There’s a book coming out by Tyler Cowen called The Complacent Class. Cowen argues that Americans have gotten so comfortable to the point where they are complacent.  We’ve sheltered ourselves to the point where we avoid change. In a way, we’re taking on our own privileges but don’t reach out because it’s too uncomfortable.

It may be over-simplistic, but Cowen has developed a quiz to see how complacent you are or too comfortable with your life. It has 27 questions and most of them are thought-provoking in that it takes into perspective as to whether you’re too comfortable.  However, some questions didn’t take things into context.  For example, I’m in grad school and so it’s really hard for me to be mobile and reach out to a community. At the same time, one of the questions is asking whether you’ve lived in a neighborhood where you were the racial minority? For me, I’m always the racial minority so that gives me an automatic pass. Nevertheless, I took the quiz and I got “comfortable.” It makes sense given where I’m at in life, and it gives you a push to see how you should avoid complacency and push for change.