The Maddening Epidemic of Slowness

I hold an objective standard.  It's called "The Speed of Clarey."  Like the speed of light you cannot attain this speed, only approach it.  And though it is incredibly enraging that the rest of the world does not operate at "The Speed of Clarey," I've learned to accept people are simply not capable of this theoretical limit and I have to operate and live within the confines of the speed at which the rest society operates at.

This varies depending on who I'm with and what activity we're doing.

For example dinner.  Unless explicitly stated as a "sit down dinner" the purpose of eating is to simply fuel yourself so you may go out and adventure forth, continuing on your life.  But if you look at how slow people eat, even when accounting for conversation that is going to naturally ensue, it is painfully slow.  The conversation could be continued on after dinner as you "watch the game," "go for a hike," or do whatever social activity there is to be had, but this fact is lost on people as they painfully cut tiny little pieces of food from their plate, chewing on them like rabbits, adding unnecessary minutes of conversation between each bite.  And so there you sit with a clean plate, looking at the rest of the people wondering how in hell's name they're not even half way done with their meal, with only a mere 30 minutes left to go.

Another example - women when they are "getting ready."  You could have a plane to catch, a reservation to make, or a symphony to attend with a concrete, specific time, but women will piss away more time 'getting ready' completely oblivious to the hard, chronological limit set forth before them.  And though you may roll your eyes and giggle at this anecdote, it's not funny.  Being late is a horrific offense to those who are punctual and on time.  It is not only making the statement that your time, and thus life, and thus you, are more important than other people, it is also theft.  You are stealing that person's time by being ignorant and slow, requiring that person pointlessly wait for you.  It has gotten to the point that during Minnesota's harsh winters I will not stand outside the car as my girlfriend waits till we park to fumble about and find her things and 2 minutes later finally leave the car.  I walk straight to the house where it is warm because I operate at The Speed of Clarey.  Along the same lines, when it's time to eat, I do NOT wait for another person to initiate the "digging in" by taking the first piece of pizza.  I am always the first to make this social faux pas because I am f^cking hungry and do not have the patience for such stupid social graces.  Whether people want to unnecessarily go hungry or cold, is up to them.

And then there's procrastination.  Whether it was going to school, working, having fun, investing, or entrepreneurship, the constant and common criticism I've received from people has been, "Aaron, you need to calm down and relax in life."  Yet, these are the same people who ask, "Dude, how did you do it?" or lament, "Well we can't all be like you, Clarey." or mock me for "Waking up at 11AM."  They think my constant, Scrat-like hustle is a mental disorder, a handicap, but fail to make the connection of that hustle to my house being paid off, my businesses all being up-and-running and profitable, my ability to work from home, or my many hiking and motorcycle adventures.  They do not realize that like "warping space" in Star Trek, you can warp time by never procrastinating.  This condenses your life into increasingly dense and productive minutes, hours, and days, allowing you to accomplish MUCH MORE, earlier on in life, essentially allowing you to live and experience three times the life of your average American slouch who pisses away his time on TV, leased cars, worthless degrees, and worthless careers.

I could go on, citing examples of the merits of the "The Speed of Clarey," but the larger point is I am right.  I am not wrong.  There is NOTHING erroneous of flawed about having hustle and making every second of your finite life count. And the biggest lie society arguably tells itself that somehow "patience is a virtue," when in reality patience is a weakness and a horrific self-loathing and lack of self-respect.

Unfortunately, your rank and file sheeple are too dumb to have these epiphanies.  They simply aren't far enough along the right of the IQ bell curve to wake up and realize they're finite and are going to die.  This means the societal medium by which I (and other anti-slowness people) try to live our lives limits the speed at which we can.  Whether we like it or not, "Fast People" are dependent upon the rest of society.  And while we'd like to "push out this software by Thursday," "climb that mountain in under 10 hours," or "get to work a little early,"  we have employees only capable of getting the software out by NEXT Thursday, people who can't climb period, and a traffic jam that is going to make us 2 hours late, not 2 hours early.

This would be perfectly fine in that society's lethargy is a given.  It's a fact.  The vast majority of the sheep are simply not going to operate at our speed and thus we will NEVER achieve or attain the accomplishments and heights we're capable of.  And it's up to us to recite the Prayer of Serenity, practice some stoicism, and accept we don't control the rest of society.  The problem is the speed at which society is operating is getting slower.  The societal medium me and my other "Speed of Clarey" peers must fly through is getting thicker.  And this is not only making our slog towards greatness more costly and painful, but has huge ramifications for the rest of society.

First, people are getting dumber.  As measured by IQ, people's overall intelligence (in the Western world) is decreasing.  They postulate and theorize why this is (with explanations ranging from smart people not breeding, stupid people breeding, and immigration), but the why doesn't matter.  All that matters is what is.  And people ARE getting dumber.

Second, this cascades into a whole bevy of effects and consequences across the country, the perfect example being traffic.  Traffic is slower not only because we spend more money on slow people (welfare, TANF, WIC, etc.) and not roads, but the people on the roads are indeed dumber.  The texting teenager, the incapable soccer mom, or the clueless immigrant all parking their asses in the left lane a full 10 MPH below the speed limit, are just as responsible for today's traffic jams and increased commute times as underinvestment in our roads and infrastructure.  This directly affects everybody, even our economic growth as our transportation system is essentially the cardiovascular system of the economy.  We unnecessarily waste time, money,  and gas to the tunes of billions of human hours all because people are becoming slower.  Sadly, traffic is merely one vital chokepoint of society that slow people populate, and therefore disproportionately affect.

Third, education.  In the olden days you could graduate from high school and go right to work.  The education you'd receive from a K-High School education was adequate and of high enough quality employers would immediately employ you fresh off the assembly line.  But the people got lazy.  They got slow.  Both the teachers and the students!  And the quality of education decreased and watered down to the point that a high school diploma was now worthless.  You now need an extra 4 years of (very expensive) schooling in the form of a bachelors degree ("Masters Preferred" however) in order to simply apply for most "entry level positions."  You want to talk about slowing down GENERATIONS of people? Mandate they spend an extra 4-8 years in higher education on top of the 13 you just forced them to take during their entire childhood and STILL say they don't have enough "years experience" for entry level positions.

Fourth, careers.  Just because you grant dumber people more time to get a quality education, doesn't make them any smarter.  And as these slower and dumber people started populating the ranks of corporate America and the labor force, the sheer amount of idiotic baby sitting required to keep them from merely destroying the place via lawsuits has increased exponentially.  "Sexual Harassment Training," "Diversity Training," "Sensitivity Training."  You spend more time legally and defensively training your staff not to cop a feel in the copy room, than you do actual work training programs that might benefit the company.

And finally, socializing the costs of stupid people's mistakes.

What I mean by "socializing" is spreading around the cost of people's mistakes to the dwindling few who didn't make any.  For example the bank bailouts.  There you had dumb bankers making dumb loans to dumb (and slow) people who would never be able to pay back those loans.  You couldn't just let the banks fail and let the deadbeats rot.  Heavens no, that might prompt them to take inventory and responsibility for their mistakes, maybe instilling in them a spirit of hustle and not being so stupid.  It's much more politically popular and expedient to just continue to bail out the stupid with the labor and production of the smart.  And thus the engines of society are burdened with the additionally heavy load of taking care of the slow and parasitic;

TRULY dumb and slow liberal arts students want to be bailed out for their worthless liberal arts degrees.
Truly dumb and slow single moms who don't know how babies are made and "accidentally" got pregnant...6 times...by 8 different fathers want free everything.
Even companies who didn't save enough for pensions or a rainy day recession demanded getting bailed out instead of being allowed to tank like they should have.

This "socializing the costs" of society's mistakes slows down society on two large fronts.  One, us hustlers of society have to work twice as hard to pay for the mistakes of the slow and stupid.  This leaves us with less money and less free time to pursue our lives to the fullest extent.  This also has a huge opportunity cost for the rest of society in that had we had that time and money to ourselves we would have likely invented a new technology, created a new company, or pursued some other venture that would have advanced society as a whole.  Now it goes to more baby formula for an unwanted bastard child or bailing out Thadeus the Banker so he can keep his leased Mercedes.  Two, the sheeple-like masses never endure the full cost and pain of their mistakes and therefore become ever more lethargic and slow.  They are never stung into hustle by having a fire lit under their bum.  They never face starvation, prompting them to work harder and faster.  They are merely placated with more taxpayer money, which pickles their brain to dumber and dumber levels, and slower and slower heights.

The overall result of this Epidemic of Slowness is the decay and deterioration of all social, economic, and sociological measures.  US Long Term Economic growth is down about 40% from it's 1940's-1960's peak.  Labor force participation is still trending down despite women's (relatively) recent entry into the labor force.  Consequently, our national deficits and debts are at all time highs since we don't produce enough to pay for the things we want.  And if there's an epitomal example of the consequences of a slow society, may I point out the Millennial generation?  An entire generation that didn't hit full maturity until they were 35 and even then, some of them still are living at home or on daddy's dime.  I fear if the slowness epidemic continues Gen Z'ers will be living at home into their 40's and be just as clueless as the Millennials as to why.

In the end, I do not have any delusions about society waking up, having a society-wide epiphany, and pulling it's communal head out of its communal ass.  I've come to accept that society is not only not capable of reaching "The Speed of Clarey" but is getting further away from it.  But instead of ruing or lamenting "what could have never been" I'm going to make lemonade out of lemons.  I already make a nice tidy profit selling harsh, blunt, truth to people on the side.  But imagine if I (and my other hustling peers) took our efforts, work ethic, speed, and intelligence and sold the slow and the stupid the lies they're desperately addicted to?  Oprah is America's richest woman using this formula.  The democrat party exists solely by selling lies to the slow.  Slow and stupid people fork over $600 billion a year to colleges and universities to tell them they're smart.  And the entire women's fashion-make-up-gossip industry even has slow women believing "big is beautiful" and "weight doesn't have a number."

It would have been nice to prevent the housing crash.
It would have been nice to land on Mars.
It would have been nice to be part of the engine that got US GDP per capita up to $100,000.

But you're all too damn slow.

Looks like us hustlers have no choice but to profit off of you.