Over-dependence on technology and the erosion of our skills


Thousands of habitual, recurrent scenes come to my head. Scenes of people driving instead of walking short distances when there are no time constraints. Scenes of people standing on the escalator like electronic components on a factory's conveyor belt, waiting to be helplessly taken somewhere. Scenes of panting people running after the bus instead of waiting for the next one on a sunday afternoon.
Services like food delivery, online shopping are ubiquitous nowadays. These are helpful tools when we have a hectic schedule, or any other unexpected event that might need our immediate attention.
These services and tools become the norm, not the exception, and as a result a sense of learned laziness, that, over time, turned into helplessness started to develop.
As much as these "helpers" make our lives comfortable, they should be used within reason as a mere tool, not as crutch.
In completely surrendering to these conveniences, we give away our independence, and revert back to the infant state, where everything had to be done for us, from feeding, to clothing, to bathing.
There was a time, when television sets were sold without a remote control, nowadays, nobody would buy a television set without it.
Going out on hike, living in remote, secluded villages for some time, or volunteering in impoverished neighborhoods, are good ways to reconnect with our abilities to cope with adversity, and navigate our lives without the help of all the contraptions, that are standing between our able selves and our dependent,helpless ones.
The muscles, as well as the brain circuits responsible for the activities we stop engaging in, atrophy from disuse. We become dependent on external tools to perform very simple  actions that we lost the ability to perform by ourselves.
If for some reason we are stripped of these "helpers", we would be like a newborn uncapable to perform any task other than flailing our limbs and crying for help.

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