The Luxury of Forgetting: How Comfort Has Made Us Fragile

Before we dive in, let me set the scene: I had a whole December lineup planned—light, festive, easy reading. Been ready since Halloween; I had the idea right after doing true crime for October, just to keep things cozy and low-key and avoid bumping into politics or mental-health vibes this month. Then the lineup disappeared. Poof. Gone.

I had dived into my favorite holiday movie, A Christmas Carol, the Muppets version, between me and the nobody that reads these, trying to recapture the December vibes. Then today I heard some ridiculousness—something so detached from reality that any hope of keeping things merry and bright went right out the window.

So let’s discuss how complacent we have become as a society.

For almost all of human existence, survival was a daily grind. Not metaphorically, not spiritually—literally. Wake up and make sure you stay alive. Find water. Find food. Build shelter. Hope nature doesn’t kill you before the day is over. We weren’t debating Wi-Fi speeds or the latest gadget; we were keeping one eye on the horizon and one hand on whatever tool we hoped would save our life if things went sideways.

Then, suddenly, in the last century or so, that entire reality vanished for a portion of the world. Safety, convenience, and comfort became the baseline. Clean water, reliable food, heating, healthcare—things that would have been miracles for most of human history became expected. And we treat them that way. What used to be a privilege is now framed as an entitlement. What used to require effort is now something society owes us.

And the same blindness extends to government.

For most of human history, a tiny minority ruled the majority. That wasn’t corruption; that was the system. Golden ages were rare, fragile, and usually temporary—and even those “golden ages” only expanded rights slowly, one struggle at a time, often to a limited group of people. Power has always concentrated itself unless people actively, relentlessly push back.

Now? We live in a world where people talk about their government as if corruption is some alien concept that couldn’t possibly take root here—while, in the same breath, joking about how corrupt it already is. It’s a strange doublethink: we assume we’re immune because we’ve been fortunate so far, and we assume the good times are permanent because we can’t imagine a world where they’re not.

“A republic, if you can keep it.” The warning was baked right into the foundation. But we treat it like a slogan instead of a responsibility.

The truth is, we aren’t putting much effort into keeping it. We’ve grown too comfortable to recognize how quickly a stable society can tilt in the wrong direction. When people forget what it took to build something, they stop caring about what it takes to maintain it. When they assume the system will hold no matter what, they stop guarding it. When they outsource responsibility—to the government, to society, to “someone else”—the ground starts quietly shifting beneath them.

Whether it’s survival or self-governance, the pattern is the same: comfort breeds complacency, complacency breeds fragility, and fragility breeds outrage over trivial things because people no longer have anything real anchoring them.

We’re living in a moment where people feel oppressed by inconveniences while ignoring the warning signs that previous generations would have spotted instantly. It’s not that modern life is bad—it’s that we’ve forgotten how unnatural it really is. We’ve forgotten that comfort is a privilege, not a guarantee. That freedom is a responsibility, not a gift. That societies don’t stay stable by accident.

We’ve been lulled by convenience, distracted by comfort, and convinced that life—and government—will just keep humming along. But reality doesn’t care about playlists, holiday cheer, or how neat we keep our little worlds. Survival, freedom, and the systems we rely on don’t exist because someone promised them; they exist because someone fought for them, every day, against chaos and corruption.

So maybe the lesson of December isn’t just nostalgia. It’s a reminder: don’t let comfort make you soft, don’t let convenience make you complacent, and don’t let the quiet days fool you into thinking the foundations are unshakable. Pay attention. Do your part. Fight for what keeps you alive—not just physically, but morally, politically, and socially. Otherwise, the lights might be bright, the cocoa hot, and the season cheerful—but you’ll wake up one day to find everything you took for granted quietly slipping away leaving only the echo of what we ignored.

Mic G