Puusti the Dog's favourite place to sleep (other than in bed with Smallsteps) is the back pillow on the lounge couch, where he would happily spend most of the day, jammed in all cosy with a cover. As a pet dog, he doesn't need much to enjoy life, nor does he have to do anything to get what he needs. He gets food, water, warmth and affection - and all he has to do is be here. A dog's life is pretty easy.
At a base level, it is not much different for humans, although we would have to be the ones to supply the food, shelter, warmth and affection through our activities. But ultimately, not much is really needed to enjoy life. Yet, we make it incredibly difficult to do so, because rather than being happy with being content, we are unable to ever be content and have to always feel like we are getting more.
This by itself is not actually a bad thing, because this is how we have evolved to be able to do what we can today. The problems arise because of the "more" that we want, because we have replaced practical advancement with theoretical collection, where wealth is the more, even if we aren't using it to advance ourselves or our species. And I believe that it is because of this that perhaps for the first extended time in human history, we are devolving and I believe it is happening rapidly.
The biggest factor I see as the reason for our devolution is that we have got to a point where convenience has become a hinderance. In the past, convenience was sought to improve our efficiency in what we do, to give us more time, energy, and capability to perform. Now though, it is sought to to avoid doing altogether, where we are no longer doing enough to keep our skillsets advancing. Our bodies, minds, emotions and social interactions are degrading at what should be considered an alarming rate, but it is inconvenient to do anything, so people will conveniently say, nothing can be done.
This is the way it is.
I have deep reservations about the future, because the way we are heading isn't toward better, it is toward controlled convenience. People aren't improving, where we spend our time and resources is useless, and a few people globally are taking all wealth and buying all resources that matter, so that we all become reliant on a handful of corporations telling us what to do, and how to live our lives. And they are not interested in those that can't bring them value, so once we are unable to pay for the privilege of their offered convenience, they will cut us off. And governments are going the way of the dinosaurs, because of their greed and focus on wealth creation of the few instead of betterment of the many.
Food, shelter, warmth, affection....
These are among the basics that we need and yet, we are failing at even these. Even in the developed world loneliness is an epidemic, so affection is failing. We can no longer provide what we need for each other to have a good life, yet we have plenty of resources to build and gadgets, cars and wars to waste our time and effort on. Perhaps if we paid attention to the basics first, clean air, clean water, clean food supply, clean energy, clean societies - we would be able to live cleanly. At least, we wouldn't have to worry about the basics and we could then spend our time on things that actually matter.
Convenience is not a bad thing, it is just where we are building it that is the problem. We should make clean energy for instance as convenient as possible, which means that it is incredibly cheap. We should make healthy food and water incredibly convenient also, and remove the highly processed, packaged trash that makes up 95% of any supermarket. But instead, we have made the things that harm us convenient, and the things that improve us, out of reach for the majority.
Things can be done.
We just don't want to do them, because it gets in the way of doing nothing.
Taraz
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