I have a confession to make. I sometimes get so mad while driving, that I have to work extra hard at suppressing the impending road rage. Like everybody else, distracted, dangerous and unnecessarily slow drivers annoy me. But what's worse to me are drivers that act like they're the only users of the road: cabs, rideshares and delivery vehicles that stop in places where they block traffic, cabbies doing u-turns in dangerous places and other behaviours that negatively affect all other users, seemingly not caring that their "convenient" choices, inconvenience and even sometimes endanger everybody else.
I know, everyone likes to bitch about the "other" driver who's not nearly as skilled and courteous as we all are, aka the "that doesn't apply to me" bias, but I'm just using this to make a point: I think our expectations for everything to be ultra-convenient all the time, might actually be our undoing, especially as this is a peculiarity of the North American culture. For someone who grew up in Europe, drive-through ATMs still seem ridiculous to me.
There is value in exerting effort to get things done, the same way there is value in taking risks, physical or otherwise to move forward in life and better ourselves. The overused truism "no risk, no reward" has never rung truer. If you want to build muscle, you have to lift weights and break down your muscle fibers to rebuild them stronger, while constantly running the risk of injury. If you want to make more money you have to make a strong case to your boss and ask for a raise, risking pissing him off in the process or worse. You have to connect with prospects and ask them for the sale, risking rejection after rejection.
Conversely, we can now get everything delivered to our door and literally never have to get out of the house to live a comfortable, safe life. While this feat of logistics is amazing, it's pretty worrying for the future of the human race, and I've seen that future, it's Idiocracy (the most brilliant of satires). If we wait long enough, it's not unreasonable to think that evolution will eventually strip us of the physical and mental abilities we don't need, as there will be no selection pressure, and therefore no need to keep those faculties around for our survival.
Fearfulism is contributing to this trend and we're exchanging too much freedom for a little bit of safety.
Remember, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.
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