My usual office attire is pretty simple: a t-shirt or polo shirt, jeans, and Earthrunners sandals. Even in our relaxed office environment, I’m still an outlier, but I’m comfortable enough with myself and our office culture that I don’t feel any social awkwardness.
I do carry a pair of Vivobarefoot leather shoes, though, for those times when I have to visit a client. In those situations, I make the quick swap, because the cost of deviating from the accepted norms can be too high (for me), potentially impacting my professional reputation, inside and outside the agency.
Whether we like it or not, social norms are powerful motivators of our behaviors. Which is why using a chair to make floor sitting possible is much less of a silly idea than it appears to be at first glance!
I’m talking about the Higher Ground Chair, pictured above (Image Credits: Higher Ground Furniture).
Don’t judge too fast
The Higher Ground Chair has been shared on social media to mixed reactions with some essentially being: “Yet another (expensive) product you don’t need. Just sit on the floor, silly”. And it does seem counterintuitive: why do you need a piece of furniture to do something you can do more easily without? Is it all marketing, creating a demand for a product that has no inherent use?
Here’s the thing: the real value this chair brings to its users is the benefit of floor sitting while not deviating too much from the existing social norms. And yes, for some of us, it’s worth paying for this.
Look at this picture, and now imagine someone (like I am writing this post!) actually on the floor using a small floor desk to write on their laptop. Suddenly, the woman using the high chair doesn’t seem too outside the accepted norms by comparison. I mean, the only thing different is the actual shape of the chair, and with yoga pretty mainstream these days, it doesn’t seem that strange.
For herself, her visitors, etc., it’s a bit different than the norms, sure, but not by much. Certainly not as much as a full-on, no-furniture, floor working space. Now translate that into an office environment, and you can easily see some—rare—workplaces where this type of chair would be acceptable. How many do you know that would be comfortable with people working on the floor?
You pay with cash or social awkwardness
At its core, it’s a trade-off between paying with either social awkwardness or actual cash. Individually, there is no bad choice. If you take as a constraint that you have to use a normal desk, then this chair is a great choice, as all other alternatives don’t allow you to work on your mobility as much, and they also cost money (some much more).
As a society, however, this is suboptimal if we only take into account health and fitness. As I explained in this post, our modern lifestyle can be viewed as the triumph of our natural instincts over our biological needs. The stigma of sitting on the floor, in our Western societies, is real and not rooted in anything other than social status and historical habits mostly created through the Industrial Age. And it’s now a vicious circle where discomfort on the floor also perpetuates norms aimed at getting rid of discomfort, and on and on we go… We’d be much better off, health-wise, if floor sitting & working was completely normal.
Unfortunately, second only to our natural instincts to conserve energy by minimising efforts and discomforts, the social norms of our modern Western societies are a major obstacle to being fit & healthy.
So what if you need a chair to enable you to “sit on the floor”?
This chair makes adopting some elements of a Foresighted lifestyle easier. The only thing you have to change is your chair, not the rest of your furniture, but most important, not your worldview or your adherence to the rest of the accepted norms. This is a small enough deviation from the norms that it should be acceptable for some people (even then, it will be difficult for most). You also don’t have to fear that much the acceptance of your own behavior by others.
On the other hand, this chair is certainly not necessary, and it’s of course straightforward to practice floor sitting without it. As long as you are willing to pay the price in social awkwardness. It might be zero (like me). It might be a little, making the chair way too expensive for its benefits. Or it might be really high, making the chair a bargain. It’s your own choice to decide on. And it might also be context-dependent. Do I work on the floor at home? I certainly do. Would I in the office? Probably not. Would I be comfortable using such a chair in the office, though? I actually might!
If our actual collective goal is to help people live healthier lives, which working on the floor absolutely supports, then this is a piece of furniture that might significantly help. And that’s why it’s now listed on Foresighted!
Responses