Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard.
A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted
We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years
Can confirm. As someone living on well water in an area with semi-frequent power outages in winter I have periodically been given renewed appreciation for the value of power, central heat and running water.
Now I have a great standby generator, though, so I'm sure I'll start taking it all for granted again soon.
I think about this stuff a lot. It's crazy how I, like, water plants with clean water that's literally on tap. Warm showers on-demand are a daily miracle.
Immediate illumination for why people don't quite feel like royalty despite all this would be achieved by replacing the aesthetic of this presentation with mis-matched uncomfortable and ugly furniture picked up off the side of the road, in a cheap split-level or ratty single wide with carpet that should have been replaced a decade ago and fucked-up window blinds et c., a kitchen table piled with a mess of homework and a pile of 20 medical bills and "EOB" letters and crap generated by a single brief visit to a hospital some of which are almost certainly in error and will take hours on the phone to correct, and so on. The presentation is upper-middle-class and comfy as hell. It's an aesthetic that my family is only slowly and haltingly and with much bargain-hunting (even Ikea is kinda spendy, IMO) struggling toward even with top-10% (for the US, let alone globally!) household income, and will never quite achieve because reality doesn't look like that. I know it's not the main point of the site, but the way they've elected to illustrate this notion is interesting in that it suggests a critique of, or elaboration on, the actual main point.
Like, I'm scrolling through this and my thoughts are on how expensive this environment is. I don't have my spices in cute well-sealing matching jars that look nice on a shelf... because that shit's expensive. Mine are mostly stale... because non-stale spices are expensive and take effort and education to track down. Hell some of mine are probably contaminated with heavy metals and I don't know it. Behind all of this is price-anxiety and ambient stress.
The core idea is sound and worth highlighting, but the reality of "so much is available extremely cheap in nearly unlimited quantity and variety! Isn't that fantastically amazing!" is exhausted parents doom-scrolling the Netflix catalog for an hour before going to bed having watched nothing, as they stress about whether their kids' dental appointment tomorrow is going to turn up anything so expensive they have to defer it and scrimp and save to pay for it.
Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard.
A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted
We need a Netflix Chaos Monkey tool for modern life. Each week one modern convenience stops working for a day: indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, wifi, automobile, air travel etc. after one day without, you will again appreciate those things for the next few years
This is called: "going camping".
Can confirm. As someone living on well water in an area with semi-frequent power outages in winter I have periodically been given renewed appreciation for the value of power, central heat and running water.
Now I have a great standby generator, though, so I'm sure I'll start taking it all for granted again soon.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_engineering#Chaos_Monkey)
I think about this stuff a lot. It's crazy how I, like, water plants with clean water that's literally on tap. Warm showers on-demand are a daily miracle.
Immediate illumination for why people don't quite feel like royalty despite all this would be achieved by replacing the aesthetic of this presentation with mis-matched uncomfortable and ugly furniture picked up off the side of the road, in a cheap split-level or ratty single wide with carpet that should have been replaced a decade ago and fucked-up window blinds et c., a kitchen table piled with a mess of homework and a pile of 20 medical bills and "EOB" letters and crap generated by a single brief visit to a hospital some of which are almost certainly in error and will take hours on the phone to correct, and so on. The presentation is upper-middle-class and comfy as hell. It's an aesthetic that my family is only slowly and haltingly and with much bargain-hunting (even Ikea is kinda spendy, IMO) struggling toward even with top-10% (for the US, let alone globally!) household income, and will never quite achieve because reality doesn't look like that. I know it's not the main point of the site, but the way they've elected to illustrate this notion is interesting in that it suggests a critique of, or elaboration on, the actual main point.
Like, I'm scrolling through this and my thoughts are on how expensive this environment is. I don't have my spices in cute well-sealing matching jars that look nice on a shelf... because that shit's expensive. Mine are mostly stale... because non-stale spices are expensive and take effort and education to track down. Hell some of mine are probably contaminated with heavy metals and I don't know it. Behind all of this is price-anxiety and ambient stress.
The core idea is sound and worth highlighting, but the reality of "so much is available extremely cheap in nearly unlimited quantity and variety! Isn't that fantastically amazing!" is exhausted parents doom-scrolling the Netflix catalog for an hour before going to bed having watched nothing, as they stress about whether their kids' dental appointment tomorrow is going to turn up anything so expensive they have to defer it and scrimp and save to pay for it.