I imagine it used to be a lot simpler. Life, that is. You were born, you grow up, you work, you raise a family of your own. The world was small. Entertainment was defined by the recreational and creative outlets that you, your friends, and your community could come up with. Most people stayed in the same town they were born in their whole lives. In short, there were fewer choices.
Now? Not so much. We are constantly bombarded with all kinds of media, and at the same time the world has become much more accessible. I’m not quite sure how to deal with it, and I don’t think I’m alone. Raise your hand if you’ve ever said or thought, “there are just not enough hours in the day”. There’s too much to absorb. Too much to see. Too much to do. Too much to experience. There seems to be no way to do it all, and that sucks.
We want to consume. The amount of information and entertainment available to the average person has completely exploded in the last 25 years. Even more in the last 10. Twenty-five years ago, there were what, 3 or 4 TV channels? Now there are dozens of shows worth watching, and don’t forget the ones you missed that you can catch up on via DVDs or other services. Hollywood keeps pumping out must-see movies, and it’s not as if books and magazines have stopped being written. I’ve got lists of all the books, movies, TV shows, and music that I want to but have not yet consumed. And despite my best efforts to check items off, the lists continue to grow. And then there’s the internet. Sure, 99.9% of it is trash. But there’s still a lot of quality content out there. Funny and/or informative blogs, hilarious viral videos, and of course keeping up with the news are just a few things that keep us busy. It’s not hard for me to kill and hour or two on TED.com*. And now with social networking, we all want to come up with a status update that people will comment on, and that takes up time. Thank god I’m not into video games.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if we had all day catch up on our TV shows, magazine articles, and the like. Unfortunately, money makes the world go ‘round. We’re all supposed to have a profession that takes up 1/3 or the day. Well, it’s not just that we have to have a job. We want one. We want to create. Whether it’s a jet engine, a new economic model, a grant for new research, a piece of clothing, a gift for the less fortunate, a legal argument, or a medical service. We all want a sense of accomplishment. Beyond our professional creations, there’s personal hobbies (collecting, building, volunteering, producing art, exercising, etc.). And good for us. It’s our creations that drive our economy and create diversity. But every minute we spend doing one thing is a minute we won’t spend doing something else. It just doesn’t seem fair.
Furthermore, we want to experience. All sorts of things. Take travel. Who doesn’t want to see the world? But I just spent a month in Southeast Asia, and you could fill a library with what I missed out on. And that’s just one small region of the world. There’s so much I want to see, but realistically, I’ll be lucky if I get to half of it. The timeless dilemma for all 20-somethings infected with the travel bug is the fact that when you’ve got the money, you don’t have the time, and when you’ve got the time, you don’t have the money. It’s an awful thing to think about, but it’s completely accurate for almost everyone. Travel is just one example of an experience people want. Others might be social, recreational, athletic, romantic, sexual, who knows. I want to see the Giants win a World Series. I want to go to parties. I want to play softball with my friends. I want to get married and have kids. Genuinely I do. But holy cow. Kids? That’s at least 18 years in which your priorities are turned fully upside down.
And that’s what this is all about, right? Priorities. If you work an extra hour, that’s one episode of Mad Men you won’t see, unless you want to sacrifice an hour of sleep. If you choose to paint a picture or write a song, that’s a social gathering you might miss out on. Sure, we can shuffle things around, but whatever we do, we’ll be missing out on something else. I’m not saying this is bad. In fact, it’s a good “problem” to have, and it’s only because I’m overwhelmingly fortunate (compared to the rest of the world) that I even have this “problem”. We have the opportunity to absorb, create, and experience so much more than we used to. And that’s fantastic. But the amount of time we have to do it in has remained roughly the same (to be fair, life expectancy has increased). So the fraction of what we do experience compared to what we can experience has gone way down.
People like to say that technology and globalization and all that has made the world smaller. On the contrary, these things have made the world much larger. Not that long ago you could only see a show if it travelled to your town. Now you have a near infinite choice of what to be entertained by. Not that long ago, you could only read about the far reaches of the world. Now you can go there. Everyone’s “observable universe” (that which is able to be experienced, created or consumed) has gotten larger. Consequently, we are aware of how much we are missing out on**. This, psychologically, it’s a bit overwhelming. How do we as individuals and as a society deal with it? I have no idea. This is just the problem statement. Someone smarter than me is going to have to come up with the solution***.
* If you haven’t been there, go now. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and there’s a yearly conference of brilliant people presenting fascinating content that they are passionate about, and all the talks are available to watch. Topics range from how to save Africa to demonstrating the latest technologies
** I imagine this “problem” is worse for the non-religious, due to the lack of heaven to live forever in. So prioritizing becomes even more critical. And piggy-backing on that—how depressing is it that we’ll never know what the future is going to be like? I want to know what the world will be like 100, 200, 500, 1000 years from now, but I’ll never know. And there’s literally nothing I can do about it.
*** If you can point me towards something to read, or have any advice, I’m all ears.
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