By Jason Lim
There was a time when life seemed full of adventure, unpredictability and the unknown, especially when you were about to get on a plane. Now, as I stand in front of an airport vending machine filled with necessities, conveniences and standardized solutions to human needs, I find myself struck by how perfectly it encapsulates the suffocating predictability of modern life. This vending machine, stocked with everything from pain relievers to razors, from skin care to condoms, is a miniature reflection of society’s finely tuned expectations of human needs. It is the distilled essence of modernity, a curated collection of the products that cover 95 percent of life’s predictable demands.
Take a look at the selection in this vending machine. The top row is dedicated to grooming — shampoos, conditioners, face washes and moisturizers. Next, there are over-the-counter medications, allergy relief, anti-diarrheal pills, pain relievers and cold medicine. There are oral hygiene products, contraceptives, feminine hygiene essentials and COVID-19 test kits. What more, realistically, does a person living in a modern, industrialized country need in day-to-day life that isn’t already accounted for here?
The sheer predictability of it all is humbling. If one were to take a random sampling of people from any urbanized part of the world and analyze their basic needs, there is an overwhelming certainty that nearly all of them will need at least one item from this vending machine at some point. This machine, stocked with pharmaceutical and hygienic staples, is a testament to the fact that our lives run on routine, on mass-produced solutions to age-old problems. If you are sick, there’s a pill. If you are unhygienic, there’s a wipe. If you engage in intimacy, there’s a condom. If you are stressed, there’s melatonin. Life’s challenges may vary, but the responses to them remain static, prepackaged and conveniently dispensed with the swipe of a card. In short, I am fully predictable.
The predictability doesn’t just lie in the fact that these items exist — it’s in how we have all collectively agreed on them as the fundamental necessities. It’s a universal script. Whether you are in New York or Tokyo, London or Seoul, this vending machine’s contents would be virtually identical. The sheer statistical probability that any one person would ever need something outside of these staple items is laughably small. How many of us, in our average lives, have genuine emergencies that fall outside the scope of what a CVS vending machine can solve?
Of course, the argument could be made that this vending machine does not, and cannot, account for every need. The items only address physical needs. However, how much variety do you think there is to our mental and emotional needs? Do you think our sense of suffering is so unique as to require specialized treatment? Just step out of our shoes for a tiny moment, and we realize that we share conformity in our emotional and mental suffering as well. It’s the abuses, traumas, neglects and other vices so very common and hidden underneath this modern façade of industrialized society. Our sins are without imagination. Even our suffering is insufferably boring.
This uniformity speaks to the paradox of choice in modern life. We are led to believe that we live in an age of endless possibilities, where individualism thrives, and personal preferences reign supreme. Yet, a single vending machine disproves this illusion. The market, and by extension society, has already calculated and predetermined what we will require. Our needs are met before we even express them, our desires anticipated by an algorithm. There is little spontaneity left in what we consume because even the unpredictable moments in life — illness, intimacy, discomfort — are already accounted for in a neat, purchasable format.
If modern existence is, in essence, a vending machine of choices, what does that say about free will? Are we truly autonomous if every possible need is foreseen, every problem anticipated, every solution packaged and dispensed at the press of a button? The illusion of control is comforting, but this vending machine reveals that our lives operate within a tight framework of biological and social needs that rarely stray from the expected.
This predictability isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is comfort in knowing that the problems we face have solutions readily available. There is efficiency in streamlining human needs into a self-service kiosk. But there is also something quietly unsettling about the realization that nearly everything we need, outside of deeper existential fulfillment, is already sitting in a vending machine waiting for us. It is a stark reminder that, despite our perceived complexities, we are creatures of habit, responding to the same needs in the same ways, decade after decade, city after city, life after life.
Perhaps the most unsettling question is, if our lives are this predictable, what does it mean for the unknown? Has modernity, in its relentless pursuit of efficiency, eradicated the sense of wonder? Has globalization destroyed the sense of the local community and culture in the name of the same? No wonder we often feel lost without a sense of belonging.
Jason Lim ([email protected]) is a Washington-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect The Korea Times’ editorial stance.
English (United States) ·