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Buy it now. Express shipping. Same-day delivery. Something taking six to eight weeks to arrive is now viewed as a horrendous hardship, relegated only to transactions with the farthest flung corners of the world which can then most often be expedited for an additional cost. It took us a while to get here but the process beginning with industrialized manufacturing has now led to us clicking a button in our living rooms and expecting the package to be on our doorstep within twenty four hours. A pleasing technology-driven societal advancement. But it has not come without cost.
As industrialization and urbanization moved our lives away from ones of subsistence the focus and drive which replaced it was one of consumerism. Commercial industry began producing the necessary materials of our subsistence and the mission of our lives shifted from producing them ourselves to earning enough money to purchase them. For the first time convenience was an option for the general population and it quickly became the primary focus and metric.
Convenience is not intrinsically an evil. Instant gratification is not automatically toxic and destructive. There is nothing wrong with preferring comfort to discomfort, easy to hard, sooner to later. They are natural impulses…