The god of convenience

I have a lot of thoughts running around my head right now, so I'll see if I can put them together to make anything coherent. This might end up being a multiday ramble. 

First off, interesting things come from a wide variety of places. I was looking through the book, Flossie Teacakes' Guide to English Paper Piecing. (For those who don't know, English paper piecing is a form or quilting where you cut out shapes, such as an octagon, out of paper, then cut out a piece of fabric and sew the fabric around that piece of paper. You then sew all the shapes together, remove the papers, and then quilt it if desired. It adds a whole other step to the piecing process, making quilting take that much longer. Does it surprise you that I love it?) But back to the book. The author did some research on the benefits of handwork, no doubt to make the case for doing an incredibly time-consuming craft, which is where I came across this. It's kind of long, but necessary to my main thesis.

"The neuroscientist Kelly Lambert takes this [Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's idea that it is the enjoyment found in working in a sense of flow that provides the basis for happiness] one step further, believing that through working with our hands we have the potential to fend off or lift depression and other mental health issues, often with more efficacy than pharmaceutical drugs, such as antidepressants.

Kelly found there is a critical link between symptoms of depression and the key areas of the brain involved with motivation, pleasure, movement, and thought. She discusses how the areas of the brain that control these components form a circuit, which when activated by complex movement and intricate thought, offers a sense of well-being. She calls this the 'effort-driven reward circuit.'

What constitutes an effort-driven reward then? Basically anything that elicits a sense of satisfaction derived from physical effort and focused thought to produce a tangible or visible result. Needlework certainly fulfills these criteria, although equally housework or cleaning could serve the purpose. However, it is critical that the physicality involves the hands because their movement actually activates larger areas of the brain's complex cortex than moving far larger parts of the body, such as the legs or spine.

In our modern world, where machines wash our clothes and clean our dishes, we've removed ourselves from many of the repetitive tasks that we would have once carried out with our hands. Interestingly, in line with this, rates of depression have risen. One study found that those born after 1970 were ten times more likely to suffer major depression than those born prior to the 1930's.

Although I am grateful that we no longer have to wring our clothes through a wringer, it seems clear that our brains feel lost unless we replace these bygone tasks with other activities. Kelly Lambert suggests that crafts may help recharge the batteries in an emotionally drained brain. When so much of our lives is outside our control, she says it's vital to feed the brain's sense of having control over something, however small, to increase our resilience to negative thought." (pp. 16-17)

I've been thinking about this all day and while the author clearly has crafts in her thoughts as she writes it, I feel as though we need to take it in another direction.  I want to talk about convenience and how it is actually killing us and the planet. I'm not going to suggest we give up using our dishwashers and washing machines and such, but I am going to suggest that there are a great many more modern things that perhaps aren't as great as we first thought. 

Convenience has become something of a god. In fulfilling our whims and desires we have become used to speed combined with very little effort. We have a thought that we want something and the next thing we know it is arriving on our doorstep. We have very little need to actually make anything, including food (especially food?). We have very little need to make do without something. We have very little need to wait more than a day or two for something to arrive. We have very little need to wait for anything, actually. All the while we grow more depressed surrounded by our stuff while poisoning the planet with our excess and making the giant corporations who flood us with images and ideas that merely feed our discontent grow rich and fund those governments which will make them richer. 

And you thought perhaps this might be a safe, non-political post because I began with quilting. Sorry to disappoint you. What if we made do? What if we bought ingredients instead of prepared foods? What if we... gasp... gave up Amazon and Target and Walmart? What if we starved the giant corporations funding tyranny of their life blood, our money? It would be inconvenient. You might have to wait or do without. You might not actually be able to get the item that you want. 

I have been happily Amazon free for a year now. Once I got over the habit of clicking on the thing I thought I needed immediately, it turns out I didn't actually need it immediately. I found other places to buy the things I really did need. It does require a bit more advance planning because it doesn't arrive in 48 hours, but that was really just a habit I needed to change. I will admit I am very tired of people (rightfully) up in arms about the current state of affairs, but who are still funding it via corporations. 

Here is my plea. Do not buy from companies that funnel money or other types of support to the current regime or to ICE. This includes Amazon. We are going to have to make sacrifices to get our country back. This is your first test. Because we you kneel at the altar of convenience, you are really acquiescing to tyranny. 

And I promise tomorrow to get back to the working with your hands bit that was so temptingly promised in the opening quote. But I'll also warn you, that it is really just a theme and variation.