Death by Convenience: The Capitalist Punishment of the Modern World

Here I am once again. A place I’ve been to many times. A place we have all been to. The unifinality of life converges here…the premade casserole aisle of Albert Heijn. You know it; the pesto pasta, the hummus and couscous, the salads with the little sauce pouches shifting around in the box like those toys you used to dig out of cereal bags in the early 2000s. Whoever you may be reading this, you have once sifted through the various kant-en-klaar meals in AH; be it because you didn’t have more time, money, or inspiration to make something better. When I moved here, I was especially impressed by the fruit section; these perfectly organized, rainbow rows of boxed fruit “stukjes”. Before coming to the Netherlands, I hadn’t seen this and I started to question myself how I was able to go without it thus far. It wasn’t long till it became a habit to buy the mango pack and the pineapple one and maybe something else just to get the BONUS. But the novelty wore off and reality hit like a truck: 2.25 euros for 120 grams of mango…what the fuck was I thinking? I knew I had to remind myself of my roots, of where I came from. As soon as I stepped in I could hear Jennifer Lopez singing in my mind: “I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the block”; there I was…back in Lidl. One mango, 1.30 euros. Not peeled, cut, or boxed. And I thought to myself…does convenience cost 95 cents?

Pre-cooked, pre-washed, pre-rolled, pre-packed…where are you in all of this? And who are the people doing all of this “pre-ing”? Capitalism has made it so that you can buy your way out of doing or even knowing how to do something. The production behind what we consume can almost feel elusive. We may think “Oh this was probably made in a factory” - and it almost sounds like “Factory” is some sort of anthropomorphic being that shoots out batches of low waisted baggy H&M jeans, but a factory is just…people on the other side of the world making these things for us. Somehow, though, they are erased; their work is not seen, or acknowledged, and it is for sure not respected. It’s common for people to barely look at UberEats or DHL delivery drivers, locking eyes with the parcel when saying thank you instead of the person holding it. This hyper-convenience brings us closer to the desired end product and puts distance between us and the people involved in its creation.

This sort of treatment isn’t just reserved for service workers, but it extends to closer relationships as well. “I cut this friend out because they didn’t serve me anymore”. Serve is a really interesting (“therapy-speak”) word - it subtly implies that others have an unspoken duty to provide you something, be it understanding, compassion, advice, in order to keep their spot as a friend. This way of thinking has transformed the way we engage in relationships, viewing them through a transactional and commodifying lens. Maybe one of the most apparent parts of our lives to which we’ve applied this is love. We can easily “shop” for partners on dating apps, guiding ourselves by their profiles as if they were a back-label, looking for what we prefer and staying away from anything we might be allergic to, such as differing political views.  

Convenience is making our lives that much easier but our existence that much harder. It’s stripping us of bits of purpose and connection that we would have had otherwise. We like hard things! Yet, it feels like we are smothering ourselves in comfort, watching the end of the world from the cushiest seat with the AC perfectly attuned to our desires. Our increasing reliance on technology and services has rendered us incapable in ways we don’t even realize—most of us wouldn’t know how to grow our own food or navigate with a physical map, skills that could make the difference between life and death in times of crisis. This only made me think that, for the most part, when something is too good to be true, it really is so. There aren’t as many shortcuts as we would like to believe there are and consequences eventually come; whether they are immediate or they take a few decades, they come. It seems like humanity has been paying for its resources with a credit card, borrowing them from future generations without the intent or possibility of ever giving them back. The truth is that life, in its unprocessed form, is time-consuming, effortful, and annoying sometimes and our convenience will surely cost us far more than 95 cents someday…