Our Culture of Little Demand

By Daniel Taverne

How many times have you or someone you know angrily turned the house up-side-down searching for the television’s remote control? How many times have you or someone you know cussed at the car in front of you because it was moving five miles per hour slower than the speed limit? Have you ever heard anyone complain that they need to wash their clothes? I know I have. Is it me, or are complaints such as these a huge indictment of our current values?

How ungrateful we are for the lives we’ve been given by our fathers and grandfathers, and their fathers before them, that we not appreciate the fact that although we are traveling 65 miles per hour, that we might cuss someone in our way who keeps us from driving 70. In this same respect, how ungrateful we are that when we say we have to wash clothes, that we in fact don’t have to wash them, all we have to do is toss them into a machine that will do all the work for us.

Now I realize I’ve begun this article with a lot of questions, and I know they sound rather rhetorical, but I believe that more often than not, we are all guilty of this type of behavior. In addition, even at the point of being unhealthy, our quality of life is measured not by our endeavors, but by how few things we actually have to do. That being said, at the current rate that our culture is “improving”, in another 50 years everything will be done for us.

After infants exit their mother’s wombs, they’ll be placed in an automated incubator that will automatically bathe, feed, change, and rock. Then, as children all that will be required of them is that they eat and breathe. Well, that’s almost the way it is now, but in the future, school won’t even be a necessary place to go since kids will be able to learn by placing a gadget over their heads and going to sleep. They won’t have to run and play because they will have a video game that will do that for them too. In fact, the kids won’t even have to play the video games because a machine will play the games for them. All that will be required of the kids is to turn on the auto mated game player through the use of a remote control that’s surgically implanted at birth.

Adults will have it just as easy. No longer will adults have to cook or clean, and they won’t have to cut the grass, or wash the car. They won’t even have to get out of bed! In fact, they’ll be able to lay in bed for weeks having everything done automatically by remote control or by programmed machines. Amazingly, a machine will be available on the market that will roll the adults in bed allowing for automated bedding changes. If these machines break down, not to worry, another machine will be dispatched to make repairs.

Eventually, food will not be necessary because there will be a feeding tube implanted at birth that will make eating obsolete, and feeding will be scientifically controlled by computer and automatically performed by other bed side machines.

Progressing at our current rate, it won’t be long until Americans become a society of invalids complaining that we have to open our eyes in the morning, and that we actually have to breathe. Do you think these thoughts are absurd? If so, consider how absurd the complaints levied in the first paragraph of this article might sound to someone from 200 years in our past.

Finally, before wishing death on the driver in front of you, before yelling at the children because they lost the television’s remote, and before taking any of the advantages this day and age offers for granted, remember this article and count your blessings. Doing so will set a good example for your children, will prevent some stress, and will help you move through life a more pleasant and gracious person.