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Add to FavoritesAs an American I must state with emphatic surety the average American is lazy. Our forefathers, who built this nation by the sweat of their brow, would be appalled and very angry to see how we live our lives today.
One hundred fifty years ago men rose before dawn to feed the livestock and eat a hearty breakfast before going to work in the fields the entire day. They often came in after dark to a late evening meal and retired to bed shortly thereafter in order to get up the next morning and do the same. They did not own tractors. They pushed plows pulled by work mules and horses. They chopped trees down and sawed wood by hand to provide heat for their homes and fuel for the cooking stove. These men had to slaughter livestock and cure the meat in order to feed their families. Their hands were rough, calloused, and dirty, as were the clothes they wore, but they took great pride in the work they did.
The women rose before dawn to gather eggs, pump water, and cook a hearty breakfast for their husband and children over a wood burning stove. These women helped their husbands on the farm, canned and dried the food they harvested from their crops so their family would have food for the winter, made all the family's bread, made the quilts under which they slept, helped their children with their homework, made dye with which to dye the cloth they made by spinning wool and other fiber so they could make clothing for the entire family, and taught their daughters how to cook, sew, and all the other things they would need to know in order to take care of their own families some day. All of this they did, and more, while wearing heavy lace up shoes and dresses that swept the ground as they walked no matter the season and without the benefit of maternity leave or a vacation.
Our forefathers knew what the word "work" meant. They put in a full day of work to care for and provide for their families and they did not whine and complain all day while doing it.
Progress is a wonderful thing, to a point. However in today's high tech world we have progressed to the point a child would rather sit indoors playing on the XBox or Playstation, playing on the computer, or watching television rather than go outdoors and play with friends or ride a bike. Many adults sit in front of the computer or television when they are at home while the lawn goes days past needing to be mowed and minor house repairs are neglected.
Work in today's world means your job, your means of earning a living, and for a lot of Americans it is anything but work. Many have desk jobs where they sit in front of a computer all day working on files, crunching numbers, designing templates, and other tasks that are quite sedentary. As a result, the population in general has become overweight causing us to become even lazier when we are not on duty at our places of employment. This in itself has brought about many medical problems we would not have if we had been more active.
There are still many Americans with jobs they perceive to be physcially demanding, such as loading heavy goods all day for shipment, and they do very little when they are not on duty because they feel exhausted. However, even these type jobs pale in comparison to the hard labor of those who came before us.
We have grown accustomed to coming in from what we think is a long, hard day at work and throwing a pre-packaged, frozen entree in the oven and call it cooking dinner for our family. We no longer bother to sit and pen a letter to a friend or family member far away. We go to our computers and quickly type a few lines to them in email before returning to our televisions. Remote controls for all our electronic equipment keeps us from having to get up out of our seats to change the channel or a CD. Even part of our furniture is now remote controlled, as are some window blinds. We can clap our hands and turn the lights on. We wake of the morning to fresh brewed coffee from the pre-set coffeemaker. We no longer have to fill ice trays for the refrigerator in order to get a glass of ice. We no longer get out of our vehicles to open the garage. Just when you think we can get no lazier a new product hits the market and everyone scrambles to purchase it. Everything in our world has become automated, push button, and convenient, too convenient for our health.
Learn more about this author, Ty Fillers.
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No
Americans are not lazy, but they are financially irresponsible. There are those of us that have to work the extra hours to get by, to have our needs met, but the overwhelming majority of us are working extra hours and taking on other projects and starting businesses or hustling to get extra money to get the things that we want. There is nothing wrong with that this is the way it has always been the way that it always will be. If you need shoes, you can find a cheap apartment and live beneath your means on whatever job you can get and get by. I live in a metropolitan area in which it costs from $150,000 to $4 million to purchase a property. There is everything here for those who want meager living and are content to getting by and just enjoy living in a large city to that for individuals who want to throw their money around and have something that is better than everything else. I can purchase a $150,000 home for myself and my wife, have an extra bathroom with a half acre of yard space and enough closet space for what I really do wear, which isn't much these days, and have my needs met. I would prefer an apartment downtown in front of the ocean for around $1.5, 2 million, I do not need it, but I want it. It would afford me the luxury of living, working, playing, and eating in the same space, as opposed to driving everywhere.
Then again I could accomplish the same in an apartment just a little bit further into the city, which costs $800 as opposed to $2,000 a month, for just the same. Sure I'd walk over the drug addicts, and walk in the other direction once I was hit on by the prostitutes, but it accomplishes the same. There isn't anything wrong or shameful about that; but for most of us, we want more, in fact, we want an environment where we feel perfectly safe to spend our money and to acquire the things we want without any interference whatsoever, and it simply isn't practical and reasonable to do that. Everyone around here is driving around in automobiles which are more than what they truly need; trucks and sports cars that do not have any fuel economy whatsoever; if it isn't that it's someone on the bus that is ghetto fabulous and wearing overpriced "urbanwear" that is out of style next month. My only practical expense; the purchase of a 2004 Kia for around $12,000 that I'm paying too much for because I'm paying a high interest rate. Could have found it for around $6,000, if I had some discipline about myself and were willing to pay cash for it, but that isn't lazy, that's foolish.
If it were a matter of being lazy, our problems would be a lot easier to solve. But we neglect the simple, more practical matters we do have some control over and end up working really, really hard to pay more at the end to get something we want, as opposed to being content with what we need. We have high interest through credit cards, homes we've refinanced, payday loans we won't get rid of, foolish, stupid mistakes we often make. We go to distant corners of the world to adopt children when there are mothers here in the States that are more than willing to give up their child on money that we do not really have. We take on interest only mortgages to live in a home that is 5 times above what we can really afford just to loose it on a foreclosure. Plus we have to have the latest technology and gadgets, when all that we really want to do; check our email and use some widgets on the PC screen, we could do with technology that was obsolete over a decade ago.
Stop working harder than you need to and take on responsibilities and problems you do not have to have when you're already blessed. There are people out there making minimum wage with 8 kids who really do need that extra money, but you're trying to keep up a lifestyle that is completely unrealistic. Most of us will not realize that until we die; my old man left us with debt and bills, and he worked three jobs. Then again he also had three cars, and hundreds of designer duds; he never could get past the fact that the guys he used to run with were living a lifestyle that he couldn't with the responsibilities that he had. I'm trying to do everything I can to be that person myself; for whenever that day comes that I have to teach a young man something...
Learn more about this author, Christopher Kendalls.
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