1. Lazy
Or how value judgments construct identity
“You’re lazy even for food,” my grandmother told me when I was twelve, because I didn’t like eating rabbit or any cut of meat that required any effort. Fighting with tiny bones for the meager rewards of a morsel of meat seemed nonsensical to me. “Lazy” was one of the strongest insults in my grandmother’s arsenal, one that she opposed to the supreme praise, “hard-working” (surpassed only, perhaps, by the virtue of being a good ahorrador, a thrifty little saver).
Luckily, the moral compass I’d inherited from my parents allowed me to take that judgment lightly. Even in those early days, I realized that one could be “lazy” about some things and “hard-working” about others, that “lazy” didn’t describe an essence, that it wasn’t an inescapable, perhaps genetic, identity, but rather a situational description. “Of course I’m lazy about eating rabbit,” I could reply, “and why wouldn’t I be, if I don’t love it?”
Today I still don’t eat rabbit or clean the nooks and crannies of lamb ribs, and yet not even my grandmother, who’s still alive (she’ll be 92 this January, which will probably be her last), calls me “lazy” anymore. Certainly, nobody considers me lazy at work, that touchstone of industriousness, and neither does Molly, my partner, with whom I share so many tasks. On the contrary, at the office they consider me “hard-working,” and Molly is periodically amazed by my “discipline” because I dedicate myself to my goals (primarily my writing and reading) with a regularity that eludes her.
But the truth is, they’re all as wrong as my grandmother was thirty years ago. Because the fundamental question remains: “lazy for what?”, “hard-working for what?” I am, today as then, lazy when it comes to things that I find difficult (things I don’t care about) and hard-working when it comes to what I enjoy, that is, when it comes to what I can’t help but doing.
And this is where things get interesting and complex. Because the word “lazy” isn’t unique; it belongs to a very broad category that includes all value judgments. When my grandmother called me lazy in 1990, she wasn’t making a neutral observation, a side note for my own information (as if she’d said, “the socks are in the right-hand drawer”), but rather trying to influence my behavior by showing me her disapproval. The message carried an emotional charge (“you’re worth less in my eyes if you don’t eat rabbit or clean the lamb chops”) that was meant to ensure a reinforcement of priorities in my neural network.
Value judgments are not simply a psychological phenomenon, one tool among many, but rather the way we construct ourselves and how society itself is built, from history to economics, politics, and fashion. If I’m considered hardworking today, for example, because I get up three hours before going into the office to write my novels, it’s because my father anointed the word “writer” with the same reverence my grandmother used for “ahorradores,” and because the world, after him, reinforced these judgments, encouraging my efforts to some extent.
Reality, both our own and that of others, unfolds according to intelligible yet unpredictable patterns because, although values are clearly contagious (their very nature seeks transmission, influence), it is impossible to calculate or control with which other values they will ultimately combine, or how they will interact with the environment. Clearly, my grandmother would not have been able to anticipate (nor, indeed, would she have approved) that her desire for all her descendants to be “hard-working” would end up leading to the writing of these notes.
What can readers expect from them? More of what they have just found here. The tracing (from the personal to the general, from my individual position in the network of values that moves the world, to the currents that influence it and to which it, in turn, contributes) of how value judgments take root in one another and inform each other to create the reality we inhabit. Node by node, thread by thread, accumulating traces until a rough sketch of the overall network begins to take shape.
This article was originally published in Spanish on February 1st, 2025. For the next few months, I will be publishing two articles a week until the English version catches up with the weekly Spanish version.
