The Tyranny of Convenience

image source: Flickr/Keoni Cabral

Our lives are ridiculously convenient in this day and age, and much of the consumer economy seems to be directed at making life ‘easier’ still. It seems that the more convenient life becomes, the more need there is for more convenience. Anything is possible in this technological age, and if it can’t be afforded, then convenient credit can make it happen. There is no reason to wait for anything.

Just like an addict, the modern convenience seeker is rarely aware of the damage that the need to feed the need is causing.

The pursuit of convenience is big business and over the last 60-75 years we have experienced a profound cultural shift towards disposable consumerism. We’ve been sold the idea that life must be easy, and that the mundane things in life are to be rushed or delegated so that more time is available for enjoying ourselves. For several generations now our culture has been programmed to place an overly high value on convenience, and the flip side of this is that we have grown to loathe inconvenience to such a degree that we now perceive even slight delays in the delivery of convenience as inconveniences.

Who has time for anything to go wrong in our world today?

Our addiction to this complex lifestyle, requiring ever-compounded convenience, is one of the subtlest and most addictive tyrannies of the modern age.

The word tyranny conjures up images of Uncle Joe Stalin, Chairman Mao and the Berlin Wall; however, taking a closer look at human behavior reveals that our lives are regimented more so by our own habits and preferences than by any outside entity. The limitations we place on ourselves, that prevent us from living proper and powerful lives, do as much to tyrannize our hearts and minds than any dictatorial edict, and the human race has never been more easily controlled.

Those who would trade freedom for convenience, deserve neither freedom, nor security, and will end up with inconvenience. – Sigmund Fraud

It is in the routinely carried out behaviors of our daily lives, in our rigid habits, in the patterns bubbling just under the surface of our psyches, that we give up our freedom. This is where we are most taken advantage of and most held captive. This is where our true identity is hijacked and where we are programmed to live in pursuit of phony consumeristic ideals such as convenience.

Are we just robots running programs? Are we merely slaves programmed to perform certain duties in exchange for a comfortable system of punishment and reward?

In interesting times as these, with such complex and dangerous problems facing all of us, and when the bulk of society seems content to live behind the iron curtain of cognitive dissonance, freeing ourselves from the habits and cultural conventions that keep us enslaved is imperative.

The freedom to purchase a service and do business with someone without having to automatically also comply with physical molestation by a third party is a simple, obvious right that we are trading away for the convenience of flying. Yet so many people consent to being groped and to watching their children being groped by strangers in TSA uniforms just to travel recreationally.

We also wish to avoid the inconvenience of being hassled, sequestered, detained, interrogated, fined, arrested, tazed, or shot by an increasingly authoritarian government. Yet, no one is forcing us to fly under these conditions, and the fact that so many people show up without protest is a broad public statement of consent to being molested. A mandate, if you will.

In many ways, convenience is a more insidious and practical tool for tyranny than the barrel of a gun. Our modern banking system is perhaps the most dastardly and subtle form of tyranny know to man, as it is so large in scope that it affects almost everyone on the planet.

Even a rudimentary understanding of central banking reveals how it capitalizes on our desire for convenience in order to ensnare the planet in a web of debt. They conveniently print up as much money as the world needs and we consent to owing exponentially increasing, mathematically un-payable sums of money to a private corporation for the rest of eternity. It is convenient now, but rather costly in the long run.

We do this not out of fear for our lives, but for want of convenience and for fear of inconvenience. We have been programmed to ignore our own best interests in order to remain un-hassled by our complex lives.

It turns out that the problem is not that they are selling us tyranny, but that we have already bought into what they sold us. We are too far hooked on the promising idea of convenience to turn back now. We are slaves to our own habits and desires. We are tyrannized by convenience.

Sigmund Fraud is a survivor of modern psychiatry and a dedicated mental activist. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com where he pursues the possibility of a massive shift towards a more psychologically aware future for mankind.