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This is all rather the point

It’s not just the cruise ships and popcorn. Comfort is the organising principle of modern life. So great is our need for comfort – to be comfortable – that the most popular products are based around things fulfilling this need and have internalised within their very engineering the fulfilment of our need for comfort.

What is Netflix and on-demand TV, chocolate-covered popcorn, business class and premium economy, cruise ships, athleisure wear, our social media echo chambers, our online shopping and UberEats – other than things that sate our desire to be comfortable?

The aim and point of a socio-economic system is that the hoi polloi can have more of what they want. Preferably without impacting on the ability of others to do the same.

People are getting more of what they want, that comfort. What’s the problem?

28 thoughts on “This is all rather the point”

  1. I never knew that me liking music at the right volume was unreasonable. Presumably I should have it at volumes I don’t like because it’s good for me.

  2. Life is supposed to be organised so that the nice people at the Grauniad and BBC can have all the nice stuff, not that those ghastly yobs who voted for Brexit can.

    Otherwise how can their natural virtue be obvious?

    The mask really is slipping.

  3. @BiG … and Waitrose.

    Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. – H. L. Mencken

  4. Srsly? Has she thought about the counterfactual? That people will pay to be uncomfortable? To pay for things they don’t want or aren’t right?

    Whut???

  5. Can’t help but notice no comments on that article.

    Perhaps the author knows the reaction might be, ummm…, uncomfortable?

  6. I have to agree with the Bloke in Italy. This woman, and those like her are the equivalent of pre- Renaissance Catholic preachers bemoaning the decline of civilisation while simultaneously living a life of luxury themselves. Of all the vices I loathe, hypocrisy is right up there. It’s the defining characteristic of 98% of Guardian (and the even more moronic ‘Independent’) columnists…

  7. She’s effectively calling for the guardian to be closed down since it exists in order to provide comfortable views to the sadly deluded.

  8. BiG

    A real pendant would insist on the rough breathing:

    ὁἱ πολλόί

    Not for nothing, it now seems, did I waste 3 years on an O-level in Classical Greek 🙂

  9. Großer: just in case Thos. Fuller’s response leaves you baffled, the point is that you are lacking aspiration!

    ps Please don’t come back to me with any of your “Kuh” cheek. Who ever heard of a cow in a china shop?
    🙂

  10. Bloke in Costa Rica

    When it comes to mortification of the flesh and hectoring Grauniad cunts, the flesh to be mortified always belongs to someone else. Silk for me; hairshirt for thee. In times past Brigid Delaney would have been the sort on nun that got Catholic schools a bad name. And note who her villains and heroes are, respectively: 1) people who enjoy a modicum of material satisfaction during their brief sojourn on this planet 2) some pretentious Taiwanese waste of skin who ropes himself to someone else for a year even when he didn’t have to. What a dickhead.

  11. @Porzellanvieh,

    Obviously I can only guess at your gender, since Bison covers all genders.

    Whatever you’ve managed to aspirate, you need to work on your inspiration.

  12. Comfort is the organising principle of modern life

    Wild guess, but I bet the new Guardian offices are very comfortable indeed. Every amenity, air conditioned, the works.

    Also, regrettably, to reduce this awful comfort everyone has got used to the Northern Line will now run only three trains an hour. Sorry.

  13. In times past Brigid Delaney would have been the sort on nun that got Catholic schools a bad name.

    Yes, as you get older you realise that it is an error to deduce the intent from the public face; the base instinct is always there and has been throughout human history, only the mask changes – Puritanism, Prohibitionism, Progressivism. The urge to dominate others.

  14. In the 30 years after making these works the intentional discomfort he endured seems perverse and shocking.

    No, just twattish and self-indulgent

    In that time, the rich of the rich west have engineered our lives so that we rarely have to experience even a twinge of discomfort.

    Just…fuck…off.

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