Last weekend was Smallsteps' birthday get-together with family, but today she is going to have a party with her friends at one of those kids play parks with slides, swings and trampolines. What is interesting and sad, is that with the price of groceries at the moment, it is actually cheaper to have the party today than last week, though all they offer today is some ice cream, popcorn and chips. It is obviously also more convenient, since we don't have to worry about cleaning before people arrive, entertaining, or cleaning up after. The kids have a good time, however, I think that next year we are going to do something different instead.
Convenience.
It is the silent killer.
Our lives these days are dictated by convenience, yet it is increasingly impacting on us negatively. Of course, it isn't all bad and it is part of the mechanism for us evolve as a species, as we improve our methods and tools to become more efficient and effective. Yet, it is also a mechanism that provides market space, so that things like "foods of convenience" can be supplied, regardless of whether they are healthy or not. Fast food might be okay in moderation, but how much of what so many of us eat is fast and, what is moderate?
The challenge with choices of convenience is that we are filling our lives up with more time-consuming activities, even if they don't necessarily improve our experience. For instance, I wonder how many people's lives are that much better because of all of the streaming content they watch. But, being able to turn on a tap and get clean water is amazing in terms of convenience and is something that likely saves lives too.
However, we are geared to favor convenient, because we are built to conserve energy, not spend it. Our bodies are designed to find ways to create shortcuts in our lives, whether it be physical processes or mental heuristics and it is this predilection that primes us to becomes slaves to the convenient. We can buy food, so few people cook. We can buy clothes, so few people know how to make their own. We can buy a house, so few people can build. We can buy entertainment, so we don't learn how to entertain ourselves.
Convenience is a skill killer.
There is term called "competitive cognitive artefacts", where tools compete against the development of our own skills. For instance, if we are continuously using calculators to do simple math, our own brains lose the ability to do so, because they aren't doing the work for themselves. It is mental atrophy. And how I see it, pretty much all acts of convenience are doing the same, competing for space in the skill landscape, replacing bits of us, without us even realizing what we are is disappearing.
Think about this in terms of personal finance, where in the past each person and household would have to take care of their own resources. Yet over the years, this has been slowly replaced by business systems and governments so that most people in the world have decreasing control over what they own, to the point that they own very, very little.
Our money is not ours. Our houses are not ours. Our jobs are not ours. Our lives are not ours.
This has come about through a trillion choices of convenience to choose some kind of efficiency to gain value in one area, at the expense of value in another. And it is an easy decision to make, as making the choice saves time, energy, resources - it is a no-brainer. And we will keep making the same decision over and over until we have no brain left at all.
Slaves to convenience.
We end up in a position where we are not only unable to think and act for ourselves, but also that we aren't allowed to think and act for ourselves. Instead, the decision-making power is proxied out to businesses and governments, who are peddling convenient solutions, because this is how they keep their products relevant and how they build wealth and control.
I sound like a crazy person.
I might be. But, I do think that there is some kind of pushback starting to happen, where some people are realizing the cost of convenience. Just look at us here on Hive - none of this is easier than on other social platforms and in order to be successful, it takes a lot of work. And, it isn't just work to build content and engage, but also to understand the ecosystem, the mechanisms in play and actually take responsibility for personal experience.
Your keys, your life.
At least on Hive. On Hive, owning your keys gives you power, as it is your ability to make decisions for yourself and act as you choose. You can give your power to others through delegation or choose to take it away again, but ultimately, you are responsible and accountable for your behavior and the consequences of your Hive activity.
You are free.
Not free to do anything, because there are always universal rules in place, and the rules of the blockchain are the universal rules of the Hive ecosystem, even though they can be rewritten. But, at any given point in time, you are free to act within the constraints of the system, interact with people as you choose and live your experience as you please. This doesn't mean you get the results you want, but it does give you control and influence.
But it isn't convenient.
Life isn't convenient. Neither is love.
The more we give in to convenience, the more we might be losing. Sure, there are gains, but tell me, what skills have you been developing through your Netflix consumption, and has it improved on other areas of your life - are you eating better? Are your relationships better?
Everything has a cost. A lot of convenience might not be worth the price.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
