Convenience

How much of your life is based on seeking convenience? In many ways, the American penchant for convenience is self-defeating. Increased convenience can free up large amounts of useful time, the most precious commodity in mortal life. However, convenience can also make the mind and body lazy, thereby sapping the mental energy and muscle for using precious time productively.

Our evolution from the plains of Africa and Asia came about through adaptation and effort to survive as hunters and gatherers. Cultivation is a recent development of human history. Approximately ten thousand of our 200,000 years as a species, 5% of human history. Most of human history has been spent in pursuit of shelter and food. The current convenience of human life in industrial nations is still very fresh. And, with it, we are just beginning to realize the problems that come with it: Obesity, overpopulation, environmental degradation.

On an individual personal level, the quest for convenience takes many forms. More and more electric appliances to do mundane tasks that require relatively little muscular effort. Electric scooters for the obese, who could maintain mobility with decreased weight and physical therapy. Website grocery stores which provide high calorie foods to your door without your having to expend calories to fetch them. Shopping malls with everything from vitamins to vacuum cleaners and fast-food courts.

Al Gore struck a profound note when he titled his global warming revelation An Inconvenient Truth. The vehement reaction he received from the uneducated and media-mesmerized was, perhaps, the seed for the current Tea Party rabble-rousing against the Intellectual Elite. Providing for the general health of a society, taking care of the elderly and disabled, standing up to people with too much money...these are all inconveniences for a segment of the Middle Class who are living a very convenient life by working the systems as they now exist.

I believe that humanism is not about convenience. The greater good cannot be served conveniently. The greater good entails change. Change is seldom convenient from the point of view of human inertia. Science and reason will eventually move beyond the current human love affair with convenience and laziness. If the fulcrum of human intelligence and energy shifts from convenience to progressive change for all human beings, our species will embark on intentional evolution. If this shift does not occur, human existence will inevitably become far from convenient.