Thresholds

"Thought of the Week" for March 2, 1999

SPEED IS THE YARDSTICK
BY WHICH THE CRISIS IS EXPRESSED

"...the two worlds of the traditional and the industrial are diametrically opposed. The indigenous world, in trying to emulate Nature, espouses a walk with life, a slow, quiet day-to-day kind of existence. The modern world, on the other hand, steams through life like a locomotive, controlled by a certain sense of careless waste and destruction. Such life eats at the psyche and moves its victims faster and faster along, as they are progressively emptied out of their spiritual and psychic fuel. It is here, consequently, where one's spirit is in crisis, that speed is the yardstick by which the crisis itself is expressed."

Malidoma Patrice Somé. (1993). Ritual: Power, Healing and Community.  Portland, OR: Swan Ravenen & Company.

Speed is the Measure
of the Cultural Crisis

by Reg Harris

Copyright © 1999 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated June 2009. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.

According to Somé, we can measure the degree to which our spirit is in crisis by the speed of our lives. If this is the case, we are suffering a serious spiritual crisis in the modern world. We seem to have adopted the computer model for our lifestyle, where multitasking has replaced concepts such as focus, concentration and full engagement.

Trying to keep up with the increasing volume of information, trying to stay abreast of the rapid changes in technology, trying to keep pace with the ever-accelerating expansion of knowledge and its applications can only lead us away from ourselves. Perhaps that is why "personnel" offices have become "human resources" offices: humans are no longer humans, but resources for the system, the technology, and the cultural structures that dominate our lives.

Moreover, we are indoctrinating our children into the crisis at earlier and earlier ages, and it should be little wonder to us that we see our young people turning to alcohol and drugs for escape or relief. It also should be little wonder to us that we have one of the highest rates of teen suicide in the world.

As educators, we have the choice of either perpetuating the situation or helping our students learn to cope with the insane pace of our culture and still live a human life. We can't―and really shouldn't― resist the acceleration in our lives brought on by technology and the media. However, we can create "sacred" space for students to escape the incoming media assaults, where they can relax and learn.

We cannot, of course, return to a "traditional" lifestyle, but we can help youngsters learn to step away from the insanity, help them learn to find the "calm center of the turning universe" within themselves.

 

We should spend more time teaching wisdom and less time teaching information. Only by teaching young people to think, to take time to sift information, to decide how to let information affect their lives will we help them cope with the future. Most of the skills and facts we give them today will be obsolete within a few years. What we need to teach are techniques to manage information, to control the speed of life, to stay in touch with their humanity despite the dehumanization of the world around them. Otherwise, we are contributing to the growing crisis rather than helping to solve it.