Luxury trap

"One of history's few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations"

- Yuval Noah Harari

As most of you would be aware, Homo Sapiens started off as hunter-gatherers. They led a nomadic lifestyle going from places to places in search of food and shelter. Around ten thousand years ago, mankind discovered few plant species - wheat, rice, potatoes. This gave birth to the agriculture revolution wherein man learnt to domesticate these species, in particular wheat.

Contrary to the expectations, domestication of wheat did more harm than good. It helped man to stay in one place, no longer he had to go out in search of food, facing dangers of wild animals and harsh weather conditions. However, wheat was also responsible for population explosion leading to malnutrition and infanticides in kids and the emergence of a number of infectious diseases due to poor living conditions. Our ancestors' bodies were evolved to run, climb and hunt, but wheat farming brought a plethora of ailments like slipped discs, arthritis, and hernias as they had to settle permanently next to wheat fields. Before the era of agriculture, grains contributed a small portion of man's diet. Man ate a variety of species and that's how he thrived in extreme weather conditions. But with the popularity of wheat, it became an essential part of his diet, so he was much more exposed to drought, pests, fungi, and other external factors that could destroy his harvest.

The point I'm trying to make here is - Luxury for lack of a better word is a trap. The early man thought wheat would give him more peace but it ended up being the opposite. The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much more hardship. The same could be said about today's time as well. Take the example of snail-mail which were delivered by postmen. Back in those days, if people needed to send anyone a letter, they used to carefully think, phrase, and write only absolutely essential things (as space was limited), and the person receiving it would reply only if it was very high on priority (as money was limited!). But now, an average working person receives more than fifty emails daily and most of them are 'reply ASAP'. At this point I would like to steal a quote from the movie Fight Club - "Things that you own, end up owning you"

What can we do? As a species, we cannot do much. Constant efforts to simplify our lives would someday lead to the extinction of mankind and Artificial Intelligence could potentially be a step in that direction. Curiosity and creativity are in our genes and we cannot stop it suddenly, even for the betterment of our race.

However, as an individual, do not get too attached to your prized possessions. It is perfectly fine to have materialistic goals but if they are the only source of your happiness, then it is a big problem.

If life is a treadmill, human beings with their innovations have increased its speed by ten times, however, we forgot that it is us who have to run on it!

To simpler times!