WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: DECELERATE! (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Let's immediately clear up a misunderstanding. The intention here is not

to contrast an indefinite speed with an equally indefinite slowness, but
rather to propose to recover the speed and slowness of each human being,
but also of each social group, and which manifest themselves in natural
"rhythms" of life. ---- On the topic, Lamberto Maffei's In Praise of
Slowness is often cited, a neurobiologist who found that the human brain
has rather slow growth and learning mechanisms, contrary to what happens
with artificial computer memories. This difference and the acceleration
imposed on human thought by the use of telematic tools causes imbalances
that only the use of slower and more authentic times, which favor
reflection and critical in-depth analysis, could remedy. But Maffei's
vision is not at all Manichean, as it might superficially appear. In
fact, he maintains that, alongside slow processes, the human brain hosts
others that are much faster, with a prompt and immediate reaction to
external stimuli, due to primordial instincts, genetic inheritance and
negative experiences suffered after birth.

The brain of each human being therefore presents itself as a hybrid of
speed and slowness, different in terms of internal times and rhythms -
scans, deadlines, recurrences - which do not seem to differ
substantially from the rhythms of nature. These times and rhythms are
subjected to daily attempts at tampering and commodification by
capitalist society, which makes time increasingly scarce for the
individual, divides it into different activities, rationalizes it due to
the ever-increasing expectations that are created for it. In order to
meet the deadlines imposed by the society in which they live,
individuals are often forced to sacrifice everything that requires time
for reflection, study and sharing to the main criterion of competitive
speed.

There is in fact equivalence between speed and competition, on the one
hand, and between slowness and sharing, on the other. In the market
economy, those who are faster acquire a competitive advantage. But in
the world of culture and politics, where speed is often synonymous with
superficiality, sharing, cooperation, participation, thoughtfulness and
critical reflection - all things that require a long time - contrast
with the very concept of competitive speed.

The Internet has contributed to binding these very different worlds
together, promoting their homologation to the market through an
unprecedented and sudden technological acceleration, a continuous
consumption of time and new forms of alienation between individuals.
Technological acceleration, however, has not led to that acceleration in
social change, and therefore to the greater self-determination of
individuals, which was initially promised, but to the emergence of
various political and social pathologies (dissociation, depression,
anxiety, stress, predisposition to violence, digital dementia, etc.),
and to the distortion of vital rhythms.

With respect to these processes, moments of deceleration have been
triggered and are multiplying, which oppose them or exercise active
forms of resistance. Among these is the one that calls for a return to
the rhythms of nature, also making use of specific technologies and
techniques that are perfectly controllable, manageable and reproducible
on an individual and collective level.

The use of a bicycle, for example, instead of a car, gives the
opportunity to adopt attitudes of openness and understanding of the
surrounding world that would otherwise be denied. Refusing to
participate in stressful meeting opportunities to dedicate yourself to
reading a book, "until the last page", allows you to put your own needs
in the foreground to the detriment of commitments and time deadlines too
often undertaken by others, activating processes of " estrangement"
aimed not only at breaking the circularity of daily time but at bringing
out a profound awareness of one's position in the world. Time becomes
space to be occupied with reflection, conversation, contemplation,
self-care. Lingering at friends' houses without counting the hours,
establishing pleasant relationships by neglecting routine occupations,
escaping from monotonous and repetitive work more and more often, can
trigger phenomena similar to "skipping school" as a child, i.e. leading
to disobedience, to revolt, to criticism of rampant conformism.

The first step to take is therefore the radical criticism of the
temporal structures of society and of the ongoing acceleration
processes. We will therefore consciously place deceleration at the
center of activities that allow us to return to the relationship with
the surrounding environment - long aimless walks, for example, in the
city center or in the countryside -, with lost spaces, with the places
of childhood ...) It will therefore be necessary to have time available
that is not used for anything else, that is not functional for anything
else, that is independent of the contingent times of capital and labor.

Natale Musarra

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca