“I have the best advice for women in business: Get your fucking ass up and work,” Kim Kardashian quipped during a Variety interview in 2022. “It seems like nobody wants to work these days,” she continued, unaware of the bomb she had just dropped. People were fresh out of COVID lockdowns, still reeling from the financial hardship of society shutting down for months on end, and utterly unwilling to receive work advice from a billionaire reality star turned entrepreneur. The social media maelstrom that followed oscillated between the nonexistent merits of influencer “girlbossery,” the tone deafness and privilege of the Kardashians and the unavoidable sexism that follows comments made by women online. 

What was largely missed in the uproar, however, is how unoriginal Kardashian’s comments were. Wealthy people have a long history of blaming those less fortunate for being lazy, and therefore casting them as unwilling—rather than unable—to pull themselves up and rise through the ranks of society. It ties into an almost universally held belief that laziness is a negative human trait, a demonstration of one’s incapacity to contribute to society. 

But what if “lazy” people just need a break—literally? That is the argument made by social psychologist Devon Price in his book Laziness Does Not Exist, which sets out to debunk the “laziness lie” permeating Western societies. “To this day, many of us believe that time spent in productivity is inherently better spent than time spent relaxing, connecting to other people, meditating or repairing the body’s tissues with rest,” says Price. This belief system, he argues, is inherited from Puritanism: the conviction that work has moral value, and that lethargy leads to damnation. Today, it is a convenient way to scapegoat individuals for their inability to be successful and an excuse to deny them a social safety net. As Price puts it: “If unemployment is merely caused by a personal lack of drive in applying for jobs, then there is no need for state intervention.”  

The inevitable result is an overworked, burned-out society where people feel guilty for their lack of motivation, rather than realizing they just need time off. Capitalism thrives on this state of affairs; humans not so much. To unlearn the “laziness lie,” Price suggests giving money to those society deems the laziest of all: unhoused people. “It is easiest to start being patient towards others,” he says, “and then begin to extend that same graciousness to oneself.”