"Spoiled by Convenience"

 With an old-fashioned winter storm arriving Sunday, I thought it appropriate to show the beauty winter can bring. The photo is of a painting by one of our grandchildren. It depicts the house in Old Lyme we lived in for twenty-five years. Our talented grandson begins an internship next week with the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

 

Enjoy the weather and stay indoors – a fire in the fireplace, a hot cocoa and a good book!

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Spoiled by Convenience?”

January 24, 2025

 

“I have known some people of very modern views driven by their distress to the use of theological

terms to which they attach no doctrinal significance, merely because a drawer was jammed tight...”

                                                                                                                                G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

                                                                                                                                All Things Considered, 1908

 

We have all been reduced to the use of profanity when things go wrong, often over minor inconveniences. A few weeks ago, it was the hot water. It wasn’t as though we had none, but it trickled, not gushed. Shaving was difficult and showering more so. I swore and felt better

 

Nevertheless, I was able to shave and bathe. And I thought of how my life has become easier over the decades. If I am warm, I adjust the air conditioning. If it is cold outside and must go to the grocery store, I start my car remotely. So, I ask myself: have I become spoiled by convenience?

 

Innovation, fostered by individual initiative, abetted by aspiration and fueled by capitalism, has led to products and services that have made our lives easier and more comfortable – everything from flush toilets, refrigeration, heated sidewalks to instant communication. We don’t think about them; we accept them.

 

Man has been around for, perhaps, 300,000 years, yet as recently as 500 years ago life for most people had not changed. Yes, cities and governments had been established, cast iron plows were used in Europe in the 14^th Century, and Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, but estimates are that in 1500 half of Europe’s population were homeless or lived in poverty and only about 7% of Europe’s population could read. Disease, wars and accidents killed millions. The Black Plague (1346-1353) killed somewhere between 30% and 60% of Europe’s population. In 1700, life expectancy was still under forty years.

 

The Industrial Revolution radically changed people’s lives. Health improved. A vaccine for smallpox was invented in the last decade of the 18^th Century. Anesthesia was first used in 1846. Antiseptic practices, which we accept as commonsensical, go back only to the 1860s – to a time when my great grandparents were young adults. Communication and transportation changed, with the development of the telegraph and railroads. Central heating dates back just to the late 19^th Century.

 

Autos replaced horse-drawn carriages, steam ships replaced sailing vessels, and air flight made the world smaller and more accessible. Air conditioning only became widespread in the 1950s. There is so much that we take for granted that earlier generations never knew – frozen foods, gas ranges, movies, television and penicillin. And the proliferation of labor-saving inventions, from dishwashers to push-button windows in cars, to on-line shopping, and the streaming of movies have made life easier.

 

Maps have disappeared as auto navigation systems became ubiquitous. “Find my Friends” app allow parents to track their children. One downside is that cell phones have replaced telephone operators. 

 

Standards of living have risen beyond what previous generations could have imagined, and today we have the free time that only the wealthiest could have imagined a hundred years ago. Yet we complain. Polls measuring happiness indicate declines. Have we become spoiled by convenience?