A tangent for your thoughts...

I was sent this article by a professor of mine earlier today. I found I agreed strongly with the notion presented that the fast paced way of life we have all grown accustom to, hinders much of our ability to become the good human citizens we often aspire to be. Although this veers away from the line of thought we were on, I think it is fairly interesting and you should take a look. The idea that time is a major factor in why we often neglect to be the progressive thinking and acting people we want to be is a problem that E² should discuss. Perhaps it is not even a problem. Leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Slouka, Mark. "Quitting the Paint Factory: On the Virtues of Idleness."
Harper's 309 (November 2004): 57-66.

This is from p.58:

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, requisite to the construction of
a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a
space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free
press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and
what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we
might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most
ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idleness dangerous. All
manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. Not for nothing did our
mothers grow suspicious when we had "too much time on our hands." They knew we
might be up to something. And not for nothing did we whisper to each other,
when we were up to something, "Quick, look busy."

Mother knew instinctively what the keepers of the castles have always known:
that trouble-the kind that might threaten the symmetry of a well-ordered
garden-needs time to take root. Take away the time, therefore, and you choke
off the problem before it begins. Obedience reigns, the plow stays in the
furrow; things proceed as they must. Which raises an uncomfortable question:
Could the Church of Work--which today has Americans aspiring to sleep
deprivation the way they once aspired to a personal knowledge of God--be, at
base, an anti-democratic force?

....

what the democratic mind requires, above all, is time; time to consider its
options. Time to develop the democratic virtues of independence, orneriness,
objectivity, and fairness. Time, perhaps ... to ponder the course our unelected
captains have so generously set for us, and to consider mutiny when the iceberg
looms.

Which is precisely why we need to be kept busy. If we have no time to think, to
mull, if we have no time to piece together the sudden associations and
unexpected, mid-shower insights that are the stuff of independent opinion, then
we are less citizens than cursors, easily manipulated, vulnerable to the
currents of power.