Take a Peek Out of Your Comfortable Skinner Box Once in a While
Driving in Las Vegas is a necessary danger in that one has to drive to get almost any place around, while other drivers pursue their road trip like a seventh grade boy hopped up on Mountain Dew Xtreme and a raging boner. Every roadster on Sahara or Tropicana gets into his or her car, shuts the door, and a bizarre bubble of entitlement and narcissism envelopes each person. No one outside this bubble matters and every second on the road is an inconvenience.
One can imagine that this attitude combined with two-ton metal boxes hurtling forward at seventy miles an hour might be taking one’s life and tossing it casually into a cage of cats on meth and hoping none of the felines notice.
Each vehicle is a version of a Skinner Box.
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.
Control Yourself Rather than Others
Is that guy in the car in front of you really a slow motherfucking brain dead dipshit? Or are you feeling rushed by an arbitrary sense of time and didn’t really plan your trip as well as you could have?
Is that woman really a racist piece of shit? Or are you constantly looking for racist things to be upset about and she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time and you now can put her on YouTube in an effort to seem engaged politically?
Is it really McDonald’s fault you’re a fat sack of suet and lard? Or are you just more addicted to convenience and salt to grab an apple instead?
Be aware of yourself and practice control over your impulses and emotions.
Always be Chill
I mean, seriously. Calm the fuck down. Trump is embarrassing and kind of awful in almost every way but your life after 2016 isn’t that vastly different than your life before so get some perspective, hunker down, quit mewling and banging your head against the world, and quietly get the work needed to vote him out this year done.
Chop the fucking wood rather than scream at the tree.
Remember that Treats Taste Better When You Actually Earn Them
Patience is the practice of waiting for a period of time without reward. And maybe not being a raging cunt about it. Not really that hard (unless you identify as Raging Cunt and are prevented from constantly reminding everyone that your RC Flag flies at all times).
Food tastes better when you are genuinely hungry. A cigarette is more satisfying when you need a moment to relax. Sex is better when you take your time.
Learn to wait for your treats. You don’t even have to be civil or polite. Just try to avoid being a Total Dickhead and you’re way ahead of the game.
