The luxuries and conveniences of contemporary life prevent people from developing into truly strong and independent individuals Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning f

With advancement and increase in luxuries and conveniences of contemporary life, do we now have less strong and independent individuals? Though the author believes this to be the case, there are different sides to the statement. Luxuries and conveniences discussed in this case include technology, travel, healthcare, business and other characterisitics of today’s contemporary life.

In the past, travelling to Europe from America for vacation will take about 3 months by ship. However with airplanes, the journey has been reduced to less than 12 hours. This improvement provides an opportunity for people to spend more time focusing on other relevant tasks, such as learning a new language, to help during the trip, than spend a long time travelling to the final destination. This is an example where a more the available luxury resulted in a more independent person and a better linguist.

Health care in present time is more advanced than it was about 100 years ago. Cancers are easier to detect, antibiotics are more readily available, infant mortality rate is reduced, to name a few improvements. Without these advancements, instead of people focusing on making themselves well versed in different subjects, they might be bedridden waiting for an ailment to pass or in extreme cases die from a case of malaria.

On the other hand, many soft skills are slowly fading with the invent of technology. For instance, in recent times, there is no need to leave one’s house to purchase an item. An order can be placed with no interpersonal contact and it arrives at your doorstep. The act of bargaining - necessary to build business acumen, buyer-seller interaction – for better interpersonal skills, is lost with the introduction of online shopping. People loose their ability to have good meaningful conversations with others. With reducing interaction with people, we have seen an increase in suicide rate, depression, and other mental health related incidents.

Education is a section that has seen both the good and bad side of these advancement. It is not easier to get an education from anywhere in the world. With good internet connection, one living in Asia can register for a course in the US and complete it fully online without leaving his/her country. However, there is still the on-going question of integrity. How can it be confirmed that the person who registered for the course is the same person who attended the classes and took the final exams? How do we know that assignments were not lifted from the internet and modified mildly to pass plagiarism check?

In summary, though new luxuries and conveniences of contemporary life has its advantages such as better health case and better time management, there is the downside to it such as limited to no personal relationships and integrity issues.