As
most people know, Nissan is a Japanese company that produces some of the best
automobiles in their particular price range.
Not content to rest on its laurels as a manufacturer of cars, Nissan is
venturing into other areas of human mobility with the idea of improving the
life of the average person. One truly
astounding device is the Pro PILOT Chair, a self-driving chair that is designed
to take all of the discomfort out of waiting in line. The chair has wheels to move on as well as a
camera and sensors that are used to keep the chair at a fixed distance from the
chair in front of it. The chairs wait in
a chair line. When a person’s chair has
moved to the front of the line, and it is time for the person to take his turn,
he gets out of the chair, and the chair, sensing the loss of the passenger,
moves to the back of the line. This
system of chairs is going to be tested at restaurants in Japan in the near
future.
No
more spending time waiting long periods while standing on one’s feet. Think of all the energy that a person can
conserve. And no more having to contend
with people pushing you as they try to move forward or people trying to cut
into line ahead of you. Waiting in line
becomes a totally orderly frictionless experience.
Is
there anything wrong with feeling more comfortable? Perhaps, there is. Standing creates a different mental state
from sitting. It is precisely the
low-key discomfort of standing that keeps a person in a state of alertness with
an attitude of “I want to engage a
situation and take control of it.” One
has the role of a dormant agent, waiting to spring into action. It is a role similar to that of a hunter in
prehistoric times or in certain preliterate societies. One follows an animal from a distance and
waits for the right moment to attack it.
The ability to wait as a dormant agent becomes a very important
component of being successful at obtaining one’s next meal when one is a
hunter.
But
one might say, the waiting involved in going on a hunt is part of an exciting
adventure filled with meaningful risk.
Man meeting the challenge of his survival. There is no such adventure, no such challenge
in waiting in line at a very busy restaurant.
One is simply waiting in line for the passive consumer experience of a
restaurant meal. If there is meat or
poultry involved, the slaughter has already taken place. But just as one has hopes that the restaurant
meal will be a pleasant passive consumer experience, why shouldn’t one expect
the waiting component that comes before a meal to be a pleasant passive
consumer experience?
First,
although there is no adventure while waiting in line that is analogous to the
challenge of the elements in a hunt, there is a potential adventure in talking
to some of the other people that are close to one in the line. People are sometimes more open to one another
when they share discomfort. It is
similar to conversations that start up in London about the cold rainy weather
that occurs there. People in line can
start to talk about how frustrating it is to wait so long, and then, before you
know it, the conversation moves into other areas of life. Sometimes new friends or acquaintances can be
made this way.
Second,
in general, most waiting is a frustration that creates an organic friction
inside the person waiting. And, in
general, without organic friction, a person cannot gain the traction to carry
on the narrative of his life Overly
frictionless environments make a person numb, incapable of having rich vibrant
experiences, of making, receiving and preserving organic imprints, of creating
a surrogate immortality as a preparation for death. Waiting in a smart chair that keeps a precise
distance from the chairs in front of and behind it, is simply one more kind of
experience that people in modern technological society can have to put them in
an increasingly encompassing experiential vacuum. It is one more kind of experience that can
make a person more numb and therefore more passive and therefore more incapable
of engaging the world.
As we
continue to make our living environment increasingly frictionless through the
application of increasingly advanced forms of modern technology, we become
increasingly intolerant of smaller and smaller amounts of friction. We become more incapable of tolerating any
kind of discomfort, and when we want something, we require immediate
gratification. Waiting in line might be
one of the last types of life situations that we encounter on a regular basis
that produces low but sustained levels of uncomfortable organic friction.
There is another kind of waiting that people
encounter regularly and that is the waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. This kind of waiting occurs in a technological
tension-pocket, an abrasive overstimulating situation filled with abrasive
static friction that is the result of the juxtaposition of many freely moving,
noisy, fumes-emitting machines. Other
cars surround a driver. One has to be
very careful not to hit another car. The noise of other drivers honking can
become intolerable. The fumes of so many cars moving slowly and/or stopping in
such close quarters can give a person a headache or sinus problems. In general,
it is a situation that creates a lot of stress and even physical discomfort in
a driver who experiences it.
But
standing in line at a very busy restaurant is usually a much more civilized
matter. The potential restaurant patron
is not naturally separated and isolated from other people, the way that a
driver is in a car. He becomes a part of
a flowing continual physical corporal movement as he gradually moves up closer
and closer to the goal of being seated for his meal. He can strike up conversations if he wants
to. Usually, other people don’t push or
cut into the line. In addition, the
patron has something concrete and enjoyable to which he can look forward. The waiting can be used to elaborate images
of himself enjoying his favorite dishes at the restaurant. He endows these dishes with the flowing
blendable continual stimuli of his fantasies.
And then when the time comes to actually partake of the meal, the
elaborated fantasies increase the appreciation of the meal. But it is the low-level discomfort factor
that increases the appreciation derived from the standing in line. Waiting in a motorized chair in a line of
orderly motorized chairs is not going to stimulate that same sustained low-key
friction discomfort that leads to the greater appreciation.
As we
continue to develop technology that helps us to deal with what for many people
has increasingly become the intolerable experience of waiting, the art of
civilized anticipation of the fulfillment of our desires is going to
disappear. People will lose their
capacity for elaborated fantasies of the future. Living for the moment or living in numbness
results not only in an incapacity to tolerate any kind of frustration, but
also, as a result of this lack of tolerance, in a weakened sense of self with
flattened affect. The kind of thing that
leaves a person predisposed to becoming a selfless robot.
© 2016 Laurence Mesirow
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