Recently,
I had the opportunity to discuss my article “The Need To Have Things Right
Away” with my good friend Dr. Jorge Cappon, professor emeritus of psychology at
the National Autonomous University of Mexico and well known psychoanalyst. Dr. Cappon had his own ideas regarding the
influence of technological innovation on the need for immediate gratification,
and I thought it would be informative to discuss his psychoanalytically-based
ideas here and then to elaborate on them further with some of my ideas. Dr. Cappon is interested in the relationship
between technological change and human emotional development.
One
of the most important things that a child learns as he grows up is
self-control. A baby wants what he wants
right away and, to a certain extent, during his early days of life, his basic
needs are usually satisfied in a timely manner.
A baby needs to get fed frequently and needs to be held frequently. On the other hand, even a baby experiences a
certain time lag between expressing his needs through crying and actually
satisfying them. A caregiver may be in
another room or involved in a task that requires his immediate attention before
he goes to the infant. So even a baby
experiences a little frustration.
Dr.
Cappon suggests the following hypothetical situation. Suppose a baby could be fed on demand with a
machine connected to him in such a way that he wouldn’t experience any
frustration at all. Such a baby would
never develop his mental faculties properly.
When a baby doesn’t get milk right away, he develops his creative
thinking by fantasizing about the milk.
Without any frustration, and while continually attached to our
hypothetical machine, the baby would become an idiot.
In
the real world, as the baby grows up, he is increasingly expected to postpone
gratification for what he wants.
Different cultures have different timelines for this self-control, some
expecting more self-control earlier than others. But all of them look at self-control and
being able to postpone gratification as being an essential part of growing up
and eventually becoming an adult.
Growing
up is a painful process. It is so much
more comfortable to remain immature. It
is uncomfortable to have to postpone gratification by having to study in order
to obtain diplomas and degrees and thus to have the qualifications for a good
job. It is uncomfortable to have to work
in order to obtain the money that allows one to buy the products and the
services one desires.
Now
how does all this relate to the influences of modern technological living
environments. In pre-industrial
societies, most of the products and services that people desired would require
work to obtain them and these products and services took time to create. In the world of traditional primary
experience, things did not simply appear in one’s field of experience by
pressing a button or a computer key. But
when radio, phonographs and television appeared, whole mini-worlds could be
created or at least recreated by the consumer, with a few effortless
frictionless processes relating to turning on the machines. Now there are video games and computers. Video games are magical game worlds, where
one can play quickly and win (or lose) quickly.
Whether one wins or loses, one has the control to keep playing quickly
and relatively frictionlessly until one does win. With a computer or iPad or smartphone, one
has the opportunity to find, create, and control many different kinds of phenomena. As technological innovation advances on, many
processes that occur on a computer occur quicker and quicker. Furthermore, many life processes are now made
more frictionless through the Internet of Things. As all
this happens, the capacity for patience and self-control gradually breaks down in
young people, as they increasingly develop expectations for what they want to
appear quicker and quicker.
We
are accustomed to looking at frustration as a negative phenomenon, but there is
a difference between frustration that puts a drag on moving towards a goal, and
frustration that puts a total block on moving towards a goal. In the first case, the frustration creates an
ongoing moving connection to one’s
grounding while traveling over it. This
kind of frustration is basically a constructive emotional friction that
actually keeps one connected to the external world while moving towards a
goal. This kind of positive frustration
can lead to dreaming about the goal (as Dr. Cappon noted), while experiencing
the drag created by external impediments.
Nevertheless, the dream just reinforces and guides the movement towards
the goal in the external world. It is a
dream that is grounded in certain important aspects of the real external world.
This
is very different from the frustration generated by an impassable obstacle on
one’s journey towards a goal. This
latter situation leads to dreams that replace reality rather than guide and
reinforce reality. The kind of dream that
replaces reality leads to mentally dwelling in frictionless experiential
vacuums that compensate for the unbearable static stimuli created by the
impassable obstacles in the real external world.
However
without some frustration, one experiences his external world as a kind of frictionless
experiential vacuum. One floats towards
his goal in a numbing mental state. More
precisely, there is no traction, no friction-filled connection to the external
world. One arrives at his goal, at his
product or service, in a state of numbness, so one is incapable of savoring,
fully enjoying, fully appreciating the product or service. Neither the journey to the product or
service, nor the product or service itself, contribute in any way to helping
the person to truly feel alive. There is
no meaningful organic imprint as can be found in a grappling assertive
acquisition of the product or service.
Postponing
gratification through a frustrating experience that acts as a drag rather than
a block can ultimately increase
satisfaction and enjoyment when the product or service is finally
acquired. One can stay grounded in the
product or service for a while without immediately having to move on to another
product or service.
So
frustration is not always something that is a negative. By providing friction, it provides a
meaningful conscious focused journey to the desired product or service, a
meaningful life narrative, a rich vibrant experience. By overcoming the drag from the friction, a
person feels empowered, as he actually grapples with elements in his field of
experience and makes meaningful organic imprints. By providing traction in his field of
experience, the frustration allows a person to stay grounded in his living
environment, so that he can fully experience the product or service. By staying grounded in his living
environment, the person doesn’t float off into a numbing experiential vacuum,
where he would constantly need to fill up his inner emptiness with more and
more products and services to overcome his numbness.
A
baby is not fully aware, not fully focused, and because he can’t satisfy his
basic needs by himself, not fully grounded in his field of experience. There is always a little lag time between
when a baby cries for milk and the satisfaction of that need, even when he has
a doting mother. As he grows up, he
gradually is expected to postpone his gratifications for longer and longer
periods of time, and as has been indicated, this is considered a basic part of
psychological maturation. But the
process of psychological maturation is being gradually more and more suppressed
as modern technology increasingly diminishes the time of postponing
gratification in many different life situations. With smartphones, with wearable computers,
with the Internet of Things, everything is happening right away. As a result, young people aren’t growing up
in the way they are supposed to, and they are becoming addicted to immediate
gratification. How are people like this
going to be able to survive unforeseen crises and catastrophes? What is going to happen to the human race,
when people develop such fragile psyches?
This is why we should look very carefully at technology that supposedly
does us the favor of making life easier and easier for us. Easier now may mean life becoming much more
difficult in the future.
(c) 2015 Laurence Mesirow
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