Synthesis; from "Speed" by David Orr

Photo from Hindustan Times

When we struggle to define a problem it is difficult if not impossible to solve it. A good definition can give as a picture of the issue which begins to point us toward solutions. I his article "Speed", David Orr sums up one of the major issues of modern society in this way:

"Water moving too quickly through a landscape does not recharge underground aquifers. The results are floods in wet weather and droughts in the summer. Money moving too quickly through an economy does not recharge the local wellsprings of prosperity, whatever else it does for that great scam called the global economy. The result is an economy polarized between those few who do well in a high velocity economy and those left behind. Information moving too quickly to become knowledge and grow into wisdom does not recharge moral aquifers on which families, communities, and entire nations depend. The result is moral atrophy and public confusion. The common thread between all three is velocity. And they are tied together in a complex system of cause and effect that we have mostly overlooked."

There is an appropriate velocity for water set by geology, soils, vegetation, and ecological relationships in a given landscape. There is an appropriate velocity for money that corresponds to long-term needs of whole communities rooted in particular places and the necessity of preserving ecological capital. There is an appropriate velocity for information, set by the assimilative capacity of the mind and by the collective learning rate of communities and entire societies. Having exceeded the speed limits, we are vulnerable to ecological degradation, economic arrangements that are unjust and unsustainable, and, in the face of great and complex problems, to befuddlement that comes with information overload. 

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I will leave you with that and with this link to another Orr article that addresses this issue of the velocity of our society.  Take your time with it. Really let it sink in....