Fast Thinking verses Slow Thinking

In today’s western society we live fast. We live fast because we think fast. People have to think fast because society today requires fast choices and even faster decisions. Fast thinking is shallow thinking which is the opposite of slow thinking which is deep thinking. People are in a great hurry. We are not allowed to sit back, think and watch the world go by. That is waste because it does not create an economic value. And according to today’s social view; anything that does not produce a monitory value is worthless. Going fast produces wealth. It produces wealth because the great economic machine needs to process output fast. Faster the better. That’s what economic growth means; processing and selling outputs faster than yesterday. The most critical ingredient to the economic machine is people’s time. All other factors are based on the human contribution, so to get more out of less the machines needs people to go faster. Western society surrenders itself totally to the machine. It’s governments, big business, media, push an agenda to ensure the machine keeps rolling. The agenda is pushed because all these interests have become dependent on the machine. We have moved significantly from democracy to corporacy. The agenda ensures that there are enough people contributing to the machine. The economic machine views and uses people in a number of different ways. It requires people to produce it’s product and also make sure people earn enough to consume it’s product, to return a profit. The “produce, earn and consume” cycle has become the mantra of the modern world. Today it seems people define their worth and evaluate what’s worthwhile in relation to this cycle. Human value and what’s worthwhile is determined in units you can produce, the money you earn, the things you can buy and what you own. Things that cannot be measured in units, money or price tags are pushed aside. Things like relationships, love, caring, friends, religion and community, things that are not relevant to turning a profit. This “produce, earn and consume” cycle, so central to today’s life philosophy, has far reaching negative implications for those things and those people that do not produce value. The negative implication is that they fall off the radar. And it is not accidental either. The handicapped, the young, the old, the disabled, the disadvantaged, the poor, the mentally ill, the addicted and anybody else who do not contribute to the economic machine are put away, out of sight. Society puts them in day care, retirement homes, mental institutes, rehab, work houses, ghettos under the justification that it is for their own good, necessary for their care or that they just don’t deserve to be included. But people want to be with people. It’s in their DNA. Children want to be with their parents, the elderly want to be with offspring, the disabled, the mentally ill want to taken care of by those who are meant to love them. Modern society doesn’t want slow thinking. Slow thinking is about deep thinking, thinking about values, what’s important in life, about love and eternity; it’s thinking about God and creation, about our relationships. The economic machine abhors slow thinking. It’s “produce, earn and consume” cycle feeds off fast thinking because it is superficial thinking. Fast thinking speeds up the cycle whereas slow thinking contracts and slows the cycle. Fast thinking reacts instantly to the barrage of media advertising, feeds the latest fads and fashions, wants the latest gadget, gives up love in favour of works. But real happiness is found by slow and deep thinking.