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We are in the era of the “great resignation”, “quiet quitting“, and the move towards a four-day workweek.

But the French, who are known to bask in life’s pleasures while still getting the job done, are taking this work-life balance zeitgeist to new extremes.

Off the back of the COVID-19 pandemic work-from-home/ no-work situation, a new study has found that France has been slowly succumbing to a “laziness epidemic” in which large parts of the country “can’t be bothered” to work hard.

The findings by Ifop and the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, reported on by The Telegraph, outline a few telling stats:

In 1990, some 60 per cent of French people said work was “very important” in their life, compared to 31 per cent for leisure. Today, those who view work as a high priority has plummeted to 24 per cent while 41 per cent view leisure as very important.

Since the Covid pandemic subsided, 37 per cent of French say they are less motivated to work. The figures vary widely according to political persuasion, with supporters of Leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon being more than twice as likely to say they have lost their will to work than supporters of Emmanuel Macron – 61 per cent to 28 per cent respectively.

In 2008, the presidential campaign slogan of conservative then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy was “work more to earn more”.

Today the Green MP Sandrine Rousseau is arguing that the French deserve a special “right to idleness”:

In September, the radical eco-feminist sparked a furore for claiming that working hard was “essentially a Right-wing value” and that taking breaks and being less productive was a far healthier objective for the Left.

“We have the right to idleness. We have the right to change professions, we also have the right to take breaks in our life and, above all, we need to regain time, a sense of sharing and a four-day week,” she said.

The study found that the COVID-19 pandemic exasperated the “exhaustion and laziness epidemic when a part of the French want to slow down”.

Worldcrunch points out that in all of human history, work is a very recent passion. Even hunter-gatherers would spend just a few hours a day working for their food and spend the rest enjoying their time:

French aristocrats from the Ancien Régime were very touchy when it came to their dignity. Still, they would have rather died than sacrificed otium (leisure) to negotium (the non-existence of leisure). It was not until the 17th century’s Protestant traders that we see the biblical idea of “earning one’s bread with the sweat of one’s brow” starting to be taken seriously.

Today, there is contention over whether we are being plagued by a “laziness epidemic” or a “burnout epidemic”, and that’s where Rousseau’s call for “energy sobriety” makes a bit of sense, putting work back in its real place.

Granted, the right to laziness suggests an entire social system redesign, with the possible introduction of a universal income to help provide for everyone’s basic needs.

It is a complicated matter, but what we need to remember is that a move towards leisure is about admitting that a job does not sum up the value of an individual within society and that overall value should exceed what is economically measurable.

Indeed, Rousseau’s idea of “sobriety” or the “right to laziness” does not mean “austerity” or a “vow of poverty” but rather, a promise of pleasure.

Work is the sideline, right 2OV readers? Live the holiday.

[sources:telegraph&worldcrunch]