Practicality Is Ruining Society

Our world is becoming more efficient everyday. For the most part, this is actually a great thing. We all enjoy way more free time than previous generations. Society today has a fixation on practicality and loses sight of what we lose due to efficiencies. I'm not going to talk about the job losses or robots taking over. What I will talk about is how we treat each other as a result of our obsession with practicality.

Don't get me wrong. I do love the practical lifestyle our society has evolved to today. It's just that I've noticed certain things that are starting to disappear and I can see great things that we have now that will soon be extinct in the future.

The biggest thing that our society is losing today is service. Businesses are so obsessed at getting to the next customer that they'll use any means of expediting services and goods to us. They give people quotas and sometimes get rid of people altogether. I remember a time when you could have conversations with customer service representatives in the store. Heck, sometimes other customers would get in on the conversations. Waiters used to talk to you at the restaurant. Stores would call their customers to tell them that the product they were looking for was in the store. I remember being able to call a company and get an actual person on the line to respond to my questions.

Now we get our information from text messaging, email, and social media. I know I've gotten less connected with companies that I've had long relationships with because of the cold manner of communication that they've opted to more toward.

I realize this isn't for everyone. Today's everyday person couldn't be bothered with phone calls anymore. They don't want to interact with strangers and start up random conversations. I think this will be a heavy loss in society. We're people and as such we're social animals. There's lots of talk about the fact that society today is more connected than ever but lonelier than ever before. I think this might be part of the problem.

We've all learned to become more practical but we don't realize that we are losing connections with one another. This efficient way of thought makes us lazy. We have lost the urge to make an effort. Why try and go out of my way to talk to a stranger? Well it can potentially make you and that stranger a little bit happier. It's an epidemic. Kids are learning these ways at a young age and grow up thinking the norm is not to initiate contact with strangers. They grow up thinking salespeople are bad because they only want one thing, your money. Practicality is making us think in black and white. There should be only one reason why people are doing things and usually it's for the negative.

So now we're moving further into a digital age. Online shopping is starting to become more popular. I see even less human interactions in the future because of this but it's what we want. We don't want the hassle of dealing with strangers in general. We think that they're slowing our day down or trying to get something out of you.

There's no going back to a more service oriented society either. It costs way too much and people today are already accustomed to a more practical way of doing things. So enjoy the services that we have today. You may have to explain to your grandchildren about how you made friends with the pizza delivery person back in the day and they'll be shocked that people actually delivered pizza.