A study in opposites

[Guest guest]

This looks like a very interesting book.

---

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/05/23/lutz/

Great couch potatoes of history

Tom Lutz was inspired to write " Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers,

Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America " by an encounter with his 18-year-old

son, Cody. Recently graduated from high school, Cody was planning to take a

year or two off before beginning college, so he moved out of his mother's

house and into his father's " with uncertain plans. "

---

Cody takes up apparently permanent residence on the couch, and he discovers

that he is very angry about Cody becoming a 'Couch Potato' so he sat down

and wrote this book to epxlore his feelings.

---

In one of the most penetrating discussions in the book, Lutz examines the

contradictions of his work life, which as a college professor and writer

lacks clear boundaries between working and not working. He watches " The

Sopranos " and March Madness to keep up with pop culture; he finds himself

waking up in the middle of the night thinking about a transition in a piece

he's writing; he's always working and always playing. " And so my life of

sloth blends imperceptibly into my pathological flip side, my workaholism,

and this is the odd thing: I can just as easily argue and believe that I

work, not too little, but entirely too much. My sense of my own laziness may

simply be the perverse guilt engendered by a work ethic that digs its

dominatrix heel into my back and rarely lets up. "

Lutz writes that his paradoxical, deeply split attitude toward work is

shared by his peers. " Everyone I know is in the same boat. We are all lazy

impostors, and we are all workaholic slaves. We work too hard and not nearly

enough. What can this possibly mean? Is slackerism somehow as much a part of

our lives at this point in history as our vaunted work ethic? Are the two

simply two sides of the very same coin? "

Lutz argues that they are. In his view, today's work ethic, and perhaps the

work ethic throughout modern history, is always haunted by slackerism, and

vice versa. This is the " twisted " and " pathological " relation he decries in

himself, the one that won't let him off the hook. " None of the work, the

quasi-work or the semi-work I do seems to lessen my slacker guilt, if for no

other reason than the simple fact that I aspire to be a complete slacker ...

In seeing my son on the couch, I suppose, I saw my ego, my alter ego, my

alter alter ego, and on and on, in a hall of opposing mirrors. "

---

I wonder if he ever gets around to Jung in this discussion? It sure looks

like a classic discussion of getting caught up in opposites.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0865476500/104-8402201-8517549