Speed For Thought

An excerpt from Why Dogs Go After Mail Carriers by Garret Keizer, which appeared in Harper's Notebook, September 2010.

"Speed alters our brain chemistry; it leaves us too little time to smell the roses -- a favourite trope among those who would do better to smell their own exhaust. In essence, the speed of a capitalistic society is about leaving others behind, the losers in the race, the "pedestrians" at the side of the road, the people with obsolete computers and junker cars and slow-yield investments. An obsessions with speed is also the fear of being left behind oneself -- which drives the compulsion to buy the new car, the faster laptop, the inflated stock. For fear of becoming dinosaurs we are turned into sheep."

From here to there,

SG

2011.03.28