Mental Indolence
Indolence is a factor that keeps the majority of people from thinking. Because of mental indolence, people do everything the way they have always seen and to which they are used. To give an example from our daily lives, the way people do the cleaning is just how they have seen their parents do it. They generally do not think, "How could things be done in a cleaner and more practical way" nor try to find new methods. Similarly, when something needs repair, people use the methods they have been taught since their childhood. They are generally reluctant to practice a new method that might be more practical and efficient. Such people's styles of speech are also the same. The way an accountant speaks, for example, is just the same as all the other accountants he has seen in his life. Doctors, bankers, salesmen, people from all classes have particular styles of speech. They do not seek to find the most proper, the best, and the most favourable way by thinking about it. They just imitate what they have heard.
The solutions found to problems also reflect indolence in thinking. For example, the manager of a building brings to the building's waste disposal problem exactly the same solution as the one brought by previous managers. Or a mayor tries to solve the traffic problem by looking at what preceding mayors have done. In many cases, because of not thinking he is unable to find new solutions.
Certainly, the examples cited here are issues from which people suffer harm in their everyday lives. Yet there are subjects far more important than these, which, if people fail to think about, may cause them to suffer great and eternal loss. The cause of this loss is one's failure to think about the purpose of existence in the world, and disregarding the fact that death is unavoidable, and that we will definitely meet on The Day of Reckoning after death. In the Qur'an, Allah invites people to reflect upon these crucial matters.
Those are the people who have lost their own selves. What they invented has abandoned them. Without question they will be the greatest losers in the Hereafter. As for those who believe and do right actions and humble themselves before their Lord, they are the Companions of the Garden, remaining in it timelessly, forever. The likeness of the two groups is that of the blind and deaf and the seeing and hearing. Are they the same as one another? So will you not pay heed? (Surah Hud: 21-24)
Is He Who creates like him who does not create? So will you not pay heed? (Surat an-Nahl: 17
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