An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
by Thomas L. Friedman
By Calvin Harris, HW,M
I ran across a review of a book called: “Thank You For Being Late.” Which resonated with me, being that, I was someone who had been stranded 30 miles from home due to a ‘Bro’s’, feeling that I was not moving fast enough for him, so he drove off and left me in the dust. Needless to say, the Book title, ‘Thank You for Being Late’, caught my interest and I wanted to hear what the reviewer had to say about the book and what I called “Making time for leisure.”
The author of the book, Thomas L. Friedman, seems to hint at validating my notions about ‘conscious leisure living’ and concepts of time. Friedman’s discourse is about the paces of change in technology, globalization, and climate. The core argument Friedman has is “simultaneous acceleration in the Commerce Market, the Natural World, and Moore’s law (the principle that the power of microchips doubles every two years) constitutes the “Age of Accelerations.”
The upshot of all of this is ‘acceleration creates fear and unmoors people.’ This causes panic or the fight, flight, or freeze response, a sign of many people becoming out of touch with themselves. Rather than panic such as reacting with fear and anger, Friedman, like myself, offers personal recommendations for coping with accelerations, such as to slow down, “pause and reflect” on your self-motivation, your lifelong learning, and the need to encourage more people to follow the Golden Rule.
Rather than having societies of people feeling fearful or unmoored from their sense of self, have them take time for leisure, meaning time for themselves to get anchored to Truth and to Source. Our Job is to find Source in our living and the value it provides, then to make it available to others. That can mean taking time to reach deep and discovering in yourself, the value you must share with the world. If you would like a more in-depth consultation, please contact me directly at things2cal@gmail.com
Side Notes About This Book
Friedman’s intriguing facts and ideas, can be all unburied in the 496-pages of this book. There are many a reader or researcher who is interested in the many autobiographical anecdotes and lengthy recollections about the circumstances of interviews he conducted and research he completed. Thus the reader is getting the recipe and history of all the ingredients along with the meal. You can obtain the book Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28 ISBN 978-0-374-27353-8 or as an Ebook - 978-0-374-71514-4. For those interested in the book but time is an issue it is also on
Compact Disc - 978-1-4272-7466-3
