from fleeing monotony, animals crave it, and what they most dread is to see it end. For it ends, only to be replaced by fear, the cause of all activity. Inaction is divine; yet it is against inaction that man has rebelled. Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs — something, anything…. Thereby he shows himself unworthy of his ancestor: the need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.”
What does Cioran mean by this?
Inaction is our salvation, and our reward for completing all the necessary tasks assigned to us by nature. Nonetheless we’ve squandered it, trading restful passivity for a never ending engagement with life’s experiences.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
And yet, if you reside within a society such as the one I live in… it does have to be this way.
Civilization was built by action, and only perpetual action can sustain it. To Cioran, human liberation could only arrive riding on the shoulders of an apocalypse.
Like Thanatos and Hypnos, Ragnarök and Nirvana are comrades; brothers born from the natural (dis)order. Their relationship is subtle, but blood is shared between them.
Take from this what you will. As good, or bad!
Pursuing either circumstance (egoism or enlightenment), can be both a beautiful and dreadful experience, but neither is the right way to be human.
Morality has no horse in this particular race.
It’s just you, and the four horsemen.
