Rick's June Tirade
In Praise of Sloth
Suddenly the first torrid days of the season have arrived,
spreading feverish heat throughout the valley. The humid sky grows
heavy, pressing upon the trees and fields like an overweight lover
upon his tolerant mistress. Wind chimes tinkle lazily in the feeble
breeze; the cat stretches out in the shade of a canvas deck chair
and snoozes throughout the sultry afternoon. I sit at my computer
and sweat contentedly.
When I'm alone and idle, I like to take the heat as it comes. Why
hide behind a protective shield of air conditioning designed to make
me more productive than I'd prefer to be? Air conditioning is an
invention for wimps and workaholics, for people who prefer the tidy
artificiality of Las Vegas to the magnificent decay of New Orleans.
Air conditioning is to summer what an iron gate is to a suburban
community: confinement masquerading as protection. Let me feel the
ripe lethargy of summer, the voluptuous and carnal heat that makes
other white folks reach for the thermostat. Let me indulge in that
most underrated and subtly gratifying of deadly sins, SLOTH.
I've always been inclined to sloth, though necessity and ambition
have diverted me from my natural aptitude. More of us would practice
this happy vice if not for the unforgiving pressures of our
work-demented civilization. Instead of dreaming away the summer
afternoons on a hammock, in the matchless company of a good book and
a glass of lemonade, we funnel ourselves into atmospherically
controlled cubicles just as the sun begins to blaze. There, beneath
our own pale fluorescent suns, we toil oblivious to the breezes and
calling birds, squandering the high season of the year in a
prolonged flurry of paperwork and pressure.
The tyranny of business has oppressed us poor sloths longer than
we can remember. We forget that in an earlier, more enlightened day,
the sloths actually ruled; they were called aristocrats. Their noble
idleness made them objects of envy and emulation throughout the
realm. Ambitious people everywhere aspired to ride in private
carriages, wear ornamental wigs, dance a lazy minuet and induce a
satisfying sneeze with a pinch of snuff. More important, everyone
seemed to be impressed by the grace and stateliness of a life lived
without haste or daily gym workouts.
Today, of course, the world belongs to the energetically gifted,
with their hummingbird metabolisms and unnatural lust for 14-hour
workdays. The prevailing law is "survival of the fastest,"
which doesn't bode well for those of us who move our lips when we
read. The swift alone are equipped by nature to endure the surly
demands of a working world gone haywire... a world of overstuffed
schedules and escalating pressures that harden the arteries of mere
mortals. These speedy metabolic mutants are the "haves" of
post-industrial society, in sharp contrast to the relatively poky
"have-nots;" they constitute a new aristocracy of energy.
As in the past, the rich grow richer. Their energy propels them
to win an outsized share of promotions, stock options and trophy
spouses; their triumphs fuel them with still more energy to reap
still more rewards. As if to multiply our miseries, they use their
surplus energy to go running, skiing, rafting, kayaking, skydiving,
hang-gliding, rock-climbing, bungee-jumping and anything else
guaranteed to raise their already absurd energy levels to truly
alarming new heights. If they could leap tall buildings in a single
bound, they'd be out there tomorrow lining up in front of the World
Trade Center.
They're altering our very perception of the world, these
aristocrats of energy. Outmoded concepts like grace and nobility
have fallen to the armies of lean and mean. Pop culture has pinned
Western civilization to the mat. Authors become savvy hucksters if
they want to see their books sell. Artists schmooze at gallery
openings to tout their wares. Hollywood gives us exploding aliens
rather than quotable dialogue.
Even dinosaurs have been remade in the image of the new
aristocracy: the slow, stately, ponderous beasts envisioned by the
Victorians have been scrapped in favor of streamlined, hot-blooded
dynamos, their heads tilted aggressively forward, their two-ton
tails held aloft as if filled with helium. The new dinosaurs are
light, maneuverable, pumped-up, rippling with energy. They could
almost be business school graduates.
Enough, I say! Cease and desist! I come to sing the praises of
sloth.
Bring back the noble thunder-lizards, dignified and slow of foot.
Give me the drone of baseball broadcasts on summer afternoons. Give
me summer itself in all its leafy, lethargic splendor. Let me
celebrate the tortoise and the snail, the cat asleep in the shade,
the watchers of clouds and stars. To gaze upon orchards and gardens
and wooded glens in the fullness of the year; to revel in the color
of the evening sky; to trace the languorous form of a loved one
beneath the sheets; such pleasures surpass even a 45-minute workout
on the treadmill.
Unlike our hyperkinetic counterparts, the sloths of the world
harm no one. We seek no advantages from friends or adversaries; we
observe and reflect in silence; we make soothing music; we
appreciate the beauties of sunlight and shade, the blazing orange of
an oriole against the cool green of a willow, the ancient aroma of
antique books. We feel connected to our world without carrying a
cell phone and beeper.
The new aristocrats of energy make life difficult for us, but we
bear them no ill will. We need to revolt gently against their
unconscious tyranny, not by overthrowing them or tripping them as
they jog, but by forging our own culture -- a civilization of sloth.
We'd produce immortal sloth novels, symphonies, poems, paintings,
architecture, philosophy and inventions. We'd dazzle the world with
the depth of our perceptions and the quiet power of our slothful
souls...
If only we had the energy.
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
