Are humans inherently lazy, or is our affinity for comfort and convenience a result of our environment?

Picture the scene: I am laid in bed at night, and my throat is parched, screaming out for a drop of water. The half-full glass is sitting on the other side of my bedside table. If I stretch out far enough, I can almost reach the glass without having to actually get up from my bed. While shuffling my body around to extend my reach even further, I forget to notice that I am sliding off the bed. Just moments later, I fall off the bed and lose control of my arms, swiping the glass of water all over the room as I fall.

What I thought was a short cut in grabbing the glass of water ended up causing more trouble and effort as I picked myself up from the floor and cleaned up the mess made from the falling glass of water. All of this happened because I was too lazy to get up out of bed and take a few steps to grab the glass, something that would have only taken a couple of seconds longer than the route I decided to take. But why is my brain programmed to take the supposed quicker and less efficient route, all for the sake of a couple of seconds?

The easy assumption is to say that the human race is just inherently lazy, and we will always look for a short cut. How many people would rather get in the car, turn it on, and drive for 2 minutes to the shops rather than walk for 10 minutes? My guess would be that the majority of people in developed countries are going in the car. This may well be explained by saying that we are just a species that seeks the lazy option, yet there still remain plenty of hard-working and tireless individuals that could not be labeled as lazy by even the wildest stretch of the imagination.

When we take a second to think of all the public service professionals of the modern age, who often work relentlessly hard for a modest wage, it shows us clearly how incorrect it would be to just say ‘humans are lazy’. Furthermore, imagine the countless hours of intense labor spent forging the infrastructure during the industrial revolution, and you will see just how resolute humans can be. Now take the Romans, the Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, or any of the historical eras gone by; all sacrificed their bodies and time for the efficient success of society, whether that be through choice or having it forced upon them.

Can we say the same for our modern-day society? In undeveloped nations, people will still walk for miles just to collect clean water, while others will spend days and nights on end working in factories to put food in their families mouths. Let’s take these examples of humans engaging in taxing work, and we can observe a common trend. This happens when it is demanded of them. If humans are required to work hard to survive or keep their families, then we are very capable of it and have proved it for thousands of years. However, we may have now reached a point where our lifestyles expect less and less from us, causing us to become too familiar with our effortless reality.

With the existence of cars, the internet, phones, artificial intelligence, and all the rest of our contemporary technology, we have been conditioned into a state where comfort and ease are top priorities. Instead of a short walk, we would rather drive. Instead of reading a book, we would rather watch a YouTube video explaining its premise. Instead of writing a letter, we would rather send a text message. Even something like searching the internet for information has become so tiresome that we now use voice commands to provide us with our knowledge.

Given that we have reached this point, the key question to be asked is, ‘Just because our modern lives seek comfort and convenience, does that make them dangerous or detrimental to our society?’ Unfortunately, in answering this question, I would undoubtedly land on the side of a resounding ‘yes’.

Many people may see no danger in taking the easy option or doing something that takes less time. Admittedly, in the short term, there are probably no obvious drawbacks to doing this. Although this changes when considering the bigger picture and our long-term development, I think it would be reckless to disregard the benefit of raising a society that knows how to deal with adversity, collect information, analyze information, and make decisions for themselves. Not to mention the obvious physical benefits to our health from undertaking strenuous activities.

Our laziness and lack of desire to better ourselves have led us to a stage where we have become almost totally dependent on technology and mod-cons to get us through our lives. But when the power goes out or the satellites are not connected, how do we survive? If we have reached a stage where we cannot even choose what to watch or listen to without a computer telling us what we like, then maybe our internal partiality for laziness has already won.