Convenience, Ego and Modern Society

by Kaleb Montgomery, Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Today, I had an insight into convenience, ego and modern society. It started with me changing my home web page to a national newspaper's web page. I thought about my housemate asking if I wanted to get the newspaper delivered to home. I said no. I pick it up when I want to read it. I buy a newspaper once or twice a week, and not on a specific day of the week either. Usually I buy it when the Maple Leafs won the night before and I want to revel in the renewed over optimistic Stanley Cup predictions. As well as not buying the paper on the same days, I almost never buy it at the same store. If most people are like me, very irregular unpredictable buying habits, how then do the stores and newspapers estimate how many papers to make? This train of thought brought me back to a conversation I had with a baker many years ago. He was a man who took tremendous pride in his work and consequently made excellent bread. He complained to me that someone would request a specific bread, e.g. sourdough caraway rye, but would not come back regularly to buy it. This scenario would happen over and over. He was trapped. If he didn't make the bread people wanted they would go elsewhere to buy it and he lost business. When he did make the bread, the people would not come in regularly and he would lose money with the unsold bread. Eventually our inconsistent, but demanding buying habits drove him out of business. What is the point you might ask?

The point is why are our buying habits demanding, but irregular? Why do I buy my paper at different stores each time? Back to the bread, if I like sourdough caraway rye, then why can I not commit to buying a loaf each week?

The quick answer is Convenience. I pick it up when and where I want. So that the article does not end here, I won't settle for the quick answer. Commit is the essential word. We live in a society were it is too difficult for us to commit to buying the same $2.50 loaf of bread at he same bakery twice a week. As commitments go this is minor compared to marriage or a mortgage, however we can not even manage this. Why is such a tiny commitment so difficult for us? The answer to this question lies in another question. Why is there so much choice? The fundamental issue here is ego. We want it and we want it now. We want it brighter, faster and tastier. As long as it feels good we want it. Coffee, sugar, cigarettes, booze, sex, music videos, fast cars; you get the picture. Our life is designed around getting a rush. Our endless wants cause us to buy something, so if business can get us to want more we will buy more. Great for business, bad for us. Wanting more only leads to more wanting. The real reason wanting is harmful is because when we want, we are not happy. Wanting is desiring something we don't have. So, if we don't have something, then we are not happy. It's an endless cycle of bigger, better, more and unhappiness. It only ends when we stop it. Naturally this leads us to other questions. Why do we want the excitement of buying something, the lift of coffee or the buzz of booze so much? What are we trying to avoid by altering our moods though caffeine, sugar, booze, shopping, and music videos? Why is it so hard to be present without some sort of distraction or buzz?

It's because if we stop using external things to change the way we feel, we are then confronted with the way we actually feel inside. Our real feelings are not always so pleasant. We have feelings that are uncomfortable, like anger, loneliness, sadness and confusion. These unpleasant feelings remind us to deal with difficult tasks or dark corners of ourselves we don't wish to look at. It's much easier to have a pick me up coffee in the morning than to take a hard look at our lifestyle to figure out why we are not sleeping well and waking up tired each morning. It's easier to have a drink than deal with the anger of an unresolved conflict at work. It's easier to surf web porn than to figure out why you aren't attracted to your spouse anymore. I am certainly not universally condemning coffee, booze and web porn. What I am saying, is to take a hard look at anything you are trying to avoid with that extra bowl of ice cream.

This article is not a rant on the evils of advertising and capitalism. It's a rant about personal responsibility. It's about exposing another part of the puzzle. By looking at the link between convenience and our fear of commitment we chip away at our own self-created misery. By looking at the connection between ego, wanting and consumerism we also whittle away at the self-created woeful state of our society. Asking and attempting to answer these questions will ultimately lead us all closer to health, happiness and smaller credit card bills.