YzermanS19

Dissected, I feel that the Plato, Nietzshe, average human, chimp thought is spot on.....believe as you may, I agree with it. I don't necessarily agree that Greeks were advanced as we are, except maybe socially. As for fear and laziness....I believe fear is the most universal human trait. For obvious reasons.

This is a quote from the movie Waking Life. It doesn't really matter if you have seen or havent. What is your response to it?

__________________
the light that burns twice as bright
burns half as long

and you have burned so very, very brightly

krwlz

Laziness....Absolutly. Im a smart guy, and had I chose, I could have been doing advanced physics/math by now (well, i like to think so anyway). but I never had the desire to excersise my abilities past what i needed to get through school (talking bout high school, im 18).

Im lazy. I think most people are, which is why we dont advance very fast.

CSflim

I would write a long and indepth reply....but I can't be arsed.

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Macheath

Why so few artists and geniuses? Well, not only do they have to be brilliant, but we regular folk have to recognize that brilliance and that recognition has to survive through the ages.

How many Plato's and Nietzsche's have been forgotten; their legacy lost? Even worse, how many have been repressed and actively tortured for their 'heresy'?

Laziness is definitely a symptom of fear; fear of unrewarded effort, fear of failure, fear of what's outside, fear of rejection. All things that keep people in front of the TV where life is safe and empty and you can hide from the world and hope nobody notices.

YzermanS19

Macheath, thats probably the most insightful answer I could have possibly seen. Not to say anyone else has a response up to that or beyond, but damn. Insightful stuff right there.

Very good point

__________________
the light that burns twice as bright
burns half as long

and you have burned so very, very brightly

Battlefield

Laziness is caused by the fear that doing something will be more painful than not doing it. Ultimately we are driven by our fear of pain and desire for pleasure. I'm no philosopher I just stole that from Anthony Robbins---the guy is a genius.

anti fishstick

i think this is definately true and i was going to say something along the lines of: fear is the underlying reason to every human response. be it laziness or what have you. the quote pretty much sums up my thoughts completely. it's so much easier to be lazy than try to go out and do something for yourself. it's so much easier to be a failure than to TRY to succeed. at least you are failing by choice, not because you tried and failed. and with that.. here's another quote:

the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing and is nothing. he may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live. chained by his certitudes, he is a slave, he has forfeited freedom. only a person who risks is free.

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And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~Anais Nin

JcL

I think that fear is definitely the universal trait of man.

It reminds me of the emotional scale in Donnie Darko, with Fear on one side and Love on the other I believe it was.

__________________
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth then lies." - Nietzsche

rogue49

I have no fear, or if I do...I surpass it.

It's the laziness that gets me.
If I didn't procrastinate, it would be amazing what I could do.

But I am mostly taking my time, or recovering from the conflicts of life.
This is the kid in me that I fight daily.

raeanna74

The biggest reason that we fail to do things is fear. We're afraid to step outside our comfort zone and face all the possibilities there. Instead of facing reality we retreat to our own little worlds. I find myself doing that here on the computer even. If I face the things I have to do then if I don't do them right in my mind I risk feeling like a failure or worse. Those who succeed are those who are willing to take those risks and step out in spite of criticism from others or even themselves. FEAR is what holds us back. my Uncle calls it backwards Pride - afraid of having our Ego's hurt. We will do what is necessary to survive and feed our Id. Ego is what makes us do more or afraid to do more.

__________________
"Always learn the rules so that you can break them properly." Dalai Lama
My Karma just ran over your Dogma.

Shpoop

I also would write a long and indepth reply, but im too lazy

JazzmanAl

I wish I could think of something to write here, but it looks like almost every angle is covered.

I am also too lazy to think, or am I fearful of appearing stupid?

It is probably too late for the stupid.

__________________
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
-The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

Your dumber then me.

Ubermensch

Just think what we could all achieve if we stopped spending so much time in the internet trying to impress each other with our on intelligence and actually went and read som Plato or Neitzsche. Or even tried to advance our culture or society by adding to it? I think that ultimately computers will be our downfall. The only driven people will eventually come to develp such powerful comuters that society will become totallly dependant on them, and we can all relax into what we all want to do most: sit on our asses for good.

__________________
"Man is a rope, fastened between animal and superman - a rope aver an abyss."
Thus spake Zarathustra

raeanna74

That is so true Ubermensch - about sitting here at the computer instead of actually reading for enrichment. The classics and good literature are so forgotten. I find I have a constant battle with myself to watch how much time I spend on the computer and what I spend doing on it. On that note I will get off here and get on with real life.

__________________
"Always learn the rules so that you can break them properly." Dalai Lama
My Karma just ran over your Dogma.

Mick.Lexington

I have a great respect for Louis Mackey but to say, “pick one, fear or laziness—” I believe one drives the other, man, as do all elements of the universe, takes the path of least resistance driven by fear and guided by an avoidance of industry until this avoidance becomes the nuance. It is easier not to do your taxes than to do them, but on April 14th it is easier to do your taxes than to go to jail, etc. It was not easy for the American Revolutionaries to move from a state of bondage to a meta-physical awakening that brought forth the American Independence yet it was easier to wake-up than stay in a state of bondage that was impeding the collective lathergicity. My concern is what will be the wake-up call as the great American conversation slowly marches form apathy— to dependence.

Irlandés

Well fear and laziness must be universal traits if this thread started in 2003 and it's now 2008! I'm 36 and I've been wandering around the last few days (or few years) convinced that my two great defects are some strange mix of fear and laziness which to my slow brain is a great revelation. So I decided I'd plug the two words into google and see where they'd take me and they took me straight to this thread. Some very interesting ideas have been expressed here and I've jotted a couple of them down for future perusal. What did someone once say... "do something every day that scares you"? I'm trying to program the words 'fear and laziness' into my conscious brain so that they pop up every time they're behind my way of doing things or not doing things. Only by being conscious of their insidious nature can we arm ourselves to combat them and widen that gap between humans and super-chimpanzees (not that I've anything against monkeys).

'nuff said, I'm off to bed!

MSD

Wow, this is old.

My take on it is to agree that fear is universal, and quite likely the most fundmental evolutionary trait of sentient animals besides the urge to reproduce. Consider how it's tied into involuntary nervous system responses, especially the adrenaline rush and the collection of reflexes characterized as "fight or flight." Without it so deeply ingrained in the primitive brain, I can't imagine a species surviving for long.

Then again, once a species hits a certain point (I'm not sure if I'd say a certain point in evolution or a certain point in societal development,) its importance diminishes. Most people will not be exposed to life-or-death situations before they are able to intelligently analyze the situation, if at all. It's something I'll have to think about more.

anti fishstick

fear, because laziness is just fear in disguise...

Waking Life is an awesome movie by the way.

__________________
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~Anais Nin