Comfortably Dumb - part 1: The misery of eternal comfort

ELE-MND.png

 

Following an initial reaction of disbelief, last month I was wondering how the whole 'selling peeled mandarins' thing, might have got off the ground:

If you missed this, here's a catch-up.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/eat/have-we-really-got-to-the-point-where-we-cant-peel-our-own-fruit/news-story/5a18cea23f084586518e481224b2ceef


You would hope that this spark of genius would, in most workplaces, have been quickly snuffed out at inception:

- I know, let's sell peeled mandarins.
- Yeah, righto. Dickhead.


But then it's now widely recognised that a good idea is a product chiefly of quantity -  not a eureka moment so much as a casting call. Blunt honesty and logic can scar creative types, so we could be generous and assume that at its genesis this idea might have fallen under the aegis of a brainstorming - no such thing as a bad idea - session.

Evidently it survived any early culling, and it's possible it even drew some corporate praise:

- That's a fine example of proactively redefining interactive partnerships and looks to be the Uber of mandarins going forward.

Or something like that.

But it's beyond this point, and especially when the moral vacuum of its new plastic wrapping is fully realised, that you’ve gotta wonder how many more people this went past without even one of them raising a hand. But of course, none of this is a mistake. No doubt, a lot of the best ideas start out looking crazy, but this is neither best, nor crazy - just obvious.

There is no more reliable trend than consumer demand for convenience and comfort. Twin forces that, taken to the nth degree, now shape our lives more than any other factor. We exist in temperature-regulated, fully-equipped, risk-eliminated comfort zones. Comfort, convenience, security and entertainment on tap. Zoo-human.

Comfort and convenience cocoon us but this is a reverse chrysalis, transforming us from butterfly to caterpillar. Instead of stepping outside your comfort zone - the mantra of all personal development - it's become far more likely you'll leave it only on a stretcher. In spite of advances increasing our lifespan, rates of childhood obesity in the developed world now suggest that many children will not outlive their parents - surely a sign that society has reached it's zenith.

Image: www.pinterest.com

Image: www.pinterest.com

It is easy enough to see why. Imagine a relationship-tree they always show in cop shows, as in the image above - the wall chart detailing the usual suspects, and indicating the links to their various connections:

At the bottom of the hierarchy, the street-thug level, we know these characters all too well:

    •    Hypertension
    •    Type 2 diabetes
    •    Cardiovascular disease
    •    Obesity
    •    Osteoporosis
    •    Colorectal cancer

Our mental health also suffers, with depression and anxiety disorders now included amongst these diseases of affluence. 

We put a lot of heat on the characters a level above -  a sedentary lifestyle, packaged and processed foods, medications, alcohol and smoking. But if we bothered to look beyond middle management to the top of the totem pole; we'll find the same double-team of Bond villains behind it: comfort and convenience.

These diseases cross all boundaries: geographic, economic, societal, and political, with the sole qualifier being the luxury of transcending concern for your immediate safety and survival. But, in the absence of other challenges, this has become the problem.

Unlike suburbia, war-zones and urban slums - arguably the most depressing places on Earth - do not have hundreds of people medicated for depression. This is not to diminish the illness, and that Winston Churchill suffered from it would suggest that a crisis is no guarantee of immunity. But when we consider the brain is an organ primarily concerned with our immediate survival, we might well question how much of this illness is the rebellion of a brain starved of something, anything, to do.

As Sebastian Junger (in a Tim Ferriss podcast), says, during The Blitz, when British authorities were bracing for an influx of neuroses and psychological disorders, as might reasonably be expected with the carpet-bombing of your capital city, the numbers of these cases went down. In the course of history, the modern day is unique for its lack of an immediate and tangible existential threat. Threats do, of course, exist, but dangers like nuclear conflagration and global warming are too abstract - it is the enemy at the gates that presents us with a sharply defined purpose and direction. 

A crisis also unites us, both at a psychological level, as realised by those facing a common foe, and physically, as during The Blitz with neighbours huddled together in bomb shelters. Modern times have seen this communion sacrificed as we increasingly equate comfort with isolation. As Junger says, we live in bigger and bigger houses or alone in apartments, and even children have their own rooms, but this is not primate behaviour.

Our physical, psychological and emotional health has been traded away in favour of convenience and comfort for years - you will have heard of this, we call it progress. The arrogance of our species has us barely capable of imagining we might not continue to be the beneficiary of perpetual advancement. Or that we already are not. I am not promoting an Amish existence, nor am I a Luddite railing against technology, only that which marginalises the human body under a banner of progress. At least not while we still have to live in it. 

Technology leads us on its merry way, always promising the next thing - easier, cheaper and quicker, than the last. Undoubtedly, this has fuelled much of our progress and advances like electricity, vaccination and refrigeration, have positively influenced our health and quality of life. Only now we are seeing clear evidence of the opposite. We don't need a crystal ball to realise this when we can look out a window, or in a mirror. 

We also see technology working the wrong end of the problem. The development of the obesity injection has us sticking true to form in ignoring cause, only to band-aid effect. The Tricorder, of Star Trek fame, is also now in development - a device that is able to diagnose your maladies instantly, at the touch of a button. One day, when we don't already know exactly what we are dying from - see street-thugs above - this might prove to be very useful.

While it has a host of useful applications, the unlocking of the human genome now gives us access to our genetic library and any mutations in our genetic code, along with any illness or disease we may be pre-disposed to. So, upon learning that you were more pre-disposed to (insert disease here),  you would then move daily, eat well, and expose yourself to occasional hardship and challenge. Unless that describes how you live it doesn't matter what your genome might tell you - you already know what to do. Without taking care of the basics, this is just more noise. In fact, on hearing any bad news, you are arguably in a worse position.

If we ever manage to transcend the shackles of our biology, it should be because we have superseded the limitations of the body, not that we can't live up to it's potential or, worse still, that we are irresponsible tenants. 

Developed by the German anatomist and surgeon Julius Wolff (1836–1902) in the 19th century, Wolff's Law states that bone, in a healthy person or animal, will adapt to the loads under which it is placed. So strong bones are the result of exposure to load. The SAID  Principle (Specific Adaptation To Imposed Demand), and advances in neuroscience showing the plasticity of our neural architecture, further reinforce the fact that our bodies and minds are a reflection only of the demands placed on them. 

That is all they can be. 

 

Image: Precision Nutrition

Image: Precision Nutrition

We rob our food of nutrients to ensure it will sit on a shelf until we are ready to eat it. Still, that's not enough, so we further reduce it's nutrient value to make the food ready-to-eat; just open and cram it in. Cars, garage door openers, remote controls and clapping light switches further eliminate the need for movement. Our risk-aversion has us sterilising the environment to kill off all microbial life, forgetting that we too are that microbial life and our immune system, like our brain, is also crying out for some action.

We plaster warnings on cigarettes and alcohol, but at the same time create detox diets, antibacterial soaps, and juice cleanses - products protecting us from imaginary threats while fashioning real ones. Forget toxin hysteria, if there is one thing we need to scour from our lives, it is comfort. 

We don't hunt, gather, farm or even prepare. We just eat. 

We don't run, jump, climb, swim or crawl. Only sit.

We don't think, debate, interpret, opine or decide. We consume. The media no longer simply report the facts and now routinely tell us what to think.

Sound bite over essay. Machine-made over handcrafted. Explosions and special effects over complexity and nuance. We see fame in the absence of talent, entitlement over apprenticeship. Our expertise is in removing the middle, and the same thing is always in the middle: the work. No longer back-breaking labour, now just peeling a mandarin. 

With any invention of the teleport, we’ll quickly get over the buzz of zipping around foreign countries - after all, it's just such a hassle when you can't speak the language. Within a matter of days, we'll be beaming ourselves up and down the stairs, and from lounge room to kitchen, only. 

Diseases of affluence are the result of an economic advancement affording us a degree of societal and lifestyle design that has eliminated any incentive for body and mind. As all effort, physical, emotional and cerebral is efficiently erased, our reward is an incessant comfort and convenience that makes us miserable, sick, and then dead.

We have demonstrably failed to absorb technology even to this point, and any lessons we might derive from this go unheeded. Further technological reprieve merely compounds this character flaw, sweeping it under the carpet. And, like The Terminator, it will be back. In the absence of any imposed demand whatsoever, we are by definition, quite literally good for nothing.

The poorest people in modern society enjoy a level of physical comfort that was unimaginable a thousand years ago, and the wealthiest people literally live the way gods were imagined to have.

And yet.
— Sebastian Junger, TRIBE
Previous
Previous

Comfortably Dumb - part 2: Cold Comfort for Change.

Next
Next

Walk the Line: Keeping your balance