The Dangerous Psychology of Convenience

Modern life has revolved around one central motif perhaps more than any other: the culture of convenience. Since the Industrial Revolution, society has focused exponentially on the power of productivity, using technology to make everything bigger, better, faster, stronger, and easier in order to enhance our quality of life. Yet, despite these continuing advances, it isn’t always clear that civilization has become healthier and happier. There are always unintended or ignored consequences of exchanging one form of labor for another, and there are worrisome underlying intentions and motivations for short-term conveniences.

This decade has tragically made us aware that our unfettered push for convenience is reaching a breaking point. The pandemic likely emerged from this overheated brew of commerce, globalization, and overpopulation…and spread rapidly because of it. Climate change is setting off unprecedented warning signs left and right: a hurricane hitting Southern California, possibly 1000 people incinerated by a sudden wildfire in Maui, toxic Canadian wildfire plumes polluting the air across the United States…and this is just in our country. Rates of cancer are rising in younger people, with new potential sources identified daily, as longer-term data rolls in for everything from artificial sweeteners to PFAS chemicals in our public water.

In turn, our economy and thirst for innovation tries to outpace these existential dangers with even more technology: We rapidly created novel COVID-19 vaccines; we advocate for electric cars and sustainable energy; we analyze genetic codes to target and produce new therapies yearly for various diseases. But it still feels like a game of whack-a-mole or a ringed serpent ultimately biting its own tail, and various distracting forces make it all feel like too little, too late.

With the rise of oligarchic capitalism, the programs and governments that are meant to look out for the public interest seem increasingly influenced by conflicts of interest and ways to maximize profiteering, short-term gains, and wealth instead of looking toward the greater good and the future. There is a tense balance between these perspectives in our regulations and our politics that seems eroded more and more by power and greed. These human behaviors are nothing new; since time immemorial, society has been prone to hierarchies and resulting conflicts and wars. Unfortunately, now married to technology, these psychological tendencies affect the very fiber of our planetary balance on a larger and potentially irreversible scale.

Yet, these conflicts of interest largely go under the radar and unopposed. At times, they're even valorized by the masses who are being thrown under the bus. One possible reason is that, despite growing economic disparity, technology has also successfully democratized certain aspects of comfortable living that keep most people lulled into complacency: Our thirst for convenience has been successfully targeted and nourished. Many people in America, even with minimal income, have access to cell phones, internet-driven social media, video games, and flat-screen televisions that keep people entertained. And, they can purchase easy thrills like movies, quick and tasty food, groceries, rides via apps, and more. Revolutions and protests only seem to happen when something truly rends at the fabric of our safety and well-being…and, aside from brief flareups related to social media or news-driven movements, we have largely stayed off the streets despite the growing warning signs that there are major civil upheavals headed our way.

On some level, we are still assuaged and satisfied by our easy-access, instant-gratification culture. We just assume that the growing dangers won’t affect us directly, even as that bubble of comfort increasingly erodes. We assume the bullets from a mass shooting won’t hit us, that a mass-disabling virus won’t give us long COVID-19, that repeated exposures to toxic chemicals won’t give us cancer, that hurricanes or heat waves won’t destroy our homes and families because we are still in our safe little nest surrounded by our gadgets. We will be okay, because right here, right now, we still feel okay.

But we are not okay. Aside from these larger-scale dangers, older forms of community-building and socialization seem to be breaking down, and individual unhappiness and pressures to keep up with rising costs of living and productivity demands seem potentially linked to all-time escalating suicide rates. Our continued focus on this anesthetized here-and-now indulgence belies a deep-seated emptiness and despair. The Surgeon General has even noted there is an epidemic of loneliness currently. So much of what we do now focuses on quick material or superficial rushes, and not on how we can truly help and comfort others on a more connected level. But it is now so difficult to incentivize this type of meaningful work for people: Who truly has the time or money to just volunteer for others when we have to keep up with the demands of the rat race of our world?

There are no easy answers, but we can try to start with some simple basics. We can advocate for values and known social support mechanisms that help all people: access to health care, education, social equity and justice, compassion, support for those who need assistance or are less fortunate, clean air and water, and more. We need to figure out how to move beyond the manipulative divisiveness of social media messaging and commit to causes that we know are humanistic and help all of us as a society. The psychology of convenience has lulled us into complacency, but we are now asleep at the wheel, heading for a cliff. We need to wake up and save ourselves.