Ever Wonder Why Humans Crave the Artificial?

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We're hard wired to seek comfort and abundance, because comfort and abundance mean survival. We like convenience because it makes abundance easier to achieve. These things make us feel safe.

Now, you can argue that we in the First World have taken comfort, abundance, and convenience too far.

I wouldn't be able to argue that point. We have. We've taken it to the point of sloth and greed.

And we're accustomed to it that way, and we like it that way, and we're not going to change as long as we have a choice.

That's sad.

This is like asking "why is water wet?".

The word "artificial" means....."man made".

So the OP is asking "why does the human species crave what the human species itself makes?"

Answer: Probably because stuff made by the human species was made by the human species to accomidate the human species.

My cat likes the heat that comes from my computer and will often sit on it.

In the winter, pests often like to spend time in human homes because of the central heating and abundance of food.

Only to a very specific extent.

I've noticed that people really like to have the artificial but keep it feeling very organic. IMHO the shiny futuristic metal cities and planes of science fiction - we'd hate it even if it weren't environmental suicide. We want a road to look like a road, a table to look like rich maple or cherry, our houses to have futuristic gadgets but look old-fashion and wholesome midwest otherwise, we want out cars to show refinement, class, and the right amount of self-restraint; I think we're pretty much at the ratio of real and fake-imitating-real that we usually like. Occasionally you'll have a fashion swing like the 80's where everything will go super-gaudy and plastic, then we scare ourselves (the sheer quantity of aerosols, carcinogens, and occasional human torch when the edge of someone's fashion helmet or weave caught the tip of a cigarette was enough!).

This dog is attracted to the artificial:

Thats one smart pooch.

And he has a very strong and dexterous mouth.

All our technologies are, in fact, adaptations. We're using our most adaptable bit-- our brains-- to manipulate the environment to be more accommodating for us.

Do I think we've gone too far??

Yes, honestly, I do. When a person has so thoroughly adapted to modern conveniences that they can't do without a dishwasher and little things to make the air smell like chemical flowers and central air conditioning, or that it's more instinctive to turn up the thermostat than to put on a sweater, we've probably gone too far.

When we not only can't raise a garden but find ourselves dependent on hot dogs, instant rice, and microwave meals (and we're not adults with more-significant-than-Asperger's special needs or teenagers just learning to cook) because putting ingredients together is too hard, we've probably gone too far.

Do I think we should make sure to retain the ability to adapt to reduced circumstances?? Given how fragile all our adaptations are, yes, I do. Lately I haven't been very good about that, though, so I should probably stop preaching right now.

What's natural?

Humans have bent nature to their will, amd have accidentally medfled with it as well. When I go out into the forest, it's not like a forest 500 years ago. There's paths, reforestation efforts, riverbeds desigmed and changed, and asian honeysuckle varieties everywhere. I'd have to go pretty far -leave central europe- to find a place that's remotely natural, free of human history and attempts to make the place into something of economic value - which I think is the bigger issue: nature has not been assigned economic value.
Even if a place's environment has a natural beauty, its value lies in tourism, and as such we seek a way to optimize that way of exploitation.

My theory is that it's because stuff was a lot more difficult, more expensive (in more than just monetary terms), and often lower quality way back when.

Or some mix of the above. For example, 70 years ago there was a lot more stuff made out of durable metals, but when you correct for inflation they actually cost far more than modern examples.

I get a chuckle out of people making "rustic" foodstuffs. Our ingredients today are far higher quality than they were even 30 years ago, in most regards.

When i look at western (e.g. european, etc) recipes from hundreds of years ago i have the inescapable conclusion that food sucked hundreds of years ago.

Some of it doesn't even make sense from a modern perspective. Like back when butchers cut meat across the long bones instead of at the joints. They wrote about having a "good joint of meat". Our experience of eating meat has been greatly enhanced both by the expanded knowledge of butchering and greater technology in tool making.

Our agriculture would blow the minds of people who lived 100 years ago. Yes there have been losses, like the fact that the ability to buy a fresh tomato any day of the year turned out, for the moment, to require that the tomato tastes like wet paper. But most fruits, vegetables, grains, etc that are grown today are better than they were 100 years ago.

We are tool makers and tool users. We improve our tools so that we can do better work with them and live better lives.

I mean honestly have you gone to a thrift store and felt the synthetic fabrics that were available in the 60's, 70's, and 80's? They were terrible compared to what you can get today.

The "back to nature" movements have all been shams. People leading lives of convenience who take advantage of their technology to go slumming in the sticks and dress down for a bit. It's exactly like millennial hipsters who for some reason think cassette tapes are cool. Cassette tapes suck. They always sucked. They sucked when they were introduced, they sucked when the technology matured, and they sucked when they were rendered obsolete.

I'm not convinced sloth & greed are at nor anywhere near the root of it. Refinement is seen as novelty and that's where we perceive artifice. This is all predicated on the assumption that as organisms we're absolutely distinguishable from what we create.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos