“In the age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. And in the age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.” -Pico Iyer
In the modern age, we often define the value and utility of anything we engage in by its “convenience” and by its “speed.” When using an application (an App) for example our primary focus outside of mind-numbing distraction and entertainment is that of convenience and speed. Especially the latter of the two. When you observe people using their phone they’re speed racing through images, through texts, through news headlines and drama, through video shorts and comment sections.
When rushing off to work in the morning, it’s all about SPEED. People constantly switch lanes, block others from merging, curse people off left and right, and race to punch in at the door, because they always leave at a time that gets them there at the precise minute they’re set to begin working. But it’s far from just phone use, application use, and our work commutes. It’s literally now our entire way of life!
Over the past two decades we have really accelerated towards this norm of everything being rushed in a never ending 24/7 cycle that just seems to speed up each year that goes bye. And if you’re anything like me, the past (5) years in particular have been nothing short of a blur. A period that can only be defined by a constant static and fogginess with faint memories of what we did or what has even happened throughout the course of each passing week, never mind the year. It’s really that extreme. A variety of factors have led us here. Academics have pointed to several culprits, but at the very TOP of that list has to be our addiction to speed, a culture of rush, and our dependency on technology and the “smart” phone.
The most troublesome part about it to me is that it’s hardly ever talked about, but everyone knows it and feels it to their very core. Especially those of us who were born in the 1980s or earlier. The older you are, the more you notice it. In fact, if you think back about the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s the decades were easily defined by a set of unique traits that made them different, and more importantly, worth remembering!
When we think about the 1950s, we think about an extremely exciting era for America, coming out of a world war and depressionary era, into one of national prosperity and a baby boom. We think about the rise of suburbia and the growing influence of television. We think about the early years of the Cold War and America’s fight against the spread of communism. While others might think of Elvis Presley, the emergence of Rock n Roll, the jukebox, sock hop and diners.
For the 1960s we think about the Kennedys and a promising future with the Great Frontier and space aviation. Then on the other hand we think about a serious decline in traditionalism brought on by the Great Society, Vietnam, the antiwar movement, leftwing political activism, feminism, the counterculture, and the sexual revolution. We also think about the hippie movement, Woodstock, and the widespread use and acceptance of drugs.
For the 1970s we think about the death of the hippie movement and the birth of conservative populism under Nixon, with a backlash against the counterculture. We also think about the emergence of disco, and classic rock with bands like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. Not to mention, roller skating, drive-in movie theaters, and the God Father.
The 1980s might arguably be the most nostalgic and sought after decade in the history of the United States. This was a decade defined by a culture of economic optimism, neon colors, the mall, the rise of cable and MTV, blockbuster, VCRs, and the most iconic action movies of all time! A decade with boom boxes Michael Jackson, Vanilla Ice, Run DMC, Guns n Roses and Def Leppard. An era with a positive retro gym culture, health consciousness, and a decade dominated by Silvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The 1990s can be defined by baggy jeans, crop tops, flannel shirts, pumps, starter jackets and bomber jackets, along with the continued expansion of sit-coms and family tv shows. Grunge music, hip hop, rave, electronic, and pop dominated the music scene. A booming economy and stock market, with a country that still had quite a bit of Patriotism. And much like the 80s, a ton of great iconic films including Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Silence of the Lambs, Fight Club, and the start of the Sopranos. Not to mention, the early years of AOL and chat rooms in the infancy stages of what was then considered the internet.
Then we get to the 2000s and experience a serious drop off in cultural significance, although nowhere near where we are today. But the decade was unfortunately defined by 9/11 and a “war on terror” with the start of a virtual police state put through with the “Patriot Act.” This was a time where we experienced much more cultural diversity and far less assimilation to American culture, customs and traditions. A decade that saw the country take in roughly 1.5 million immigrants each year, with minimal effort put forth towards an effective national process of assimilation.
This inevitably led to more alienation and a weakened cultural connection, with a more fragmented landscape in our own neighborhoods. More depressing music was released like emo, alternative rock (nirvana comes to mind), and gangster rap. More ugly modern art and architecture was becoming the norm. The birth of digital music and social media with Myspace followed by Facebook. A digital revolution and 24/7 internet that radically changed how people communicated, consumed information, and even spent their time.
And since then, what do we have in the way of cultural significance worth remembering?
From 2010 onwards what can you point to? From 2020 to RIGHT NOW, what can you even start to discuss, besides Covid and the Lockdowns? Yeah, not much!
No wonder it’s all a blur.
In many ways, much of the past (5) years haven’t even felt fractionally the same as prior decades. Everyone seems numb and everything seems fake! Most of the general public is entirely self-obsessed, way too caught up in their own bullshit with their heads glued to their phones to even care, never mind have any bit of care or concern for others. You see examples of this every day, and it doesn’t take very long.
If you commute to work in the morning, even if it’s just a 15-minute drive, you’ll see it without failure. You’re trying to pull out of a street onto a main road, and instead of letting you in, you have car after car literally racing to sit behind other cars stuck at a red light. It’s the craziest thing to witness but I watch it every day. People driving 20 MPH over the speed limit, only to slam on their brakes behind a line full of other cars stopped at a red light.
Everyone’s out for themselves, even on the weekend they’re in a rush to go nowhere, stuck on autopilot with zero self-awareness. As a society, we’ve gone from walking in a relaxed state down the street to the park, to driving there (if we even go at all). We’ve gone from home cooked meals prepared in an unrushed slow fashion with love and care, to take out, door dash, and uber eats with poor quality food thrown together and rushed to your doorstep. We’ve gone from writing letters and heartfelt messages to AI generated emails and emojis, with zero authenticity. We’ve gone from going to bed with the moon and rising with the sun, to staying up late at night in front of screens, waking up tired, ignoring our bodies natural rhythm in exchange for an alarm clock.
Before the invention of the light bulb, the average person went to bed much closer to sundown. Sleep patterns prior to the mass adoption of commercial and residential light bulbs were much different. Before the light bulb, sleep was biphasic with two separate periods that sometimes extended for 10-12 hours depending upon the season (longer in winter). Much in the same way as the light bulb, the internet and smart phone also dramatically changed sleep patterns. Prior to 24/7 screen stimulation, sleep was of a MUCH higher quality, people moved more, and the body (rather than the brain) was exhausted.
And that’s where we stand today. We’re operating in a world where you’re surrounded by people who are mentally exhausted nearly ALL of the time. You might be one of them? Over stimulation has led to an environment where the average person puts their head down at night to go to bed, but they can’t rest their mind. They can’t fall asleep, and a lot of them can’t stay asleep. They wake up multiple times, they toss and turn, they have racing thoughts, negative dreams and nightmares.
This isn’t by accident. This is an obvious result of what you get with over stimulation of the mind. A stimulation that is electronically generated with powerful attention-grabbing stimuli hitting us 24 hours a day, all day, every day. We’re now living in a world of constant noise, constant distraction, and constant sensory stimulation with little to no solitude at all.
The human brain was never designed to handle all of the input we force feed it on a daily basis. From thousands of phone checks, app checks, email notifications, dings, pings, texts, music, podcasts, images, shorts, and streaming. It’s no accident that everyone around you seems crazy!
But we’re now seeing cracks in the system. In our professional and work life, in our health, in our relationships, in our families, in our entire way of life. By all measures available, mental health and quality of life (for Americans still caught up in and consumed by hustle culture) has fallen off a cliff. Life satisfaction in America hit an All Time Low of just 44% in 2025 according to Gallup polling. That figure is down from 65% pre-covid. Just 20 years ago, that figure of personal life satisfaction was around 85-90% depending upon the referenced poll.
What has changed so drastically to produce such a significant drop in life satisfaction?
Well, if we’re honest, the ONE main difference between now and then is the proliferation of “news”, information, and entertainment all brought to you in warp SPEED at the click of a button on a 5’ inch screen! Our brains are now overloaded with all kinds of information (most of it trivial and meaningless), with noise, with dings, pings, and endless notifications of all kinds.
Who the hell is supposed to stay “sane” in such an environment? Where’s the time for peace and quiet? Where’s the time for reflection? Where’s the time for prayer and gratitude? Where’s the time to just sit with your thoughts, be present, and listen to the birds sing during the day, or the bugs chirp at night?
These are important questions to ask, because for most people, the answer is that they NEVER shut it down! They’re constantly plugged in, mentally drained and exhausted, and they’re far too “busy” to even understand why?
Speaking of being “busy.” Leisure and free time used to be a sign of wealth in this country. But now, “busy-ness” and embracing a non-stop grind is the ultimate sign of “wealth.”
Wealth used to be shown in early retirements, in beautiful relaxing family experiences and vacationing. But now it’s shown in a 3-piece suit racing between high rise offices, meetings, and the corporate hustle. It’s shown in being “ultra productive” and traveling the world on a private jet or yacht with no family and no children.
If that’s wealth, you can have it and have it all. I want no part of that. It used to be (not too long ago) that the less you worked, the more status you had. Now, the more you relax, slow down, and enjoy your life, your family and leisure, the less status you have. Once again, you can have it, because I don’t ever want today’s definition of “wealth” and “status.”
Much of what you see on your social media feeds validates this in one way or another. In fact, the entirety of the “self-development” movement has promoted this as well. Right there along with perfectionism and being “ultra-productive” every second of the day. We’ve gotten to the point where all of the fun has been stripped out of life. Everything is now monetized, and every last hobby we pursue is now questioned from a monetary perspective. Impossible, fake, and often curated standards of perfectionism are sold to you every day. From finance, to fitness, to diet, health and nutrition, to beauty, to parenting, to just about everything you can think of today.
And where has all of this perfectionism led us? Maybe it works for a minuscule fraction of people (at least temporarily), but for most of the general public it leads to extremes and burnout. It leads to extreme trends with food choices and macronutrient deficient diets that wreck your hormones. It leads to constantly following trends and staying “informed” even if it makes you feel empty or worse. It leads you to consumerism and a trap of buying shit you don’t need to impress other people, that you don’t even know or talk to. That’s where it goes!
The more you chase being ultra-productive, the “busier” your life becomes. It gets to the point of being busy, just to be “busy” in order to fill some kind of void you have in your life. And when you’re constantly busy, you’re generally in a hurry. And when you’re hurried constantly it becomes your main setting and sets the pace for everything that you do. Including spending time with your friends, family, and children.
Hurry is truly the enemy of peace, quiet, and solitude. It’s also the enemy of spirituality and faith. We walk with God, we don’t run. God doesn’t hurry. Nature doesn’t hurry. Animals don’t hurry. We are the ONLY creatures in the world that hurry. In the words of Carl Jung “hurry is not of the Devil; hurry IS the Devil.” A rushed and hurried life isn’t just a sin to be avoided; it’s an extremely destructive force that absolutely shatters the soul.
Combine hurry and hustle culture with the “smart” phone, and you have a deadly combination. The “smart” phone has completely and utterly destroyed our capacity for concentration and contemplation. Our minds are now trained to absorb an overabundance of information (most of it meaningless and impactful to our life) at lightning speed in small chunks with little time for critical thought or reflection. It has literally fried our brains!
But that’s not all…
We’ve handed our children (in the palm of their hands) the MOST addictive drug in the history of mankind, with little to no reservation at all. It’s extremely rare to have both parents on board with limiting and even banning the use of Phones. Not a phone for texts and phone calls. But a phone with unfettered access to internet porn, social media, and short form brain rot, with limitless smut and vice.
If it’s not BOTH parents, it’s usually at least one of them arguing for it, because “it’s what all the other kids do” and it’s the norm. They argue that they’ll be disconnected from friends. And that time on these devices will give themselves a break from parenting.
Another argument we hear rather frequently is that prior generations grew up watching TV and playing video games on Nintendo and Atari, isn’t that the same thing? In short, NO. It’s not even remotely close at all. The digital age our kids grow up in today is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Tech developers and engineers deliberately study and use research on how to extract the MOST dopamine and keep up continuous engagement on their Apps. They offer likes, bonuses, rewards, and “perks” that aim to monopolize the time and attention of your children. Online casinos do the same EXACT thing!
These same Tech developers and engineers have become experts on addiction and what triggers the mind and holds the attention of your children. Your kids don’t stand a chance. And once they’re hooked on constant hits of dopamine, the stimulus becomes so over-powering to the point where the dopamine receptors are completely numbed out. What that means is that these same kids need even more of it, only stronger and much more intense hits of dopamine to feel even a fraction of the pleasure they once enjoyed at an earlier time in their life.
This is not like playing Pong on Atari, or Tecmo Bowl on Nintendo, or watching a full-length movie, cartoon, or show from the 1980s or 1990s. This is NEW technology that is deliberately designed to rob your kids of their time, their minds, and their soul.
Argue with it all you want, but we have seen and studied the results for long enough now. And to no one’s surprise, they are nothing short of disastrous. Over the past 15+ years we have seen all kinds of health, developmental, cognitive, and behavioral problems related to digital media consumption.
In the way of health complications, we have seen serious problems with anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, insomnia, and vision problems. In the way of developmental problems, we have seen delayed language development, lower literacy rates, an inability to read deeply or focus, along with poor social skills and emotional regulation. In the way of cognitive disruption, we’ve seen difficulties with processing emotions, reduced memory capacity, and reduced levels of reading comprehension. And finally, in the way of behavioral disorders we’ve seen ADHD and Autism diagnoses explode, lower rates of empathy, irritability, and impulsivity, along with an aversion to solitude and avoidance of social interaction.
And all of this either seems to be avoided or ignored because most of the adults that surround you are way too caught up in “hustle culture” and distracting themselves to death. That includes me by the way, for far too long! It’s only now that I’ve seen the error in my ways. But we’re pushed into this life and culture of rush in a massive sea of never-ending mind-numbing distractions. And once you’re there, you’re stuck for long periods of time, before you even start to think of pulling yourself out.
Sometimes it takes a great personal loss, while for others it comes in the form of a breakdown or “midlife crisis” of sorts before you pull yourself out and SLOW DOWN.
When you finally leave the scam of hustle culture, constant dopamine chasing through the use of vice and distraction, and striving to have it ALL, you become a much more grounded, happy, and fulfilled person.
When you get off social media, you stop scrolling, complaining, and comparing your life to others you can finally feel at peace once again.
When you STOP browsing for the next trinket, mindlessly shopping online for things you don’t need and you declutter your possessions, your phone, and your home, you remove sources and triggers of stress in your life that you didn’t even know you had.
When you STOP engaging with negativity and fear driven content/media you become a much more positive person.
You’ll also find that you STOP talking negatively about other people.
Not just other people but even your children!
You’ll stop yourself mid-sentence before you even finish what you were about to say. Parents today are constantly in a never-ending comparison game with their own children, trying to one up their peers like they’re still in grade school. Or even worse, they’re complaining about their kids, without reflecting on their own parenting, their own behavior inside the home, the example they set, or even just the physical environment they raise them in. If you’re an adult glued to a screen or a social media feed, why should your children be any different, or any better than you?
If your children never see you read or exercise or eat healthy, why should they?
If your home is filled with a cluttered mess from over consumption and a lack of cleanliness, why should their rooms be any different?
And finally, and more importantly, if you’re constantly in a rush and hurried with everything that you do, and you embrace this soul sucking poison of hustle culture, where do you think they’ll wind up?
We have to reconsider our future practices and incrementally reform our entire way of life before it’s too late. It starts with embracing simplicity, spending more time in nature, and focusing on what matters most. Then it moves to incorporating extended periods of silence and solitude where we move back to God, rejuvenate our souls, and find our true selves once again. Then from there we reserve at least one day a week where we escape it ALL. No phones, no work, no stress at all and we truly embrace REST.
Rest and Gratitude, to reignite our long-lost innate curiosity, wonder, and lust for life. Then finally, and most importantly, we SLOW DOWN. We slow down and become truly PRESENT to the people and the precious everyday moments of our life.
