Take it slow
By Richard Nilsen
Arizona Republic
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| Gannett News Service
Stop and smell the roses ... carefully Homemade bread is better than sliced because it has flavor. Cooking is better than fast food because you know what it's made out of. Walking is better than driving because it's cheaper. Surface streets are better than freeways because you can stop for lunch. Checkers is better than GameBoy because it doesn't require batteries. A book is better than a Web page because it boots up instantly. Conversation is better than instant messaging because you have eye contact. A letter is better than e-mail because it doesn't get deleted. |
Minute Rice? Who has the time? You can buy a pre-made pilaf at the grocery store on the way home from work.
Instant tea? Why, when you can buy it in a bottle?
Let's face it: Do you actually have the time to read this story?
Or are you conference-calling on the cell phone while driving 75 mph down the freeway on your way to drop off a package at FedEx?
Not only has time sped up, but we demand it be so.
"We have been spoiled by services that provide instant gratification: overnight deliveries, instant cash from ATMs, faxes, e-mail, cell phones, information from the Internet, global news from a satellite, 24-hour grocery stores," says James V. O'Connor, author of "The Complete Book on How to Control Your Cursing" (Three Rivers Press, $12.95).
"So, when we don't get what we want instantly, or have to wait in line, we get impatient — and swear.
"We hate being stuck in traffic, even though we have cell phones to report we will be late and car radios to catch up on the news. Instead of relaxing with music or using the time to think, we rudely honk at each other, cut into lanes — and swear," he says.
"We are stressing each other out. We are cranky."
It's not just crankiness. It's road rage, too. And just listen to Chris Matthews on MSNBC: He's so cranky, he can't even wait for his guest to finish a sentence.
We stand there hitting the "close door" button in the elevator, because it won't close fast enough — and cannot remember when people used the stairs.
Instant macaroni and cheese wasn't fast enough, so now it comes in a plastic bowl that you microwave.
America has gone time-savings crazy. It no longer recognizes the physics of time.
With TV's home recording device TiVo, you can just wipe out whole chunks of time. Fast-forwarding through commercials, you can see a half-hour sitcom in 22 minutes. Twenty, if you eliminate the credits and tag scenes.
"We flit from one thing to another like a hummingbird," says Craig Kinsley, psychology professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia.
"When you're watching CNN, you've got people on the screen talking, then a summary of their words next to them, some factoid about the story under him and the whole time, there is an unrelated scroll underneath everything.
"The assumption is that that is a good thing."
But, he says, it's really a kind of experiment in society to see just how fast we can go and still function.
Americans have developed the cultural equivalent of attention deficit disorder. We haven't got the patience to wait for anything, and everything from speed-passes at the gas station and theme park to spray-on suntans caters to our need for speed.
Think about how things have accelerated:
According to the James Beard Foundation, when cream of wheat was introduced in 1893, it took 15 minutes to prepare. Back then, that was a quickie breakfast. By 1939, it was five minutes. Now, it takes 30 seconds.
Politics has become entirely a question of shorthand.
Consider the Lincoln-Douglas debates about slavery, usually considered the high-water mark of political oratory in U.S. history. The text of those debates fills an entire book, with reasoned arguments and well-crafted rejoinders.
Today's debates had better star a catch phrase: "Read my lips," or, "It's the economy, stupid." To get elected, you need a political philosophy that can fit on a T-shirt.
When the Iraq war lasted longer than a week, TV pundits began wondering what had gone wrong. Had the military made a poor game plan?
Does anyone remember studying the Hundred Years War?
It's hard to pinpoint when the culture first put its foot down on the pedal. For some, it started when TV sets began appearing with an "instant on" button for those too impatient to wait for the set to warm up.
But it isn't only television. Even in the serene, old-fashioned world of classical music things have changed. In Beethoven's time, a concert could last six hours. Even 15 years ago, the standard concert was two hours. Now patrons fidget if a program runs more than 90 minutes.
"The human brain wasn't designed to accommodate so many bits of information simultaneously," Kinsley says.
We are being carpet-bombed with information, he says. "But the brain ultimately acts as a filter. It can't accommodate all that information, and we quickly cease paying attention.
"It is the information equivalent of the boy who cried wolf."
It's so bad, they're messing with American institutions: The new strike zone in baseball was established to speed up the game for impatient ballpark patrons.
"Given the increasingly high density of our national life over the past generation, it's extraordinary how we have managed to juggle such a complex set of tasks and activities," says Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University in New York. He is speaking over a cell phone while driving on his vacation. That's the ultimate multitasking: working and vacationing at the same time.
The downside of all this impatience is burnout, depression and a sense of hopelessness, says Scott Geller, psychology professor at Virginia Tech. He has been studying rage, including road rage, office rage and desk rage.
"We have a notion of efficiency," he says, "but not effectiveness. We have our e-mails, faxes and cell phones, but communication is more effective in person.
"The problem is, we don't have time to take our time."
Like many things, the solution is simple, but impossible.
"The answer is to slow down, take your time," says Geller. "At least, that's the quick fix.
"But how do you do that in a culture that won't let you? How do you drive the speed limit anymore? You'll get instantly tailgated."
But, like any speed addict, first you have to admit there is a problem.
