A car is convenient. It transformed us from travellers (walking or cycling) to passengers (sitting). The fuel switched from the food that we ate to the petrol that we bought.
We could both relax, and go huge distances.
My aeropress coffee maker is also convenient. Alongside a grinder, I can have a pretty good cup of organic coffee without leaving the house.
At the grocery store, it gets tricky. Sure, convenience drives cheap, bulk food, but it’s also mass produced, and largely driving the use of Round-Up in the environment.
The thing is, our own collective desire for convenience has won. We’ve got amazon dropping packages within a day, and Uber can drop food within an hour. A screen can deliver anything we could imagine watching within seconds.
It’s also created a lot of problems. Our capacity for work, our shorter attention spans, and a lot of environmental issues are rooted in the fact that we feel we need something faster and cheaper, with less effort.
At some point, there’s an inflection curve. Convenience goes from an asset, to a nicety, to a hindrance.
We lose sharpness, creativity and grit. Identifying the line is important, because once you’re too far past it, going to a gym or doing a crossword isn’t going to bridge the gap.
