Is the nature of civilization speed or is it consideration?*

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“What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough?  It becomes your entire history. “

Louise Erdrich

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There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

H. L. Mencken

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Is the nature of civilization speed or is it consideration? Is it efficiency or effectiveness? With a societal mindset that believes speed is essential for survival, if not thriving, in today’s world, what is the role of slow, observation, and consideration?

The reality is a conscious decision to move slowly, or move slower, or even stop on occasion, is not in contradiction to speed. Think festina lente.

The reality is speed and efficiency are not, themselves, signs of intelligence or capability. They do not carry with them any moral value and they don’t necessarily make any social contribution to civilization. Efficiency and speed are certainly useful, but they are not in themselves manifestations of civilization. In fact one could argue the main effect of our efficiency idolatry has been to discourage consideration, if not to make it actually impossible. And while there certainly can be arguments for speed (we need to grow fast enough to meet the needs of a growing population AND grow alternative ways to fulfill those needs rather than extracting & exploiting the world the population is dependent upon for Life), speed also runs the risk of sacrificing some important reflection and consideration aspects.

Why is this important?

Well. In an interconnected world where dependencies are often 6 degrees of separation away, the concept of a united civilization, or at least one in which we recognize the interdependence, is not that farfetched so maybe, just maybe, if we begin thinking about this as ‘global civilization’ maybe it gains some additional importance. Look. I am not suggesting a “global government”, just a recognition that civilization is not bounded by some specific culture or border, but rather a collective effort of 8 billionish people.

Before you reject this idea, whether we like it or not on an individual level, we have reached a point where local connections between separate societies, nations and cultures have become embedded in a global interconnection world. Events that happen in any part of the globe have its direct or indirect influence on people’s actions everywhere.

Some people suggest this the emergence of new world civilization. I believe that is aspirational thinking and a concept of some distant future, but this is when speed and consideration step back into the discussion. I certainly can’t project the future but I can certainly see without consideration, and only speed, our existing social process and social configuration will only continue to fragment and increase conflict as disparate objectives collide at faster, less considered, speeds. The probability of multiple socio-communities living and ‘thriving’ by themselves and being incorporated into a cohesive, let alone united, world system grows less and less. It demands consideration to enhance the probabilities of incorporating social bodies into a useful social configuration.

Which leads me to the concept of time and space.

At the core of this is measured time versus experienced time. Measured time gives a false sense of order to a more frenzied speed driven civilization, in other words, it allows giving order to complicated picture of changing world. this is important because it offers attributive features on a social level to civilization thereby giving an appearance of consideration – done at speed. The issue with this is that social time and space are connected with human activity, social relations and, ultimately, social configuration. The constant speed, without any true consideration, drives how human lives should be lived and, consequently, reflect into people’s consciousness. My point is that speed becomes the conscious default and consideration is an afterthought (or put in the ‘reflective’ bin) and civilization does not benefit.

Society really needs to get a grip on social relations and its relations with time and space because all of it is related to work, communities and technology.  Technology determinism is a very dangerous path to travel in that it emphasizes speed and deemphasizes consideration, hence squeezing both time and space. Reckless application of technology to people’s lives, social relations, and what society values, or not values, transfers much of civilization’s values to something that actually has no values and, well, I seriously doubt good results.

Which brings me back to the opening: is the future of civilization speed or consideration? while much of what happens in today’s technological world occurs independent of human awareness, humans are still accountable for much of the system itself – you have a responsibility to reflect upon your actions/thoughts even if technology may have encouraged the action/thought.  This responsibility is important because the reality is people in today’s complex society have little choice, but to be more knowledgeable than in the past – who had fewer occasions for facing new problems or adapting to radically unfamiliar circumstances. We simply face more things that demand more consideration than we tend to give them. We need to, well, consider more and more often. I am not suggesting speed is not important to the nature of civilization, in fact, I think it is an important feature. I am just suggesting that consideration is possibly more important to civilization because it impacts trajectories, of not velocity, of the speed which inevitably not only effects the impact but where the hell we end up. Ponder.

• –         * note: I am not smart enough to have come up with this thought and question. I had written it down from somewhere but I cannot locate the source. So, thanks to whoever wrote this, said this and thought this. It is an important question.