Ezzes by Estis – Breeding Laziness

I’m not lazy. You can tell by the way I think things through. Not always until the end, because a thought often distracts me. A more important one. I run a lot, sometimes, and anyone who runs isn’t lazy.

Of course, laziness doesn’t mean letting your limbs relax on the musty sofa, wrapped in plush. And certainly not to chill in a contemporary way; it has to be extremely casual and therefore effortful. Having nothing to do, in other words, is not good laziness; even less – not wanting to do anything. Impotent tachinosis, hypnotic apathy, melancholic idleness, nihilistic whimsy, decadence of obscene inactivity, dull phlegmatism, afternoon pipe puffing, lounger indifference, stupidly bold piss-off – all inferior laziness. The dolce far niente may be as far removed from the Ciceronian Otium as today’s Italy is from ancient Rome: nowhere can one find between the two what I call true laziness.

Ezzes von Was

Magnus Terhorst

Alexander Estis, a freelance Jew without a permanent address, writes so much nonsense in this column that it will make you sick to your stomach.

(Don’t think of these as excuses; I want to exclude myself by making subtle distinctions: there are real reasons. Although, of course, justification, apology, evasion, sophism are also part of the repertoire of the lazy person. Many say: I’m not lazy , I’m a philosopher. But they have no idea about the matter at all. It’s just that you have to stay in the limbo of the paradox and then just nothing But whoever claims that he is lazy is a completely lost cause. He wants to contain laziness like darkness in a bottle, he wants to domesticate it , wants to be considered hardworking. Oh, that’s very vulgar!)

Weak people know no great laziness; they lack what they could possibly achieve victory by. Laziness is a force that conflicts with the will and wages war with it. Only great will creates grandiose laziness. I have to want: an expedition, building a house, a marathon, at least one novel. And even then you have to do some work to deliver a laziness of higher value. Half still about to act, but only half, half already slowing down, sacrificing all attempts, mourning the many things that won’t happen. Little by little you have to decide on laziness, with full consciousness and with all responsibility, acknowledge its superiority, fill the air of your life with this decision and persist in it.

The Talmud says – I haven’t checked it: Out of laziness arises a golem. But you have to create laziness, you have to cultivate it like a fern. The ferns collect their scent at night while they are twisted up, grow inwardly, and in the morning they slowly unfold their leaves and emit their musty scent. So you have to let laziness germinate in the depths, carefully nourish it, from the internal organs, from the kidneys, carefully guide it in cool trickling streams to the skin, to the pores and finally release it, an epiphany of unreason Triumph of all-purpose.