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An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is “easy” is that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme, we don
by philipkglass 9y ago
An unwelcome consequence of living in a world where everything is “easy” is that the only skill that matters is the ability to multitask. At the extreme, we don’t actually do anything; we only arrange what will be done, which is a flimsy basis for a life.
There is no shortage of hard problems left to solve. If everything in your life looks uneasily easy, raise your eyes to something harder before gamifying your routine with deliberate refusal to use a microwave oven.
Before big government-funded science programs started in the 20th century, people born into affluent families were greatly over-represented in the sciences, because you can't theorize or research if all day is spent on routine chores. The same goes for composers, mathematicians, and authors.
I find it kind of sad if people liberated from routine chores choose to use their new leisure time exclusively on TV and Facebook. But I'm certainly not going to tell them that they should wash clothes by hand to break out of the entertainment rut. That's a waste of a life too, admittedly one with a lengthier historical pedigree than binge-watching.
Even if you lack the inclination or the skills to advance the frontiers of art, mathematics, or science, there are plenty of rewarding activities that are orthogonal to convenience technologies. Hiking, biking, fishing, birdwatching, learning to sing or play an instrument, woodworking, cooking food that a microwave simply can't make, playing sports, gardening... I do think that people suffer physically and mentally if the only parts of their bodies they use are their fingers and their eyes. A sedentary life spent entirely looking at electronic displays isn't good. (Even reading paper books all the time without using the rest of your body isn't great, and I say that as a serious bookworm.) The best way to fill excessive time freed by convenience technologies is to take up leisure activities that use the rest of yourself, not throw away labor saving machines and start beating rugs like your ancestors (or ancestors' servants).
- essayist 9y agoRight. Many things get easier, but "everything" is not easy, especially not in comparison to every-other-thing. And +1 for pointing out that drudgery-for-the-sake-of-drudgery is hardly the solution.
- justinator 9y agoBut the convenience itself becomes the drudgery. Does everyone love to drive a convenient car, even though it leads to traffic/congestion, bad posture, poorer help (Which , now you have to go to the gym), and environmental collapse? Have you ever noticed the public space we give up to the convenience of the automobile? How much of your town/city has been paved over?
- deeg 9y agoThat's romanticizing the past. Before cars horses (and the infrastructure to support them) caused massive environmental problems, people had all sorts of physical ailments from riding, and their corpses occasionally littered the streets.
- justinator 9y agoI would say horse vs. car is a strange comparison ('cause you can walk you know), but OK. Did travel-by-horse, any time in human history contribute to GLOBAL climate change, rising sea levels, unpredictable weather patterns, etc, etc, that the rise of greenhouse gases like CO2 from the combustion fossil fuels seems to be doing? I'm guessing not. Conveniences have created a population explosion, and we're slowly snuffing out our existence because of it. Convenience is just another pattern of the Luxury Trap that authors like Yuval Noah Harari talk about. We have more of things at lower qualities, which allow us to spread more suffering around.
- philipkglass 9y agoThat specific bikes-vs-cars example is actually pretty good, IMO. When I was in graduate school I spent all day in a classroom or in front of a computer, but I was still in good physical shape because I biked to and from the campus each day. I would have had to go into debt to buy a car. My officemate and fellow grad student had car payments and paid for a gym membership to offset his similarly sedentary day. I used to laugh at that. I laugh a little less now, knowing how much risk cyclists are exposed to from cars, but that problem itself is a symptom of American cities that are built in an excessively car-dependent, car-first way.
- drdeca 9y agoMy contrarian impulse leads me to ask whether for a small portion of people, having a short period of time in which they wash clothes by hand, and afterwards go back to the more convenient and efficient way of doing it might have some benefit by resetting something. But I'm guessing the answer is "probably not, and if so, probably for exceedingly few people. If something like that was a good idea, washing clothes probably wouldn't be the ideal form of it."
- shoguning 9y agoA sweet spot might be things which are 'harder' but have other advantages such as cost/health. Commuting by bike, instead of car is one example, though not possible for all.
- gascan 9y agoClothes washing machines do seem to be one of the unmitigated "goods". Machines use less water, less energy, are gentler on clothes. Reportedly, manual clothes washing is also very hard on the body- physically laborious combined with scalding water and caustic chemicals. There was some article here on HN a little while ago in which the authors were surprised that women of decades past voted the clothes washing machine as the single greatest invention & engine of their emancipation, instead of planes or semiconductors or medicine or- By all means though, gardening, cooking food, human-powered travel, repairing & making things of all kinds, etc I do believe can have great value.
- skookumchuck 9y agoThe sewing machine was also a great emancipator of women.
- gascan 9y agoYes, now thinking about it I think they had been asked about inventions of the 1900's.
- contingencies 9y ago
- leggomylibro 9y agoOn the other hand, after working for 8 hours a day, is it really reasonable to expect people to be enthusiastic about pursuing their own intrinsic questions about how things work and how they could make or improve something? Just because they don't have to spend a couple of hours on rote labor like doing their laundry by hand and cooking? I want the answer to be yes, but it's like my favorite quote says, "as soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up." A better question might be why we're okay with this state of people being largely anesthetized once they get home. But the same thing has been said about television and movies, and pulp fiction before them; maybe the problems are built-in and we just don't have it in us to meaningfully improve.
- CodeMage 9y agoSorry for being off topic here, but I just wanted to express my admiration for such a great use of a Terry Pratchett quote. Vimes is my favorite Discworld character and I'm delighted to see his wisdom used so well in a discussion.
- leggomylibro 9y agoAw, thanks - he's definitely one of my favorite authors. I think that when you're deeply cynical about people and are never given any reasons to think otherwise, it's easy to start acting like a jerk and generally lose sight of the fact that other people still share the same foibles and flaws and fears and insecurities as yourself. Terry Pratchett writes the sort of books which remind you that even though you might completely despair of them, there is still something in everyone that is inherently worthy of compassion. Too bad that human compassion and judgement tend to be the first casualties of all this convenience, huh?
- watwut 9y agoThere were quite a few affluent people who did not do science or anything like that. And quite a few who did science still had time to socialize and relax. Most employed people now, especially those with families, especially Americans, do not have all that time to do hobbies that require effort. They are tired and stressed when they come home and need something easy to unwind. I am not even sure why fishing or birdwatching would be superior to watching a movie on TV.
- philipkglass 9y agoThey are tired and stressed when they come home and need something easy to unwind. I am not even sure why fishing or birdwatching would be superior to watching a movie on TV. I've seen quite a few studies that indicate exposure to nature is beneficial in reducing stress. So is physical exercise, even non-strenuous, which you'll get more of by fishing or birdwatching than by sitting on the couch. Maybe these studies are just more non-replicable junk; I don't have time to do a deep dive to check right now. They do line up with my personal experiences and anecdotal observations of others. (Which means I should probably be extra-skeptical, since it's easiest to fool yourself when a result aligns with your prior intuitions.) But that's how I developed my list of examples, with a lot of outdoor activities and activities that will use different parts of your body.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deeg 9y agoGood comment. I think it's important that we examine our reliance on conveniences but people have been warning us about life becoming too easy since the ancient Greeks.
- interfixus 9y ago> there are plenty of rewarding activities that are orthogonal to convenience technologies The gulf of understanding that many tend to forget or perhaps deliberately dismiss: The vast majority of real people out there would understand nothing or very little of the quoted sentence.
- cortesoft 9y agoOnly because of the word choice; I think you could phrase this, with a bit longer sentences, to something most people can understand.
- truculation 9y ago>There is no shortage of hard problems left to solve Yes, and there never will be. The problem of life is which one to choose. This problem is getting harder in the sense that there's more choice now. (In the old days if peasants didn't labour as their fellows did then they mostly died. Simple choice.) But even though we have choices now this doesn't imply it's possible to live a life of distraction and convenience. The illusion that this is possible leads to nihilism, despair and mental disorder. Which are themselves hard problems.
- WJW 9y agoI only mildly agree; because it is indeed possible to live a life of distraction and convenience. This is easily provable by by observing that there are people doing this already. In my opinion most of the nihilism and despair stems from the fact that distraction and convenience, for all their superficial attractiveness, are the happiness equivalent of a Big Mac. It's a quick fix, but it does not last...
- truculation 9y ago>it does not last... Exactly. It ends with addiction, bad health, senility, crippling alimony or something else nasty. Thus hard problems are inevitable. Better to choose something meaningful ASAP.
- Swizec 9y ago> we only arrange what will be done, which is a flimsy basis for a life. Isn't this what managers do? And large company execs? The bigger the team you lead, the less you do and the more you arrange others to do. So perhaps instead of saying our lives are becoming flimsy, we could say we're all turning into managers.
- b0rsuk 9y agoI'm not going to get upvotes for that, but some of humanity's most profound achievements happened during times of slavery and feudalism. At times even majority of population labored so that the privileged few could pursue philosophy, science, architecture and art. Ancient Greece, Rome, medieval cathedrals, sculptures and paintings. Great wall of China. Oppressive regimes can throw incredible numbers of people at the problem (although recent research suggests the pyramids of Egypt were built by paid workers). My point is that substantial achievements happen even when the privileged people are largely lazy, spoiled and delegate tasks. It's different kind of achievements than in a more egalitarian society (like a republic), perhaps scientific progress is the biggest casualty.
- watwut 9y agoMajority of history was feudalism. So, I guess of course? Through, medieval sculptures and paintings are quite odd choice of profound achievement. They are just sculptures and paintings and buildings, really. There is nothing profound or moving about them. We are generating a lot of art, philosophy and what not right now, more then they ever did. Same for science, it is moving much faster now then it moved under feudalism or slavery.