going slow

The paradigm of acceleration fails to grasp the deeper human tension between action and contemplation. It’s a false binary, one that Benedict XVI (then Joseph Ratzinger) identified clearly in Introduction to Christianity. He described modernity’s obsession with Machen—do/make—as the belief that only what we can build, manipulate, or produce is... See more

He offers a thought experiment: what if the brief to design a new train connection was given to Disney instead of railway engineers? The latter immediately focuses on speed, time, distance and capacity. With Disney, the goal wouldn’t be to shave minutes off the journey. They may ask a different question: “How do we make the train journey so... See more