Let’s shrinkwrap the bread into some cellophane and toss twenty of those individuated little bags into an even larger plastic bag, toss ‘em on into a box, toss that box into a crate, run quality control on all steps of this damned conveyor belt, sign it off across the broad badlands of administrative forms, toss FedEx and UPS into the ring to battle it out for our shipping business, dump a truckload of money into marketing so we’re not exiled to the shelves of Grocery Outlet, and hope we can scrape this all by with just enough margin to finally have the capacity to fund those man-hours required to get us ISO-9001 compliant so Kroger might eventually field our emails. What an effort to get those grains into your gut. But sometimes I wonder…
Why don’t people simply buy the flour and grain and make the damned lumps of carbohydrates themselves? Have those individuals exploring (and arguably leading our culture’s advancement towards) the western front of convenience grown too comfortable in their capacity to just buy it? How many of us can’t even make a loaf of bread from scratch anymore to supplement the week’s lunches? Why don’t we just do the damned thing ourselves?
The immediate answer I’ll address here comes as such: the efficiency at which the market can provide the individual with what they want or need has encouraged the individual to simply pay the market to do so, rather than do it themselves. The cause for this needs grounding, but the end result remains the same - forms of modulation or limitation have been exerted on society, leading many individuals to spend earned capital outwardly to accomplish a task of necessity, which has grown more reasonably achievable than should the capital be invested inwardly instead.
Though (importantly) this trend is not restrained to trends in food supply and consumption, establishing an acute example in this field should serve purpose as a staging ground for addressing concerns surrounding the many tasks-for-survival which we’ve forfeited autonomy over - or outsourced to an outward, perhaps global marketplace - over time. (For better or for worse: automobiles becoming more difficult to work on at home, rights to repair movement being continually contested by manufacturers; refrigerators now engineered to suggest what foods may need repurchasing, or texting you that you’ve left the freezer door open - the list goes on).
Doing so, we can enact a discussion towards a better understanding of our changing (in)capacity to do.
To begin, I’ll toss a softball-of-an-idea out there: it’s become more practical for the individual household to buy the steak and the milk and the cheese than it is to buy the cow and the land and to work the udder, so to speak. At large, individuals find themselves choosing to spend their amassed capital on consumption, rather than production. On spending for, not investment in, the self.
I’ll call this the convenience modulation, which proposes: the broad machinations of advanced society have conditioned (or convinced-in-earnest) the individual to expand the scope of things which they consider more convenient or practical to buy ready-made by someone else.
An emphasis was placed on the descriptor of expanding the scope of essential items we purchase rather than produce. The articulation of the word expanding is important, as a fair argument can be made that at this point in history, and in the balance of society’s demands, convenience has it’s place.
For instance, let’s go back to the loaf of bread conundrum: an arguable man-hour is required just to bake a single loaf. How much is your time worth? Certainly orders of magnitude more than the $2.46 it takes to just buy the loaf at the store. Building this example outwards, we’re left with the consideration that a growing number of things are now both easier and cheaper to just buy over the counter.
The logic up to this point is easy to follow - the concept of bartering needs no further substantiation. Modern-day specialization of industry allows for greater market participation among a broader population, and, in theory, makes more people’s lives “better” than not. Furthermore, the act of observing the effects which the convenience modulation has on the individual’s capacity to do does not immediately appear to summon an existential moral qualm. By concession, it becomes evident: the driving force behind the convenience modulation of the individual is neither innately illogical nor “wrong” (using modern definitions of the word). As such, the argument concerning the convenience modulation’s impact on the individual’s ability to do should not be made from a stance of moral or ideal absolutism, but rather, by nuance.
Nuance lies somewhere in between the answers to the following questions:
To what degree are we capable of achieving survival without the advantages of specialization and convenience?
To what degree are we comfortable with placing our survival in its entirety into someone else’s hands?
The Western individual’s general answer rears its head in several trends observed regarding the Food Purchase Decisions of Millennial Households Compared to Other Generations, as noted by the United States Department of Agriculture. These findings, within the microcosmic realm of existential nutritional needs, suggest: we’re becoming more comfortable handing over various responsibilities of survival to an outward source.
To name a few:
“Millennials spent almost 1 hour less in food presentation, preparation, and cleaning despite working the fewest hours per week, on average, of all generations”
“a large portion of FAH [food-at-home] purchases are ready-to-eat foods”
Millenials place an “emphasis on convenience . . . in line with their pattern of higher food-away-from-home (FAFH) consumption, perhaps indicating they have become accustomed to consuming foods requiring minimal preparation effort”.
With the blinding vote of confidence in the idea of big-timing earned capital outwards for pre-packaged survival, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the expanding psychosis of succumbing to a broadening scope of convenience is not being properly coupled with a consideration for the future-self. Again I ask: who among you can make a loaf of bread? Let ye who is without the Uber Eats app cast the first loaf.
Western individuals are simply becoming less interested in (or less economically capable of) exerting traditional effort towards existential concepts such as nutrition (among other things). A growing number of us, then, simply labor for fiat to be used in exchange for survival. To what ends can this trend be pushed? Taken to it’s theoretical extreme - when you need to eat, and it’s someone else with the means to produce, prepare, transport, and disseminate your food, who tells who to do what? Take your autonomy and shove it.
Parallels describing such hypothetical dangers of our complete submission to the extreme qualifiers of the convenience modulation of society (complete outward reliance, significant reduction in private household nutrition procurement, monopolization of supply) may be drawn in comparison to historical events in which similar qualifiers of modulation were actualized to extremity through political force. Take, for instance, the Holodomor, in which an estimated 3.9 million Ukranians starved to death largely due to the authoritarian installation of Soviet collectivization; or, the Great Chinese Famine in which an estimated “36 million Chinese citizens were persecuted or starved to death” (alongside cannibalism becoming “widespread practice”) under the Chinese Communist Party’s statist aim to assume outright authority over food production and supply.
Though we are a far cry away from such conditions (and though Western nations tend to disavow political authoritarianism), with social norm as the driving force, the theory remains at play: the individual under the effects of convenience modulation voluntarily yields participation in various elements of their lives that once could only be taken by expending political capital or enforcing physical punishment. With the dangers of dismissing autonomy over our own survival, or even comfort, catalogued, it’s an open ended question as to how far along this path we are willing to go. This is especially so, as mobilization along this path is entirely dictated by social norms as dispensed by cultural institutions, an engine that Western populations largely enjoy watching operate, or even revving as we go along.
Thankfully, we can give the engine a rest with the simple turn of a key. It’s the distinction that the convenenience modulation phenomenon is partially a social one which allows for us to step back from the ledge as outlined by historical authoritarian outfits. It becomes clear, then, that a most effective argument concerning the stultification of the individual’s involvement in their own survival may be of the persuasive sort - drawn from nuanced reference to philosophy, and perhaps history. In reference to self-reflection, in reference to tradition. In reference to what values the individual celebrates, and maneuvers society to capitulate.
These values can be found as answers somewhere along the spectrums of identity piqued by the following questions, among others:
What other forms of autonomy have you let slip through your fingers in the name of convenience?
If such access to convenience was taken away from you, what would you give up in exchange to get it back? (edit: This one in particular is especially haunting as concepts such as a vaccine passport are being kicked around like the empty can of an idea such things are - Engorged ‘authorities’ are legitimately weighing taking away your access to convenience, getting you to do what they say in order to get it back.)
To what degree are you comfortable relying on outward sources for your family’s well-being?
What portion of that convenience did you truly need? What portion did you just want?
With whom or what are you in exchange with for those conveniences?
Answering these questions, are the answers truly yours? Are they grounded with a wisdom of history? Or are they made exclusively through a modern, Western, cultural lens?
My argument has then become clear: the convenience modulation’s growing impact on the individuals amassing society may be demonstrating that our current heading is in need of address, or at the very least, engagement in and discussion of.
From here, in closing, it may prove wise to carry these thoughts into the form of a maxim: There is no absolute utopian vector that individuals must allow the broader vessel of society to plot course towards. Convenience is nice, and perhaps necessary, but it is not absolute. The individuals amassing society are morally charged with trimming its sails as necessary, changing its course, so to speak, away from the extremes of such societal modulation, as examined in the convenience modulation phenomenon.
To do so, the individual must be informed, empowered, capable of free speech and consideration. Onwards towards reclaiming autonomy.
Great writing! Your points were concise, important, and (I believe) very valuable to many people today. Generally speaking, lots of people tend to move towards things that are easy or convenient, and I think your points in this article are enough to push people towards at least moving away from that ideologically and taking steps towards becoming more autonomous. I look forward to reading more of your stuff!