As 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.