A Slower Urgency

The times are urgent; let us slow down." This is good advice. Faster skims the surface, slowing down allows you to work more smoothly and at a deeper level. You see it reflected in other aphorisms:

"Slow is smooth and smooth is fast." Navy Seals dictum

"5. Go Deep: the deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value." Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

"When in doubt, choose to go deeper rather than faster. Accept the idea that reflection and understanding your own nature, including the dark side, is the key to effective action." Peter Block in "The Answer to How is Yes."

There is a tendency to try to go faster, but sometimes, you must look below the surface and revisit your expectations and mental models. I also believe that in many instances committing to a low-intensity long-duration effort to effect a change or improvement is more likely to succeed and more effective when it does.

I think about this a lot in our rush into techno-utopianism.

"Car-centric lifestyle but electrified" has turned out to be worse in the short and medium terms because of battery mining/recycling, tire wear and microplastics, etc. Electric cars incur a huge upfront environmental cost for those reasons and only balance diesel cars in CO2e costs after about 8 years, which is longer than most Americans own a car before they sell it. So those who sell and upgrade before then actually increased their emissions by switching to electric. This is just an illustrative example of the rush into feel-good, inconsiderate virtue signalling that accompanies many behaviors of individuals who want to feel like they're doing good rather than to know they're doing good.

Generally increasing our consumption rates and entrenching our consumption patterns is what has been accelerating us toward tipping points this whole time. I'm not a stark technology cynic but have learned a healthy ambivalence: tech doesn't make things better or worse, just different. But without acknowledging the cultural components of our use of technology, especially the pursuit of comfort and convenience at seemingly any cost, we risk diving headfirst into short-term conveniences and egocentric validation of our habitual patterns at the expense of making room for future generations to enjoy the same. Technologies amplify our effects on our environments for good or for bad.

I greatly appreciate the sentiment, but you don't need to build something new. Thai forest monasteries, such as those in the Ajahn Chah tradition http://forestsangha.org/ , fit the bill just fine.