Peter and the Tragedy of Instant Gratification: A Parable

I know last week I promised you another blog about something I experienced on Catalina Island when I was child. But instead, I offer you a cautionary tale about a fictional man named Peter.

Peter lived in the year 2089, when technology had finally eliminated one of humanity’s greatest annoyances: waiting. Imagine a world in which no one ever had to be patient, and anything one wanted could be obtained instantly.

Hungry? Robots deliver food instantly. Want a six-pack? Go to the cosmetic body shaping clinic and within minutes you can have the body of your dreams. Need a PhD? Download the program and let your subconscious mind do all the learning and research for you while you sit back and enjoy your coffee. Want the experience of climbing Everest? For $7.99 you could purchase the memory, complete with frostbite, triumph, and an inspirational Sherpa. Of course, the Sherpa would have never existed, but science has perfected methods for implanting memories that register as lived experience. Why incur the risk of actually climbing a mountain with all of its inherent dangers, when you can achieve the same thrills and memories without the danger.

Peter, like most people living in the future, took full advantage of all these technological enhancements to live a more fulfilling life.

He became fluent in Mandarin, mastered the piano, learned astrophysics, and acquired memories of sailing around Cape Horn. He felt he had accomplished a great deal in his lifetime.

The trouble was that, with life expansion longevity, he was only a third of the way through his expected lifespan, and he was bored.

Whenever his boredom made him feel unhappy, Peter bought another achievement. He became an Olympic athlete, a Nobel Prize winner, a movie star, and, during a regrettable weekend, Emperor of Mars. Each accomplishment produced a burst of satisfaction that lasted about as long as a box of popcorn at a movie theater.

Naturally, Peter concluded he needed to acquire more satisfying memories of more accomplishments.

Instead, he found himself staring at a wall.

Not an ordinary wall. This was Interactive Mood Wallpaper Platinum. It read your mind to display whatever you might need to regulate your mental state: tropical beaches, Alpine meadows, and inspirational sayings from artificial philosophers with names like SocratesGPT and Deepak Chopra 6.0.

Still, it was still just a wall.

“Why am I so unhappy?” Peter asked his AI therapist.

The therapist pondered for almost a full second.

“You may require additional stimulation.”

Peter purchased additional stimulation.

But soon he was unhappy again. It was a deep, profound, existential unhappiness not unlike the one experienced by some of his poor luddite ancestors.

By then he had begun to suspect that if every desire could be fulfilled instantly, if nothing  was earned, and nothing was anticipated, then nothing felt important or satisfying.

And so,  Peter decided to look into a nearly forgotten practice.

Waiting.

Anthro-psychologists defined waiting it as the ephemeral time of yearning between wanting something and getting it.

Peter founded a new movement called Slow Gratification.  Those participating in the fledgling movement undertook projects to resurrect the experience of delayed gratification. They began by practicing the lost art of growing food.

They began with tomatoes.  Actual tomatoes.

For three months members watered, weeded, and waited. Then the first tomato appeared and over many days ripened to bright red.  The group gathered around it reverently. Someone cried.

Peter took a bite, it tasted better than any tomato he had ever eaten.

The difference, he realized, wasn’t the tomato.

It was the waiting. It was the work that went into growing it. He passed the tomato around for others to taste it.

It was then Peter began to understand what had been missing from his life. Human beings need something to push against. They need effort, uncertainty, inconvenience, setbacks, and the occasional disappointment.

Without resistance, life becomes a meaningless buffet. What once might have sounded wonderful had made every life experience effortless, but boring.

The insight spread. People stopped downloading memories of marathon victories and started running marathons. They learned things the slow way. They began to take up cello and violin and suffered through the awful squeaks and squawks of an inexperienced beginner.  Some even took the time to connect with other  human beings the slow way, one date, one conversation, one kiss at a time..

As for Peter, he began to feel happy again. Not all the time and not every day, but he realized that he could no longer have everything he wanted with just the touch of a button. He had to work for things.

And he rediscovered an old truth: a kite rises not because the wind carries it forward, but because the wind pushes against it.

The same is true of people.

Then venture capital discovered the Slow Gratification movement.

Within a year they began to market “slow gratification experiences.” Premium members could afford to have access to more experiences. Platinum members could have anything they wanted.

Once again, users unwilling to grow tomatoes could instead download memories of having grown tomatoes, including the character-building struggle, the triumphant harvest, and the comforting belief that they had experienced delayed gratification.

And humanity marched ahead toward achieving its oldest dream: the ability to avoid reality altogether, while feeling extraordinarily satisfied with themselves and their lives.

Alan