The Age of Impatience

We are said to live in an age of austerity - as indeed we do and shall continue to do for many years. And there is much about today's society that is a lot less good than it was a few decades ago. Here, for example, I refer to values and conduct rather than technology and medicine.

We also inhabit an Age of  Impatience. This is often reflected in the use and setup of technical devices and worsened by adverse management practices that treat customers as punters to be dealt with (rather than served) quicker than is reasonably possible even when face to face.

We come across chronic impatience frequently on the phone (if we can contact a human being at all) and also in person at 'service' counters, for example in banks where staff do not seem to have the time or even the ability to concentrate in between distractions from their colleagues.

Incoming business landline calls, a high percentage of which are the detested robotic financial services plugs, often only give four or five rings which is never really enough if the phone is not directly to hand. Some personal callers have adopted this practice too, alas. Most mobile phones automatically end a call unless answered in a few rings.

Why do we do this? In some cases it's about money, in others it's a practice that has spread, unconsciously for many people, producing nervous and twitchy ways of living in as it were a personal 'short-now'. We do not need to do this and of course we can adjust as individuals when we become conscious of this habit.

There's been a campaign for some time (the Slow Movement) which seeks many ways of regaining a more human and civilised tempo. And if you'd like to find out about a project to give a really long term perspective, then there's a great book of essays entitled 'The Clock of the Long Now' and a website for the Long Now foundation - if we can find the time to visit it of course!