It is late, and you are hungry. You have spent the last hour and a half in front of the television, watching a fantasy series, and now there is no time to cook. You swiftly reach out to your smartphone, pick a favourite you had last ordered on the food delivery application, pay from your saved credit card for which you only had to memorize the three-digit code, and your doorbell rings in half an hour with a food packet. You dig into your dinner, without having spoken to a single soul in the whole process.
Sounds familiar? Yes, this scenario would have been part of a science-fiction story about five years ago, but today we live and breathe automation in almost every sphere of our lives. It definitely is a boon to get things taken care of so smoothly, but is it always healthy for the mind? Let us find what are the things you are depriving your mind of when you automate practically everything that is possible to automate.
Connect with the society
When you stop automating little things, for example, mobile application-based grocery shopping, or ordering medicine online, you tend to connect more with the people outside your friend zone. Let us take an example where a family member is sick, and you order medicines through a website, a delivery person comes and delivers it, and the whole transaction is carried out without uttering a single word. Instead, if you walk to the neighbourhood pharmacy, you might get an opportunity to enter into a discussion with the pharmacist about the kind of illness, which medicines might be most suitable, and he/she might even be able to recommend a better doctor than you had visited so far. Similar examples could be sought for in scenarios where you visit your local grocery store, your simple local fruit vendor, your electrician and plumber, and also the sleepy person sitting behind the counter at the local cinema. These people add to the diversity of life. You connect more, and effectively share more information, thus broadening your knowledge about different kinds of human persona.
Balance of mind
If you are always dependent on automation, that in turn makes you a person not being able to fix his/her own things. The connect with the life that our ancestors used to lead is broken with automation, and you would be unable to mend the technology if it bails on you some day. If you never take the public transport, for example, and always depend on application-based taxis, in a situation where there are no taxis available or you phone malfunctions, you would be completely lost on the road as you would not know which bus would take you to your destination. Sure, you could always ask around, but instead of getting such kind of quick fixes at the end moment, it is always better to be mentally prepared to face broken technology to avoid unwanted helplessness.
Environment
When you are surrounded by automation, you inevitably expose yourself to numerous electronic devices that constantly emit harmful electromagnetic forces (EMFs). These EMFs have been thoroughly researched upon by the medical fraternity and have been found to be responsible for critical and chronic lifestyle diseases. The lesser you expose yourself to these rays, the healthier and longer you live. Aside from their harmful effect on humans, many of these devices largely contribute to the ever-increasing carbon footprint that has emerged as a looming threat to our beloved planet.
Automation is doubtless necessary in many aspects of life, however, taking a break every now and then, and going the manual way has several healthy benefits on the mind, the body, and the environment.