Discuss: Finding Time

Always thoughtful comments.  Reality and being here now rather than projecting someplace else.  As if the here and now is so complete and satisfying.  We can’t trash cell phones as we type away on computer’s and explore this safe area called cyber-space.  How many people at this exact time are sitting in front of a computer, just in our own bioregion? 
Iv’e lived in the woods in rural northern MN since 1970.  Dome building, gardening, communing with 24 other homesteader’s for almost 40 year’s.  Iv’e never held a regular job, but rather been self employed...doing anything to survive.  I’ve raised four great kid’s and managed to get them all through college and on their way.  Remember, when you live on the edge of society, you don’t receive the paid vacation’s, sick pay, health insurance, coffee break’s etc.  When I hear people complaining about this and that...I think that they should try going out on their own.  I mean really on your own.  You and the tree’s if you know what I mean.

So after all that time, living totally free, my neighbor felt that I needed this computer to complete my life.  So here I am on a beautiful Friday evening, throwing thought’s out into cyberspace...why.  I have great neighbor, living a very zen existence.  He didn’t buy this old computer, he assembled it out of old part’s and made it work.  He also got me working again...greenslowmovingvehicle.com.
Our little effort to help people everywhere to actually, physically, slow down...and live.
everbody take care and put some energy toward a green and sustainable future for all. Remember to keep hope alive.

Chuck,

Interesting comments. Thanks.

May I so humbly rebuke the improper english of the good friar David Buer. For example, “less things.” “Less” refers to volume, “fewer” refers to individual objects. Therefore, it is “fewer things”, “less time”, “fewer cars”, “less water”,
etc.  Maybe, those of us who will actually take our lives back and slow down, will think about our articulation of language and be impeccable at it.

Slowing down is one of the best perks of retirement.  There may be less income, you may miss the routine, but there is now time to wander through museums, galleries, the park. Walking around wherever and whenever you want - dawdling here in a shop with interesting staff, talking to someone beside you in the subway (yes, some of us still do that on occasion).  Ms Solnit’s article is so true - you should try what she suggests!

While agreeing with most of the points in Rebecca Solnit’s essay, I find it ironic that she starts out citing “Efficiency” as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalpyse, before making some concise, insightful comments about car culture.

If one wants to criticize car culture, it seems to me, “Inefficiency” is the obvious fault.

What could be less efficient than a personal transport tool that uses a 3000 pound carriage for each 150 pounds of flesh? If one were to design such a system, for scores of millions of people, the perfectly logical expectation would be that huge roadways and parking lots would be required, which would push dwellings and work places ever farther apart; and yet, whenever a large part of the population tried to move around at once, speeds would drop to horse-and-buggy levels.

Although marvellous levels of efficiency have been applied to the production of cars, the actual product is a perfect engine of waste, inefficiency taken to truly absurd lengths. Please don’t malign the word “efficiency” by associating it with car culture.

If you want to talk about “efficiency”, please look to the bicycle, the most efficient tool of transportation yet invented, but hardly a horseman of the apocalypse.

I second that, Bart.

I can agree that convenience implies compromise and profitability implies crassness, that from security follows languor and eventually paralysis. But her decision to criticize “efficiency” as well is a rhetorical misstep. This word must be reserved for that which is not less than adequate—and it is by questioning the adequacy of cultural alternatives (should musicians seek collaboration online, or in person? should we pay exorbitant costs to stay at the cutting edge of technology? etc.) that we can identify and set aside the dehumanizing products of commerce.

The time to garden--to volunteer--to meditate--to read--is a luxury. In every community that has made time for such activities commonplace, this has come either by exploitation of an out-group or adherence to the principle of efficiency.

I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of Solnit’s article & of most comments so far, but I’m skeptical about black-&-white arguments.  Going slow or fast is a choice, as is integrating the former with the latter.  Today I used a web site to connect me quickly to this article & your comments so I’d have the opportunity to dwell upon interesting ideas & react to them.  Is that fast or slow?

Or, when I drive somewhere as I did this morning & listened carefully to Shirley Horn sing in her uniquely leisurely way: fast or slow?

Or, to use Amazon when I can’t find something in the many bookshops nearby?

Yes, we do see more when we walk & go slowly.  But that isn’t everything.

pb

And then there is the idea of part-time jobs in the country.  See here:  http://luke.lea.googlepages.com/home