On a work trip to Sweden a few years back, I experienced a micro-level version of the same idea in the form of the fika, the daily moment when everyone in a given workplace gets up from their desks to gather for coffee and cake. The event resembles a well-attended coffee break, except that Swedes are liable to become mildly offended—which is the eq... See more

As this modern mindset came to dominate, wrote Mumford, ‘Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.’11 In its place came the dictatorship of the clock, the schedule and the Google Calendar alert; Marilynne Robinson’s ‘joyless urgency’ and the constant feeling that you ought to be getting more done. The trouble wit

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