‘Instant everything’ kills, everything..
Consumerism, digitalisation, globalisation, a toxic combination sucking us all into a black hole of impatient urgency!
Not my most alluring headline ever, but you can’t ‘sex up’ the apocalypse really, can you?
Look, it’s still important: we all need to SLOW DOWN!
Ever since I was a wee rascal racing round the streets on my bike, my mam would shout “when will you ever stop!”. As I grew older, she’d still pull me up for ‘always being in a hurry’. Maybe I was in a hurry. I’ve been charging around ever since. Until now.
Some people just do that, don’t they? Rush around, desirous of doing everything - wanting everything - faster..
Faster cars, faster women, running for buses, at work running a fast growing business, pushing harder to get projects finished, upgrading the internet, checking Alexa for that delivery, buying a hot water tap so you don’t need to wait for the kettle to boil…electric toothbrush - saves me seconds!; binge-watching TV series’ instead of waiting for next week. Yep, guilty as charged. Been there.
What one factor - which one variable - do all those ruinous activities have in common?
Time.
My whole life had been about speeding things up. The ‘t’ variable dominated every one of life’s equations.
In fact it’s not just me is it? The whole world wants everything to be faster. You can get any non-essential item of your choosing delivered to your doorstep. Any piece of plastic nonsense you want, shipped halfway round the world, almost instantly!
If you can offer to deliver that thing faster than anyone else, people will buy it.
No need to wait, just get online and order it today.
And if, when you do get it, it doesn’t fit, or you just don’t like it, send it back. No problem!
Now the serious stuff: Banking. Investments. Trading…
‘T’ means everything in this world. This used to be a world that was dominated by the time it took a sailing ship to return from the Orient to London, loaded with commodities, or even just mail (information!), about stuff that mattered to those bankers and stock market chaps. Stuff that made millions for those involved. The waiting time (that T factor) could be months. The guy (and it was almost exclusively men) that gets it first, wins the game.
Then, with the advent of the telegraph, then telephones, and now the internet, and even higher-speed communications than even normal internet, ‘T’ shrunk from weeks, then days, then minutes…and now tiny fractions of a second.
That time difference - between something being created to being received at the other end - is called latency.
Latency - if you can get that information a fraction of a second before anyone else, you have the advantage. You get to make money the fastest.
So, I left University a thousand years ago with my Maths degree and got my job in the City of London, then I worked in IT, helping Big Computer Companies to sell bigger, faster, more efficient ways of delivering data, and all the time (yeh!) I kept asking the big question bugging me:
“What happens when ‘t’ reaches 0? ZERO. This business goes bust, surely?’
“What happens when there is no delay in gaining access to that critical, profit-generating, knowledge?”
“What happens when, everything is instant?
You might be thinking: ‘this guy’s really dumb - there’ll always be a time delay between wanting, and getting’….
But what is growing, all the time, is people thinking they need it now!
It’s all relative to last time you asked. The longer everything takes, the less happy people are about waiting. Even people in ‘Third World’ countries. They have mobile phones these days too. Even they can now also be part of the consumer society. To them, things are super-fast! They want more, even more than we do! And they’ll do almost anything to get it.
A Financial Crash used be a relatively local thing, till ‘word got out’. It could take months for people to start panicking. Now disaster can cascade around the world like a digital tsunami in a day. Indeed it just did.
These days it seems like half of those traders and investors are even banking on those mini-disasters, initiating share computer-driven sell-offs and gambling on the delta changes in individual countries, or corporations. They’re making money out of nothing! Whilst the poor people (and that’s the majority of people, relatively) don’t get a look in.
So, as time becomes infinitesimal, do our odds of enjoying the journey shrink with it?
I’m writing this whilst looking out at my garden. Bliss! I’ve just planted my potatoes. The ‘early variety’ of course, because they’ll grow faster. The blossoms are just starting to bloom. Birds are frantically building nests. I’m waiting for a delivery of new compost. Last year’s manure is ready to use. You cant rush manure - horse shit takes a good year to be useful, regardless.
These days, I’m not in such a hurry; I don’t want the season to rush by - it’s a beautiful thing, let’s enjoy it as it unfolds!
I don’t need the grass to grow faster. I want the days to be longer. I don’t care if the slow cooker takes another two hours.
TIME….
I had that 6-monthly meeting with our Financial Advisor last week. The question is always the same - how much do we need in order to be secure and enjoy our lives? The answer of course, is always governed by that one main factor in the equation: T.
If only we knew. We could at least plan things. See - we’re still wanting more information, and we want it quick!
Yet the irony is, we don’t want ‘t’ to be….too short, for us to not enjoy our loved ones and our new-found freedom….or too long, if it means we’ve just blown our financial projections and we’re headed for the poor-house.
There you go: ‘t’ - the 20th letter in our alphabet - still causing us anxiety, right till the end, of time.
Useless footnote: Jasper Carrott was a great British comedian in the 70’s. He used to joke that he’d smear marmalade on the guitar solos on his vinyl albums of his favourite band so he could learn how to play them. Nonsense of course, but somehow it made sense to me - you just want to make the great bits last longer….
Just Slow Down, friends.
“Slow living is a curious mix of being prepared and being prepared to let go. Caring more and caring less. Saying yes and saying no. Being present and walking away. Doing the important things and forgetting those that aren’t.”
“Whether you’re in the countryside or the city, so much daily magic can be found – you just have to stop, slow down, and look around.“
Rosie Steer, Slow Seasons
“There is only today, with holes in our pockets, with time spilling out. We cannot keep it for tomorrow.”
Erin Loechner, Chasing Slow