Complicated Lives

Life is difficult. It doesn't have to be, but it is.

It is difficult because people make it so. We have the technology and intellect to make life easy, and in some ways it very much is. We have running water in our homes and electricity to power things that were impossible to imagine 100 years ago. We have washers and dryers in our homes along with microwaves that can heat up food in a fraction of the time cooking over a fire or in a stove does.

But we still live in a society of exploitation. Capitalism is, inherently, exploitation. The concept of having people attached to a product in which the outcome is more valuable than the person attached to it is, by definition, exploitative.

But thats not what I mean when I say humans make life intentionally difficult. The choice of exploitation is made by the few, not the majority.

What I mean, more specifically, is that all humans choose to make their lives more difficult. They choose to pursue relationships, which no matter how "easy" they can be, they are intrinsically more difficult than being alone. People have babies, which is incredibly difficult. They pursue careers that stretch their mental capacity. They pursue knowledge to test their limits. They take on hobbies that add pressure to their minds.

Comfort, in a lot of ways, is a luxury of stagnation within humans. In actuality, it seems as though nothing is more human than to push themselves out of their comfort zone. It is just far more positive of an experience when that expansion is done because of personal preference than having it being forced upon the individual.

And humanity is incredible. We have managed to make cars that can drive themselves while keeping occupants safe inside (to some degree, at least). We have discovered so much knowledge with how things work that we can accurately predict the exact point that an object will be in space decades later. We can utilize math to explain so much of the observable world we live in.

And we can also utilize our own desires to force other people's lives into being exponentially worse.

There is something to be said about the ignorance we succumb to the further away from our impact that we get. As an example, it is easy to hate people like Jeff Bezos or Sam Altman or Donald Trump, but the world they live in is so far detached from the impact they have on those who suffer because of them that they are likely completely ignorant to it, or are so detached that they can't truly care about it. The person who died in an Amazon factory likely wasn't even reported to Jeff, and if it was then he likely could write it off as some kind of fluke thing unrelated to the working conditions those who work for him are encumbered by.

And I have heard rumors that Donald Trump can't focus on the reports of his actions for longer than a few minutes at a time. That is definitely not enough time to hear about the complexities of his economic policies catastrophic and systemic destruction of the country.

Now. That isn't to say that they would care. Humanity can justify anything if they want to. We devised entire religious networks to justify atrocities, after all, and the harsher truth of reality not having any meaning whatsoever can lead to even worse results if a narcissist takes hold of it.

But humanity would be pushing itself with complications regardless. If people were completely free to do anything and everything, we would have more people pursuing art - which is inherently difficult - or science. Or camping in the wilderness for "fun." Or any number of other things that make our lives more difficult.

Because difficulty is fun. At least, it is fun when we are choosing how it is difficult.

-Dustin S. Stover