Why Do We Become Busier as Technology Advances: A Perspective of Severity
Why are we so busy amidst a plethora of convenient tools? And despite attaining a level of wealth unprecedented in history, why can’t we escape conflict and suffering?
In this article, I intend to analyze the current state of society using the concept of ‘Severity’.
Severity
Severity refers to the degree of harshness or seriousness. It’s a measure of the severity of a situation.
When individuals are placed in situations with high severity, they are constantly under stress and unable to play or rest.
When a group is in a high severity situation, more power concentrates in the hands of the leader, and rules become stricter. Also, high severity situations bring about internal conflicts and divisions within society.
This applies, for example, when facing natural predators or large-scale disasters, or situations of food shortages and the spread of epidemics.
Changes in Severity
As societies become wealthier, the risks of food shortages and epidemics decrease. Encounters with natural predators and disaster damage can also be somewhat mitigated.
Therefore, the wealth of a society is a major factor in reducing its severity.
Factors that increase a society’s severity are not only external ones like predators, disasters, famines, and epidemics. It also includes the magnitude of desires and demands.
As desires and demands increase, severity relatively increases as well.
Thus, even if society becomes wealthy and reduces its severity, if desires and demands increase along with it, the severity will rise.
If the increase is greater, it means that despite becoming wealthier, the society’s severity has increased. This makes it easier to concentrate power in the hands of leaders, tighten rules, and restrict individual freedoms. At the same time, it can lead to or exacerbate conflicts and divisions.
Capitalism and Severity
When viewed from a human societal perspective, rather than an economic one, capitalism is a system that drives competition and pushes individuals into productive activities. Individuals and organizations engaged in production activities aim for increased productivity and innovation due to heightened competition.
Another aspect of capitalism is its mechanism to drive desires.
As production capacity and productivity improve, and innovation leads to abundant goods and services, the psychological aspect is that it becomes easier to obtain these, lowering the threshold for desires and making people want goods and services.
Also, engaging in productive activities allows individuals to receive rewards, which they can use for consumption, representing another economic aspect at the individual level.
Furthermore, companies advertise to increase profits, and governments implement demand-stimulating measures to keep the economy circulating, thereby working to heighten individual desires.
Capitalism thus affects human society from these two perspectives. From an economic standpoint, this means an increase in both supply and demand. As both increase, the economy improves, and economic growth occurs.
However, the increase in economic and material wealth brought about by capitalism, along with the increase in desires, has a dual effect on society’s severity, both decreasing and increasing it.
The Impact of Wealth and External Factors on Severity
From the perspective of severity, it is desirable for a society to become economically or materially wealthier.
Whether it’s a family or a company, having economic surplus rather than struggling financially tends to lower severity. Of course, other factors also play a significant role, but when there is economic surplus and lower severity, there tends to be less conflict, and it’s easier to decentralize authority and relax rules.
However, if other factors increase severity, even with significant economic or material wealth, an environment prone to conflict and bound by concentrated authority and strict rules may emerge.
If the factors increasing severity are external, economic or material wealth can often offset them. In the case of disasters or deteriorating economic environments, economic and material resources can be used for prevention and mitigation. If interference comes from hostile organizations, economic and material resources can be leveraged for advantageous negotiations.
The Impact of Internal Factors Unrelated to Wealth on Severity
On the other hand, if the factors increasing severity are internal, it is often difficult to offset them with economic or material wealth.
For example, if a leader prefers concentration of power and resists decentralization, or if the members themselves are not motivated to decentralize authority, power tends to concentrate. Moreover, if the ideology of imposing strict rules is widespread, rules will become stricter regardless of wealth.
Furthermore, if conflicts and divisions arise not from economic or material distribution issues but from grudges or discrimination, these conflicts and divisions will progress irrespective of wealth.
The Impact of Productivity and Efficiency on Severity
The availability of convenient tools and technologies for work intuitively seems to make work easier. However, the reality is often the opposite. Modern people, surrounded by convenient tools and technology, are becoming increasingly busy.
While such tools may reduce the physical strength and stamina needed for manual labor, or shift from manual to intellectual work, making it physically easier.
However, tools and technologies that shorten time and increase efficiency create harsh conditions for workers in capitalism. For instance, consider a job that used to take half a day now only takes 30 minutes with a revolutionary tool.
If everyone used to take half a day for the job, taking a 30-minute chat or break due to poor health or mood would not significantly affect the outcome. However, if the job now takes only 30 minutes, a 30-minute break means the job takes twice as long.
Although most tasks can be completed in 30 minutes, if one task takes an hour, it will cause dissatisfaction to those waiting for its completion.
Also, consider if a machine processing your work used to require a 10-minute wait, which improves to just 10 seconds. Previously, that 10-minute gap allowed for a break to drink something, but now that break time disappears.
As such, increased productivity and efficiency tools can reduce the time and effort for tasks, but they also exert pressure on workers to work continuously without gaps.
If future biotechnological advancements or implantable devices make sleep, excretion, or eating unnecessary, we might have very convenient bodies but also face pressure to work continuously 24 hours without breaks.
Capitalism, or a competitive society, can be seen as a system that puts high pressure on workers along with the efficiency of tools and technologies. Convenient tools and technologies, in this way, increase the severity for workers.
The Impact of Long-termism
Furthermore, there is a very troubling issue from the perspective of severity: long-termism.
It might seem commendable for current society to undertake efforts to mitigate or prevent future problems based on long-term forecasts. However, from the perspective of severity, these demands assuredly increase the severity of society. This is a significant headache.
As foresight increases regarding issues like climate change and environmental problems, it becomes apparent that we cannot continue our current way of life, necessitating a transition to a sustainable society. Also, the unrestrained development of various technologies could bring unexpected problems to society, requiring a cautious approach.
However, such demands for a sustainable society and careful technological development are new to past societies. Even if these are forward-looking and thoughtful demands, if they are difficult to achieve and are earnestly requested by many people, they increase societal demands. This, in turn, heightens severity, causing us distress.
In essence, long-termism, which focuses on long-term issues, leads to an increase in society’s severity. This results in the concentration of power, stricter rules, and deepening societal divisions and conflicts.
However, this does not mean we can ignore environmental or technological issues. Ignoring these issues due to increasing severity only heightens the risk of an unfortunate future.
Yet, the more actively we try to tackle future risks, the more society becomes shrouded in the dark clouds of severity. This presents a significant and profound dilemma.
The Equation of Modern Society
When considering society from the perspective of severity, it is desirable to keep severity as low as possible. However, due to various factors, severity tends to increase, necessitating the solution of the complex equation of modern society.
To reduce severity, the first step is to increase wealth.
On the other hand, enhancing productivity in a competitive society to increase wealth can increase severity. Especially when economic growth rates slow down, the increase in severity due to the negative effects of a competitive society can outweigh the decrease in severity brought by wealth.
This situation requires significant social or economic ingenuity. Since it’s crucial to reduce severity by increasing wealth, the pursuit of wealth remains necessary. However, if the pursuit of wealth ends up increasing severity, it’s counterproductive. Therefore, we need strategies that enhance wealth without increasing severity.
Then, ideally, we use the accumulated wealth to address environmental and technological issues, thereby tackling long-term problems without increasing the overall severity.
In Conclusion: Managing Severity
To successfully progress in any endeavor, it is important to find the right indicators.
For instance, if you want to prevent adult diseases, it’s not enough to just blindly continue with healthy behaviors and diets. Instead, it’s crucial to use indicators such as blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and visceral fat amounts to understand where the risks lie, and manage these to keep them within desirable ranges.
Similarly, if you want to invigorate a country’s economy, it doesn’t work well to just look at stock indicators like the amount of savings held by citizens. It’s more appropriate to compile flow indicators like GDP and observe the annual growth rate of this flow. Then, devising economic policies that improve these indicators is a shortcut to economic revitalization.
Finding effective indicators is extremely important for successfully managing affairs. If you are looking at indicators irrelevant to the problem you truly want to solve, the problem will never be resolved.
I consider severity as an indicator to analyze situations where increased convenience and wealth are not leading to our happiness. It is because, even with convenience and wealth, if severity increases, we become busier, suffer more, and the risk of division and conflict grows.
If we can quantify or qualitatively assess this severity, and implement measures to reduce it, we have the potential to manage severity and improve this contradictory situation.
Furthermore, I believe managing severity could be an effective approach to addressing challenging environmental and technological issues.
