Confessions of a Shiftless Jerk
Tonight, as I lazed in front of the television summoning the will to channel surf, I happened to watch a commercial for some prepackaged frozen food stuff. In this ad, a woman pulls a package of generic Hamburger Helper from her cupboard, looks at it disapprovingly, and says something to the effect, "I have to thaw the ground beef!" She says this in a voice that implies thawing ground beef requires the kind of time commitment and mobilization as building a dam or putting a man on Mars. Part of me reeled at this concept, that Hamburger Helper has now become an exhaustive culinary endeavor only to be explored by those with the fortitude to complete the rigorous defrosting process of putting meat in a microwave and pressing, perhaps, several buttons, while another much more honest part of me was forced to admit I had on several occasions avoided cooking Hamburger Helper for exactly that reason!
I've never been more certain that our entire civilization is absolutely doomed.
Should aliens ever invade Earth, and I think we can all agree that if movies have taught us one thing, it's that aliens are just aching to invade us, they'd be foolish to do so with guns, armies, and war. It's not that they wouldn't win, despite our silly faith in the power of human tenacity or certainty that the aliens will forget something important like a competent firewall or reasonable vaccinations. It's that they wouldn't need to go through all that trouble. Humans, as a rule, like to kill things, and the opportunity to try and kill totally new things, particularly in the face of overwhelming odds which gives us the illusion that we're all in a Will Smith movie, would just get our dander up. No, aliens need to take a page from TS Eliot and realize the world best ends not with a bang, but a whimper. What they need to do is use their advanced technology to create something really fantastic for us to watch on television – perhaps an alien reality show of some kind – while they take all our water, or women, or whatever it is that aliens want. Honestly, we won't care that much as long as we get good cable reception.
I guess Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd and getting stoners really freakin' high fame, gets it as much as anyone when he sings, or more precisely recites in his gravelly out-of-tune monotone:
And when they found the shadows grouped around the TV sets,
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists admitted that they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species had amused itself to death
I'm torn on the issue of breaking down the conflicts and hardships of life. On one hand I'd prefer not to dash through the woods with feet like leather and a thirty-two year life expectancy hurling spears I fashioned out of the fallen branches I'd used as bedding the night before at animals that might suddenly choose fight instead of flight and maim me in painful ways. On the other hand, my life is so unfamiliar with strife that I sigh remarkably, as though I were trying to change wind patterns, at the very thought of having to drive my air-conditioned car five minutes to Target for prepackaged, almost entirely ready-to-eat food. An uninformed observer might mistakenly assume from my reaction that I'd been sold into indentured servitude. I rise from my recliner couch, a martyr to some great cause, and demand that, while I'm out, my wife TiVo the rest of that rerun of Friends – the one where Chandler says something sarcastic – that I had been in the middle of watching, thank you very much! And, not once, not one single time, does it occur to me that I'm a shiftless jerk.
Frankly, I'm glad there aren't time machines. If there were time machines, I might be inclined to travel to the past when people had to do things like chop down trees for firewood so they didn't die, or grow their own crops so they didn't die, or learn a useful skill so they could earn several pennies wages which they'd spend on cloth that they'd take home and fashion into rudimentary clothes "… so they didn't die. I would get out of my time machine, and tell these hardened people about my life in the future, and pretty soon one of them would punch me. This would seem like a great idea to most of those who'd been listening, and then they would join in the punching. And, to be honest, I'd have a hard time coming up with a reason that these people shouldn't go right on punching me for a while.
Seriously, I wonder what our great-great grandmothers and fathers would think of the civilization we built from their dust and sweat. What would they think of the Hot Pocket I had for lunch? What would they think about the wasted hours I spent leveling up my Tauren Hunter in Un'goro crater so I could wield my new two-handed axe – the one with the stamina and agility buffs? Would they be remotely impressed by the internet, much less television, telephones, the combustion engine, or central air? How far into the backs of their heads would their eyes roll when I bemoaned the forty-five minutes I spent mowing my ¼ acre lawn with my gas powered front-wheel drive lawn mower? How long would they be able to hold back the certainly overwhelming impulse to "… you know "… just start punching me right in the face? Would they have suffered a single episode of any television program before recognizing its bald faced insidiousness, much less an advertisement talking about how exhausting beef thawing is?
But most of all, I wonder what we're heading toward. What would I think of my own great-great grandchildren? As our technology, our wealth, and our secure knowledge of our own absolute superiority increases, is there an inevitable fall on the horizon, or will we eventually reach a culture that revolves somehow securely around infinite entertainment? I think about how many hours the average westerner devotes to entertaining themselves in the multitude of ways we've devised, and how the things we classify as work have consistently drifted from the tangible to the insubstantial, and I wonder what the end must be. I picture people plugged in to their media through every conceivable sense, oblivious to the world in all its dirty and troublesome reality, embracing hedonism and excess in a fictional world without consequence and without limit. I wonder what will be left if we surrender ourselves to the most addicting drug conceivable, our own pleasure impulses.
These are the thoughts that will keep me up an extra seventeen seconds tonight as I lay myself on my pillow-top mattress under my 300 thread count sheets and rest my weary head upon my hypo-allergenic pillow.
- Elysium
Print
Delicious
Digg
Oh man, I was totally going to read at least the first paragraph, but then I just kind of drifted off.
(The frowny face was sincere.)
The market has much to answer for as to why gaming is NOT an art. -- illum
I think about this very same thing very often. Humanity is in a sad state, where even a task that only requires 10 minutes of waiting, is a task too difficult. I absolutely despise the lack of effort that we have for anything and long for a civilization where actual effort and work is required just to survive, let alone have a "good" life. Who would ever think that people would get to the point of wishing for hardship?
I'm more of a sausage smoker myself. - Yoyoson
XBox Live - PSN: SneakinAround - Last.fm - Flickr
Shh. It's already happening. But don't say it too loudly, or they'll set the MIB onto you.
Paranoia aside, I've thought along those very same lines. But you don't need a time machine to look at people struggling to survive. Don't forget that the western hemisphere isn't all of humanity. Billions of people all over the world still have to work hard on a daily just to be able to eat, while we complain about having to press a button on the microwave.
History and dialectic theory teaches us that decadent empires usually implode. Marx was right there, even if he was wrong about a lot of other things. As the gap between the haves and the have-nots increases, the haves are less likely to want to commit to the risky business of war and defense, which automatically gives the have-nots the chance to rectify the gap. Rome fell partly because Romans no longer wanted to enlist, but preferred to watch bloodsprts instead. They started to rely solely on immigrants to meet their defense needs, until the immigrants realised they may as well take over while they were at it. The French and Russian revolutions happened because the aristocracy stopped caring about anything but what went on at court and on battlefields, and most importantly forgot about their people, and that soldiers came from the people.
So, I guess what might happen is that, while we're busy watching the 361st rerun of Friends, somebody with a more ambitious agenda will eventually sneak in behind our backs and get a stanglehold on something they can hold us to ransom with (be it the military, oil or millions of disenfranchised prepared to blow themselves up). After they pull the plug/switch off the oil well/etc., it's back to the dark ages for a while.
Of course, if we manage to eradicate poverty, bridge the global wealth inequalities, foster universal tolerance and understanding, and make people care, the story might turn out differently. But I'm cynical.
I don't know about lack of effort. Last time I checked I still have a 9-to-5 job that steals a good part of my life and nerves, and various mundanities like finances and keeping with the maintenance of my car, cleaning my toilet and bathtub...
We're quite far away from the state of the future described in Wells "Time Machine".
I don't welcome the idea of hardships for the sake of hardships.
There's always room for creative realization, for doing work we actually feel like doing.
I think that ultimately when self-sufficient robots will free us from 9-to-5 jobs and we'll be free to pursue whatever we want, THEN, if we rapidly start to degrade, it will be our own damn fault - for not pursuing our dreams and instead choosing to lie plugged into Holodeck version of "Friends".
The storm is coming.
HAHAHA! Hey guys, shihonage doesn't have his T1000 yet!
Thank you, SkyNet! I'll never have to clean the toilets again.
Also, during the time travel mention how much we pay in taxes, or pay for a bottle of water... see if their hearts stop!
Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.
Nice one Ely. Perfect amount of words, too.
Don't be saucy with me, Bernaise. - Count DeMonet
FalseGravity - My first blog.
If your great great grandparents punched you, would by them touching you, they cause some split in the space time continuum?
Whatever. It took too much energy to think about that. pff.
Part of the wishing for hardship probably stems from the fact that we enjoy deriving meaning from tangible accomplishments. A lifestyle in which you have to work hard to stay alive would then be full of everyday accomplishments in which you've done something to ensure your survival. In our more modern times, most of us are fortunate enough to not have to worry about our survival on a day-to-day basis, and our work has moved away from strictly tangible labor and accomplishments. It's harder to assign meaning to having "money" deposited to your checking account electronically every so often then, for example, coming home with something you've harvested from the fields.
"Screw the speed of light, fan-boy rage is my new gold standard for measuring velocity." - Dr. J
"Lupus with a crowbar is the meaning of life itself." - Certis
Does our own collective laziness stem from the our constantly fulfilled desires? I don't necessarily agree. Shihonage touched on it above, our "jobs" rob a large portion of our lives from us; and for most, it's a job we wouldn't even consider doing were it not required by society. As a result, time away from the job is spent attempting to "make up" for the time lost. If I spend all day doing something I hate doing, all I want to do all night is stuff *I* want. Larger Yin, larger Yang.
I've often considered whether or not our lives today really are that much better than our distant ancestors. Were I in a hunter-gatherer tribe, all that's really required of me in a given day is that I find something to eat. If I kill a boar by 10 AM, my day's covered. Other chores may need work, but the minimum is covered -- stemming off the reaper via starvation. Actions translate directly into results, so a sense of accomplishment is immediately available.
However, if I rot in an office, doing what some boss tells me even though I know it's wrong and will be re-worked in two weeks, I have no sense of accomplishment. Sure, I get paid and therefore can eat and sleep under a roof, and watch reruns of Friends. But, there's no immediate sense of accomplishment. As a result, I turn to the lazy vices I enjoy to fill the void. I don't want to have to spend time thawing the meat when all I want to do is eat it.
So, therein lies the problem, methinks. Less of the day wasted at a job == a person less apt to take the "easy way out" in everything.
I generated a virtual world in the toilet bowl this morning.
-- Podunk on the PS3's mystical, magical abilities
Every time I get to blow something up at the bequest of the Army, my life feels right. I suspect I may be part of the problem.
"If Blizzard announces a subscription fee for Diablo III we will have to build a second Internet to make room for all the complaining." - muttonchop
Ah, yes, here it is...
Johnathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", 1741
8-0
Extremism in the defense of liberty *is* a vice. It has been since the first Crown Loyalist was tarred, feathered and set afire, and it's no better now. It corrupts first the individual, then ultimately the institution it defends.
Oh man, your looking at the hunter-gatherer lifestyle through rose-colored glasses. What about the 5 miles you have to drag the bloody thing back to camp? What about skinning it with just a sharp rock? What about cutting its heart out as a sacrafice to your gods? What about using the bones to fashion some ungainly tool? You make the kill at 10 AM but you can't knock off work until at least 2 or 3 in the afternoon. The grass is always greener ...
No sh*t. What about keeping the dirty liberal hunters from rallying the troops to steal your kill and "share it for the common good". I mean, we all know communisim and socilism existed in a time when we had to kill to eat, fight to protect our kill, and dodge goddamn dinosaurs...what about that!?
Unfortunately, if I slash my wrist with my lightsaber it cauterizes instantly. - PurEvil on emo Star Wars plots.
Even if I skin it until 3:00, that's still less than your average work day. Yeah, the grass is always greener for me. As for the socialists... I'll eat them too.
I generated a virtual world in the toilet bowl this morning.
-- Podunk on the PS3's mystical, magical abilities
Robear, are you saying that Elysium is the reincarnation of Jonathan Edwards? 'Cause I thought that guy who scammed people into believing he could talk to ghosts was his reincarnation. My whole world has been turned upside down...
Elysium, I know exactly what commercial you're talking about, and I hate every goddamn second of it. When you say that laziness will be the death of us all, you are spot on, because we are apparently too damn lazy to micro ourselves a pound of meat. *sigh* Another great article.
"Today's Tom Sawyer, he gets high on you, Kat. You." - Haakon7
My Website v. 3.0
What, Jon Edwards the cold-reader? Pfffftttt! Penn and Teller do a better job than he does. And they are more fun to watch. No, it just seemed like the archetypal get-off-yer-butt sermon, old school. I mean why futz around with vague middle-class watered-down angst scribblings (no offense Ely, liked the piece) when you can go right to source? 240 volts of DC moral outrage bile-driving right into your eyeballs, a wake-up call 18th century style!
We can mess around with self-criticizing while we munch Doritos, but that doesn't make us Marcus Aurelius. Those old New England Puritans gave up the ground of self-criticism to no other team, fueled by the knowledge of what hard times really meant, and powered by a vision of an afterlife that was, if anything, even harder than real life. Memento mori indeed.
Extremism in the defense of liberty *is* a vice. It has been since the first Crown Loyalist was tarred, feathered and set afire, and it's no better now. It corrupts first the individual, then ultimately the institution it defends.
You, my friend, need to read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. In fact, everyone who hasn't already, needs to. Let's just say that sometimes the grass is irrefutedly greener, no matter what color glasses you're wearing.
Variable -> Veeble -> vbl
"Nice boys, guys." - Swampy
Great observations that arrive at slightly incorrect conclusions. IMHO, anyway.
The Americans aren't "lazy", per se. Most of those whom you fault for balking at having to thaw Hamburger Helper (what is it, anyway?) work soul-crushing jobs, with a soul-crushing commute, and spend more time during the day laboring away than their counterparts in the rest of the developed world.
Neither they value passive entertainment above any other pastime. OK, actually maybe they do.
The root of the greatest evil, however, is that what Americans value above everything else is their comfort. Or the sense of such. Or, rather, whatever their understanding of "comfort" is. That's where the difference takes a hideous twist, and on large scale of things, produces devastating results.
Xbox Live tag Gorilla800lbs
Roger Waters!
If this world was right, Roger would be topping the charts and Eminem would be posing with his practiced look of apathy for the folks at the Howard Johnson's lounge.
Just looking back at television as recently as Phil Donahue, Walter Cronkite, Captain Kangaroo and comparing them to the maudlin Oprah Winfrey, the dimwitted Dan Rather, the spastic Yu-Gi-Oh and the glut of low brow reality shows will illustrate the decline of television as a dipstick of societal values. Each generation bemoans the doom of the forthcoming generations in part because of the previous generation's failure to recognize changing nature of the method of comparison itself. We go to look at the dipstick and fail to recognize that the dipstick no longer measures oil, it measures cake batter.
Television programming, physical labor and focusing on life's necessities were all means of determining a person's character at one time. Those things still have some ability to do that but the heavy emphasis no longer lies with those things. For example in the past television's programming was for only a handful of stations for the whole nation. Television also dominated a majority of american's leisure time across all social and economic boundaries.
Today's television programming doesn't reflect society as a whole because it is much more fractioned and varied than before, more heavily market focused than before and a disproportionate amount of undereducated citizens now populate the Nielsen Media Research target groups. The internet, MMORPG's, concole video games and dvd's have complicated the process of accounting for taste and culture beyond methods of measure.
I think it was more than coincidence that once music became freely downloadable to anyone with a high speed connection, the music charts reflected the culture of those left still buying cd's. The music charts became unusable as a barometer of national music tastes.
The age of robots doing all of our work for us has, in reality, turned out to be an age of efficient production that allows us the free time to either download Pamela Anderson videos, read the Wall Street Journal online or level up a paladin while in some cases "illegal" workers quietly do the work of our forefathers.
Thanks again for mentioning Roger Waters.
PETA Rocks!
Crud makes an excellent point. I hope Ely and Certis get him to write for GWJ!
But he leaves the $10,000 question unanswered: why thawing a pack of ground beef has become such an ordeal?
Xbox Live tag Gorilla800lbs
America desires instant gratification. The term instant is becoming more and more..instant!
Unfortunately, if I slash my wrist with my lightsaber it cauterizes instantly. - PurEvil on emo Star Wars plots.
I think there's at least one important distinction to be made between myself and Jonathan Edwards - though, there may also be a further infinite number of distinctions beyond this one - and that is that Edward was probably pretty sure he was above those he condemned and not destined for hell. I, on the other hand, finished this piece, posted it, and settled in front of the Daily Show with a bag of Ruffles. Like you say, my fatalism-fu is weak. I can't even measure up to Lobo, much less the puritans.
Oh, clearly.
"I think Elysium has the right of it" - Certis
Elysium, BTW your own remarks about your daytime lifestyle betray an impression that you're clearly not working your ass off in Elysia's business.
I have to rework my earlier statement about un-lazy, hardworking Americans to exclude Ely out of it!
Xbox Live tag Gorilla800lbs
Thanks 800.
Vegetarianism is the way to go. No need for the beef. The preparation time is an unheeded warning for most. Beef, over the long term, is bad for the man-sack.
PETA Rocks!
That sounds like a vacation for many americans. How many people will work all year so they can spend a couple weeks creeping around in the forest after that elusive buck or stalking a mountain stream catching those beautiful trout which reside there. These tasks have meaning, relieve stress and improve mental health. Almost any anthropologist will tell you that modern humans' toil is much greater than that of our tribal ancestors. I'd give up these endless days sitting in my cubicle pushing paper and studying numbers to be able to lead a meaningful life pursuing my natural desires. Even it was significantly shorter. Maybe that is just me though. This book, I think, is better than Ishmael at describing the difference between our current lives and the those that we left behind. Despite an unfortunate titel, it is a great book about this guy's experience living with an aboriginal tribe in Malaysia.
"I like to hear people talking when they're not talking to me," I said. "It's soothing to know that I don't have to listen." -- Bill Harris describing a truism.
Well, then. That settles it.
XBox Live|Tshirts|My Music|GameFly|xfire
You should read this book, as it kind of speaks to what that future may hold. It's fiction of course, but still an interesting glimpse of what may come. And an enjoyable read, as well.
The new Snarling Badger Games, makers of fine microgames.
snarlingbadger.com
I had typed up this whole paper, but felt it was too P&C. So I encourage everyone to shut off their computers read a book that was mentioned here, and wallow in the pity of the world that is to come. Or actively do something about what Geck talked about:
BF2stats
MTGO - TheMentat
BF2 - EElite
There is something faintly nauseating about over-analysing "the simple life" don't you think?
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." - Churchill
He might not want to if you keep calling him bad names.
I also agree that he makes a good point in saying that we are rich enough to partake of a historically decadent amount of leisure. Having been to a rural farming village in Moldova, I can say that our lot is quite nice. Even with the soul-crushing. I like to think about historical norms of hardship and labor whenever I hear whiners with no perspective complain about how you can't survive on minimum wage. I submit, though it is no original idea, that the poor of America are the filthy rich of the world.
Man, someone busted a Jonathan Edwards up in here! Pass the Charles Spurgeon to bring back the aroma of grace!
Quote:
- Legion, taking "keeping it in the family" to a whole new level.
Xbox Live: Fedaykin98