Comfort Crisis

 From The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter.

I was comfortable, quite literally, every single moment.

I awoke in a soft bed in a temperature-controlled home.  I commuted to work in a pickup with all the conveniences of a luxury sedan. I killed any semblance of boredom with my smartphone. I sat in an ergonomic desk chair staring at a screen all day, working with my mind and not my body. When I arrived home from work, I filled my face with no-effort, highly caloric foods that came from Lord knows where. Then I plopped down on my overstuffed sofa to binge on television streamed down from outer space.  I rarely, if ever, felt the sensation of discomfort.  The most physically uncomfortable thing I did, exercise, was executed inside an air-condition building as I watched cable news channels that are increasingly bent on confirming my worldview rather than challenging it. I wouldn't run outside unless the conditions were, well, comfortable. Neither too hot, too cold, nor too wet.

***

The Englishman never touches the ground.  

Emerson travels to London in 1847.  Richardson writes: "In England he saw mostly cities where all life moved on machinery.

The Englishman never touches the ground. The steamer delivers him to the cab, the cab to the railway train, the train to the cab, the cab to the hotel, and so onward.