The hectic modern life
Lileks punctures the myth:
The amount of stress expands to fill the amount of space freed up by convenience and progress.
The emotions of someone trying to get to the bottom of their email on Friday are probably identical to the emotions of a caveperson trying to convert that wooly mammoth to grub and garb before it rots completely. Our definition of what matters constantly gets easier, but it doesn’t mean we discount the things that matter appropriately.
Times when ads in Life magazine didn’t talk about stress: oh, that would be about 1941 to 1945.
Just so. We are so busy only because modern technological conveniences have given us more free time in which to be busy.
His Majesy: “Indeed. In the time it would take for me to destroy a planet using half the star fleet, I can blow it away with a giant laser and have time left over for a long weekend of golf.”
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | Tags: culture, leisure, modernity, the slow movement