How Convenience Killed Patience (And All Our Practical Skills)
There is a hefty price to pay for our ultra-modern, ultra-smart world.
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There are many things that we rely on in life. Water, food, heating. WiFi, hugs, tea. Firefox, Netflix, Google Maps. Earplugs, moisturizer, 40 denier tights (perhaps that’s just me).
As a child, only food, water, heating and hugs were essential. Plus a few items from the Argos catalogue at Christmas. But as we have gotten older, our lists have inevitably grown. Not only because we have become more self-sufficient, but also because the world increasingly hands us things that are very, very useful.
I asked my boyfriend what he couldn’t live without, and his first response was “You.” Aw. But seriously. “Food, sunshine, WiFi.” A succinct but well curated list.
My rumination on these needs has grown in recent years, mostly because the age old promise — that more technological sophistication brings us more free time — seems to be a fabricated one. Yet many agree, quite rightly, that speed and convenience are nice things to have.
When my grandmother got a washing machine after years of cleaning clothes by hand, I’m sure she did a hallelujah dance. When my parents installed a dishwasher in their late forties (my father, an eschewer of any newfangled machines, took a lot of convincing) they both basked in the joy of no dirty dishes after dinner. Of course, they had to rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. And then take them out again. But overall, it was a very good device for hiding dirty plates.
But now these items barely seem luxurious, instead another standard appliance to squeeze into our ever growing kitchens. And although these developments were supposed to save us time, somehow it still slips away from us. Because the more time you have, the higher the expectation to fill it. And the more time filled, the more appealing convenience items become.
Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z grew up through a period of rapid technological advancement. Sure, some of us had paper encyclopedias, or went to the library on weekends. But we were all eventually sucked into the world of internet search engines, using Ask Jeeves and Yahoo Search until “Google it” became a legitimate command.
Typing is our go to writing technique. Reading is done on screens. TV programs are ruled by choice, not rigid schedules. In our lives, we get what we want, when we want it. And we want it now.
Take, for example, the way we buy and consume food. Food is a necessity — it’s on all our lists. But growing, harvesting and preparing food takes time and work, and the vast majority of people in affluent countries don’t want to do this. So we pay somebody else to do it.
But we also don’t want to go to farms and collect the food, because these farms are far away (sometimes really really far away). So we pay a company to transport the food, package it and display it on nice neat shelves close to our homes.
And that’s not all. We also want our food to look a certain way and be conveniently shaped. It is difficult to peel an oddly shaped carrot. We want our carrots nice and long and straight, thank you. For easy peeling.
But then again, who the hell has time to peel a carrot? So we demand our carrots shredded and sliced in handy plastic portion sizes. Or better yet, the carrots cut and cooked and seasoned before being put into the ever alluring ready meal package. An easy meal for one.
This is not new to my generation. But my generation is perhaps the first to accept it without question. If we can’t find something in a supermarket, it frustrates us. When things are out of stock, we complain. Where are my strawberries?! We demand, in the middle of winter. Why the hell is this shop closed on Christmas day? Because people need a holiday? But what about my Greek yoghurt!
One could argue that speed and convenience are a rational pursuit: To have time for relationships and creativity, we should spend less time on boring repetitive tasks. This is the common argument thrown around when the topic of job automation comes up. And, indeed, I definitely don’t want to wash my clothes in the bathtub. Modern conveniences are very practical.
But when does being practical teeter into something else? Max Weber wrote in the early 1900s about increasing rationalism in modern western society. Instead of being motivated by customs or traditions, rational societies are motivated by reason and practicality. Rational societies are more efficient. Rational societies get things done.
Yet a one-directional view of a “reasonable and practical” society can ultimately become irrational. We become trapped in a system of our own making. We no longer completely understand why we do certain things, we only know that they are the only feasible way. The system is too complex to break apart, and pulling at one thread might unravel the complicated world we have cocooned around us. Look at the coronavirus pandemic. Look how it is unraveling us all.
Speed and convenience sit at our fingertips. But there is a hefty price to pay for our ultra-modern, ultra-smart world. Our patience is frazzled. We no longer understand that waiting is a normal part of life, that things will not pop up immediately, that people will not respond straight away. And convenience means waste. Industrial farming. Global exports. Plastic packaging. Heaters and coolers and dryers and boilers. In light of the many impending environmental problems that loom over our lives, relying on things that aren’t necessary for survival seems somewhat foolish. Yet because of the overt practicality and efficiency of it all, giving it up seems virtually impossible.
I have no solution. I wasn’t taught to need one. I have a smartphone. I use apps. I have a ChromeCast permanently plugged into my TV. And of course I wouldn’t die without Netflix. Only of boredom. But I would definitely starve without Tesco. Because I have no idea how to catch a fish (I tried once, but felt so sorry for the little blubber mouth I let it go). And I have nowhere in my 40m² overpriced apartment to grow potatoes.
