Other areas of life
In many areas of human activity, it’s easy to get stuck on ‘the thing’, rather than to pay attention to ‘how easy’ or ‘how appealing’ is ‘the how’ of doing ‘the thing’.
One stark example is the topic of suicide. One of the biggest drops in the suicide rate of the UK was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and it was of the order of 20%. Why? Had Brits become more cheerful? Nope, big things like wars and economic ups and downs were ticking along about the same.
The big change was the conversion of the gas supply from town gas, with its fatal levels of carbon monoxide, to natural gas. That meant the quick and easy suicide method of sticking one’s head in an oven was no longer available and some other method was needed.
When something becomes harder to do (and we’re talking about a difference of a few minutes in this case), people do less of it.
It’s a similar story with the rise in the use of remote controls for television sets. Just a few decades ago, remote controls were not standard items. The argument was so simple: how lazy have people got to be in order to not get out of a seat and change channels?
And one simple fact should have settled it: a remote control costs money and needs batteries as well. This means more money and, on top of that, batteries are bad for the environment. Still, it’s near enough impossible to find a television set today that will work without a remote.
