My apartment's air-conditioning has been broken for over two weeks now. Despite multiple work orders put in, it has not been repaired. Now that summer is upon us in Dallas, the apartment is reaching temperatures around 90 degrees Fahrenheit during the afternoon when the sun is directly on it.
This is turn has resulted in waste disposal becoming extremely important; dirty dishes can remain in the sink for a day or two when the air is kept at a constant cool temperature, but somewhere around the mid-80's their half-life drops to around a couple of hours, after which the food scraps begin to very rapidly return to their original elements, a process in which fruit flies will somehow manage to infiltrate our building and participate.Even a blanket in my bedroom, after days of elevated temperatures, had begun to produce a unique odor which suggested that washing would be highly recommended.
It occurred to me after a few days that, had the AC been working, none of this would have taken place. Cooler, climate-controlled air greatly slows down the decomposition of kitchen scraps, and the rate at which a blanket gently reminds us that we are organic creatures after all. A similar realization occurred after returning to America from Taiwan. I was surprised to discover some fallen pears which, after several days, appeared to have been barely impacted and perhaps still edible, preserved by the cool, dry autumn air. In Taiwan, fallen fruit would have lasted a few hours at best, as the tropically-boosted decomposition process made short work of it.
While thinking about these things, I realized that the phenomenon had a wider application. It could be said of many Americans, that we live air-conditioned lives. Climate-controlled, insulated against the historical struggles of life, what some call the real world. Our struggle is not to put food on the table, or stay warm enough to survive the winter. We struggle to choose what restaurant we really want to eat at most, amid a staggering array of choices, or to avoid sweating so we can look fresh for job interviews.
Indeed, our cultural awareness of the trivial nature of many of these perceived difficulties has led to the "First World Problems" meme, demonstrating that younger generations of America are well aware of their own material privileges, even if that does not prevent them from complaining about similar issues. But is the best response to criticize these complaints as coming from excessive privilege or unforgivable ignorance? Surely everyone will complain about the things in their lives which are frustrating or disappointing, the disconnect occurs in that for certain groups of people, problems that cause them real frustration are brought on by material wealth which most of the world's inhabitants could only dream of.
But rather than trying to pretend that only problems which are more like problems which most humans face are worth complaining about, perhaps we should look at the root of the problems. The problem is not the complaints, the problem is the contrived lifestyle. Many people begin at this point to critique our culture of excess, or claim that such extravagance only comes at the expense of other parts of the world. But I submit that mere affluence does not lead to a situation where we have a near-culture-wide self-awareness of being out of touch with most of humanity, as evidenced through those things that bother us in life.
I do not wish to engage in a serious discussion of global resource distribution or the complicated cultural, historical, and political reasons why some areas of the world can be so developed as to have children worried about how much data their iPods hold, while one day's plane ride away some children are dying from lack of drinkable water. That important but highly divisive topic seems more to bring out differences in world view between those engaging it than it produces any viable solutions.
Instead I want to think of a more specific and less often discussed topic.
How could we as Americans bring ourselves back in touch a little? How could we, without top-down government policy changes, live in such a way that does not assume prosperity is evil but also gets rid of a culture which has become at odds with the experience of most humans, self-contained and unsustainable, trapped behind glass to protect the artificial chill of conditioned air which delays its inevitable decay into more fundamental elements?
Everything in our lives has become processed, packaged and shippable. Our food comes in chemically treated chunks, our water comes in little bottles, our air blows out of little temperature-controlled vents, our friends when not physically present represented by discrete profiles with filtered and prepared information.
Most people in the world are forced to take life as it comes, at least on a phenomenological level. It comes in analog. But in a parallel to the onset of the digital age, we have instead broken life into small, managed, dichotomous packets. We do not conform and are not shaped or hardened by our circumstances, we purchase them and change them to suit our tastes, growing soft behind protecting glass, preserved by climate-control. But what will happen when the glass shatters?
