Convenience: Performing an action with a minimum of immediately expended energy.
It is arguable that convenience has become a necessity in today’s culture. Everything we do is constructed around the time-or-energy-saving concept. However, taking full advantage of such social organization necessitates a higher than average social standing. Lower social classes (here indicated soley by overall income) find themselves trapped by the same convenience mindset.
EX. Assuming a lower class example, it is less expensive in the long run to buy food at the market, but immediate need combined with availability of funds traps the individual in the “convenient” state of satisfying immediate hunger by buying fast food, which is overall more expensive and less healthy.
Earlier I stated that in order to benefit fully from this structure requires a higher social standing. It is interesting to note that a higher social status also makes said individuals less dependant on this system. The only reasons (theoretically) they continue to participate are familiarity, contentment, or lack of conscious knowledge of the particular structure.
Oct 24, 2006
Captive Audience Consumerism
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Definition of convenience revised: Performing an action in a manner that utilizes the least amount of expended energy in exchange for the most immediate and direct return on said expenditure.
Convenience as necessity:
This example is most particularly a Western American situation. Most goods and services made available (and often considered necessary) in a given community are stored farther away from the home than one may easily walk to. Nor does the Western United States have anything even closely resembling an efficient mass transit system (as opposed to places like New York or London).
Everything is place so that jumping in the car to head to ____ is (arguably, you CAN walk) a necessity.
It is here that owning a car becomes a necessity. Not in that the car itself is necessary to your actual survival, but in that life would be much more difficult to deal with without one. It becomes a "necessary convenience."
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