Speed Kills

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"Speed kills, Del" ~ Dr. Johnny Fever

Over the course of the last few decades, perhaps a wee bit more, human life here on planet earth has steadily been putting the peddle to the metal, an acceleration which did not abate any after the turning of the 21st century, the opposite actually. Individually we are rush, race, go here, be there, microwave this, fast food that. As a society, our consumption and expansion has continued, increased. In neither case however has our overall maturity level kept pace and we are now finding ourselves ill equipped to handle both the social challenges and technological advancements we've made during the last century or so.

Progress and forward motion are certainly desirable, a requirement for happy humanity I would reckon, but a slower more measured pace is the name of the game. Ask yourself: what's the rush? Where do I have to get to in such a hurry? The answer to this question is one of those "well duh"'s but in turn we do not apply the answer to our day to day lives nearly enough.

In economics lives the idea of scarcity…a reality more than an idea truth be told. Scarcity in the economic sense simply means a limited and/or finite supply: when I only have one slice of pizza left in the fridge, that is a local scarcity and one that I can alleviate simply by making more or ordering in. There is however more scarcity potential in how many or what amounts of raw ingredients I have on hand, including any components needed to make the wheel, like an oven and electricity/gas to heat it, a table to roll the dough, a rolling pin, etc. Further, do I have enough monetary resources to pay for raw ingredients or for take out? This potential scarcity extends out into the pizza world as well in that restaurants are also subject to the same type of scarcities and many that an individual is not.   

The answer to the what's the rush question then is this: scarcity of time. Humans have a limited lifespan on this beautiful space rock, there are only so many minutes available to each of us and once used up it be lights out. Unconsciously/consciously we are aware of the scarcity of time thus infusing a desire, urge, push, whatever term you'd like, in our day to day actions. Unfortunately whipping along at break neck speed often results in problems, any number of which could be considered severe and our current civilization is an example of this.

An important philosophical question we should be asking ourselves is what's the point; what's the point of going through the motions of living if all one does is race around, physically and metaphorically, only to come up for air when they're senior citizens, with fewer precious life minutes left and degraded physical abilities with which to use in conjunction with those minutes?

At the individual level there is a fix: understanding, from the earliest possible age and in no uncertain terms, that our time is limited, period. This is nothing to be afraid of, it just is, it's part of reality as we know it, part of the circle of life as it were and there is equally nothing that we can do to change it, it's inevitable. From this starting point of big picture understanding begins the growth of a mindset that spends more time in the present from an awareness perspective, an awareness that is cognisant of past, present and future, a mindset that makes decisions based on a much wider set of critically selected inputs.

Sounds like so much New Age mumbo jumbo to be sure, but in the end, it's just simply a mental advantage that one can apply called 'paying attention'. :) I smile but it's truth.

At the bank/corp/govt level, we can also apply a fix: the return to hard money, like gold & silver for example, primarily as they've worked successfully in the past throughout many centuries. There are some very compelling reasons why this fix needs to be applied but for this word collection I'm keeping the focus on time scarcity. Commodities, I'll use gold and silver for this example, take time, effort and money to locate, remove and process before they are market ready. This in turn influences the market availability resulting in changes to the value that humans place on them. Increasing availability is not an overnight option thus putting a brake on the speed of all levels of society that participate in a monetary system; if monetary resources are also a scarcity, as they should be, then different choices are made, different priorities rule the day.

It's logical then to suggest that the majority of choices would be far more positive than negative. Additionally, unlike our system today, the bank/govt groups would not be able to simply create money out of nothing as they see fit…this is, and always has been, a recipe for disaster again as evidenced by our civilization today.

A return to hard money will have an equally profound effect at the individual level with the same results for essentially the same reasons.

Part #1 of ?

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