Speed and localism
This is an extract from Patrick Noble’s new book, Reclaiming Commons, which can be ordered online here.
SPEED
What of fossil-powered speed – the borrowed muscular lives of fossilised years? Do we forget ourselves in consequence?
What of two people walking side by side? They are more or less equal until they step into what money can buy – a car; an aeroplane…
What happens when the energy required for cars and aeroplanes exceeds available energy – that is, exceeds what is possible? Is that a partial recipe for equality?
But does that speed lead to a forgetting, not only of human speed, but of all human qualities?
What of the time between destinations – both the space/time and the space? Does shrunken time, also shrink space and so the richness of a life?
What of the purchased fancy of traveling between places, without the revelatory truth of the places in between?
If the places in between are a nuisance to be transcended by those millions of purchased photosynthetic years, is our knowledge not impoverished and our imagination stunted? Certainly, our chosen purchases must crowd out what is unpredictable, sacramental, revelatory, beautiful and true.
Listen, as we slow to walking pace, so the great mass of life comes around us in the ways we’ve evolved to live – in obstacles, delights, gradients, weathers, sights, sounds, scent… As we slow, revelation accelerates. That is, as we slow, what is human accelerates and swells. Also, what is possible, accelerates and swells.
Here’s something else, as we speed by our purchasing power, so we impoverish the passage of time. That’s as old as the oldest philosopher.
So, is slower richer in rewards and faster poorer – even though slower is poorer in money and faster richer? Is unnatural speed, not a perfect parable for folly?
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