Crazy Town
With equal parts humor and in-depth analysis, Asher, Rob, and Jason safeguard their sanity while probing crazy-making topics like climate change, overshoot, runaway capitalism, and why we’re all deluding ourselves.
Crazy Town
Escaping Speedism: How to Slow Down and Enjoy the Collapse
Consult your inner tortoise to find novel ways of slowing down and living the good life. In a world haunted by just-in-time delivery, hyperactive business, accelerating environmental calamities, and metric tons of stress, Jason, Rob, and Asher work at a fast and furious pace to savor the moments, because there aren't many left.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Top 10 most unrealistic car crashes in movies
- Clip from the movie The Blues Brothers
- Clip from the movie Speed
- Clip from the movie Live Free or Die Hard
- Clip from the movie Furious 7
- Definition of high frequency trading
- Graphical representation of the Great Acceleration
- Interview with Hartmut Rosa
- Bart Zantvoort's article about Harmut Rosa's work
- Article about social acceleration by Bettina Hollstein and Hartmut Rosa in the Journal of Business Ethics
- Podcast episode about shrinking attention spans (episode 225 of Speaking of Psychology)
- Article about technology and perception of time by Fiona MacDonald in ScienceAlert
Rob Dietz
I'm Rob Dietz.
Jason Bradford
I'm Jason Bradford
Asher Miller
and I'm Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town where Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" has replaced the national anthem.
Melody Allison
Hey, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in Season 6, we're exploring escape route pathways that just might get us out of Crazy Town. In today's episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher are escaping speedism. And here's a quick warning. Sometimes this podcast uses swear words. Language! If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about Crazy Town. Now on to the show.
Asher Miller
Guys, I decided I'm into role playing.
Jason Bradford
Nice.
Rob Dietz
A little scared.
Asher Miller
And I decided I'm going to role play as Rob today.
Rob Dietz
I'm right here. I'm over here.
Asher Miller
No, you're gonna be Jason today.
Rob Dietz
Oh no.
Asher Miller
Jason, you're gonna be me. Okay? No, no, no, The reason I brought it up is because I wanted to not run a quiz by you. But just to kind of gauge where we're all that in terms of a very important question, right? Which is, what is the worst or most implausible car jumping scene in cinematic history?
Rob Dietz
Okay. I get the channeling me now. This is right up my alley.
Asher Miller
And I decided that I would do a little bit of homework. So I scanned, I didn't do every decade of cinematic history, but I went for like the last four decades. I went back to the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and then 2010.
Jason Bradford
Wow. You really put some time into this episode.
Asher Miller
Hey man. I work hard for this show.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, I can tell.
Asher Miller
I prep and I prep and I prep. All the important work.
Jason Bradford
That's fantastic. The research.
Rob Dietz
Alright. Whatcha got? Lay it on us.
Asher Miller
Okay, so I'm going to put in front of you four scenes. And we'll watch them and then we'll -- Yeah, so we're going to start with the iconic "Blues Brothers" film from 1980. Alright. Then we're gonna go to the classic "Speed" from 1994.
Rob Dietz
Keanu Reeves?
Jason Bradford
Sandra Bullock.
Asher Miller
Then we're gonna go into the franchise that is the "Die Hard" franchise.
Jason Bradford
Bruce Willis
Asher Miller
Going to the 2007 "Live Free or Die Hard."
Jason Bradford
Okay.
Asher Miller
And then we're going to another franchise, an even longer running franchise: the "Fast and Furious" franchise, which Rob I know you've watched every single one of those. You own them on your DVD collection.
Jason Bradford
I can't name any of the actors in this one because it's too new.
Rob Dietz
C'mon. Vin Diesel? Everybody knows that.
Jason Bradford
No I don't.
Rob Dietz
Well, the thing is, I was never a "Fast and Furious" fan, amazingly. I don't know why. I just decided not to be.
Asher Miller
The way you love cars. I mean. . .
Rob Dietz
Well, is it sad that the other three you named, I don't have to go watch the clips. I already know scenes.
Asher Miller
Alright, so we're gonna play them: "Blues Brothers," "Speed," "Live Free or Die Hard," "Fast and Furious Seven." Okay, here we go. Alright guys, so whatcha got? Which one, if you were to rank these?
Rob Dietz
So like possibility in the world of physics.
Asher Miller
I'm talking about implausibility.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Well, I think that's obvious for me. It's the "Blues Brothers," but that's because they meant it to be like that. They were playing upon the implausibility. So they made it implausible, and it's hysterically implausible.
Rob Dietz
That's the problem here is there's a difference between implausibility from an actual physics standpoint and implausibility from a suspend disbelief. If I'm watching a ridiculous comedy, slapstick, I expect cars to maybe not obey physics.
Asher Miller
Cars to fall from higher than the Sears Tower.
Rob Dietz
But before we go any further, I'm a little sad that there's nothing in here from the "Dukes of Hazzard."
Asher Miller
Yeah, but that's not a film.
Rob Dietz
I know. Well, they did make a movie.
Jason Bradford
I mean, in "Speed," the bus popped a wheelie. That was ridiculous.
Asher Miller
Right. So this is what prompted this whole thing. Like I would say, based upon what you guys were just laying out, which is, it's not so much. It's just the physics implausibility from a physics standpoint. It's like in the context of the plot. And I would say that "Speed" actually was like, "We have to make this work. We have to make this sort of seem believable." And because of that, it is even less believable to me.
Rob Dietz
The thing with "Speed," I remember the movie coming out and everybody was really high on it. It was a great movie. They've got the perfect setup for suspense. The bus has to stay above 50 miles an hour. And I remember losing all believability when the bus hits the end of the highway because there's no ramp. Like the bus, somehow it angles up and jumps across this huge --
Jason Bradford
It pops a wheelie.
Asher Miller
It's like trying to dunk.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it goes across an Evil Knievel chasm. But if you were actually to film that, a bus, it would just plummet.
Asher Miller
It would just fall straight down. Yeah, well, so look, we're not here to do a movie criticism. I mean, they're probably better podcasts for that. But the reason I brought it up is because we're doing escape routes this season, and the topic of today's episode is escaping speedism. And so of course, forgive me I thought of that film.
Jason Bradford
I mean, the other ones may be breaking the laws of physics also. But the "Speed" is just so obvious. It's the worst in terms of its obviousness. Okay? But the others are terrible as well.
Asher Miller
Yeah.
Rob Dietz
But getting on to the idea of speed. Yeah, this whole episode, as you said, it's about speedism, right? And the problem that things are going too fast. Seems like all of modern society is stuck on that bus with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. It's like we are addicted. We have to keep going that pace.
Jason Bradford
And we are imagining implausible scenarios by which we can actually survive. The bus has to pop a wheelie.
Asher Miller
We can jump the bridge, basically. That's right. Okay, let's get into speedism. What are we talking about here? Now, there's been a lot of advances in transportation technology, right. And I think that they have led big time to the speed of life changing. Just think about how long it takes to get from point A to point B before cars and highways existed, right? Or even before trains. Just a completely different world different world altogether. So again, I did my research.
Jason Bradford
Thank you.
Asher Miller
I went deep into the wells of the internet. I was thinking like, how long did it take John Adams, for example, to go from Boston to Philadelphia, you know, for the --
Jason Bradford
And for our Australian listeners, that is one of the founding fathers of America, you know. Authors of Declaration of Independence, Constitution --
Asher Miller
Our second president.
Rob Dietz
I love how you point out the Australian listeners.
Jason Bradford
Well, most of our listeners are from Australia. So I have to basically keep them along.
Asher Miller
And I don't know if this guy was a relative of him or not, but there's another Adams too who's arguably much more important. Samuel Adams, because he, you know, is the great famous Brewer, right? And we now have Samuel Adams beer, which is hopefully more important.
Jason Bradford
I hope that we export it to Australia. I'm hoping.
Asher Miller
Well, they've got their own stuff, Foster's. In any case. So you know, how long did it take the Adams to travel, you know, to go to the Continental Congress, let's say in 1776. So I was looking at his blogger posts from back then --
Rob Dietz
I thought you would just recreate the ride.
Asher Miller
Yeah, it's kind of hard to read with his ink. But in any case, it probably took between 10 and 15 days.
Jason Bradford
That's 20 or 30 miles a day.
Asher Miller
It's like 300 miles of journey, you know, again for our foreign listeners. About 480 or so kilometers. So, you know, 10-15 days. If you were to do it now, let's say. And we have to factor for traffic, right? Let's say there wasn't traffic. You know, it'd take you less than seven hours by train. It would take you less than five hours by car. And it would take you about 90 minutes by plane. I mean, shit, our transportation infrastructure sucks. I mean, if you were like in Japan, or China or even in Europe, you're taking a bullet train. You could probably slash the time, you know. And what Elon is working on with the vacuum tubes, you could be there in like, two seconds.
Rob Dietz
Even with a bike today, you could probably do it in three days.
Jason Bradford
Because we have the nice tarmacs and paths.
Asher Miller
Yeah, that's right. So when people think about speed, typically Americans think about speed, they do think about moving in, like cars, for example. And I think that the way transportation has changed has had a remarkable impact.
Jason Bradford
Well then also, of course, that impacts trade. So that all leads to the way life has been transformed because of our ability to get stuff from other parts of the world. So for example, tea was very important to our forefathers. It's not as important nowadays.
Asher Miller
They didn't like it. They dumped it in the harbor.
Jason Bradford
But you know, so kind of we turned our back on tea.
Asher Miller
Just for a little bit.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. But anyway, we stick the tea theme. On the Silk Road, from China to Rome, right, they would move tea across that. Yeah, it would take six months.
Rob Dietz
Wait, wait. Wouldn't they move silk across that?
Asher Miller
Well, they did all kinds of goods.
Jason Bradford
Silk and tea.
Rob Dietz
It's just not named the tea road.
Asher Miller
They wrapped tea in silk.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Okay.
Rob Dietz
Sorry. Sorry. A little aside.
Jason Bradford
It doesn't matter. All kinds of stuff. Silk, tea, whatever. Jeez Louise, the people that I have to work with. So now it only takes about a week to get tea that far. So vast improvement. And the thing that gets me, of course, that I think about when I go to the market, you can get like fresh blueberries all year round. Because they're finding them all over the world. They're going to Chile, and they're going . . .
Asher Miller
And they're sticking them on a plane. Fresh fish that gets, you know, overnighted to sushi restaurants, or whatever in Denver. It's ridiculous. You know, thinking about trade, this is completely different form of trade, but think about like high frequency trading, right? If you think about speed of trade, and we're talking about what's happened with the trading of stocks, right? The stock market. High frequency trading is insane.
Jason Bradford
Well, computers are doing this, right? Like nanoseconds of stuff.
Asher Miller
So what high frequency trading basically is is computer trading done with proprietary algorithms done buy computers, right? Like if you're trading commodities, you're trading currencies, for example, you're looking for changes that happen in the value of something. And you're jumping on it as quickly as possible. In some cases, they're actually changing the outcomes. But according to the NASDAQ, fully half of all stock market trades are in the form of these computer-generated high frequency trades. So there's just all this shit going on constantly. And these people are looking for little marginal edges based upon nanoseconds in a sense. That's about, I don't know, maybe there's a faster way of doing it, but that's kind of taking you all the way to the to the extreme.
Rob Dietz
Well, and I think you're making the turn to the speed of information. Because you talked about the speed of people. Then Jason, you're talking about the speed of goods.
Rob Dietz
Yes, silk.
Rob Dietz
And now you're talking about the speed of -
Asher Miller
Silk and only silk.
Rob Dietz
This podcast is no longer about speed. It's about silk. You're talking about the speed of these transactions. Well, that's all about the information. And I was thinking about the news. You know, when we were kids, you get a daily newspaper, maybe.
Jason Bradford
Might even have a route.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, maybe it was wrapped in silk.
Asher Miller
That was only the Wall Street Journal. You had to pay a premium.
Jason Bradford
I remember listening to the -- You could hear it hit the door sometimes. The guy would throw it.
Rob Dietz
Oh yeah.
Asher Miller
Mine was not good. He would just crash right through the window.
Rob Dietz
Well, there was that video game, Paperboy. Do you remember that? Where you were the paperboy, and you try to throw the newspaper into houses.
Asher Miller
Yes, I remember that.
Jason Bradford
That's awesome. Kids these days have no idea what we're talking about.
Asher Miller
They're like, what is this game? What is a paper?
Rob Dietz
But then think about it. You go from that -- There was also nightly news on the TV.
Jason Bradford
Sure. Walter Cronkite.
Rob Dietz
You'd have a half hour, hour show, whatever. But then you got the 24 hour news cycle, like CNN and cable channels, and those started multiplying.
Jason Bradford
Ted Turner kinda started that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. And then now you've got streaming, right? And you've got this just instantaneous worldwide spread of news. So you're getting information at a rate that you never had before, and more information. It's kind of dizzying.
Asher Miller
You're just talking about in our lifetimes, right? And we're ancient. But if you go further back, like, I mean, it's really hard to imagine. People didn't know who won the presidency for weeks sometimes.
Jason Bradford
And then the telegraph machine was so huge, because you could least get stuff across the country faster. Across the Atlantic.
Asher Miller
It was weeks or months to get information.
Rob Dietz
And I mean, we tend to focus on the downsides of these things as you know, it's kind of our schtick.
Asher Miller
No, I don't think that's our schtick.
Rob Dietz
But I do just want to point out, there is some upside to this kind of speed. Like oftentimes, I think about in the past, when I wanted to learn how to do something. I might have to go down to the library, checkout books and get it all wrong. Get another book. I might have to hire a coach or some kind of teacher or something. But now you can jump on YouTube and get 12 tutorials on whatever it is that you want to do.
Jason Bradford
Oh sure. You want a better tennis forehand, just go on YouTube.
Asher Miller
Well look, this podcast wouldn't exist if it wasn't for speed. I mean, think about the speed of the Internet and being able to transmit energy. Just even with a internet age. If we were back in the days of like, dial up, people having to download -- First of all, their hard drive wasn't big enough to download an 80 megabyte file, you know, like one of our podcasts. But it would take them all day to download that puppy. Do you know? And then be like --
Jason Bradford
"Do we have to listen to this? All my bandwidth for this?"
Asher Miller
Yeah. So the only reason people bother to listen to us is because they can download it so fast.
Jason Bradford
Now, I also think of the speed of fight scenes in movies has also gone up.
Rob Dietz
Oh yeah. Like back to our buddy Keanu Reeves, like the John Wick stuff . . . Those are some fast fights.
Jason Bradford
Unbelievable. I mean, Jackie Chan, of course, I think pioneered a lot of this stuff. But it was much more choreographed and complex. But I think if, okay, all kidding aside, the speed at which we are able to kill people has gone up with technology, you know? It used to be, what was that movie? "300," or whatever. I can't remember the movie name.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, the Spartans.
Jason Bradford
The Spartans, you know, they got swords and stuff. And then you start shooting people. You have machine guns. And now you can launch a hypersonic missile and destroy a whole city. So much more efficient.
Rob Dietz
Violence has sped up.
Rob Dietz
The speed of violence. That's great.
Jason Bradford
Sorry about that.
Asher Miller
I was talking about the upsides here. We're just sticking with it.
Rob Dietz
Well, let's get back to the downside. Let's get back to what we're good at.
Asher Miller
I think a key thing about this speed stuff, or one thing to think about is that it's not just that things are faster. Right? And the benefits and the consequences of that. But it's also that if it wasn't for speed, certain things wouldn't be possible. I mean, we just talked about the fact that no one would listen to our podcast. But back to the example of moving people, right? If it wasn't so relatively fast to get from, let's say, the United States over to continental Europe, people wouldn't do it. I mean, so there's a very famous documentary about the Griswold family's European vacation --
Jason Bradford
Wonderful Americans. Yeah.
Rob Dietz
You are channeling me today. Good work.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, he is.
Asher Miller
They wouldn't have ever done that trip, right? I mean, you couldn't. Who could take out the months it would have taken, you know, to travel across the ocean.
Jason Bradford
And the poor Parisians never would have met the Griswolds.
Asher Miller
I know. They'd be missing out.
Rob Dietz
I don't know. What about these people that are on the yearlong cruise now? They're taking the time.
Asher Miller
Right.
Jason Bradford
Interesting. Interesting.
Rob Dietz
Well, I think you're actually making another turn here, which is to the idea of accelerationism, which is the first derivative of speedism.
Jason Bradford
I thought, what's it --
Rob Dietz
Mathematically speaking.
Jason Bradford
Okay, I thought speed was the first derivative of acceleration.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
Jason Bradford
I don't know.
Rob Dietz
One way you're integrating or taking derivatives.
Jason Bradford
We're doing something mathematically though here.
Rob Dietz
That's a long time ago.
Jason Bradford
We're putting a square in front of something.
Asher Miller
The brilliance and just the eruditeness of this conversation. Stunning.
Rob Dietz
No, the idea is that it's not just that things are going faster. But all of this taken together is accelerating the entire pace of change for society. You can really see it over the last, say, 50 to 75 years. And you know, you could have questions about when's the period of the greatest acceleration.
Jason Bradford
Right. They talked about doubling time, right? And that at each doubling you've used as much of something as you have in all previous history. Right. It's just madness. I think in my lifetime, you know, there's been at least a doubling, and in some cases, one and a half, or whatever doublings -- which is a weird thing to think about --Of oil use and all these things, plastic production. And that's just amazing to think about. So there's this great graphic -- I think Will Steffen was his name, he was part of the Stockholm Resilience Center. And they produce these graphs on these socioeconomic and earth system trends. And they're all these hockey stick graphs, right? Because when you have this acceleration, when you have this incredible growth, it all looks like in the near term it has just gone vertical on these graphs. So hockey sticks of doom, they sort of look like. But some people of course, GDP is on this graph. The hockey stick of GDP, or world population or, you know, hydroelectric dams. Some consider that progress. But on the earth systems that we have, right? CO2 on the atmosphere or rate of extinction, these are terrible things to look at.
Asher Miller
Yeah, so Will was an Australian scientist. Unfortunately, he passed away last year. And I think he was the one who coined the term, The Great Acceleration. If you look at these hockey stick graphs that you're talking about with trend lines that are environmental and social, and you just see this insane dynamic of all these things going straight to the roof. And it's interesting because obviously, a lot of the changes, we've talked about this extensively, go back to the harnessing of fossil fuels, right? Which kind of uncorked everything for us. But there is sort of this dynamic, even in a near term, like you were saying, Rob, last 50 - 75 years. It's a whole other level of acceleration that's happening.
Rob Dietz
If you look at his graphics, like you said, Jason, there's the socioeconomic on one side, and then the Earth system trends on the other side. And to me, it's the whole Crazy Town premise. Because like you said, most people look at the left side, the socioeconomic, and they say, that's progress. And that's what we're saying is, well, maybe its progress in the very, very short term that cannot be sustained. And so we better find a different model. And it's crazy to think our whole economic system is based on these hockey sticks of doom that are going to put us into extreme peril when it's right there in front of your face. People aren't paying attention. And they're misconstruing what kind of progress we actually have.
Asher Miller
I think it's actually interesting, because, you know, what you're pointing out effectively is the unsustainability of that progress. The consequences of things, right? But there's a lot of arguments to be made and have been made, even just within the social sphere, that these things that we might view as progress actually come with a lot of social consequence. And there's a German sociologist and political scientist named Hartmut Rosa who developed this theory. I would call it the Theory of Social Acceleration. He's talked a lot about kind of the negative impacts of this dynamic. So his view, and I'm going to quote him here is that "Society is modern if its mode of stabilization is dynamic. That is, if it needs progressive growth, acceleration, and innovation just to reproduce its social structure and to maintain its status quo." What he's saying here is that, in his view, it's a key component of modernity to have a society that kind of needs -- We've talked about how societies need economic growth in order to function, modern societies. But he's talking about sort of this dynamic of the growth of innovation, acceleration of social change, and all these things being kind of like required in order for a society be stable at all. Modern society to be stable.
Jason Bradford
So in some ways, I think it sets up expectations, right? You expect, yeah, my kid's generation is going to have it better than I am. And you're willing to sacrifice in the near term thinking that, okay, well, I'm making a better world. And you see this often with, you know, economists will say stuff like, "Well, don't worry too much about solving today's problems, or paying for today's problems. Wait, and we're going to be so much more advanced later." It's just an incredible assumption, isn't it?
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, I like that idea. You said from Rosa that society's mode of stabilization is dynamic. You can add that right into the oxymorons. Dynamic stabilization, right?
Jason Bradford
Right. It's like if you put me on one of those like playground -- What are those things?
Rob Dietz
Like a merry-go-round?
Jason Bradford
On the playground . . .They had those ones -- I don't if they allow them anymore because they were so dangerous. Remember them as a kid though?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, you get thrown off of them all the time.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, you try to make it go faster and faster. Next thing you know, kids are flying off and crying? It kind of feels like --
Asher Miller
Those were the good old days.
Jason Bradford
Those were the good old days.
Asher Miller
Just rub some dirt in it.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, you get splinters.
Rob Dietz
It was the speedism that got you. If you'd just gone at a sustainable speed, you wouldn't have been thrown off the merry-go-round.
Asher Miller
So boring, Rob.
Rob Dietz
Well, I've seen a video of somebody taking their motorcycle, the back wheel, and putting that up against the merry-go-round so they could really fling it.
Jason Bradford
That's the next level stuff. Motorize the merry-go-round for the playground.
Rob Dietz
So let's get into Rosa's ideas hear a little bit more. He talks about three types of social acceleration. And the first one is maybe the most obvious. That's technological acceleration. And we can all look at that, like I said in the last 50 to 75 years you've seen a huge jump in technology. I think it's kind of interesting to think was it a bigger jump in the 20th century? Or has it been a bigger jump more during our lifetime?
Jason Bradford
What about the 19th century? Remember we had this podcast . . .
Asher Miller
We had a podcast in the 19th century?
Jason Bradford
Season, was it Season Four on --
Rob Dietz
Watershed Moments in History?
Jason Bradford
Watershed Moments in History. Yeah. Remember the whole thing on the World's Fairs, and how each World's Fair really was unleashing a new set of technologies? But we're talking like plate class windows.
Asher Miller
The telephone.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Electricity.
Asher Miller
Refrigeration.
Jason Bradford
Lighting.
Rob Dietz
The wheel.
Jason Bradford
So I almost feel like you know, the 19th century, it was just unbelievable stuff. In the 20th century, sure. We honed them and we got you know, better appliances. But anyway, we can argue about the qualitative changes that happened in the 19th and 20th centuries were incredible.
Asher Miller
Yeah I mean, look, I would say we probably -- I mean, certainly with transportation, we've hit kind of the diminishing returns of technological advancements, right? We're not going much faster.
Rob Dietz
It really was once that wheel got perfected. Once they removed the last corner on that octagon, or whatever it was.
Asher Miller
I think they're gonna bring back square wheels. Just you wait. I think you're right. I think you could argue that the impact of technological change or acceleration of technological change, 100-200 years ago, whatever, was maybe more dramatic in terms of changing day to day life. But the pace of life is dramatically different.
Jason Bradford
The pace has gone up.
Asher Miller
Pace has gone, I think, way up.
Rob Dietz
And are you talking kind of like just the rhythm of day to day living, or . . . ?
Asher Miller
So I'm gonna quote a guy named Bart Zantvoort for who wrote something about Rosa's work. And I just thought it was a good way of kind of describing the pace of life thing. So bear with me, it's a bit of quote here. So quote, "The acceleration of the pace of life can be explained in terms of the following paradox. How is it possible that our lives seem to get, or at least feel busier and busier, despite the fact that technological change, which allows us to do more in less time, should leave us with more free time on our hands. The point of inventions like the washing machine, the car and email, seems to be that they should save us time. But the availability of cars has led us to live further away from work. And although writing and sending emails is faster than writing and sending letters, the volume of emails sent and received has increased to such an extent that we spend more rather than less time on them." And so I think that's a great way of kind of, I think people can all relate to the pace of life. Even though we've had all these technological advances that have actually gone up arguably more than then the benefits of that technological advance.
Jason Bradford
He actually also gives changes in fashion, for example, that accelerated. So typically, you know, you had an average of maybe 10 years that a fashion trend would last. 10 years in the 20th century. And now, and we're talking, we're in the first quarter of the 21st century. Now with fast fashion, the trends are as short as three to five months. And younger generations are especially more caught up in this. And they also then, it's not just about fashion, but they end up changing relationships and jobs more often. They tend to be accepting of that and their life tends to have turnover after turnover.
Asher Miller
Well could see, yeah, on the social change, which is the third of his three, right? We have technological acceleration, pace of life, and social change, which is what you're talking about. You could see that even just in terms of what's considered sort of like culturally appropriate or not appropriate. For example, terminology. The sort of velocity of how these things are changing it feels -- And I think for some people, it can be bewildering. It's like, wait a second, now, I'm supposed to be using this kind of terminology or that word, or that word is bad, or whatever it is. And I'm not . . . You know, you can be agnostic about whether it's good or bad. It's just the pace of it can really feel dramatic for people.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, and I think same thing. There's some cases where that's clearly confusing or makes life tougher. There's cases where it can be good, like the Me Too movement and exposing bunch of dastardly acts out there. It seemed like that all accelerated and hit a tipping point, which, you know, I would say it was a very good thing. But that also gets to the idea of the positive feedback loop, which we've discussed back in our Hidden Drivers season, and how that affects all of this idea around accelerationism. You know, we've got those three forms, technological acceleration, pace of life, and social change. And they contribute to each other and build on one another, you know. Like technological acceleration, of course, with all this technology contributes to social change. I mean, the things that we're spending our time on is at least in part related to what's available to us.
Jason Bradford
Smartphones, for example.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it's why we're sitting here in front of microphones doing a podcast that you couldn't have done 10 years ago, or whatever.
Jason Bradford
Right. The washing machines aren't getting better. The cars aren't much faster. The planes aren't breaking the sound barrier.
Asher Miller
Right. For people to listen to on their phones. Yeah, your point is, they're feeding on each other. And the overall thing is accelerating faster and faster in terms of social acceleration. I mentioned this briefly, but I think it's worth pointing out that most of the acceleration, I think that we're experiencing or seeing is actually not so much in the biophysical world --
Jason Bradford
What are you talking about? The cars can jump off of highway bridges and get across a huge chasm.
Asher Miller
Cars can't, but buses can.
Jason Bradford
That was in the 90s.
Asher Miller
And we've talked about this before, too, if you think about Moore's law, right, the doubling time of computer chip's processing speed, which is an exponentially growing phenomenon, coupled with it, like the internet and all that. We're really seeing it actually in terms of information, and the kind of impact that that is having. So even the fact that it feels to me, I'll just say, it feels to me like I'm able to get stupid plastic shit that I buy on Amazon faster than I would have been able to get it five years ago even. And I do think that there has been quote unquote, "improvement" in that. But that's probably not driven by the fact that the trucks that are transporting it faster. It has to do with the efficiency gains that they have in terms of all the informational systems.
Jason Bradford
Supply chain logistics have been incredible.
Asher Miller
Yeah. And probably the fact that we've got these huge corporations that have swallowed up so much of the marketplace that they could have warehousing all over the place. So it doesn't have to maybe go as far as it had to before. So it feels like oh my god, everything's so much faster. A lot of that really is driven by computer technology I think, in particular.
Jason Bradford
Now, there's really strong evidence that this is really impacting us in some ways that I consider pretty negative. And we can measure these changes to what's happening to human beings and their and their minds. So a key one is attention spans. And Gloria Mark, a PhD, professor of informatics at University of California Irvine studies the digital media and its impact on people's lives and did an analysis of changing attention spans. And here's what Gloria said, quote, "Back in 2004, we found the average attention span on any screen to be two and a half minutes, on average. Throughout the years, it became shorter. So by around 2012, we found it to be 75 seconds. And then in the last five, six years, we found it to average about 47 seconds, and others have replicated this result within a few seconds." So that's just astonishing to me. I mean, we're talking within 20 years attention span dropping from two and a half minutes to less than a minute. 47 seconds.
Asher Miller
So at this rate like in 10 years, three seconds.
Jason Bradford
We'll be like goldfish. All of us.
Asher Miller
Yes. In fact, I was going to ask you to TLDR what you were just saying because it was talking too long.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it tells me that our podcast is, you know, like 90 minutes too long. It should be about 47 seconds.
Jason Bradford
Well, they'll be implanting us with chips soon so that we can keep up.
Asher Miller
I will say, I'm gonna sound like such a boomer here, but a lot of younger people, students, they're consuming information that's, that's online, right? And, you know, you can have professors assigning them to watch videos, or even sometimes podcasts. We actually have, PCI has some of our stuff out there that instructors are using. And it's not uncommon for students to be listening at 1.5 speed or two speed.
Jason Bradford
Yes, exactly.
Asher Miller
Which I don't know if you've ever tried, but holy shit. Like I can't keep up with it at all. But people are becoming conditioned to be able to - I am skeptical by how much they're able to actually take in, but they are operating like that. Not only is the information coming to them more quickly, they're consuming it when they receive it even more quickly.
Rob Dietz
Yeah.
Asher Miller
It's pretty nuts.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, this stuff is fascinating -- the effects on the way that we deal in the world. And another study, another person that's looking at this is Dr. Ephah McLaughlin who studies, how do we perceive time. And McLaughlin found that people who are always online or working on their phone or whatever, they overestimate how much time passes. So if they're trying to figure out when an hour is up, they're off by 10 minutes.
Jason Bradford
So they say 50 minutes have gone by where they think an hour has?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it's like time, they just can't track it anymore.
Jason Bradford
And time seems to be going faster for them it sounds like.
Asher Miller
Yeah, and actually even people -- They've done studies on even people who don't use technology very much. If you put in front of them like, read this ad online, or read this excerpt from like a print book, they feel like time went faster when they're reading the ad online. So there's just something about the technology that's kind of changing people's perception of time. And you could see, like, in terms of thing about sort of some of the social dynamics of speedism, or accelerationism. You know, the first thing I thought about was actually kind of the dynamic with social media that I find so troubling. And even in the mainstream media, which is this sort of like rush to judgment. This pressure to be the first mover in a space. So like, you've seen this, for example, with like the news media wanting to call an election result before their competitors. I think they've learned and try to correct for that, because there have been mistakes in the past. Like, I don't know if guys remember Bush vs Gore, right? They actually switched it a few times with that. Because they wanted to be the ones at first. Now with social media, it's like somebody posts something, and you need to be the first shit talker on there. You're gonna be the first one to like denounce them, or attack them, or give them plaudits, or whatever it is. Because there's the social esteem that you get.
Jason Bradford
And there's no time to hear both sides, or reflect, or try and find context, or nuance. And then, by the time 20 minutes have gone by a conclusion has been drawn and everyone's piled on. And how do you back out?
Asher Miller
And you can't correct the record, right? It just becomes fixed even though it was like incomplete or whatever, right? So you see that in terms of dynamics, in terms of how people are receiving information, reacting to it, you know. You have the whole like Facebook adage, move fast and break things. So sort of like corporate culture, particularly, I would say, coming from the technology sector, which is like, yeah, we've got to move fast and it's okay to break shit. So what if we broke democracy? It's like, it's fine, right? And interestingly, I was thinking about this in terms of like, the response to climate change, which is something that's near and dear to our hearts. And I have obviously huge sympathy for it. But it is, the more urgent that the crisis becomes, the more sense that we have to respond to it with speed, right? And that means that might lead us to adopt solutions that maybe have really unintended consequences. That maybe are not actually true solutions.
Rob Dietz
Maybe that don't even make sense in the first place.
Asher Miller
Right. So there's kind of this rush in the sense of, we've got to solve this problem. We gotta get into it right away.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. I myself am an extremely patient person and never get flustered or, you know, feel rushed. But I've noticed that other people have such over the top expectations sometimes for customer service. And you know, of course, during the pandemic, there was trouble with hiring and keep hitting staff and people were sick. But you know, some people get impatient.
Rob Dietz
Not you.
Jason Bradford
Not me.
Rob Dietz
Not you.
Jason Bradford
And then there's also the whole talk about how, if you've got a boss - Now, I don't have any.
Rob Dietz
No. You would not thrive under a boss.
Jason Bradford
No, I don't understand this. But apparently people who have a boss, the bosses expect them almost to be on all the time, right? Like the idea is you've got your phone and so the culture has shifted where everyone's present and everyone needs to be served now.
Asher Miller
Right. Particularly with white collar jobs, you know. The whole idea again, that's the combination technology and then expectation of speed.
Jason Bradford
And I think because what we're getting is we're getting addicted to dopamine. And it's becoming this short attention span and this cycle of, okay, I feel some tension. I want something. I got it.
Rob Dietz
Gotta have it now.
Jason Bradford
And if you don't, you get anxious, right? So that's an addiction cycle, I think. It manifests then in all aspects of your life, in other words.
Asher Miller
Yeah. An aspect that, to me, is really resonant in something that Rosa has written about, and maybe the reason he's really gotten into this question of social acceleration, really has to do with what the impact is on the broader society and culture. I mean, there are impacts on us as individuals that we're sort of talking about here. But you think about it at large, what happens to society when things are accelerating so much? What is the impact in terms of our social ties and social connections that people are feeling? The sense of like, things are outside of my control? And I do think that when I see the trend towards a right wing populism, for example. That's happening across the world. As we're recording this, there's just an election in Indonesia, one of the largest countries in the world. Where they went, they voted for a pretty right wing authoritarian military dude. There are lots of reasons why those things might be happening. There could be people's sense of being left behind economically, you know. We talked about that with like, globalization and neoliberalism, you know. So there's anger about being left behind from that standpoint. Maybe there's actual embedded things around sort of jingoism, or xenophobia, or whatever around cultural change that's happening because of immigration or just the demographic changes that are happening.
Jason Bradford
The classic explanations you're giving us right now.
Asher Miller
But I think that there is something here around the fact that if the pace of life, everything is accelerating so much that change is happening so quickly, and people are feeling like it's outside of their control. They can't handle it. They would turn towards figures that provide them with a sense of like comfort, and security, and stability. Think about it, "Make America Great Again." This idea of going back to the past. It may not be just like, I want to go back to the days of segregation you know, with like, separate drinking fountains. It may not be going that far. It might just be like, this is going too fucking fast for me.
Jason Bradford
Right. Somebody slow this down.
Asher Miller
Exactly.
Jason Bradford
Right. Somebody put me back in my comfort zone somehow. I get it. I think that's a legitimate perspective. And it is not the one you hear a lot. It gives a little more, I'm a little more sensitive to people that might feel that way. Like you can understand like, we evolved in these tribal bands where change was relatively probably slow. And nowadays, like to expect people to constantly be adapting as fast as we're expecting them to, I think is a little bit absurd.
Rob Dietz
Well, of course, it brings me to a pop culture analysis of this phenomenon you're talking about. You guys of course, knew of the great film, "The Shawshank Redemption."
Jason Bradford
Yeah. That's a great one.
Asher Miller
I think we've talked about it.
Rob Dietz
Well, the character Brooks Hatlen, he's like the old guy in prison and he finally gets paroled.
Asher Miller
Right. He was there forever.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. And he finally gets paroled. He's on the outside now, and he writes a letter back to the prison. So the film is just showing him kind of going about his life, but he --
Asher Miller
And this is sent in what? The 60s?
Rob Dietz
Yes, I think the 60s, maybe. So you hear his voiceover of the letter where he's saying to the guys still in prison. He's like, "Dear fellas, I can't believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid, but now they're everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry." And of course, spoiler alert. If you haven't seen that movie, well, go see it and don't listen to this. But he has a serious problem with the world and with depression and kills himself, you know. And I think it's a total statement on what you're just describing Jason. We're not evolved for this pace of change.
Rob Dietz
This is a message to all you Crazy Townies out there. Sometimes Jason, Asher and I wish he could be here in the room with us when we're riffing on ecomodernist nightmares, the end of capitalism, the collapse of civilization, and lines from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Since you can't be here. Maybe we could still be in contact in another way. If you've got a comment about the show, or you've want to throw some shade at us, or you've got a question . . .
Asher Miller
Or you have any suggestion of escape route stuff.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, maybe you've got a story of your own you want to share? Go over to Apple Podcasts or iTunes and leave us a review and write your comment there. In your comment, include your idea, whatever it is, and we'll think about sharing it in an episode.
Jason Bradford
How's this? "I'll be back." Is that any good?
Rob Dietz
Oh my God. That's terrible.
Jason Bradford
You try it. You try it.
Rob Dietz
Get to the choppah!
Okay, listener feedback time. We got this one on iTunes. It came with a five star rating. Thanks a lot. Anonymous. The title of it is, "Comic relief about the end of the world as we know it." I like that REM reference. That's good.
Jason Bradford
Great song. Great song.
Rob Dietz
So this person says, "The fundamental value worldview shift as indigenous peoples refer to it cannot happen without systematically deconstructing the existing worldview. But that cannot happen without the core foundation of a new worldview in place." They go on to say, "I'm not a fan of Heidegger, but that is how he put it. Explain your values and develop your vision for a future. Make it more universal than the counter-cultural values. Do kind of a monkey wrench gang thing." So I don't know. I kind of agree with that. That's the Buckminster Fuller vision, right? Build a new model that works.
Asher Miller
Well, I think they're pointing out just how challenging of a predicament we're in, right. And we talk about this a lot, especially when we're talking about, well, we need an infrastructure change in order to have structural and superstructure change. But we can't have an infrastructure change if we don't change our superstructure and what we see.
Rob Dietz
Yeah.
Asher Miller
So it's, um, it's sort of a paradox.
Jason Bradford
Well, we can't plan ahead or do anything proactive. I think the infrastructure is going to change no matter what, right?
Asher Miller
Sure.
Jason Bradford
So that's the dilemma. That's the predicament.
Asher Miller
So we're working on the edges. And I think this listener probably agrees that there's, I would hope they would agree that there's some worthwhile stuff to do that sort of --
Jason Bradford
So what's this have to do with the to do with the Hindenburg?
Asher Miller
It's not the Hindenburg.
Rob Dietz
Heidegger.
Asher Miller
Heidegger.
Jason Bradford
Oh, not Heineken?
Asher Miller
Not Heineken.
Rob Dietz
Alright, whatever. Anyway, the one thing that's clear is the egg came first. Thanks for that comment, listener.
Jason Bradford
Wow.
Asher Miller
Okay, so here we are visiting with our good buddy Marvin Harris's Memorial lens of doom, taking a look at the world of speedism through that lens. For listeners who aren't as familiar, just a quick summary, you know, this is a view of understanding the world that we inhabit through the lens of infrastructure, which is the physical world, not just the built environment, but also the physical world structure, which is the rules of society, you know, or laws or politics, those kinds of things. And the superstructure, which is the belief systems and worldviews that kind of govern the way that we function. And we've talked a lot about how infrastructure in a sense drives the others, right? So let's start with infrastructure. And when I think about speedism, I mean, it's obvious, but it's worth just restating the infrastructure of speedism is a lot of the high dense energy inputs that we've had that allow us to move people and things far distances quickly. That's fossil fuels, primarily, and the built environment that we built around that. And then when it comes to technology, you know, it's everything from the internet to computer chips, and hard drives, and mobile devices.
Jason Bradford
And satellites and fiber optic cables and all of that.
Asher Miller
Now, we experience, as we said, before, we experience, I think a lot of us experience, the pace of acceleration most in the form of technology, but really information technology space and communications. And it can be easy to think that that doesn't really have much physical consequence.
Jason Bradford
Right. The illusion.
Asher Miller
But the truth is, all of this stuff comes down to the physical world. The biophysical world comes with great consequences and limits.
Jason Bradford
Well I mean, if you look at the hockey sticks of doom or whatever, we're using more stuff now than ever in the world. We haven't dematerialized one bit even though now we think we have an information economy. It's complete bullshit.
Rob Dietz
Well, when thinking about the infrastructure of speed, I had a weird thought here. Like I agree with you. That's the main stuff, the oil, the technology, all that. But I wonder, is there something innate in us, the wiring of a human mind, let's say? Like, do we have an innate desire for speed? The reason this came up for me is I thought about the playground. When you're growing up in school, the fastest kid had the most esteem. Like when a new kid would come to school you had to race him against the fastest kid and see like, does this kid measure up? Maybe this is the new best kid in the school.
Jason Bradford
Sure. Like who's gonna get picked first on the soccer team, or whatever, intramural soccer. I think that's true, actually. I think there's an advantage to being faster.
Asher Miller
It's probably not just humans.
Rob Dietz
Like evolutionarily. Like the tiger can't catch you.
Jason Bradford
Exactly. But I'm gonna broaden this even. And I want you to think about little birds flitting around outside and mammals in general. The whole evolution of the warm-blooded animals, right. And it's happened a couple times, obviously with happening within the lineage that is birds and the lineage that is mammals. They can be active when the cold-blooded animals right, like the reptiles and amphibians, can't be active. They can't be there or they're active but they're slow. Like you ever see how slow a salamander moves compared to a little mouse, or whatever, that might be the same size?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, a hummingbird. How fast those wings are flapping.
Jason Bradford
It's incredible. Now the tradeoff is that they need a lot more energy to survive. So there's this positive feedback loop that if you are active, because we're warm blooded, you can hunt more. You can get more resources. But you better get it or you're going to die of starvation. And the other one I like to think about is if you ever had a pet cat versus a pet iguana. They're about the same size but the cat will call your eyes out if you don't feed it. The iguana you can maybe throw it something once a week and it's fine. So, yes, I think there is something there about the pace that animals have and our innate warm bloodedness.
Rob Dietz
Now you used to keep your cat and your igunana in the same aquarium, right? What would happen?
Asher Miller
He was trying to create a hybrid.
Jason Bradford
Well so I think, you know, with fossil fuels, it's analogous to having hot blood. It's like you're burning these things and you're just like creating all this power. So I think that's what essentially our society ended up being one that was maybe agrarian in the past. That could sort of slow down with the season, you know. There's a harvest period, but then you're quiet and you can maybe go into a hibernation mode in the winter and mend your major clothes, or whatever. And now it's everything all the time as fast as you can.
Asher Miller
And with electricity and lights it's 24/7
Jason Bradford
And capitalism and consumerism, it reinforces that. It's a requirement. Almost like we're saying that it's a structure of modernity then that you have to keep going and going and accelerate.
Asher Miller
Right. So you're saying like capitalism as a structure?
Jason Bradford
Yes. In the Marvin Harris sort of perspective that our modern capitalist society structurally is sort of set up for the speed and acceleration.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, you remember that slogan that UPS used to have. That's the big delivery company.
Asher Miller
"What can brown do for you?"
Rob Dietz
That's even better. I forgot about that. No. It was, "Moving at the speed of business." The speed of business. Yeah, that's the tagline. And you know, going back to your moving of goods, this is kind of blurring the lines between structure and infrastructure. You know, the structure is we have to move at the speed of business. The infrastructure was like, you went from the Pony Express, up to the U.S. mail service on through to now UPS, FedEx, and then Amazon just whipping around at unbelievable speed.
Asher Miller
Right. And a lot of it is just back to the capitalism point. Its competitive advantage. It's one of the ways that companies can differentiate themselves in order to get business right. And that's why Amazon is looking at doing drone deliveries in urban cities. So you don't have to wait a day. You can get it in an hour.
Rob Dietz
And they're crushing UPS because they're just wondering what brown can do for us.
Asher Miller
And it's such a philosophical question.
Rob Dietz
What company came up with that one?
Asher Miller
I mean, what can brown do for us? I was thinking about, this is kind of speculative, but I'm just wondering if advertising plays like a structural role in speedism. And by that I mean like, at least here, the way we structure advertising, which, in some ways kind of supports a lot of our information infrastructure and industry.
Jason Bradford
Sure, it pays for it.
Asher Miller
Yeah, exactly.
Asher Miller
I can't wait to hear today's sponsor at the end of the episode.
Asher Miller
Our entertainment and our news and all these things, largely the business models to be paid for through advertising. But I remember it being a kid going to the Netherlands to spend time with family, and the way that they would do things there is that they would run a show complete, you know, like a 20-minute sitcom with no interruptions. But then there's like 10 minutes of ads. And with 10 minutes of ads, you know, maybe you could run a three-minute ad or a five minute ad. It can get a little more in-depth. But here in our culture, it's like 30 seconds, 15 seconds.
Jason Bradford
Do I really want that toilet paper?
Asher Miller
Right. They're gonna do like literally, you know, a trial for you.
Jason Bradford
A wipe-off.
Asher Miller
Here, you know, you've got to do in 30 seconds, 15 seconds. And I wonder if that kind of like creates this mindset that we all have to be really pithy in how we communicate things. The whole idea of an elevator pitch, for example, you know. Get to the point, right?
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Speed dating.
Asher Miller
Exactly. No it's interesting, some big tech, like YouTube, went in the opposite direction on some level. And they're like, "Oh actually, we want to run ads. But the way to run as many ads as possible to keep people on our site for as long as possible." And that's when they open up their videos -- They used to have a limit on video length. Then they opened up so now Joe Rogan does an 18 hour podcast. Do you know what I mean?
Jason Bradford
We thought ours were too long.
Rob Dietz
Okay, that brings us then to the superstructure or the culture and beliefs of speedism. And I think this is pretty simple honestly. You've already mentioned Jason kind of this entitlement that we have around, "Hey, I want it now. Get it to me instantaneously." But there's a couple of underlying themes, especially with the structures of capitalism and the policies there. And one is that time is money. Everything that happens costs so you have to boom, boom, boom. Get it done. There's also another cultural belief that I see all the time, which is that faster is always better. Well maybe not in the bedroom, I guess. But, you know, certainly in business. Certainly in sports. And you know, it's just kind of this notion that speed is always desirable. And it's gotten even to the point where I feel like, if things slow down, people wish that time would go away. Like that, "Oh no, I have to wait for this. I wish I was already there. I wish this was already done." It's like you're willing to have yourself closer to death to not have to slow down.
Asher Miller
It's just the boredom. I think people are scared of boredom.
Jason Bradford
They're scared of boredom.
Asher Miller
Yeah, it's hard. I mean, I see it with my kids, you know?
George Costanza
Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Rob Dietz
Okay, this version of do the opposite is going to be more of a do as I say than as I do. Because we have to stay above 50 miles an hour and get this out of the way.
Jason Bradford
Yes.
Rob Dietz
So let's do some stories of escaping speedism. And I've talked to you guys before that there was that time when I was coming down to Corvallis from Portland to record podcast episodes, and my car broke down. And basically, it was taking me all day to get down here. And I frickin loved it.
Jason Bradford
That's great to hear. I should break your car.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. I mean, seriously. The slow down, it was such a weird headspace. I enjoyed the observations that I got. Like just looking around at what's going on the landscape. Of course it gave me time to judge and criticize everybody around me as is my . . .
Asher Miller
You enjoyed all the people honking their horn to you ,flipping you off, like, "Why are you going so slow."
Rob Dietz
It wasn't that. I mean, I was not blocking traffic. But you know, I ended up coming down by bike. I ended up coming down by train. I ended up charging a car for six hours while trying to recharge. And I don't know. I mean, it really got me to a place where if we all just agreed to slow down a bit, I'm pretty sure we would all enjoy life a lot more.
Jason Bradford
We'd be okay.
Asher Miller
To be honest, I think there's a process though of learning to be more patient. If we're a bit acculturated or acclimatized to a certain pace of life. And then even with intention we try to slow down. There's kind of like, I don't know . . .
Jason Bradford
Well in cities people walk faster, right? You know those studies?
Asher Miller
Yeah, for sure. Like for me, I went through almost, and maybe I'm still going through it because who knows what the next chapter will be. But going through this process of moving from a very dynamic community and it wasn't a big city, but you know, living in Silicon Valley. It felt like the culture there was very much a fast pace of life. There's no chitchat at all that happened. Transactions were like this, right. And we're talking a long time ago. I don't even know what it's like now. People are just walking around with their Oculus glasses and not even knowing each other. And then I moved to Santa Rosa up in Sonoma County a few hours away. And I really felt at that time, this is slower. And it was kind of hard for me to acclimatize to that. I would get sometimes impatient. And then we will move to Corvallis, a smaller town, where people really, and I love it about being in Corvallis, people take the time they actually ask questions and answer them of each other. I mean, yes, you still get the typical American, "How are you doing?" "Fine. How are you," kind of thing. But people actually, like when I go to the Co-Op, you know, yeah, people take the time to actually converse and talk to each other. And being in line behind that sometimes for me was like, "Ugh. Hurry up." It took me a while to sort of get used to it. And I think, I mean, you just Rob, you just kind of like embraced it right away. But I think we have to be honest. For some of us, it may be a process of being like, "Okay, I'm choosing this, but I'm biting my nails."
Jason Bradford
Well, while you were living in Santa Rosa, I lived in Willits and that was a lot smaller than Santa Rosa. And I could tell you that was a joke my wife and I had. Like, "Oh, I'm going to run down into the store," which is like, three blocks away. It's like, "Okay, see you in two hours." Because you kept talking, you kept running into people you knew all the time. And so it was charming, but it also could be frustrating because you had to explain, "I gotta go, I gotta go." And that was okay, too. But when I was there in Willits, I actually did this thing where I ate all local foods, like what I could grow or get for a month for every meal. And I blogged it. I took a picture and explained what I had. And that's the thing, the food system since I was a kid to now has really shifted where so many more people are getting takeout or eating in restaurants, pre-prepared. The whole idea that you don't cook for yourself anymore. And anything is available anytime. There's been a huge shift in the last 50 years. So part of what I was trying to do is consciously grow my own food, source what I couldn't grow myself locally, make my own meals. And I think that that is sort of my favorite do the opposite.
Rob Dietz
It's definitely a slowdown, but I'm guessing just the appreciation of the quality of the food and the joy of spending your time doing something that's worthwhile.
Jason Bradford
Yes. I'll kind of sort of think about like, conceptually, how to think about a vision for a better way. And I talked about the cat versus the iguana. Well there's a famous story, right, the tortoise and the hare.
Rob Dietz
Hey, another mammal reptile story!
Jason Bradford
Now that is it. It's a mammal and reptile. And basically, right, the hare is faster and the tortoise is slower. But if you actually look at it from a perspective of efficiency, you would say, the hare is time efficient but the tortoise is energy efficient. They both do the same amount of work. They both complete the race. But one is doing it as a hot-blooded animal burning through fuel fast, and the other is chilling out, going slow, and using much less energy to go the same distance. And so part of what I sort of think about is looking at what is efficient differently. Don't worry so much about the time efficiency. Be in the moment, enjoy the fact that you're walking slowly and seeing things around you. That's your life. And so that's, I think, be a little bit more reptilian in your life.
Rob Dietz
I'm sorry to do this, but I'm gonna give our listeners a speed time efficiency tip. Don't bother listening to this podcast, just read Aesop's fable story and you'll get it all.
Jason Bradford
You'll get it all.
Asher Miller
That's a good idea. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this before, but thinking about travel, right? Setting limits on travel. So making choices to travel slow or not to travel at all. I have a friend Peter who lives in in the UK, in Bristol. And he's an avid cyclist, and he works on climate and sustainability issues and kind of set a policy for himself of not flying or avoiding it absolutely as much as possible. And so when he has to go to continental Europe, you know, for work or whatever, he will take the train. He will go through the tunnel and it takes him much longer to make that trip, but he'll bring his bike with him, you know. And he'll combine that trip so that he will get a chance to go up, whether it's into the mountains or somewhere else, to get out and to ride. So he's really enjoying the experience and immersing himself.
Rob Dietz
Well and that's the amazing part is he probably set the rule to avoid emissions, but then he found that this is a better way to go anyway. I'm really enjoying the experience. Yeah, one of the things that I want to point out on this is how to be more turtle-like. I guess, a few episodes ago, I did a bonus interview with LaUra Schmidt of the Good Grief Network. And I was asking her about some things that she does to cope with climate grief. And one of the things she talked about was sort of the idea of cycles in your work and taking breaks. And how important it is, especially if you're working on something difficult to just step back, take some rest, take a break, recharge, give yourself that opportunity. And that is not really a big part of our culture. And I thought that was a really good reminder that you're probably going to have that long term sustainability if you're willing to slow down from time to time.
Asher Miller
Yeah, speaking of culture, I mean, I think our culture, the American culture, which has been exported out you know, to other places quite a bit is known for its brevity. It's not taking its time to get to know you. I mean, there's so many stories of just like cultural disconnect, ou know, when Americans go abroad and the tradition there is to really take time before you start a meeting or something. And the Dutch have this great tradition, they have a word for this called natafelen and that is basically a word that they created to describe the act of sitting around the table after a meal and talking. We have no word for this in English, right? And shit. I'm Dutch, but I'm really guilty of being really like impatient when I eat. I'm just like done and get up. But there's something so lovely about just taking the time, you know, and enjoying a meal and seeing it as an opportunity not only to connect with the food, right, ideally, that maybe came locally, or you had a role in growing it and cooking it, but the people that you spend your time with.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, assuming that you like them.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I don't know. When you started talking about the idea of after the meal, you just relax and hang, I just got a positive feeling, you know. I just feel like yeah, that'd be great. Why don't we do that? When looking for escape routes for anything we often look for, well, who are some people out there that we admire that are that are doing it. And when I was thinking about an escape route from speedism, you know, we talked about quality versus velocity. I think that's your thing, Jason, with the food, for example. Instead of getting takeout (velocity), you're growing your own awesome food and taking the time to cook it. That's quality. And there's one person that came to mind for me is Wendell Berry.
Jason Bradford
Oh, my gosh. Of course.
Rob Dietz
You know, sort of one of the patron saints of our philosophy with Crazy Town. And one of the things that I know that he does is like when he's when he's writing, he just writes it out longhand. And he does that on purpose. Because it takes time and he's able to get more quality into it. He even, when you hear him speak, his cadence is kind of slow. And you can see that he's got fully formed thoughts coming out of his mouth as he's saying them because he takes his time. And the quality is, I don't know, sitting around listening to him I'm just like, "Wow. He just said an amazing thing." You know, now I gotta take time to even process that. But if he were going at typical cadence, I don't think you'd have the quality.
Jason Bradford
He'd sound like us.
Rob Dietz
Well, he would never sound like the blathering idiots that we are.
Asher Miller
We're trying to disguise lack of substance and intellect with speed.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, to cover it up.
Rob Dietz
Listeners, please run this podcast at double speed.
Asher Miller
Exactly. It will be really brilliant. Trust us.
Jason Bradford
There have been countervailing movements. So it's not just not just Wendell Berry, but they're actually movements you could look into. And maybe our listeners have heard of these. They're very slow movements. And so there's Slow Food, right? I think in Italy. That's sort of one of the places that got started. It's spread around the world. And Slow Money. Woody Tasch founded that with some other people. And now there's Slow Fashion, which I think is great. So these are clothes that really weigh you down.
Rob Dietz
It's those weight vests that CrossFit people use.
Jason Bradford
Chain armor, yeah. Chain mail.
Asher Miller
Yeah, I mean, speaking of like, Slow Money, for example. I mean, the idea there is that it's like patient capital, right? You're not expecting to get the biggest return as quickly as possible. You're investing in something that might take time. And there are examples in our own lives that we could talk about. I think, Jason, you and I both invested, our families have invested, in local solar projects. Where they've asked for upfront investment that gets paid back over time. That takes a while. There's another organization here called Seeds for the Sol. I remember my family gave them some money, and we got it paid back over four years, you know. And it wasn't a ton of money and in the return was really pretty marginal. We're in a position where I had a little bit of money we could throw at it. But they took that money and they invested in putting solar panels on Habitat for Humanity homes for lower income households. And they're able to pay it back through the savings, you know, on their electricity bills. So there are lots of examples of that. Even if it's not technically connected with the Slow Money movement.
Rob Dietz
You could even think of combining Slow Food and Slow Money into one investment in an ecologically sound farm, right?
Jason Bradford
Yeah. That's a lot of what you find. And the Slow Money investors actually are really aligned with Slow Food projects.
Asher Miller
Yeah. It makes a ton of sense. You know, other thoughts about how to do the opposite here. There's deliberative collective decision making. I talked earlier about sort of the rush to judgment before. Traditionally, and you'll look at a lot of indigenous societies and cultures, it's embedded in their cultures that they take time to seek consensus and to grapple with questions. You know, I remember you reading stories about interactions between European settlers, for example, coming across Indigenous tribes here and nations in North America and proposing a treaty which they usually turn their backs on and didn't meet. But the time that that the local community, that the indigenous community would take to deliberate over it, would drive them crazy, right? And there's, you know, there's versions of this that are happening now. Citizens assemblies, for example. And there are lots of models are people doing this all around the world. There are even ones that are doing it around addressing climate. And it's basically opportunities where you bring together representative members of whatever community you deem. It could be very local, regional, state, national. To kind of represent the groups who have stakeholder interest in topics. And through an assembly process you really hash out and kind of tease out what the course of action is, especially with contentious issues. We're dealing with climate, you know, houselessness, other kinds of issues like that. To be able to come to decision makers, you know, the ones who are actually elected to make policy, law, or whatever it is, and govern, with more reasoned thoughtful process of saying this is what we feel like is best.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. It reminds me of my experience living in an intentional community, a cohousing community, where you have a fairly manageable sized group of people who are trying to make decisions for the community. And you would use consensus decision making, sometimes sociocracy. And it would be slow, right? But the idea is that you get a better decision that meets everybody's needs and that has more wisdom built into it. Now, could that be frustrating? Yes, yes, it could. You know, depending on the topic at hand and how much you care about it or not. But I think in the end being able to move forward with a community with some wisdom rather than just velocity is what you get.
Asher Miller
Well, I remember you talking about this one experience you had there that was really -- It took what was it? Nine months, I think to deliberate. And that was which way should the toilet paper be put on the roll.
Rob Dietz
Right. Inside or outside.
Asher Miller
Inside or outside. You guys spent what? Months and months? And you finally came up with the perfect solution nobody thought about which is that you just put it on top.
Rob Dietz
Well, we were supposed to be an ecovillage.
Asher Miller
So no toilet paper at all?
Rob Dietz
You just use your hands.
Asher Miller
That was the solution you came up with? Great.
Melody Allison
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.
Jason Bradford
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