06 January, 2009

Conditioning from conveniences

On a very merry night out in Osaka on New Year's Eve, while coming out of a pub housed on the 1st floor (2nd floor in Japan), seeing exiting customers waiting for the lift to go down to the floor below got me going. 

How is it that we have got to the point where people unquestionably wait for a lift (elevator) to come to their aid for moving up or even down one floor, when next to the lift there is a 'manual' device (stairs!) which invariably offers the same service in a quicker and cheaper (in environmental and health terms) manner?

While my cohort on that night's merriment thought that moaning about this point was perhaps taking things too far, but for me it represented a larger problem - our conditioning that comes from conveniences, which paradoxically, leads us to lose-lose habitual actions and decision-making. 

In everyday life similar the results of this conditioning can be seen everywhere. Just go to any check-out counter to see shop assistants putting single items into tiny plastic bags and customers with bags and pockets, unquestionably accepting them.

Anyway, sorry to start the new year with a bit of a moan but once you notice these things you may see that it soon becomes something you need to periodically vocalise, or indeed, blog about.

May 2009 be filled with a greater awareness about how we are being conditioned and where it is leading us.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

why our life came this far?
I hope I was born little earlier.... to when people get their bowl to buy a scoop of ice cream.....

Aaron said...

Yeah, even here at the university, throngs of students in their "physical prime" stand waiting for the elevator to take them to class just one or two floors above them.