Why should we move with such haste?

Have you noticed that we (in the UK) seem to have less time for common courtesy or patience? I know this has been on the decline for a number of years, in fact I’ve posted about this before but the decline seems to have rapidly increased. Maybe it’s because (I’m a Londoner!!!! He he he, do you get it?) I’m becoming more set in my ways or that I’ve become more observant as I get older. I don’t know however I have compiled a list below of the ways in which we have either become less courteous or act without observing the niceties or rules or conduct be they legislative or socially expected): 

• Holding the door open for others - this no longer happens for me. I do it however it never (and I mean never) happens for me. 

• Giving way to people - in reference to the way people just barge through others in busy places (cities, airports, train stations etc) 

• Ignoring the rules of the road - those rules that you have to abide by to have a licence and drive a car. Things like not indicating so that both other road users and pedestrians don’t know what you are doing. Oh and speeding! We live opposite a primary school and a large pre-school nursery, the road has a 20mph sign and speed bumps yet we often have to jump back from the road as cars go speeding past. These cars are often large 4x4 (SUV’s for my colonial friends) driven by parents taking their offspring to said institutions. 

• Saying thank you - do you? 

• Saying please - see above. 

• Waiting for something - how many people don’t have any patience anymore. Whether it be waiting to get served in a store, standing in line for a bus or saving up to buy something (yeah, like anyone does that anymore!) we don’t seem able to wait. Everything needs to be now. Instant meals (which take longer to cook than a fresh meal sometimes), instant entertainment (MP3, MP4’s etc) and instant fashion (Primark wardrobe changes!).

I’ve heard the argument that in todays modern society we don’t have time for any of these things. We work longer hours, have greater demands on our time and our lives are harder.

Harder than the Blitz in World War 2? More demanding than a child mill worker at the turn of the 20th century or a Coal Miner during the Thatcher era?

In a 2011 survey the UK featured 3rd out of the rest of Europe in a full time working hours survey, as our average full time hours was 42.7 with both Austria and Greece working 43.7. So maybe its born out and we work harder and longer than everyone else. Hmmmm, well in the same survey the data for all in employment placed the UK 27th (last) at 36.3 hours worked. Now this is the average total hours worked and incorporates the full time hours but it does indicate that the majority of the UK workforce works less than than our European counter parts.

So why are we in such a hurry all the time. Why don’t we have time for our P’s and Q’s, to play with our kids and wait for things. My personal opinion is that we rely on this thing, the cursed Internet. It occupies our time and replaces those things that take effort. Such as:

• Conversation
• Shopping
• Reading a book
• Going for a walk
• Acquiring knowledge (damn you Wikipedia!)

I do all these things, however I’m aware of this, I’m aware of the effort it doesn’t take to power up a laptop, tablet, smartphone, desktop and just surf the net for hours (or days) on end. When I was growing up it was the TV. However we only had 3 channels until that fateful day of the airing of the first Countdown episode on Channel 4. It was difficult to while away your time watching TV so we had to think of ways to entertain ourselves. Now we have digital TV with 90+ channels for free and if you get satellite there are literally hundreds. So it’s easy(ier) to find a program to watch whilst not actually expanding effort to think. And if we don’t think then we don’t exercise our brains and therefore we stagnate and lose our ability to interact with reality.

In essence the web has made our society lazy and expect everything on tap. The only thing that we can’t have instantly is travel however I’m sure some clever boffin somewhere is working on teleportation (in between surfing the net and eating McD’s) so soon we won’t even have to wait to do that.

My advice is slow down, look around and say thank you and let’s halt this downward spiral into madness.

It’s a start.