	Bob Hostetler > Writing

Our Microwave Mentality

by Bob Hostetler

It was the early nineties, and my wife and I were foster parents to six teenage boys in a Butler County boys’ home. Our boys, between the ages of twelve and seventeen, had come to us from the juvenile court system.

You could say that each was there for a different reason. One had been involved in a few minor scrapes with the law, but was sent to us after intentionally throwing a skateboard under a city bus, causing an accident (he did it, he said, just to “see what would happen”). Another had been repeatedly truant. Another couldn’t stop experimenting with drugs. Another had been convicted of a sexual offense.

But as we got to know and love “our boys,” we eventually learned that, in another sense, every one of them was there for the same reason: the inability to postpone gratification. Each of them displayed a strikingly predictable weakness: given the choice between obtaining or enjoying something now or later, they would always choose “now.” Even if the reward would be substantially bigger “later.” I tested it many times, and the result was always the same.

“Brian,” I would say, “how would you like a Hershey bar right now?”

“Sure,” he would answer.

“What if I gave you a choice? What if I said you could have one Hershey bar now, or two Hershey bars after dinner? Which would you choose?”

“I want it now,” he would say.

I tried upping the ante, so to speak.

“Shane,” I would say, “you’ve earned an extra hour of television privileges today.”

“All right!” he would say.

“But if you wait till next week, I’ll give you an extra hour every day.”

I could see the wheels turning. I could see he was very tempted. But I could see it was just too much to ask.

“No,” he would say. “That’s okay. I want to watch Perfect Strangers tonight.”

“But it’ll be on next week,” I would say.

He would smile sheepishly. “That’s okay.”

What was once true mainly of children has become the rule throughout our society. We eat fast food, ride rapid transit, use instant coffee, bank at drive-thru windows, service our cars at Jiffy Lube, make copies at Quick Print, pick up a gallon of milk at the Quick Stop Shop, ship packages overnight, dry clean our clothes at the One-Hour Cleaners, pay extra for high-speed internet, pay for gas purchases with a quick wave of our SpeedPass, and speed through toll plazas with E-ZPass.

But we do not simply prefer instant gratification; we demand it. How else can we explain our indignation when our lunch-hour pizza isn’t served within five minutes of our arrival at the restaurant table? How else can we explain our impatience after four minutes of waiting in line at the bank, our inability to endure three minutes of television commercials without reaching for the remote control, or our rage when a website takes as much as ten seconds to upload?

More serious, of course, are the effects of our microwave mentality in more important matters. Take, for example, the posturing of politicians (of both parties) in regard to some of the most urgent and critical issues of our time:

Iraq. Despite the president’s frequent warnings that America’s war on terrorism in general—and the Iraq War and rebuilding effort in particular—would require a lengthy commitment, many politicians, activists, and large segments of the American public have resembled nothing more than a tired tot in the back seat of a station wagon, whining, “Are we there yet?” Prominent Democrats in particular, with the notable exception of Senator Joe Lieberman, have tried pressing the president and secretary of defense to set a timetable for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, simultaneously faulting the administration for not sending “enough” troops to “win the peace” and demanding immediate troop reductions now… with absolutely no sense of irony.

Gasoline Prices. It’s disheartening to hear the rhetoric coming out of our nation’s capital these days about the rising price of oil. Either out of ignorance or cynicism, politicians of both parties seem interested only in the quick fix, from the Republicans’ stupid $100 cash rebate to the Democrats’ equally silly proposal to suspend federal gas taxes for a month or two. Sheesh! No one can seriously believe such measures will have any constructive effect (ah, but when did that ever matter to a politician?). In fact, inasmuch as either solution would encourage more consumption, they would more likely make matters even worse! What an inconvenient situation: none of the truly constructive measures—like drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and easing restrictions on building new refineries and pipelines—happen to fulfill our demand for instant gratification.

Immigration Reform. The recent May Day protests in defense of illegal immigration underscores the sad result of our addiction to instant gratification. When millions of people break a law intended for the protection of a nation’s citizens, what’s to be done? The quick fix, of course, is: change the law! Make illegal immigrants legal with a stroke of a pen! Ta-da! It is much harder, of course, to do what needs to be done, namely, secure our borders (something that should have been done within weeks or months of September 11, anyway), stop the flow of illegal immigrants into this country, and then—and only then—discuss what to do from there. Anything less than that sequence of events is like turning on the blue light at K-Mart, inviting everyone to grab what they can now, before the light goes out.

But that’s where we are, as a nation. It scares me. It makes me worry that we may never summon the perseverance to tackle our most pressing problems. If that is the case, our demand for instant gratification may sow the seeds of our eventual destruction.

This article appeared in the May 7, 2006, edition of the Hamilton Journal-News.

More articles by Bob Hostetler...