Call
me old-fashioned, though you don't actually need to now for I've
saved you the task, and here comes the but, BUT what is happening to
us as a nation? I don't know about anywhere else as I don't travel
very far from my own front door (I don't have a back yard, or a
balcony, or a box window where I could grow my own herbs) but, and
it's not my imagination, some of us are goddamn lazy. Or getting
increasingly and ludicrously so. And I think it's shameful. I'm still somebody that goes out to the shops with a list of what I need for the week ahead. I walk there and back, returning weighed down with packed bags, the contents of which might have come from more than one store. I don't mean to make myself sound like a martyr because I think nothing of it: it's how I've always done things and known them to be done, and I do shop online, just not for food, nor items I can easily acquire through traipsing the local high street or shopping centre.
What really gets my goat (pardon the expression. Where does it come from anyway?), is the on-demand services. Note the following real-life examples: Person V fancies a yoghurt but doesn't have any in and so pays for a banana-flavoured pot to be taxied to her; Person X needs deodorant but instead of visiting the local pharmacy orders online (thank you radio commentator Jeremy Vine!) for a white van man to bring that item, that solitary item, to him; and Persons Y & Z want a fish and chip supper, but even though there's a shop across the road they place their order over the phone and get it hand-delivered. It's all nonsense!
Nobody is that time-poor! Yet more and more of us are becoming precious about getting our individual (and largely non-essential) needs met. What do I care if someone chooses to fritter their money away in this manner? I don't per se , but I do question what it says about us as a society: about our high expectations and lack of self-management, not to mention discipline. What exactly are we freeing up this time for? To sit in front of a box set, to check our Twitter feed, to upload selfies, and generally loaf. And why is it suddenly so difficult to a) get ourselves organised as in plan ahead and stick to it, and b) delay our gratification? How would we, the generations born long after the Second World War, cope in times of rationing should they come again? If suddenly one day all these add-ons got taken away?
Perhaps that's the issue, we've gone too far the other way. We have too much choice and too many firms willing to cater to our increasing demands which forces others to offer the same. And then there's our attitudinal change which is, to be blunt: I want what I want when I want it, and I'll get it too, that pressurizes and drives this supply model.
It's almost communistic in style, except instead of workers walking out on their owner-bosses and preventing trade, consumers are making trade by demanding zero hour workers save them more time and physical effort; both of which, you have to admit, have already been greatly improved by modern contraptions. Aren't we pushing it a bit wanting and expecting more? Because more labour and energy-saving devices is not necessarily good. Haven't we already seen proof of that, with us as the evidence, living as we now do against the clock? And what about skills? Okay, you might be able to code (I can't do that!), but can you cook from scratch? More to the point, can you use a tin-opener? Not all have ring-pulls and even if they do some of those fail.
Yes, I'm being facetious, but where's the satisfaction in these convenience measures? Where's the real gratification in any of it? It's too instantaneous. And none of it, by the way, saves time. You could walk to the shops and back in the time it takes you to shop online, or whip up a meal that's ready before your takeaway, ordered forty-five minutes ago, gets delivered.
What it amounts to is: minimal effort for a reward which won't keep on giving, because from the beginning you haven't been fully engaged with the process of acquiring that item. In a sense, it's meaningless; if it wasn't, you wouldn't immediately search for another gratifying hit elsewhere.
Picture credit: Tempting Sweet, 1924, Robert Lewis Reid
