by Don Hall

After two years of waiting for the pandemic to even out, the economy to level up, Congress to nail the fuckers responsible for the January 6 insurrection and subsequent propaganda campaign known as the Big Lie, looking for Congress to pass some laws and regulations that at least look like measures to limit climate disaster, schools to open and kids to get the fuck out of their parents' hair, we humans of the world are fed up. We're weary. We're nothing short of pathologically impatient.

Americans have become that guy in line for his Big Mac with no special sauce and fries who has waited for seven whole minutes and has lost his shit at the horrors of being denied his instant gratification.

Thinkpieces about the woes of living through a pandemic abound as if no one else can feel the existential angst accompanying the realization that we are not in control of nature no matter how much we want to be. 

The Skinner Box was popular back in the day when studying human behavior by torturing rats was in vogue and had a simple premise: put a rat in a box with a lever. Rat presses lever and gets a treat. Rat learns this behavior and continues to press that fucking lever until Scientist stops dropping the treats. Rat gets pissed off as he is now expecting the treat and deserves the treat and Where The Fuck Is My Fucking Treat, Motherfucker!?

If there is a defining characteristic of the last decade it is that with the introduction of the smartphone (2007), which beget social media and nearly unrestrained connectivity to immediate gratification we have spent ten years in various Skinner Boxes almost twenty-four hours a day.

Rat gets the internet. When he presses the lever and chooses his Amazon Prime treat, he gets it in twenty-four hours. Rat keeps pressing the lever and stuff keeps getting delivered. Internet goes down for a bit and Rat tries to press the lever but no treats come. Rat gets pissed off because he deserves that immediate gratification and deserves the internet and Where’s My Goddamned Bali Essential Oil Bath Bombs at 30 percent Off, Jackass!?

Rat joins Facebook. Posts pictures of funny things and gets likes. Likes feel good and are, in and of themselves, little endorphin treats. Rat keeps sharing opinions about politics, personal information, and memes and gets used to the flow of treats. Rat decides these treats aren’t quite enough and starts tailoring everything he shares to get more and more attention but the treats are arbitrary and inconsistent. Rat gets pissed off because he is entitled to the attention and why does that vapid bikini model have so many more followers than me and Where’s My Cocksucking Likes and Followers, You Stupid Mouthbreathing Fucktards!?

Skinner Boxes are the avatars of immediate gratification and unearned treats.

The multiple Skinner Boxes we have embraced in our every moment—fast food, social capital, speedy travel, The Customer Is Always Right, self-checkout lines, Black Friday, movies on our computers, instant payments online, Tinder, hashtag activism—have trained us to expect things we haven’t earned and to become a society of toddlers and Rats without the understanding or valuation of Patience.

We love to read about how badass we are by simply existing. According to the Information Highway, we are all beautiful and amazing even though we know we aren’t all beautiful and amazing. The simple Law of Averages says that at least half of us are decidedly ugly and unremarkable, right? When anything gets in the way of that self-esteem is deserved belief, we lose our shit. The idea that one would need to work on themselves—to lose a few pounds, maybe hit the elliptical once in a while, take a fucking walk, buy some pants that actually fit—means that in order to be beautiful and amazing, we need to do something rather than simply press the self esteem lever and get the sugary treat on the other side.

Rat has no patience for that. Rat wants what he wants and isn’t fucking waiting that shitstaining fucking-fucking treat for a second longer. I mean, How Long Do I Have To Stand Here and Wait For My Crapping Soy Latte with a Shot and Extra Fucking Foam, Asshole Barrista!?

At this point, we’ve been moving from Skinner Box to Skinner Box for a full decade and escape is pretty much an impossibility. Arguably, there are far less of them in Flyover Country, which is perhaps why the social justice rhetoric finds far less purchase in, say, Kansas, than it does New Jersey. For a lot of us in America, we aren’t going to suddenly cut ourselves off from the levers and treats but we can focus on that sense of entitlement and the outrage we boil in when we aren’t gifted with the immediate.

We can’t escape but we can re-learn Patience and Self-Discipline.

The Biden Administration may seem slow but it has heralded in two of the most sweeping public safety bills in history in just a year. Calm down. Have some patience.

The masks and vaccines are a remarkable set of tools to combat a worldwide virus of which we have no control and, in a country where we can't even agree what teaching about the legacy of slavery looks like, a whopping sixty-percent have been vaccinated against the debilitating effects of full-on COVID. At this point, the only people actually dying from it are either old, fat, or old fatties. Chill out. Get some patience.

Take a breath. Research the numbers. I mean, you have access to every piece of published information on the planet, right? Googling some basic statistics is not complicated or difficult. My discovery is that for every hysterical crisis I read about, if I read it, do five minutes of research online, I'm far calmer because most of these problems are not even nearly as bad as the rhetoric.

The difference between the rat and you is that you can get out of your Skinner boxes. You can reflect upon your situation and make changes for your own benefit.

Or live 2022 much like you did 2021 in despair and apathy and take it all out on a teenager or 70-year-old in need of a minimum wage trying to get you a fucking cup of coffee or sandwich under three minutes.