How Lazy Can You Get?
There’s not much I do that’s actually difficult anymore.
It didn’t used to be that way.
When I applied to colleges, it was suggested to me that I create a number of tiers of schools: the long-shots, the probables, and the back-ups. I collected catalogs and applications from a number of schools in different parts of the country. To do this, I had to find telephone numbers, call admissions offices, get on mailing lists, and wait to receive my material. I wound up with a stack of applications, each one differently shaped, with different numbers of pages, and different requirements.
I dug in. The first application was a number of long, narrow pages. (It looked a lot like a real estate contract, but I didn’t know that back then.) It asked me to print my name and Social Security number at the top of each page. What a pain. I set it aside, and looked at the next application. This one seemed easier, until you got to the essay requirements. They were asking for multiple essays.
This was before the computer had entered the bedroom of every student, so rewriting essays was not just a small effort. I passed on that one.
Finally, I found a state school application that looked reasonable in what it was asking of me, and they had “rolling admissions” which meant that, if I applied early, they would tell me early. I shoved all the other applications in a drawer and filled out the state application, which had the added benefit of being far from home. If they said yes, I would be spared a lot of trouble.
Getting into college is just one example of the hoops we all used to go through without really thinking about it. Sure, we’d try to avoid them (just look at my college admissions strategy) — but we did not resent them.
Similar examples abound: I recall a time when, if something irritated me in the newspaper, I’d have to go through a number of steps before I could find any contact information for someone to tell. Even if I took the easiest route and wrote a letter to the reporter, I had no way of knowing if they would get it and even if they did, it would be days hence.
Nowadays, I routinely get messages fired off in anger, the sender secure in the knowledge that her or his opinion will immediately reach me. The children of my friends apply to multiple colleges in an afternoon. Job seekers turn resume-sending into a project unto itself, applying to hundreds of companies. If I hear a song on the radio that I like, I can download it into my iPod in less than a minute.
Choice. Ease. Speed. Bliss.
But, there are downsides. Intemperate opinions fly around and I send messages I might wish to have slept on, necessitating corrective action. The competition to get into colleges is through the roof in part because it’s so easy to apply. Employers seeking to fill positions must wade through hundreds of ill-fitting, scattershot cover letters that may or may not even get the company name right. And, perhaps worse than all that (at least for me), in seeking out only music I am familiar with, I miss the discovery of new bands that the record store used to bring me.
These drawbacks are all well-known and well-discussed. But there is another, more insidious and creeping downside to the culture of information-ease in which we now live: We resent anything that takes time or effort.
The New York Times discovered this when they tried to make a little money off of the popularity of many of their key columnists. They created TimesSelect, a subscription-based area where you had to pay if you wanted to read Maureen Dowd. People from across the political spectrum complained and jeered, and how! You would have thought the National Archives had decided to charge a sawbuck to look at the Declaration of Independence. The Times backed down.
The Gray Lady is just one example. But they’re all over. Journalists no longer pick up the phone to talk to a spokesperson, they quote from an organization’s web site instead. Young scholars would rather cite an article from the Web than a book – because getting books requires taking the trouble to mosey on down to the library, while I can get that link in just a few clicks. iTunes is only profitable insofar as it tends to provide the illusion of free downloads by making songs so inexpensive and the playback rights so liberal that I may as well have just pulled that tune down off of Gnutella. And woe betide Apple if it restricts overly much.
In our personal, day-to-day lives, where things really matter, how often do we choose ease over energy, and resent the notion that we might have had to put in some effort to get what we want? How many businesses have you growled at because they don’t have a good enough website, or don’t have a way to order online, forcing you to actually go somewhere to obtain goods or services? How often have you excoriated (at least inwardly) a government agency for not having public records online? How many gas stations have you passed up because they don’t have pay at the pump?
It’s this growing sense of entitlement that worries me. We are turning into a culture where everyone feels — and acts — entitled to know whatever they want to know, contact whomever they want to contact, and say whatever they want to have, whenever they want to. And we resent it when things are not this way. This feedback loop squeezes out deliberation, thoughtfulness, and restraint and, on a personal level, human development.
It’s hardship, large and small, that improves us and forces us to grow. As we shift from a culture of personal industry to one of personal effort-avoidance, what will spur us to reach further tomorrow than we did today? What will teach us that, no, we can’t always get what we want when we want it? What will push us to grow up?
From where I sit, easily typing away in my basement, I don’t see it.
Brad Rourke writes a column on public life called Public Comments, produces a videolog called Taxonomies, is a founder of the Maryland neighborhood blog, Rockville Central, and is in a band called The West End.
Last week I saw a truck go by with the label “AAA Battery Service” painted on the side. I wondered, how lazy or incompetent do you have to be to need a technician to change your AAA batteries for you? It went by again and I realized that it was the car battery service of the American Automobile Association. Oh, well…
Ask one of your kids to perform math by hand, on paper, without a calculator.
When was the last time any of us did that?
Who remembers what a slide rule is for?
Pardon, but I can’t help but put this into a different context and imagine you’re lamenting the fact that people no longer have to fear getting eaten by alligators when they go out gathering berries… or that they now “expect” to be treated as human beings regardless of their skin color.
We won’t lose our humanity just because things change and the hardships that you faced aren’t the hardships that your children will face. And though their hardships aren’t recognizable to you, that doesn’t mean they aren’t real, and aren’t capable of teaching life’s lessons.
I understand Mr. Rourke’s point; but +1 to Matt Knowles.
Ease in this context means time-efficiency. I am far more productive now that I was in the 90′s because of the vast improvement in technology lamented by Mr. Rourke.
I resent outdated and poorly designed customer service solutions because I KNOW that they are an unnecessary waste of my time.
So I vote with my wallet and feet.
Vendors who refuse to compete in the convenience arena out of some nostalgic love of the old, slow ways deserve what they get.
Nice article Brad, I think.
Actually, I did not read it all. It became too much work, conditioned as I am by ‘Net media for ADHD-friendly speed-blurbs.
I’m sure you made a great concluding argument, for whatever your main premise was…
It became too time-consuming and inconvenient for me to pursue it to its conclusion.
If you could condense your logic, then squeeze it down to something Paris Hilton might say…
you’d have gotten my attention for sure!
Good article!
Technology has been a major contributor to the downfall of society, but it still has its benifits.
I am heading towards a degree in journalism, and I know what you are saying about the online quotes. It does seem like the easy way out, But e-mail is much easier than other methods of obtaining information.
We all have our tendencies to find the easy, but sadly it is now part of human nature.
Life doesn’t require much less effort, we’re just more productive with the same effort.
I’m sure when the wheel was invented, all the old-timers used to carrying things sighed and pined for the days when men were more industrious.
Got to go with Matt Knowles on this one. Here’s something you might recognize from childhood:
“I had to walk to school, uphill, both ways, through snow banks six feet tall.”
Or something to that effect. The “younger generation” always has it better, easier, they’re lazier, etc., because they don’t have to deal with “character building” hardships.
Newsflash: mowing the lawn doesn’t build character, it builds calluses.
Innovation, on the whole, has made our lives better. Myself, I work plenty hard, but I don’t do it in the sun, from before sunrise to after sunset, desperately trying to put food on the table for myself, my wife, and the five kids who haven’t yet died from childhood diseases.
The idea that somehow we have a sense of entitlement that didn’t exist before is ludicrous. Throughout history, when one store offered better service for the same money, they got the business. Nobody would go out of their way to have a bad shopping experience so they could “grow as a person”.
As for being able to say what you want when you want, no problem, it just isn’t so. That sort of behavior will bring its own consequences, and it always has. The potential audience is simply larger.
Believe me, I have no illusions about being able to have everything I want whenever I want it. I also recognize that I have a better life than my parents did at my age. And isn’t that something everyone wants for themselves and their children?
Technology increases the gap between rich and poor, because technology creates more free time. Those who use that free time to do new productive things become richer. Those who waste that time (for which itself the number of options is growing) become poorer.
Read this article about prosperity vs. historical trends.
If you want to find new and obscure music then you may want to check out online radio stations. I have learned about dozens of amazing groups and artists in the past couple years that never get airplay on traditional broadcasts. My main problem now is in gathering enough money to buy all of this new music.
I bet when you were filling out all of those college applications you were drinking Milk out of a jar or plastic container, eating fruit and vegetables our of a can or frozen in your fridge and you drove 5 miles to work. Try to have someone from the 1940s set up a home entertainment center.
Without lighters we’d spend half our day stroking sticks vs. creating life saving drugs. Sure my post shows up on your sight effortlessly to you and I, but I worked all damn day to ensure that network and software worked right to make that happen. Sure that calculator does multiplication easy, but try making a calculator from scratch. It takes effort to make things effortless. Now I can go home and try to mountain bike that damn trail up yonder in under an hour, trust me it will take effort.
Amazing …
If I follow Mr. Knowles inferences I have to assume he thinks Mr. Rourke is pinning for the days of racial discrimination … to quote Knowles: “or that they now “expect” to be treated as human beings regardless of their skin color.”
wow, what an amazing leap of intellectual BS …
typical ad-h attack on the author avoiding the message … I wonder what party Mr. K is from ?
Please. A wealth of information, readily available to anyone with minimal computer skills, is a bad thing? When the codex replaced the scroll, I wonder if anyone complained that information was just too easy to get, and that unrolling scrolls built character? Give me access to the information any day. I’ll build my character some other way.
I read your column with interest.
Here’s another point of view: As you know I recently started a graduate program in counseling. There is a lot of library research involved. In the old days, I had to go to the library, sneeze my way through dusty card catalogs, find the journals (IF my library subscribed to them) and if I was lucky the article of pursuit wasn’t torn out of the magazine. Collecting as few as a half dozen articles was laborious, boring, tedious work with frequent dead ends.
Today, as you know the situation is much different. I log in at home in my bathrobe, do an online search using a few keywords to filter topics and within seconds I’ve downloaded all the articles I need! It actually makes reseach almost enjoyable! I can concentrate on the information and not on the acquisition of the information.
Be well my friend.
Richard
Who remembers what a slide rule is for?
For use as a straightedge, right?
These are great comments; thank you everybody.
I do want to make it clear I am not anti-progress. As my favorite author, Robert A. Heinlein, pointed out in Time Enough For Love, all real progress has been made in the pursuit of ease — laziness, if you will. So, increased access to info, easier transactions, ability to do things heretofore unthinkable…all good.
And, yes, hardships DO still exist.
But, in my view, there IS a downside, in the attitude that many of us take when our ease is interrupted. It’s one thing to try to re-establish the ease we want. It’s another to resent hard work.
That’s my real issue…the resentment and attitude so many of us (me too) put on.
I wish I could find my slipstick from when I was younger and my dad showed me how it worked.
Thanks, all. –Brad
I was going to comment on this article, but you weren’t sitting right in front of me to hear what I had to say. That annoyed me, so I decided to skip it.
“How many gas stations have you passed up because they don’t have pay at the pump?”
Plenty. I’m a stay-at-home dad. When you have preschoolers, especially sleeping ones, in your car, the inability to pay at the pump is a fairly significant inconvenience. (Never wake a sleeping child before he’s had enough nap.)
I wish they had some drive-through convenience stores in this state (Massachusetts), but I’ve never seen one.
Eh? I’ve always resented hard work. It usually means I’m doing something wrong.
Technology increases the gap between rich and poor, because technology creates more free time. Those who use that free time to do new productive things become richer. Those who waste that time (for which itself the number of options is growing) become poorer.
Read this article about prosperity vs. historical trends.
Sorry, not motivated enough to read the whole thing — too hard.
“I was going to comment on this article, but you weren’t sitting right in front of me to hear what I had to say. That annoyed me, so I decided to skip it.”
Really Ramon? Really?
The real danger, to add to Brad’s good thoughts, is when one depends upon the Mainstream Media and culture to supply you with, not only all your info, but your very worldview. Nobody reads relious works like the Bible, history, classic literature, much less philosophy anymore, which used to provide you with a age old perspective. Now its up to goofy twits like Jon Stewart and Colbert to provide you with a worldview and news. We’re sunk.
Counter to Brad’s contention though, I thank God for the Internet. If you seek there, you will find, but that does take some work.
The problem with NOT having a sense of entitlement is that when something genuinely shocking to the status quo comes along, we reject it as too easy. If, tomorrow, someone came out with an immortality pill, too many people would be talking about the dangers of overpopulation and possible side effects to realize that the sensible thing to do is to give everyone the pills and alter everything.
We get impatient when something slows down our muli-tasking? I don’t think you’re making much of a case for the downside.
Interesting comments. I think they are making his point. If you are not working from sun-up to sun-down to put food on the table, somebody is doing it for you. The point is whether you realize that someone is doing this and if they stop you will not have food on the table. Realize that while you have access to all this technology someone has had to make it available to you. When you eat, someone has grown this and transported it and made it ready for sale. An effort has been made whether by you or not and if it is not immediately available you need to know that there is an effort you can make to resolve the situation.
What I see is too many people who when faced with a lack of technology or some other product have no idea of how to handle it. I am reminded of waiting for a check at a diner and when I asked for it the waitress was waiting for someone to give her a calculator so she could add it up.
Jeff,
It wasn’t “ad hominem” it was “reductio ad absurdum.” I had no intention at all of suggesting that Mr. Rourke *actually* was lamenting that we no longer had to fear getting eaten by alligators…
I think I must have been clearer than you took me or others would not have gotten my point.
And my point was simply that it is a timeless thing to observe the changes in the world and declare them a “decline.” It seems, to me, pessimistic to some degree. I have a greater faith in humanity.
And, to respond to Mr. Rourke’s comment above. Was it any different at the early part of the last century when I can easily imagine someone “resent[ing] hard work” when their automobile stopped running and they had to step out and turn the hand-crank until it started again?
It’s all relative.
PS – I’m not going to announce it, but I’m quite curious what party you think I must belong to.
The article sounds too much like the lament of the small town retailer who used to be able to routinely charge a lot, until Wal-Mart and the Internet hit him with competition.
This lament is odd coming from an internet journalist, a beneficiary of the internet.
Supply and demand. The supply is better so the price goes down. That’s why Times Select failed. Internet journalism, for that’s what it is, is better and there’s plenty of it. Why would I pay to read that antiquated old dolt of a Dowd when I can read this?
Perhaps the cyber world has become effortless, but not the real world. I wanted to put up a high gain antenna to extend my wireless network, that antenna had to be supported by a pole, and that pole had to be planted in the ground. In this neck of the woods that means several hours of hard labor with a tool called a “rock bar” followed by some nice relaxing concrete mixing. Perhaps someday my fembot wife will do all that for me.
I feel a similar guilt about our present lives of ease. I spend all day sitting in front of a computer doing work or surfing the web, then spend an hour watching television after dinner, and spend the rest of the evening playing the computer game du jour. Okay squeeze in some homework with the kids in there, but that’s it.
My grandfather built Manhattan as a union carpenter for 50 years and before that was employed by the CCC, building logging camps and dams out west.
In comparison, I feel like a lazy turd.
Richard Chalmers — “Collecting as few as a half dozen articles was laborious, boring, tedious work with frequent dead ends.”
What you fail to realize, in your casual faux-intellectual bathrobe and DSL-speed academic certainty —
is that there never were any “dead ends” in visiting the actual libraries and stacks of books and manuscripts.
A great pyhsical library with actual books and shelves is guaranteed to provide revelations you did not anticipate.
What your generation lacks is any sense of desiring a surprise.
You just want to find what you already believe.
Premature certainty is killing your potential to actually think for a change.
You could not recognize genius if it fell off the library shelf and smacked you in the face.
You would view that event as an affront.
To your certainty, right?
Good article, Brad. I was taught that there are five essential elements to successful living: eating, drinking, sleeping, one-ing, and two-ing. Anything in addition is metaphysical. Cheers. ld