This morning I have been ruminating on the theme of sloth. This was triggered by observing the familiar habits of my fellow train passengers when boarding the King’s Cross service. It’s a twelve car service so by the standards of these things there’s quite a lot of room on it. However, there is a lemming* like tendency for everybody to try to get in the carriage nearest the entrance, rather than walking along the train. As a result that carriage is full to bursting and the passengers either have to stand or, in the case of the smarter ones, get out and walk further along to discover the (temporary) abundance of empty seats.
The odd thing about this behaviour is that they’re going to have to walk that distance to get out at King’s Cross anyway, so it’s not as if they’re saving themselves anything by getting in the first carriages of the train. Hence they’re not simply being lazy (or conserving energy if we wish to be kind), they are also being irrational in terms of effort when balanced against convenience.
Having turned this over in my mind, my thoughts drifted to the film The Seven Deadly Sins, the 1971 version that consists of sketches written by, and in some cases starring, British comedy figures. The section on sloth is written by Spike Milligan and in the part in which he appears he is crossing a field when he comes across a big tree in his path. Rather than walk round it he chops it down, expending enormous effort in the process. The interesting thing about this is that it portrays sloth as something very specific: avoiding making an effort in such a way as to make something harder or less convenient, as in the case of my train passengers.
But then I started musing as to whether this was the usual meaning of the word sloth. My Shorter Oxford defines it only as sluggishness or laziness. Incidentally the word derives from the adjective “slow”. To me that is interesting, since it is perfectly fair to refer to sloths as slow, whereas calling them lazy is libellous. They’re just sloths.
I digress. It strikes me that we need a word for the behaviour displayed by train passengers and Spike Milligan in the sketch. Shit for brains is accurate but not specific enough. Any suggestions?
For what it’s worth I prefer the portrayal of the seven deadly sins in the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore film Bedazzled:
Link (roll over me to see where I go)
*Unfair to lemmings, I know.