Has life gotten too complex?

[Prairie_Seagull]

Last edited Sat Jan 18, 2025, 12:38 PM - Edit history (1)

I am retired and I fill out paperwork seems like every day. Paperwork that takes concentration and effort. Seems I am more frequently running errands. Think if you live rural, Are you in essence voting for a less complex life?

I am not specifically talking about us.

My dining table is filled with stacks of shit I need to read/go through. Not everyone can afford a CPA or Lawyer or...

Been wondering about this for a while and thought I would ask our brain trust.

[Hugin]

1. I would say life has become more needlessly complex...

I agree and I believe it’s by design.

[FSogol]

6. Agreed, it is easier to rip people off if things are complex.

As for rural folks, they get ripped off by scams, cons, and grifts more than city folks. The last election is a prime example.

[Walleye]

2. My motto is, nothing is ever as simple as it ought to be. And everything can be an ordeal.

I often laugh when I hear student speakers at high school graduation say “well no more homework” hooray

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. By design. Complexity is a barrier to accessing services. Not sure what difference "living rural" makes though.

[Prairie_Seagull]

5. Running errands could mean longer trips

for those who just want to be left alone.

[NewHendoLib]

4. Yes. Streaming services, remotes, multiple passwords

Multiple acct numbers, multiple ways of communicating - it is very complex.

[markie]

7. easy answer

YES

[marybourg]

8. I have simplified my life in retirement.

I bank and invest online. My bills are paid automatically. I shop online. Everything is delivered.I read online. I have a rotating pattern of meals. I have an insurance agent. I have a Medigap policy. I have monthly cleaning person. I keep my cars forever.

I do my own income tax by hand, however. That’s my only large paperwork project for the year.

[Prairie_Seagull]

11. I wish! nt

[paleotn]

9. Part of me thinks it has in general. Another part of me thinks that's just part of aging.

My parents, WW2 generation, said the same thing in the 80's and 90's. At the time, I didn't think it was that complicated. Point of perspective I guess. We spend most of our lives not having to deal with any of that. Life seems simple, but getting old can be complex in America. Shouldn't be that way.

There are free legal aid non profits and other organizations in most states that can help seniors with these types of questions. I donate to our local organization that does just that. They're always busy, sometimes overwhelmed, but they do good work. Might be the same where you live.

[Prairie_Seagull]

14. My kids (early thirties) think the same/similar way.

Buying a home today needs a lawyer, my daughters just bought theirs and oh boy!

[XanaDUer2]

10. Yes and I hate it

[Irish_Dem]

12. Our billionaire overlords use paperwork to justify scamming us.

All the fine print is about passing their liability to us.
To make it legal to add all kinds of monthly surcharges and increases.

And to make sure we have no legal recourse.

[Prairie_Seagull]

15. It's all about the Benjamins.

Fuckers!

[walkingman]

13. I personally think that technology has surpassed the ability of society to deal with it.

Autos are needlessly complex - forcing you to use the services of others for repairs and expensive parts. I view an auto as a means of transportation, nothing more. They basically all look alike these days so style is a joke.

Customer Service - It is virtually impossible to speak to a human being these days without spending 5 minutes simply going through endless trees of menus. Then you end up speaking to a call center.

Phones - does anyone talk to anyone else these days.....texting, videos, games, marketing....

Lack of Privacy - ever google yourself...your entire life history is available, some free and everything for a small fee.

Political manipulation - For billions of internet users the lack of privacy mirrors the alleged threat that US officials say TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, poses to Americans. “It is a little bit ironic for the US to sort of trumpet citizens’ privacy concerns or worries about surveillance. It’s OK for them to collect the data, but they don’t want China to collect it.” (ACLU)

[Prairie_Seagull]

16. Walkinman I channel you. nt

[Diamond_Dog]

17. I was just saying this to Mr. Diamond the other day!

Paperwork and forms for so many things. Managing your banking, medical stuff, social security, cell phone and cable online, (which necessitates “creating an account” to multiple websites which necessitates coming up with fifteen or twenty passwords to keep track of).

Trying to figure out the new technology for just about everything. Like cell phones. I hate cell phones. And you have to have one for just about everything now. Smart TVs. And God help me if I ever have to buy a new car.

Complicated medical billing that requires a phone call almost every time you get a bill, then trying to get ahold of a live person who can actually help you.

You send away for something online and they send you the wrong thing that you’ll have to return. Or your order gets lost and never arrives.

We had an error with our tax return last year (wasn’t our fault) . We always send our tax form in in January. After much back and forth for months with the IRS, guess when they finally resolved our taxes last year. October!

I do go to about 2 or 3different grocery stores but that’s because I’m picky about my food and only one store just doesn’t suffice.

It’s exhausting sometimes.

Yes life is way more of an ordeal than it needs to be.

[Prairie_Seagull]

19. Seems to me the complexities hit in multiples.

Like you I hate my way to complex cell phones. I have 2. Go figure.

[elocs]

18. I am retired and for me, my life is very simple, maybe because I am poor and never married. n/t

[highplainsdem]

20. You wrote, "Think if you live rural, Are you in essence voting for a less complex life?"

You might be voting for it, with your feet, but you won't necessarily get it.

I have relatives with a horse farm in a rural area. Health care, shopping, entertainment, etc. are a long ways away (and the medical specialists you need might be in the area only once a week or less, or you might have to travel hours to see them) . If you can't clear your own quarter-mile drive of snow, which will require a tractor or truck with a blade, you need a helpful neighbor who will. Rural vets can be cheaper than urban vets owned by venture capitalists, but that rural vet can be an hour away. Still have a landline as well as cell phones when a flood knocks down phone lines? You might be told landline service won't be restored for weeks and billed for service in the meantime (they finally got rid of the landline then). Expect to pay exorbitant rates for internet, and for satellite TV to be much less dependable than cable. Forgot something at the store? Do you need it enough to spend hours, and whatever at least a few gallons of gas cost, to go back for it? You can have problems with a well, which can be aggravating as well as expensive. Need hay for the horses for the winter? You might have to order it delivered from a long ways away, and you'll need a tractor to move the bales on your farm. Think you're safe from crime in the country? They had a truck stolen one night by a drug addict whose car had stalled on the road, and who later drove their truck off another road and totaled it. And while a walk on your rural property can be peaceful, if you have mountain lions for neighbors, as they do, you might want to carry a gun.

They do have Amazon Prime and get a lot of stuff delivered, but it never arrives within 2 days.

Rural life can be very complex. It's just a different set of complexities.

[Prairie_Seagull]

25. You are speaking my language highplanisdem. better than I do.

I have a complaint, Too much tech in my life. Hell my headphones talk to me. I have a love, hate relationship with all of it. For a trip into town I have to take at least one of my hand-held computers (phones). Grief case for mostly medical stuff. Guitar because it's funny and all the other stuff one must carry. Most everything has a frustrating as hell blinking light. I used to walk out of the house with just my wallet and keys. OK sunglasses too.

[SWBTATTReg]

28. Your dialogue is one of the best I have read re. rural life, the benefits vs. disadvantages, and when we tried

to live next to my parents at my place, everything was 20 miles minimum from everything, jobs and services were a long way off, just like you said. We tried living there, but gave up after a while, and moved back to the city eventually for many different reasons.

Out there in rural America, some retailers / vendors would deliver (most would not), some only went to a certain point, and you would still have to drive miles and miles to that meeting point to actual still pick up the delivery, so in short, you still had to drive for deliveries.

When my mom would go for her daily walks, she always carried a small pistol too, main reason why is that packs of wild dogs roamed around that area (and even an EMU!), where people from the city, tired of their animals and such, would 'visit' and then dump their animals in that rural area.

Over the years, we did have issues w/ some crazy, whacked out neighbors (drunks) who caused some issues w/ some of their neighbors and ended up getting shot for their efforts. It didn't end well for them (there were 3 of them who were bullies in the neighborhood, and when your police are at least 20 miles away?). You had to rely on your protection, just in case (which we had to use, some of our neighbors on two different occasions).

I think Mom and Dad had over the years, some 20+ animals / dogs mostly that showed up at their house. That was one of the bad things in my mind about the Country down there (but most of the dogs were sweethearts, you couldn't take it out on them). All of the neighbors down there had rescue animals down there.

And heaven forbid if you suffer from some health issues, that are more serious in nature than a lot of issues (heart issues for example, one of my issues to worry about). You would, if you had an event, had to have a helicopter ferry you out to the hospital. That costs at least $20,000 or so alone.

If I could figure out a way to live in Rural America, I would. But the health, safety, and a lack of services not offered would spoil the day, so I'm glad to live in the city most of the time and would visit instead. One of our most favorite pass times was to go canoeing down the river, during the week (not weekends, too mobbed!). Seeing the wildlife on the river, when you're the only ones on the river canoeing was heaven on Earth.

[Keepthesoulalive]

30. Rural life does present challenges

But to be able to be in your head without the neighbors intruding, no one cares lf you have large dogs,
Don’t worry about the lawn because no one sees it and you don’t have to use chemicals. There are trade offs. But it’s worth it i enjoy the tranquility ,oh yeah we have fiber and we pay less than we used to for DSL.

[Sailingfish]

21. Recently saw one of those nostalgia booklets. Early 1950s.

I wasn't around. Some of you probably were. Be nice to have these prices with today's dollar. lol

New House (average price) - $9000

New Car - $1750

Average Rent - $80 a month

Tuition to Harvard - $600 a year

Movie Ticket - 70 cents

Gasoline - 20 cents a gallon

Postage Stamp - 3 cents

Sugar - 85 cents for 10 pounds

Milk - 90 cents a gallon

Bacon - 4 cents a pound

Eggs- 25 cents a dozen

Fresh Hamburger - 50 cents a pound

Fresh Bread - 16 cents a loaf

[Sky Jewels]

22. Most humans' brains are not wired for this kind of living.

For more than 200,000 years, we primates evolved to live a life focused on the very basics, like finding food and staying alive in winter (in cold climates). We mainly didn't know what was going on over the next hill or in the next village over, let alone all over the world. Most of us simply can't process this firehose of information and requirements and technology and awareness of what is going on worldwide 24/365. It's taking a massive mental toll on billions of people in the form of stress and anxiety and depression and addictions and breakdowns and suicides and on and on.

[HeartachesNhangovers]

23. I believe you are correct. People try to manage by using digital calenders, password managers and other crutches,

but I think those are signs of desperation rather than real solutions.

As others have said, deliberate simplification is the best we can do. I've been agonizing about adding Instagram as a better way than FB to keep track of bands I like so I don't miss them when they are playing in the area, but the thought of all the AI suggestions and other spam have prevented me so far.

[hunter]

24. I try to keep it simple. The biggest problems I have are with the Medical Industrial Complex.

If I was Emperor of the United States I'd nationalize the medical industry and throw a few of its leaders in prison for crimes against humanity.

( Clearly I am not Emperor the United States, but who knows what will happen to me when they start punishing us for thought crimes... )

Other than that the only paperwork I suffer is the usual bills -- water, electricity, mortgage, internet, etc..

My only social media is DU. My television only plays Netflix and DVDs. I don't have cable, satellite, or broadcast television. I have a simple flip phone that I mostly use as a phone, sometimes for texts. My cars are not "smart." My computers run Linux.

Etc.

We can resist.

[Prairie_Seagull]

26. Resist, I love it.

The way it is now, to be one of the cool kids we need the tech. "For just 5.95 for 60 months you too can have something techy that will wind up in a spare bedroom mostly unused. You will need to sign up for an account, get a subscription for 3.95 per mo. that will get forgotten. There is probably an app for that. I could go on but I will RESIST.

[Skittles]

27. I told a young coworker that before email, we used to get paper memos at work

I DON'T REMEMBER GETTING HUNDREDS OF MEMOS A DAY.

[SWBTATTReg]

29. So quaint and of course we all had to have secretaries for our workgroups, they didn't have voice mail and the

like back then!

[haele]

31. Yes. Speaking from experience.

There were complexities back then, but for the average person - even professionals - the only time you really dealt with paperwork was the weekly balancing of the household or business ledger, and you could typically hire someone cheap for tax time or any legal or contract related paperwork you might need to arrange for loans or wills or temporary partnerships.
Bills weren't complicated. And schedules for payment were easy to understand.
A worker typically lives near his or her job site, within walking or easy transport distance. Two hour commutes were unheard of, unless you had a farm out in the country and had to commute into town to buy supplies like Laz's grandfather, who had his own small smithy and carpenter shop to do small repairs in the house - up to including home welding for plumbing and auto repairs, and making nails and hinges.

But most of all, everyone had Time.
Time to make actually consider situations and make decisions, to order their lives in ways that they could see the results.

Time measured in days, or weeks. Not hours, minutes or seconds.

The complexity of modern life comes from the constant noise and pressures on our attention.
Can I sit in a sunny spot by my window and take two hours reading a book, just watching clouds, or thinking through a particularly knotty engineering problem? Or am I spending those two sunny hours trying to remember what other errands I need to do as I take grandkids to appointments, mentally balancing my bank ledger while deciding if I have time to make dinner or if I have to order out, considering how late I can stay up tonight because I desperately need to do laundry and take a shower before I head out to work tomorrow, and still trying to work out a work email addressing that knotty engineering problem, as well as trying to fix it before it gets too much later - all while I'm negotiating early rush hour traffic.

It's not like 1968 when I was sitting at the dining room table after dinner, doing homework and listening to music on the stereo while Dad was across the table grading papers from the classes he was teaching that week, and Mom was on the couch with my little brother helping him with his reading.

We had Time. Not now.

[viva la]

32. Well, some things are simpler--

I used to have to designate an entire day each month to fill out insurance forms and send the doctor bills into to get them reimbursed. Now it's all done electronically-- I show my card, and the claim goes in from the doctor's office.
That doesn't mean it gets PAID without complication, but it is quicker. So is online bill paying.

Then again, back when I wrote checks and mailed them in, I never had to worry about my terrible typing messing up the hidden password three times on Friday night so that my account is restricted for the weekend because they suspect fraud.

[dumbcat]

33. Tell me about it ....

I graduated from college 55 years ago with a BS in Electrical Engineering, concentrating in Computer Design. I worked my whole career in the EE field, mostly in communications and Instrumentation.

And now I need my eight-year-old grandson to help me set up my new Windows 11 laptop. Things are just so much more complex than back in the day of DOS 3.0.