Our Cages of Convenience (or the reasons we’re not yet going Apeshit — yet during our lockdowns.)
There’s nothing like a great dystopian / post-apocalyptic film to put one’s optimistic hopes for the future in check. In my morbid desire to increase my consumption of eerily relevant coronavirus lockdown entertainment, I’ve recently wrapped up this week’s binge with the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy, a one of the best sci-fi flicks in recent times that explores the dangers of humanity’s technological hubris, in this case in the realm of biotech.
I’ll skip deep diving into the themes of this movie franchise that are relevant to our current times, as much as I would love to talk about them right now.
Rather, I just wanted to point out how seeing the heroic apes in various scenarios of captivity across the films made me think: “Hmmm. Now that’s a metaphor of how us humans are now in cages in our coronavirus-induced lockdowns. Cages. So deep. So deep.”
These are “Cages of Convenience”: our increasing dependency in the comforts of a modern technological lifestyle, the cages that we’ve already built for ourselves long before the pandemic.
It’s also a subtler reason why I think we, the technologically-dependent part of the population, are not (yet) in a massive, Planet of the Apes style uprising, given how much the Covid-19 crisis has paralyzed our day-to-day lives.
Rise of the Planet of the Homestayers
Since the dawn of mass media, we’ve progressively equipped ourselves to live in comfort indoors. The widespread use radio and television made it easy for us to get information and entertainment in our living rooms for decades. These are nostalgic memories of families and friends huddled around the warm glow of the TV set during prime time, seared into the minds of boomers, Gen-Xers and the older batch of Millennials, watching sporting events, news broadcasts, live and pre-recorded television shows. Despite watching moving images in comparative low-definition for today’s standards (i.e. staticky lines on those old school CRT tv sets), we were blissfully distracted in our living rooms.
Although back then, convenience was restricted in the realm of media consumption. Generally we still had to go outside to eat, work, meet friends, and actually experience the world.
Enter the Internet Age, which for the past couple of decades has exponentially increased our ability not just to live, but to thrive in the comfort of our own homes.
Since the ’90s, we’ve already been using our basic web browsers to access unlimited information online. And since the 2000s, we’ve been on social media to stay connected with friends and family, and consume a wide array of multimedia content in multiple screens.
In the past decade, we have already gone beyond relying on the internet for information and social connections, and into providing us with much more fundamental needs.
E-commerce has made it easy for us to get most necessities like food and clothing (and non-necessities like your 20th pair of Nike Air Force 1s) into our doorsteps in no time.
Video streaming combined with hi-definition home entertainment systems allows us to watch and endless amount of tv shows and movies without being in the mercy of live TV time slots or visits to a physical theatre.
We can be productive remotely with a slew of online work collaboration tools such as work messaging, project management software, and online video communications.
Physical events have also been increasingly conducted online, from intimate webinars, to live-streamed large-scale conferences and concerts.
Why We’re Still Generally Keeping Calm
Being comfortable at home has been happening pre-Coronavirus, and, just based on these ingrained behavioral changes from tech innovations, you’d think we’d actually be at ease today that many of us are in some form of lockdown.
But of course, a majority of us are in various states of restlessness and worry due to the massive disruptions in our day-to-day lives, to the existential worries from the larger uncertainties the pandemic is causing (ex. economic recession, job security, health and safety, social unrest).
And yet interestingly, unlike the apes in the movies I mentioned earlier who were always finding themselves trying to break free from cages in spectacularly rebellious ways, most of us are so far NOT going apeshit. (Or should I say “people-shit”, to avoid offending our simian cousins.)
Some of us, likely from the pre-millennial generations, are slowly realizing that our indulgence in these modern conveniences are also technological traps that distract us from the simpler, more meaningful gratifications we used to get pre-Corona, even the pre-internet era, when we had the option to live happy, flourishing lives without digital technology.
A big reason is a combination of government-imposed restrictions and a shared sense of communal responsibility. It’s both the law and our social obligation to our communities that we follow stay-at-home practices.
But I think there’s also subtler, more profound reason, particularly for the people who have already been equipped by technology to stay indoors.
We were already comfortable at home long before Covid-19.
And some of us, likely from the pre-millennial generations, are slowly realizing that our indulgence in these modern conveniences are also technological traps that distract us from the simpler, more meaningful gratifications we used to get pre-Corona, even the pre-internet era, when we had the option to live happy, flourishing lives without digital technology.
And today, about a third of the population is locked in their homes, many of them recognizing their increasing reliance in tech to live and thrive. While many could be thankful for the conveniences tech has offered, some might view it as a cage — an existential struggle to find a compromise between the promise and the pitfalls of technology.
And because the future holds so much more potential in making our lives easier, I suspect, many, if not most of us (myself included) will probably prefer to stay in that Cage of Convenience.
🤷
For now, let’s stay safe, stay sane, and recognize that we live in a time where staying at home is not only doing good, but also pretty damn comfortable, more so than any time in history.
And lastly, watch out for those damn dirty apes. Because the longer we stay in, the more nature’s going to take back what’s theirs.
It has already begun.
P.S. — I’m usually not this glum about technological progress, and in fact I tend to hold an optimistic, albeit pragmatic, outlook of the future. But weeks watching a constant stream of dystopian movies and tv shows sure can shift your mood.
