Convenience

How convenient is convenience, anyway?  

Is it convenient that in order to get chicken nuggets delivered to your door that the delivery person makes $3.00 an hour to do so?

Is it convenient that in order to save fifteen minutes by driving somewhere rather than taking the bus that you contribute a little more to the problem of climate change which will eventually cause humanity’s demise?

Is it convenient that because you don’t have to carry your re-usable travel mug around that another disposable coffee cup goes into the waste stream and our already overflowing landfills?

Of course, it’s certainly NOT convenient to be reminded—and passive-aggressively scolded—of such examples of alleged convenience by some random person on their rarely-read personal weblog, which just goes to show that the truly convenient action in many cases is not to take action at all, at least in the name of convenience.

The internet tells us that word “convenience” comes from the Latin “conventia,” or in French, “convener” which is essentially to come together (although not in any naughty sense).  What’s “convenient,” then, is what we come to a meeting of the minds about what’s convenient, essentially.

So, if we can agree that it’s NOT convenient to order online so much, drive with such frequency, or discard with such impunity, then, apparently, do so would no longer be convenient.  

Conveniently.

There’s nothing wrong with labor-saving devices; it’s a good thing that we have washing machines and vacuum cleaners to spare us from the drudgery of banging our dirty clothes on rocks and hitting rugs with sticks to get the dirt out of them.

But do we really need leaf-blowers instead of rakes? An automated espresso machine instead of a stovetop pot?  Self-driving cars?  Artificial intelligence?

Seems like the goal is to reduce human activity to nothing more than sitting in front of a screen pressing buttons; if that’s the height of convenience, isn’t not doing so even more convenient?