I don't really mind the act of mowing the lawn. It's not difficult or even really too boring. Dull, yes; mindless, yes; but I can still pull together my reserves of patience and do it anyway. No, I don't mind the act at all. It's the purpose behind it I object to.
Why do we mow lawns? Some would argue to make them look nice and neat and pretty. Yet I see no ugliness in wild-grown grass that tickles the middle of the shin. The fact that it is laid out in such nice geometric patterns makes it orderly enough for me. Many people curse and complain about having to mow the lawn on the weekends and then get no joy out of their "nice and neat and pretty" lawn. Seems like wasted effort to me. If one isn't going to enjoy the fruits of a completely uneccesary behavior, then why do it?
Some people agree with me but mow their lawn anyway because they don't want to aggravate the neighbors. Why should the neighbors care? If they have an allergy to grass cutting it just makes it worse. Reducing property values? How can five-inch-long grass affect a house of wood and concrete? The property is just as large and innately valuable as it was before. Well, then again, market value is just an illusion caused by transitory stimuli. The local high school football team does poorly, property values drop. The local area creates a minor felon who operates in another town, property values drop. None of these things actually affect the physical property nor the standard of living, so who should really care?
I also would like my lawn to grow wild, with dandelions, purple loosestrife, clover, and those little blue flowers in it here and there. I like the varied colors of yard "weeds." It gives what would be a bland, green expanse of ground cover enough character to make it interesting. I simply don't understand the people who go to such great effort to eradicate every non-grass biological organism in their lawns. Bugs, ants, flowers, clover, or rodents, these people want nothing to do with them and purge them with various forms of toxic chemical death. Somehow this makes a patch of green monoleaves even more lifeless than the semiarid Mojave desert I grew up in.
Some people like to work hard on their lawns and actively enjoy the results. Bully for them; they're doing what they want and are perfectly happy. What bugs me is that so many people force themselves to do something wholly uneccesary simply because they have been brought up to think of a manicured lawn as "proper." No one else really cares what someone else's lawn is like; anyone who does needs to stop being a busybody and get a life of their own. For my own part, I'll just find some place to live where I will never have to mow the lawn if I don't want to.