Adam Blatner

Too much too fast too intense… whoa! So I was intrigued by the mention by a friend of a “slow living” conference next early summer. They cover so many facets but I didn’t see psychology. I’ve been pondering SDP (social-depth psychology), the deeper resonances in the psyche of that part of the mind that is so sensitive to social interactions. It’s sort of social psychology, but it takes it into more sensitive elements. This email brought home the further variable of time pressure.

It’s easier to obscure the ache we feel at varying degrees of alienation by keeping things moving fast, throwing in a variety of alternate role goals or distractions. This is so even if we are participating in doing what makes for that separation from the communal mind-field. Some aspects of this “field” are stifling, presuming to impose norms and be-like-us social pressure; and other parts are deeply hungered for, whether that hunger be rational or irrational.

I’ve been thinking of the wide range of phenomena and strain that are both offered and kept away by an acceleration of our lives. Slowing it down will bring forth these postmodern strains.