**The column below represents the personal views of the student journalist.
The phenomenon of convenience is the optimization of underfulfillment. At 6:00 am sharp, your Alexa starts the melancholy melody to wake you up, just as it did yesterday and the day before. You catch the bus, chug an energy drink, and doom scroll on TikTok before arriving at school. The school day starts with the fluorescent light shining doom and despair instead of warmth and growth, and the blue light from your Chromebook, which you stare at for seven periods, has also given you a headache. An animal we are the world, our zoo, but could zoozchosis be here soon?
Animals thrive in their natural habitat, which is curated to provide all the enrichment they need. Humans are animals that have created an artificial world far from what it once was, to the point that it cannot be reversed. What role does that take on the average human’s behavior? Humans, much like animals living in captivity, have shown signs of progression toward zoochosis living in a world that tells us convenience is the future.
Zoochosis is a mental disorder that manifests in abnormal and often unhealthy physical behaviors. It is largely, though not necessarily exclusively, caused by psychological factors induced by physical captivity and sensory deprivation, according to Psychology Today.
People say convenience saves time, makes daily tasks easier and has brought them more freedom. Convenience is efficient and is the future of society.
People have lost many life skills over the last 50 years. Many basic tools that humans use to function in daily life have been replaced by more convenient alternatives. Home phones have been replaced with the cellphone. The cellphone has replaced maps with GPS. There is also no longer a need to memorize phone numbers, because they’re all saved as contacts on your cellphone. Which is what society has normalized. But losing the ability to not rely on technology and convenience for every aspect of life is dystopian, life isn’t pixels its tangible. A subtle deep dive into society no longer keeping physical copies of anything, and losing skills that build our critical thinking skills and our ability to be flexible under any circumstances, the ability to also not rely on technology for everyday tasks. Enrichment comes from these learned skills. Convenience has ruined enrichment for society.
Convenience has gotten so far that, in fact, it is starting to cause abnormal behavior in humans, including but not limited to extremely sedentary lifestyles, “Bed rotting,” for example. Reliance on ready-to-eat foods that are nutritionally undernourishing. The rising use of Protein supplements, fiber supplements, multi-vitamins, and even colon cancer is becoming more common in young adults. Healthy food should be the norm, but convenience options for food have been pushed on society over busy schedules and affordability, which is not natural for humans. Nutrition shouldn’t have to be replaced with a supplement. Even our social behaviors have become abnormal. You can go to any dine-in restaurant, and you’re going to see two people sitting across from each other, but instead of talking, they’re looking at their phones. Dopamine is the excitement hormone that you feel before the actual excitement is there, like waiting to wake up on Christmas Day. That is what the mind is hooked on, but it’s a loop of addiction to convenience, and your brain never actually gets to open the presents it’s stuck on Christmas Eve.
Humans have adapted and evolved over nature’s rebuilding over and over again. Yet this time we’re rebuilding nature, destroying it before it has time to catch up. I urge the world and society to put the Earth first. Looking through life from a different perspective, zoochosis sounds not outlandish were told we were free, but were trapped in an artificial world. We have created AI before we have explored the deepest part of the ocean. The Earth does not belong to humans. Resources don’t belong to anyone; they belong to the Earth. Why destroy the earth after all it has given us? The Earth has given and given time and time again, yet we are sucking it dry and are not replenishing what we took. The consequences are showing in humans and on the Earth. When will enough be enough? If you took anything from what I have written, I hope you step back from an artificial world in a world that never sleeps and one that would rather smell candles than stop and smell the roses.