In spite of having had enough of the recent political shenanigans surrounding Westminster political decision-making I still switched on the BBC Politics Live show the other day. I was glad I did. On it, I heard Thomas L. Friedman discuss his latest book; Thank You For Being Late – An optimist’s guide to thriving in the age of accelerations. The theme of the book is that the world is getting faster and deals with how humans are coping with the change.
I heard Friedman say that when you press pause on a computer it stops, when you press the pause button on a human being it starts. For Friedman, we are in need of pressing pause right now as we are in the middle of seismic social change. We can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations, if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to think differently about work, politics, and community.
Friedman says that to understand the twenty-first century, we need to take account of the planet’s three largest forces. For him these are what he calls Moore’s law (technology), the market (globalisation), and mother nature (climate change and biodiversity loss) which are accelerating all at once. Five key realms are being transformed as a result of these accelerations: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics and community. It is argued by Friedman that these forces are not just changing our world but that they are actually reshaping it.
Friedman cites 2007 as a major inflection point in social and economic change which witnessed the release of the iPhone (in addition to advances in software development, silicon chips, increased storage, sensors and networking), all of which created a new technology platform. For Friedman this platform represented what he terms “the supernova”.
I first began thinking of these ideas when reading Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave, about the post-industrial society in the 1990s. It was Toffler’s thesis that since the late 1950s most countries have been transitioning from a Second Wave society into a Third Wave society. He coined many words to describe it and mentioned names invented by others, such as the Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age).
For Friedman, this new technology platform amounts to a massive release of energy that is redesigning how we lead our lives, from how we hail a taxi to international diplomacy and the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. This new technology platform is creating vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world, or to destroy it.
So, what has all this got to do with counselling and psychotherapy, you may well ask? I believe that awareness of wider health factors such as sleep patterns, quality of diet and levels of physical exercise are crucial in treating clients. It has been my experience that these wider health indicators can often be awarded less priority in counselling and psychotherapy assessments, compared to the emphasis on the internal states of an individual. It is also my view that for psychotherapy to be truly holistic and integrative we should be taking a 360 degrees view of a person’s life, including sociological, political and cultural influences, as Wilber outlined in his AQAL basic framework for integral theory. One’s relationship to technology should also form a part of this assessment given the gigantic changes taking place in how we lead our lives. There are big implications for how we view child development, mentalisation and mental well-being. Suicide prevention strategies also need to address the consequences of changes in the workplace and technological change.
So, what can be done on a personal level to help with pressing pause right now to better deal with the rate of technological change around us? I am not sure being late is the cure for having insufficient amounts of spare time for jogging or contemplating the nature of existence. Perhaps we need to step off the treadmill of this high speed digital world and take time out without being deliberately late. We could engage in more mindfulness practice, spend more time away from devices, spend more time outside, learn to play a musical instrument, these might be the better ways of slowing down.
Perhaps we also need a new system of governance. All national governments are currently paralysed by tribalism and partisanship, just witness the current Westminster logjam. Perhaps the healthy community will be the right governing unit and the way forward for the 21st century. The political challenge for government will be to accept responsibility and respond positively to the social and economic dimensions of health experience. Individuals and communities could be co-designers of health, using the concepts of health literacy and empowerment to become involved on their own behalf in health policy and service development.
Noel Bell is a UKCP Psychotherapist based in London who can be contacted by telephone on 07852407140 or noel@noelbell.net
