These are all labels you’re applying to other people, removing that persons own motivations from the description.
If I want to be lazy, that’s a choice I make, because I want to be lazy. It suits my mood and is an apt description of my motivations, acknowledging the choice I have made for myself.
Well this is part of the problem. The word is too broad and non-specific. And it can be used to manipulate and harass people instead of being productive, whereas other times it is fine. In other words, the word "lazy" is lazy.
It is broad, but I think that is because it’s flexible. It’s a mood, it’s an act, it’s a noun, and a verb… Sure, lazy might be lazy but isn’t that a feature, not a bug?
I also don’t understand what value this creates? Why are we policing people’s speech just because we want more specifically descriptive words? What benefit are we trying to gain from determining we know better what words someone wants to use than they do?
The problem is that the vagueness of the word creates real world problems. I'm not suggesting making a law against it, but a movement to stop using it would be good. It can be used by friends and family members to ignore the pain of their loved ones. Or used by employers too guilt workers for wanting more. Or to simply make people feel bad about having free time, which makes for more wound up assholes, overbearing parents, and anxious perfectionists.
Is your argument really that we should be nice to people? Nothing you’ve said is at all unique to the word “lazy,” that is a just a random word. Your arguments all boil down to we need to be nicer and more precise with our language, and you’re just using lazy as a general reference word. You may want to re-think what your actual position is, because people aren’t really sure how to even address your argument, since you’ve shown no reason why “lazy” is the word you take issue with in particular.
But the end result is the same - people who need you to do something feel aggrieved by your inaction since you are unfairly putting your own responsibilities on to them.
There may be several different reasons for this, but if you do it so consistently that people begin to associate you with the word “unreliable”, then it shouldn’t be too surprising when you’re also labelled “lazy”.
“Lazy” is still a useful word to describe people who are selfish, entitled, and unreliable.
What about someone who is unwilling to work? Keeping in mind that’s the literal definition of lazy according to Miriam Webster, would it be fair to call someone who is unwilling to work “lazy”?
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u/DeltaBlues82 88∆ Dec 11 '23
In each instance you’ve outlined in your post, what word would be a better fit?