> Would spending time with family feel as meaningful as it does now if you were living inside the loop of "Groundhog day" and recreating the same evening over and over again?
Who said that was the choice being offered?
> That is essentially immortality, as experienced in an unchanging world.
But we don't live in an unchanging world, so I don't see how any of this is relevant.
> most people I meet seem to lament that it feels like they're getting less and less time for these things
Is that because they're refusing to use automatic coffee makers and doing all their chores by hand? Or is it because they're using all the time freed up by automation on Facebook and Twitter instead of using it reading or playing with their kids?
That line of thinking sounds a lot like trying to artificially induce meaningful experiences. I don't know if it generalizes to everyone, but once I'm aware I'm tricking myself into something, I don't find it meaningful at all.
Also, "spending time with family" isn't meaningful per se. The meaning is in the details the phrase doesn't convey - the things you do together, the things you talk about, the emotions you feel.
> most people I meet seem to lament that it feels like they're getting less and less time for these things :-)
That's because we live in a competitive environment; the work really does expand to encompass all the time labour-saving inventions liberate - simply because some people choose to go "the extra mile" and everyone else suddenly has to follow suit, or risk being left behind.
> Or read a book. Or play with your kids. Or your pets. Or talk to your spouse/significant other/friends. Or write code. Or post on your blog.
> you do have to choose.
Yes, convenience frees you up to pursue something else, but I've felt that it takes so much willpower to pick an activity you know to be of value to you (like exercise, or reading a book) over something immediately gratifying.
Another thing I've been thinking about, related to this is that our value systems and/or attention span have been weakened severely by the torrent of information and immediate connectivity these days have.
I remember this quote attributed to G. Michael Hopf: "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times."
What if this pursuit of convenience is making us weaker, and in the long run, blind to what should be pursued with the time we free up?
You may be interested in this if you haven’t already come across it previously: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_th...
Really interesting bit, wouldn't have found it unless you sent me this. Interested, too, to hear what people think about it.
> it takes so much willpower to pick an activity you know to be of value to you (like exercise, or reading a book) over something immediately gratifying
Yes, it does. Anything worthwhile requires effort. But most such things can also benefit greatly from practice--the more you are able to choose to do them, the easier it gets to choose to do them.
> Yes, convenience frees you up to pursue something else, but I've felt that it takes so much willpower to pick an activity you know to be of value to you (like exercise, or reading a book) over something immediately gratifying.
Whereas before you didn't have to choose and never got an opportunity to use your willpower to pick an activity of value. What's to say that people weren't made weak and compliant by a lack of opportunity to make their own choices?
> What if this pursuit of convenience is making us weaker, and in the long run, blind to what should be pursued with the time we free up?
What if it isn't? What if this is little more than another moral panic, such as a decade ago how sexting was going to ruin everyone forever and was a threat to all children?
It seems to me that there are few answers here, but an awful lot of moralizing about shockingly little. Re-frame much of it as the quest for self-mastery, and now generations of philosophers approve.
> Whereas before you didn't have to choose and never got an opportunity to use your willpower to pick an activity of value. What's to say that people weren't made weak and compliant by a lack of opportunity to make their own choices?
Is the lack of choices and opportunity absolutely less preferable than wasting collective human time and energy in the deceptive pursuit of convenience? Also, aren't we converging to a future where we are in less control of important things, like privacy, human rights and environmental health, because we have traded them away to entities who were willing to take these from us in the pretext of convenience?
What if it isn't? What if this is little more than another moral panic?
Aren't we better off treating matters like these with care rather than abandon regardless? I think it's weak to dismiss this as a moral panic simply because an unrelated concept came and proved to be one.
Back then, you knew the bad people simply wanted to take your freedom and use it to empower their choices. Now, they feed off our compliance and mindless consumption with a smile on their face and we seek them out actively. I or you may benefit individually, but atrophy is a real thing, tedium and hardship serves its own purpose. Would you make the case that we do not weaken mankind as a whole, or in the long run?
I'm saying the premises as presented don't hold water, and therefore the arguments rooted in them do not function as intended.
For instance, we are in a context where we are less in control of important things, like privacy, human rights, and environmental health than we would like. We are not in a context where we previously had full individual control of these things. We in aggregate, human socities, have always traded these away for one reason or another. What clear rubric makes one reason better or worse?
Whether this is a moral panic is an interesting question. It gets to the core of the issue. Specifically, is there any good evidence to believe that convenience is making humanity weaker? Perhaps it is true. Perhaps it is the opposite of true. Perhaps the truth is a mixed bag. Perhaps it's unmeasurable, making the whole subject one purely of personal opinion. Do we even have a clear definition of "strong" or "weak"?
I'm making the case that you have a wonderful opportunity to convincingly make yours ahead of you yet.
All this talk of "strong men" being created by hardship is the bread and butter of fascist propaganda and jihadi recruiting videos.
This sounds pedantic, but it's a core point that the quote talks of men, while historically it's women that have been the beneficiaries of labour-saving machinery in the home. While John Henry was trying to fight the steam shovel, Janet Henry was waiting for the washing machine to arrive.
And both genders can benefit from accomodative technology as they age and weaken. Not to mention the younger disabled. See all those catalogues of seemingly useless hyper-specific kitchen gadgets; they're actually accessibility aids that for reasons of customer pride can't be marketed as such.
"Convenience" doesn't just extend your life by giving you more in the middle. It extends your time of useful independence.
> All this talk of "strong men" being created by hardship is the bread and butter of fascist propaganda and jihadi recruiting videos.
That's neither here nor there - even if they use such talk in their propaganda, that does not neccessarily mean it is false (I cannot imagine that for example every single notion that Hitler held was false, or even a single contested notion - statistically, he had to be right about something).
>statistically, he had to be right about something
There's a dangerous propensity for people to look at something someone says and go "well. he's right about that, so he must have something to offer to the conversation".
What people say usually has a deeper reason than the face value of the comment. Taking random quotes from philosophers / religious texts / leaders / raconteurs can support pretty much anything you want it to. The original quote probably had a deeper reason. In the case of Hitler (and pretty much any despot throughout history) the "right about something" quotes were carefully crafted to lower the guard of otherwise moderate people to bring the bigger, "core" message closer to being accepted.
The point is that the "strong men" line, although possibly true, is historically only used by those looking to appeal to those who self-identify as "strong men", and usually in order to manipulate them to a cause that pits them against the "weak men".
The statement may have truth in isolation, but historically it has red flags hanging all over it.
Also, I'm amazed we haven't gone all Godwin at the mention of Hitler!
I use a (manual) coffee grinder as part of a morning ritual. When I wake up I put on water to boil, start grinding coffee, stare out of the window, make coffee and then return to bed and read my news/blogs for as long as the coffee lasts. Then I go for a shower.
The thing for me is: it feels good to start the day by doing something yourself and the time you spend in morning rituals can be valuable for the whole day.
Although I automate a lot on computers, I belive in the value of manually making things happen, instead of having a environment that caters to you.
Every now and then I break my ritual and don’t drink coffee, which is something I don’t want to have to schedule with my smart watch.
Do you cut the wood to boil your coffee, light the fire, or is that line about boiling coffee just a convenient knob you turned. When you put the water on to boil do you go to the well [that you dug yourself] and let a bucket down on a rope [that you made yourself]; or do you open the tap? Is your coffee grinder a rock, or a more convenient gadget?
I have a similar morning routine. Waiting for coffee to steep and drinking it creates a space to slow down and do something other than getting ready, in a way that using an alarm or some hard rule like "three news stories" wouldn't replicate.
A friend of mine starts work very early, so he has a different routine. He takes his dog out, gets dressed, then drinks his coffee on the commute. His coffee maker isn't especially smart, but it automatically heats water at the same time every morning. For him, taking the dog out is his manual "slow time", and automating coffee gained him a little bit more of it.
I don't think it's coincidental that artisanal products and "Pintrest-style" homemade crafts are in vogue at the moment. Doing something manually is fulfilling, and often produces much better results than automation. But not everyone gets that fulfillment from the same tasks, so automation helps free time for the ones we value. It's probably telling that neither my friend nor I has a drip coffee maker; we each went to a pole of manual or automated production.
>Or read a book. Or play with your kids. Or your pets. Or talk to your spouse/significant other/friends. Or write code. Or post on your blog. Or...
Or nothing of the short -- just go and produce more useless innovations (IoT crap, and so on), and then spend 3+ hours on social media, and so on.
The important real time saving low hanging fruits inventions (washing machine, fridge, etc) are already done (some are pending still, but they aren't those peddled by modern companies).
All those modern "innovations" are meant for you to be a good consumer -- and to be such, you need to constantly buy the next, and work in the rat race to afford them.
You could read the book and play with your kids without an "internet-enabled coffee maker"...
In fact even agrarian medieval societies had more holidays (almost half the year) and far more leisure time than we do -- and that's with all the farm and household chores...
> Specifically, is there any good evidence to believe that convenience is making humanity weaker? [...] Do we even have a clear definition of "strong" or "weak"?
This, exactly. Unless we're talking about how much weight a person can lift, there's no objective definition of "strong" or "weak" person. "Strength" in this context isn't a property of a person at all, in my opinion, but of how other people perceive that person behavior - and that perception is so dependent on observers' life experiences, culture, religion, education and many other factors that it's practically meaningless. As such, the very notion of "strong person" is exploited in all kind of propaganda - with a concept this fuzzy it's easy to bend it to mean whatever you want it to mean.
"Convenience is making us weak" or "hardships make people strong" are examples of such propaganda in action. There's no meaning to them other than what the person talking wants them to mean (and, possibly, what the audience wants to hear). You could reformulate the statements to be easier to prove or falsify, but then the entirety of modern psychology and cognitive science would be against you, which is why nobody attempts to do this.
Well, that's how thought-terminating cliches generally are, so no surprise here. What's amazing to me, though, is that we're this deep into the thread and we still talk about them...
You can associate it with controversial groups and ideologies, in the same way a person can claim they relate to the statement in some way. I'm from a third-world country, and have been personally beset with circumstances that have left me at massive disadvantages, and I cannot be more thankful to have experienced them as I have been stronger because of it.
> This sounds pedantic, but it's a core point that the quote talks of men, while historically...
Is it? I took it as referring to mankind and not referring to males in particular. Them bad times could surely have affected, strengthened females as well. I'm sure you know that labor-saving machinery in the home have benefited everyone regardless of gender, too...
Also, I think we shouldn't conflate accessibility with convenience. The two are simply not the same. Increasing accessibility is good, because without it, some people will simply be excluded. Convenience, on the other hand?
Seemingly useless hyper-specific kitchen gadgets in particular can be interpreted as capitalizing on people who don't want to spend time and/or willing spend more money on things. Not sure if it's a virtuous example, and I may be wrong in this one.
> "Convenience" doesn't just extend your life by giving you more in the middle. It extends your time of useful independence.
I do agree with this, too. I just think that exposure to convenience without experiencing the lack of it keeps you ignorant of its true value which is the opportunity and pursuit of higher purpose, and I am left wondering if such a thing should be held as strong as we see in society today.
> I'm sure you know that labor-saving machinery in the home have benefited everyone regardless of gender
While this is true in a pedantic sense, prior to the 20th century this work was overwhelmingly done by women; not easy to "save" a labour of men that wasn't being done by them in the first place but instead being outsourced with a strong element of social and household coercion...
> I just think that exposure to convenience without experiencing the lack of it keeps you ignorant of its true value
Largely this is what the "privilege" discussion is about.
With all due respect were you here before the 20th century?
Was anyone looking at this site?
There's an old bit of cross-generational wisdom that I can't quite find the provenance of, but damnit, I know I've seen it before, and it goes something like:
>Let the wars of the past die with those who fought them.
The point being, they fought the fight that you wouldn't have to live in the same world, and fight the same battles they did.
That was then, this is now, and we even have precedent of what hasn't worked historically to help guide us. Let the sin of the parent reflect not on the child. The child is born into a world which is shaped around them until such time as they too can contribute to reshaping the societal fabric.
The phrase fits into such controversial ideologies just as much as mainstream ones because it describes a pattern, nothing more.
The thing that makes the jihadi and fascist interpretations of it controversial is the course of actions they believe it justifies. Not the pattern itself.
Now, more on topic. There is value in understanding "where you came from", and the path previously tread. Moving [society/the species] forward is difficult when you don't even understand what was being moved away from in the first place, and why. Heck, you don't even understand the direction you're going in the ideological landscape if you can't reconcile the required ethics of your sociological end condition with a physical environment capable of supporting them.
People see things in different ways, because everyone is mentally equipped with a different view of the puzzle of survival in the physical world. I might, as a hypothetical, understand how to guide a group through an environment, and build a sustainable community given the physical constraints, while being largely blind to the norms and emotional needs of those in it. This is why we're social creatures. We balance off one another so the collective can perpetuate.
But if we all get stuck in the past, and dig up every skeleton to have a crusade over, we're never going to get anywhere, or do anything to leave the next generation in a better starting place than what we had to start with; and I think deep down we can all agree that is a reasonable goal, yes?
To leave the world (and those in it) in a better condition for us having lived than not?
Philosophically it takes a certain kind of person to want to live in a environment designed to cater to ones needs, independent of whether these needs stay the same or not.
What convinience in that sense does, is reducing the users agency. If your coffee is ready every morning, independent on your desire to drink it, it influences you into not deciding yourself. It would be a waste to throw it away.
This is not at all dramatic, but I can imagine better ways of starting a day than not deciding yourself, if the rest of the day you wanna be a person who does.
Purely symbolical of course, but I learned that the person who enjoys brewing a coffee by hand every morning might have more energy for the day than the one who gets it catered to them automatically. And the time the latter person wins, is usually not used in any meaningful way (quite the opposite usually).