This will be the first post in a new series on the blog called "ramblings". If you've grown accustomed to the high quality daily posts (read that with just the right amount of sarcasm), don't expect that same level from these. There is also no schedule for these at all. These will also be entirely opinion based.

Question: Has the world gotten better or just more comfortable?

I'm not sure what triggered this thought in my head, but I've been thinking about it for a week or so now. Has the world actually gotten better in recent years or just more comfortable? Recent could be defined as the last year, last decade, or even last century. I constantly hear people saying the world is better than it's ever been or it's the best time to be alive, but is that true? Now I know immediately you may think that I'm just delusional, but I'd like to explain my viewpoint further.

I think it is safe to say that the world (as a typical American, when I say world I mean Western society since that's really all I know) is more comfortable than it has ever been and will continue to get more and more comfortable. But at what point does this increasing comfort start having negative effects? I'd argue that this has already happened and probably happened long ago causing the "betterment" of the world to go down despite comfort going up. I think of Wall-E as an example here.

In Wall-E, humans have reached a presumable peak of comfort that has virtually eliminated any and all discomfort to the point that they no longer even need to walk to move anywhere. They have hovering chairs that can bring them any and everywhere. However, this comfortable chair also functions as their jail. Due to inconveniencing themselves with the act of walking (or standing for that matter), their leg muscles are so weak and they are so fat that they can not walk even if they wanted to.

I can think of several examples in the world as of 2025 that seem to be on this same path. To name a few:

1. We no longer need to inconvenience ourselves with shopping of any kind. Anyone can simply go on Amazon (or any other website) and order what they need without ever leaving their home.
2. We have machines that automate common household chores or can pay someone to do them for you.
3. We are starting to eliminate the need to appropriately diet/exercise with new drugs that are coming out to give all of the benefits without the inconvenience of eating healthy or exercising.
4. AI is improving to the point where it can write code and essays, give travels plans, and much much more eliminating the inconvenience of thinking.

Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of this innovation is great and will improve the lives of many, many people. But I think there is cost to not having these inconveniences that people don't think about enough: our resiliency and development. Once you adjust to a certain level of comfort, that becomes your new baseline (your zero-point). Initially, this may be a fictionary +5 improvement to comfort, but steadily, that +5 will degrade back to 0 without constant improvements leading to an endless cycle of better and better.

I think this post is getting long enough for a rambling and hopefully my point has been made. If not, I think the best way I can summarize it is that I believe there is a power to inconvenience that people ignore and a constant search for comfort is not such a good thing. For me, I do and will continue to try to built inconvenience into my life and really evaluate a comfort before adding it to my new baseline.