In a further exploration of laziness, I find myself wanting to link the notion of ego to that of energy or drive. What drives a billionaire to strive for further billions? It's certainly not the need to keep the wolf from the door. There comes a point at which another million złotys, pounds or dollars cannot appreciably improve one's material existence – let alone another billion. Once comfort, freedom and security are assured, why bother pushing further?
The obvious answer is that the money has ceased to be money. It's now a score against which some people feel the need to measure themselves against others. Why this need for external validation? Isn't it just a symptom of insecurity?
The question of what makes some people push themselves relentlessly while others are content to coast along through life has fascinated me since youth. Some seem born with an inability to switch off. They build businesses one after another, acquire properties, push for promotion, write multiple books, enter politics, collect honours, climb mountains or run marathon after marathon. Achieving one objective provides no lasting satisfaction because its achievement merely reveals the next objective beyond it.
Others reach a point at which they can say to themselves quite reasonably: this will do nicely.
For much of our human history, we tended to explain such differences morally. One man was industrious, another lazy. One had ambition, another lacked it. Sloth and indolence are sinful – it says so in the Bible. Protestant societies in particular elevated industriousness to the level of a spiritual virtue: hard work was not just economically useful – it was evidence of good character.
Advances in our understanding of psychology complicates that simple distinction enormously. We are now far more aware that humans vary greatly in temperament, impulsivity, conscientiousness, appetite for excitement, and desire for social status. We are also much quicker than earlier generations to recognise patterns of behaviour that may have neurological or psychological components. In everyday conversation we hear, ‘that's a typical autism-spectrum trait’, ‘she's rather obsessive-compulsive’, ‘he's an absolute narcissist’. There is of course the danger of judgmental amateur diagnosis, but ultimately there is no single standard human mind. Our brains differ, and those differences affect what we find rewarding, what bores us and what compels us to act.
What we perceive as ambition can be seen as a question of reward circuitry. One person experiences a tremendous psychological boost from achieving a goal and immediately hungers for another fix. Another achieves the goal but gets an even greater boost from just sitting beneath a tree with a good book. To the first, the second may appear lazy. To the second, the first may appear slightly unhinged.
Ego plays a major role here because human beings are social animals. Wealth does not merely purchase goods; beyond a certain point it purchases rank; it also purchases human souls – influencing how millions of other humans think and behave. “Can I buy a TV station? Newspaper? Political party?” Billionaires compare themselves with other billionaires. Once the essentials of life have been secured, human striving becomes positional. Enough food is enough food, enough warmth is enough warmth. But there's no quantity of status that can be considered ‘enough’.
And yet obsession with status has driven much of human progress.
We live in an age defined by technological advance. Our lives have become astonishingly easier. I no longer queue in a bank to pay a bill sent to me through the post. I buy my train ticket on my mobile telephone minutes before boarding. I can communicate instantly with someone on the other side of the world, search a library containing nearly all of human knowledge.
But who brought this world into being?
The mythology of capitalism hails the heroic entrepreneur: the visionary individual who sees what others cannot see and wills a new reality into existence. Sometimes that story is justified. But behind almost every technological revolution there are engineers, mathematicians, programmers, researchers, technicians, administrators and obsessive problem-solvers, many of whom are not interested in achieving fame or having more money than they know what to do with.
Civilisation advances because human beings possess many different kinds of drive. We specialise. One individual has the ego necessary to raise money, persuade investors and command an organisation. Another possesses an obsessive fascination with solving a technical problem. Another simply has the patience to spend ten years perfecting something to work reliably without ever breaking down.
The successful institution somehow harnesses these different energies, but which one gets the praise?
And here lies another distinction worth making. Ego may fuel drive, but it doesn't usually provide wisdom. Excessive ego can become destructive. The leader who needs every success to bear his name eventually becomes an obstacle to the organisation they lead. Decisions begin to serve the preservation of their status rather than the purpose of the enterprise. They surrounds himself with people who tell him how brilliant they are. The organisation becomes an extension of the personality at its summit. We can think of many like this – in politics, and in our workplaces (we've all come across bosses like that).
At the opposite extreme stands the ideal associated with Lao Tzu: the leader whose presence is scarcely noticed and who, once the work is accomplished, leaves people believing that they achieved it themselves.
Wise leadership requires finding a balance: enough ego to fuel the drive required to bring something into being, relentlessly pushing forward across obstacles, combined with enough detachment to relinquish ownership of the achievement once it exists.
And this distinction applies beyond leadership. There's creative ego – the force that says “I can make this happen” – and possessive ego – the force that says “everyone must know that I made this happen”. The first one build things; the second often ends up building monuments to itself.
Which brings me back to laziness. Instead of asking why some people lack drive, I should ask why others possess too much of it. Why should the natural human condition be assumed to consist of ceaseless striving? For most of our evolutionary history there was little advantage in expending energy unnecessarily. Energy was precious. If one's belly was full, the weather benign, and there's no predator approaching, sitting quietly beneath a tree was an entirely rational thing to do. Take it easy, man.
Modern civilisation has inverted the logic of biology. Rest requires justification; work does not. The person who says 'I have enough' can appear deficient in ambition. Yet the ability to recognise when enough is enough is a deep a form of wisdom. Slacking off when one really doesn't have enough is indolence.
The billionaire pursuing his tenth billion has more drive than the man contentedly reading under his tree. But it does not mean that the billionaire has a better understanding of what life is for.
This time last year:
Dzieci wojny – Children of War
This time two years ago:
Ten grand a year
This time three years ago:
The ephemeral pleasures of materialism
This time four years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia modernisation – a long way to go
(Three years on: still not finished)
This time six years ago:
Back in Aviation Valley
This time seven years ago:
My flight to Rzeszów – delayed
This time ten years ago:
English as she is used in Europe
This time 11 years ago:
Where asphalt is needed – Nowy Podolszyn to Zgorzala
This time 16 years ago:
I cycle to work along the cyclepath along ul. Rosoła
This time 18 years ago:
First apple
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