Jackson urges us to be less productive

Tim Jackson who has argued
that we should be less
productive.

Tim Jackson who wrote about growing less and yet still prospering. told readers of the Sunday Review in the New York Times about the need to be less productive.

In an opinion piece headed: “Let’s Be Less Productive”, Jackson wanted to know if the pursuit of labour productivity had reached its limit.

Jackson, who explored the concept earlier in his 2011 book “Prosperity Without Growth”, again encourage his reader to think about the urgency with which we appear to live; an urgency that appears to be rooted in growth.

In discussing the switch to a different economy, Jackson said:

“Of course, a transition to a low-productivity economy won’t happen by wishful thinking. It demands careful attention to incentive structures — lower taxes on labor and higher taxes on resource consumption and pollution, for example. It calls for more than just lip service to concepts of patient-centered care and student-centered learning. It requires the dismantling of perverse productivity targets and a serious investment in skills and training. In short, avoiding the scourge of unemployment may have less to do with chasing after growth and more to do with building an economy of care, craft and culture. And in doing so, restoring the value of decent work to its rightful place at the heart of society.”

nef has similar agenda arising from similar philosophies

The idea of working fewer hours is obviously not new as it has been at the core of the new economics foundation (nef) agenda and philosophy since 1986.

According its website:

the new economics foundation is an independent think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrated real economic well-being.

We aim to improve quality of life by promoting innovative solutions that challenge mainstream thinking on economic, environment and social issues. We work in partnership and put people and planet first.

nef was foudned in 1986 by the leader of The Other Economic Summit (TOES) which forced issues such as international debt onto the agenda of the G7 and G8 summits.

We are unique in combining rigorous analysis and policy debate with practical solutions on the ground, often run and designed with the help of local people. We also create new ways of measuring progress towards increased well-being and environmental sustainability.

nef works with all sections of society in the UK and internationally – civil society, government, individuals, businesses and academia – to create more understanding and strategies for change.

The proposal for a Four-Hour Work Day arises from similar philosophies.

The antagonizism of gratuitous advice

Few things antagonize people more than gratuitous advice.

Denialists and climate change
 advocates face a near
impentrable divde.

Adaptation to climate change is, in the eyes of many, not only advice they consider gratuitous, but advice that is irrelevant and simply wrong.

Seeing the whole argument false and believing it driven by a utopian-like agenda that disregards and ignores man’s achievements, skills and abilities, the denialists conceive it as an attack on all that is good about society - a way of living they approve - and so grossly irrelevant, disruptive and disingenuous.

There is subsequently, a near impenetrable divide between climate change advocates and the denialists.

Sadly, nature is oblivious to the human debate, for as we face off over whether or not the discussion is based on fact or fantasy, nature is simply busy in the background doing what it does as it adjusts to what exists.

We procrastinate, protecting whatever role it is we consider critical and in doing that fail, absolutely, to make any decision; decisions that employed effectively, assuming they promote decided climate change adaption processes, could produce significant abatement of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Humanity faces a massive dilemma, something intensely unfamiliar to the human experience and as we procrastinate and in many powerful circles adhere unflinchingly to a “business as usual” paradigm, nature totally unaffected by human dithering works at securing equilibrium, unconcerned about whether or not the outcome includes, or allow for, the human species.

The advice that we should respond to evolving changes to our climate with care and contraction may or may not be, depending upon what prism through which you see life, gratuitous, but however you see them they are about equity and a broader sense of care for our fellows.

Achieving the Four-Hour Work Day will be chaotic and divisive, but absolutely worth it

The most remote inhabitated island on earth,
 Easter Island, collapsed for reasons not dissimiliar
to those presently facing existing civilizations.

The journey to a Four-Hour Work Day will not be easy; it will be chaotic, socially and politically divisive and viewed from the present paradigm, impossible.

Of course we don’t have much to compare it to, and to consider it from within the restrictions of what exists makes it appear dysfunctional and wholly irresponsible. It is neither of those.

Of course, the idea of a Four-Hour Work Day did not emerge in isolation as it has a few implacable allies; among them a dramatically changing climate, an imploding world economy, and the rapid depletion of finite and irreplaceable resources.

Good sense, even in the face of an imminent world catastrophe, is surprisingly rare and it appears that our blind addiction to what exists has obliterated our reason, and fear, of inevitable difficulties.

What is happening is an echo of the collapse of earlier societies, one being Easter Island, the most remote inhabited island on earth.

The idea of building large stone statues for the deified dead, whom the islanders believed provided for the living, was an obsession that equates with today’s equal obsessional-mandate that argues our quality of live hinges entirely on growth.

About 15 000 people worked tirelessly to build the statues and although aware of what they were doing and the inevitable consequences, cut down the island’s trees, one by one, to move the stone giants about on until the late 16^th century, they had totally deforested their home.

The environmental degradation they had brought upon themselves in pursuit of superstition is being played out again and, interestingly, the similarities are striking.

Easter Island was isolated leaving those living there with no retreat – our earth is absolutely isolated in the universe and despite the fancies of some, we have no escape and yet we continue to use and exhaust the resources upon which modern life is built.

Despite the enthusiasms of some who point to technological solutions, we are travelling with enthusiasm, laughing and smiling and we rush blindly toward the abyss aware, but not paying any attention to the inadequacy of those ideas and a chaotic outcome that will decimate life on earth.

What do we do? First, we accept that nature cannot be negotiated with and so understand that we must learn to life with it; second, use less of everything; third, use the extensive and intricate knowledge we presently have to soften the emerging difficulties.

How do we do that? Ensure an economic equity among all, that is making many poorer and many more people richer and to do that we consider implementing the Four-Hour Work Day.

In all that, it is worth remembering that existing market driven economic processes did not arrive trouble free – its birth was damnable, chaotic and decidedly troublesome as we went about investing society with the present and existing market system.

In fact, if we knew then what we know now, we would not have gone down this path at all, but of course it is easy to be intelligent after the event.

The challenge now is to simply be intelligent and within that understand that fewer working hours will, after a period of adjustment and difficulty, make life better for all.

Morphing sweetly to improving the quality of our lives

Happiness is in our hands.

The idea for a Four-Hour Work Day emerged first as an adaptation to climate change and has morphed sweetly into a concept underpinning the quality of our lives.

Work is essential to human wellbeing for it grounds us socially, connecting us with our fellows, gives an important sense of purpose and, importantly, generates many of the things that are crucial to our broader health, both physically and emotionally.

Sadly however, the idea of work has been corrupted, diverting our attention from those truly human qualities of connection, purpose and the innovation that provides those goods that allow us to attend to both our physical and emotional needs.

Struggling with the idea of work, humans, or at least most of us and certainly in the developed world, are now locked into a paradigm that dictates that we devote, almost exclusively, our talents and time to a process that is about boosting consumerist-based egos.

Life, it must be noted, is not about surrounding ourselves with “stuff”, the production of which consumes an inordinate amount of primarily fossil-fuelled energies to bring to the market being assembled using, mostly, an irreplaceable resource.

The complication is that while that wasteful paradigm simply expands exponentially and worsens the circumstances of anthropogenic climate change, it subtracts rather than adds to general human happiness.

Ideas that drive the modern “work-world” have been hijacked from the happiness, contentment and wellbeing humans experience when they pool their talents, time and personal resources to enrich the purpose of their being.

Simply, we work too long and too hard to achieve far too little in terms of making what is the human experiment a worthwhile endeavour – we have been grossly mislead and so we are equally grossly mistaken about what it is that makes humans, human.

Strip away the glamour of the commercial world; consider what it is that makes a person’s heart beat faster; look at what matters to them on a truly personal level and it is not, except in the rarest of cases, spending more time with your shoulder to the wheel (laboring to enrich others) for the ultimate benefit of another.

The Four-Hour Work Day will make us all substantially poorer, or at least bring some equity into the world economic system, but in doing that make each of us time-rich and so in a position to contribute the greater wellbeing and happiness of our communities – the quality of our lives will be better.

Jianying Zha clarfies, unintentionally, the reason for climate change skeptics

Jianying Zha.

Jianying Zha may have inadvertently stumbled upon why the concept of climate change is beyond the comprehension of most.

The award winning author, academic and who was among the first class of students at the newly reopened Peking University (now Beijing University) said recently that everyone lives in the moment.

Therein rests the complication for with climate change the differences that amount to the warming of our climate are overtly subtle and as such illustrate no evidence in “the now”.

Paul Church.

Most people consider, wrongly, the weather to be the climate and look about today (May 20) and in admiration of the near perfect day (still, clear and about 15 degree Celsius) and seriously question, and so doubt, the indisputable reality that is climate change.

Jianying Zha was discussing the China Question at this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Festival with long-time Shanghai resident, economist, consultant, commentator, writer and editor, Paul Church, and sinologist and novelist, Linda Jaivin.

Their discussion can be seen on the ABC’s Big Ideas.

The Four-Hour Work Day is a workable adaptation to climate change

James Hansen has told New York Times readers that “Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening”.

NASA's James Hansen
being arrested.

Hansen, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren”, reaffirmed his earlier warnings (much earlier as the first came in the 1980s) in the piece headed: “Game Over for the Climate”.

Also discussing similar issue in its “Climate Snapshot”, The Vancouver Observer reported in a story headed “Global warming increasing by 400,000 atomic bombs everyday” the “Even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow, our past C02 emissions will continue to add hundreds of thousands of A-bombs worth of energy each day for years”.

Endless adaptations to climate change are being proposed, including the idea (it’s actually working) that we re-engineer the DNA of certain species causing them to excrete diesel, fuel that can be used in vehicles and while undeniably exciting, the development is still in its early stages and without the fossil fuel infrastructure its likely impact in a useful human time frame will be infinitesimally small.

"Storms of my Granchildren"
 by James Hansen.

The Four-Hour Work Day is something that requires nothing in the way of infrastructure, it can be implemented immediately, it will slow dramatically human consumption and energy use, and in making each of us less reliant on income and more dependent on our neighbourhoods, the world will be a better place and so, by implication, we will slow the human impact on our climate.

Attitude, a preparedness to surrender some of the pleasantries our energy-rich life has bequeathed us and the personal will to opt for the Four-Hour Work Day is the only thing that stands between us and working together to abate our worsening climate.

Absolute sense, backed by the reality that nature doesn't negotiate

Fossil fuels are nothing
than "ancient sunlight".

The idea of a Four-Hour Work Day makes absolute sense in terms of adapting to climate change, but is laden with unresolved difficulties when applied to what exists.

How, for example, does a hospital care for patients over 24 hours? What does the self-employed person do whose financial fidelity depends on them working 60 hours a week? What does a farmer do? What does a professional endurance sportsperson do when their chosen sport demands training sessions of six-hours? How do traditional industrial businesses operate? What happens to the fly in–fly out people who work 12 hour days within the resource industry? What does a truck driver do?

All those things, of course, can only be resolved through negotiation between humans, all of which must be tempered by the irrefutable certainty that nature simply doesn’t negotiate.

Just 200 years of exploiting the world’s ancient sunlight (that is all our fossil fuels are) has seen humans change the atmosphere to such an extent that no matter how we behave in the short term, the world’s climate has changed.

The core idea of the Four-Hour Work Day is to bring a decided economic equity to the world and within that slow the damage we are causing to our atmosphere by making everyone, especially most in the world’s developed nations, poorer and so less able to consume and subsequently reduce our need for that “ancient sunlight”.

Should businesses, whatever they are, be able to see profitably in working past the four-hours, then they would need to hire another group of workers as the Four-Hour Work Day is just that, no overtime and no double shifts.

To understand the Four-Hour Work Day it is essential we escape from present mindsets; we abandon the growth imperative; we learn to put people before profit; we need to grasp the idea that true human happiness and contentment is not to be found in gathering fanciful baubles around us, but in connecting with those around us, our neighbours and others who live in our street, things that are greatly enriched when we work, in a traditional sense, fewer hours.

Families among the beneficiaries of Four-Hour Work Day

Australian Institute
of Family Studies
researcher ,
Jennifer Baxter.

Families would be among the prime beneficiaries of the Four-Hour Work Day.

A survey by the Australian Institute of Family Studies has found the one in three 10-year-old children say their parents work too hard, and 25 per cent of parents agree.

Institute researchers asked a large group of children aged 10 to 11 – about 4000 of them – what they thought about their parents working habits. About 35 per cent of those children thought their fathers worked too much, while 27 per cent said their mothers worked too much.

A story headed: “Kids feel family time suffers when mum and dad are overworked” appeared in today’s (April 14) Melbourne Age.

Merrelyn disucsses a value that arises from the Four-Hour Work Day

The Four-Hour Work Day has many intrinsic values, none more important than what Merrelyn Emery discusses on the recent issue of the ABC’s “The Drum”.

Merrelyn Emery.

The social scientist has documented social change over time for many years now and in answer to the question posed earlier on The Drum by Jonathon Green: "Can someone explain how in the space of just a decade our public discourse has been hijacked by the ignorant and the bigoted and their boosters in the mass media?"

Writing in the story headed: “Individual emphasis and the loss of community connection”, Merrelyn writes:

While the ignorant and the bigoted have become much more visible over the recent decade, the problem has been in the making for much longer. In Australia, the problem surfaced for the first time in the period 1977-78: it is called 'dissociation'. Dissociation is a denial that cooperation with others could be more effective in reaching desired goals than acting alone or selfishly.

Working fewer working hours won't decimate society

Dick Smith.

Confirmation that fewer hours at work will not decimate society is illustrated in Dick Smith’s book, “Population Crisis – the dangers of unsustainable growthfor Australia”.

Smith became wealthy when he built his business, Dick Smith Electronics, on the back of a growing Australia and benefited hugely from a society addicted to consumption.

While readily acknowledging that, Smith now argues that growth, be it in human numbers or in economic terms is not in the long term interest of Australia, or the world itself.

His argument, arrived at after talking with some of Australia’s sharpest thinkers, along with reading about and listening to many of the world’s best demographers, economists, environmentalist, climatologists and an impressive array of scientists left him absolutely convinced that Australia, and the world, needed to immediately attend to all intricacies of growth.

Smith said: “I believe it’s time to abandon the growth-obsessed economy in its entirety. This will be epochal as the Industrial Revolution, but our long-term survival as a civilisation depends on it”.

He added: “The endless growth economy is obsolete and risky to future generations. We must plan now and begin to implement a ‘steady-state economy’ based on quality of life rather that the quantity of consumption”.

The human experiment has reached a nexus: continue with “business as usual” and we are unquestionably doomed; reshape and rebuild the world’s economic system and in doing so address all facets of exponential growth and we have a chance, a slim chance, of furthering the experiment.

Dick Smith's
"Population Crisis".

The growth Smith discusses at length has arisen through the conflation of a of event, alone each has certain impact, but together they have created a situation that sees humanity charging blindly toward the abyss.

Among the ingredients that have become a catastrophic recipe, is the fact that exponential economic growth brings many difficulties, among the fact that we are all too rich (many are also too poor) and that taken our consumption of “stuff” – stuff that we don’t need, that we buy to impress people we don’t know of don’t like – to a level that now actual endangers humanity.

The Four-Hour Work Day, yes, it will be as life-changing at the Industrial Revolution, will unquestionably end the wonderful discretionary spending that today troubles the planet so much, but that life-changing event could also be life-saving.

Richness and resilience of neigbourhoods pilfered by business

The richness, and resilience, of our neigbourhoods has been pilfered by the business world.

Demography, consultant, analyst and author, Bernard Salt, late last year told a packed house at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre that the vibrancy and friendships once an integral part of neighbourhoods, was now to be found in the workplace.

It seems that the richness of life that traditionally arose in neighbourhoods was now largely restricted to friendships among work friends.

Bernard Salt

Mr. Salt, one of a panel of four who spoke about “Becoming Seven Billion” at the centre, said once neighbours chatted over the back fence, but now “neighbours” chatted over the petition at work.

Rather than being exciting, vibrant, resourceful and resilient places, neighbourhoods are becoming, or have become, silos from which people emerge in the morning to begin their journey to work, mostly by car, and to which they disappear into at night, back into their private nirvana.

The cost, ecologically, psychologically and socially, to our communities is damaging in the extreme and could be reversed if we adopted the Four-Hour Work Day.

Commercial operations are particularly good as creating a sense of belonging among its staff and that being so emotionally demanding, that arriving back in their neighbourhoods, most people are psychologically exhausted and searching for respite; respite they find by retreat to their private utopia – the “place” pays the price and becomes little more than a dormitory.

The neighbourhood, the place, needs people who actually live there; people who invest a significant portion of themselves to engender life into their small community.

Frequently people are so wearied by the rigours of the commercial world that they have nothing left for their community.

The Four-Hour Work Day would ensure that people returned from their workplaces with something of their soul left enabling them to interact with their neighbourhoods.

Contrary to that, Bernand Salt cast doubt on the idea of what he described as “urban villages” in which people know their neighbours, chat across the road, feeling connected and know their butcher.

Mr. Salt said he gets all the social interaction he needs from his work and when he gets home from work, “I just want to go to sleep”.

“I don’t want to chat with my neighbor,” he said.

The sad reality that appears to avoid the consciousness of Mr. Salt is the emerging conflation of events, our imploding economy, exploding population and decided changes to our climate that can only be resolved if in some way we reduce the amount of “stuff” we produce, the amount of “stuff” we can afford to buy and, within that the amount of energy we use, most of which is produced by fossil fuels.

The adaptation of our lifestyle to allow for the introduction of the Four-Hour Work Day will be the first step in on that journey of abatement.

Looking at life through the existing prism and seeing a handsaw

Considering just four hours of paid work each day is impossible, especially when our view is limited to the prism of what exists.

The common handsaw will see a return
 to common usage as we adapt to our
changing climate.

Should we struggle to comprehend the idea of a Four-Hour Work Day, then what is incomprehensible is made even more so because of the intractable burden that has settled upon us, gaining both weight and force with the passing of recent centuries.

The idea that contentment will emerge from having your shoulder to the wheel and that there is simply no other way of achieving such serenity is embedded in our psyche.

The world’s market driven system has become so pervasive and so entrenched in our being that consumption inevitably equates with contentment and much to the delight of unquestionably the military/industrial cohort, along with the world’s neoliberals (the same people probably) we work tirelessly to enable that consumption and so the associated  imagined contentment.

What exists did not arrive on the horizon, perfectly shaped, in ideal working condition and ready for instant implementation – rather, it was knocked into shape over the centuries: some bits working, other bits being discarded and all along being shaped to ensure it favoured the few, enriched them and allowed the orchestration of life to ensure that those with their shoulder to the wheel believed they were working for the broader betterment of mankind.

The latter is not true as the majority are really working for the betterment of just a few – there is an imbalance; an imbalance that favours “that few” with the implication that the present economic structure needs rescuing and definitive restructuring.

The Four-Hour Work Day is about many things, but chief among them is the restoration of neighbourhoods in that people would be able to spend more time in there and play their part in ensuring its resilience and so its adaptation to a changing climate; changes that will raise, hugely, the importance of such basic technologies as the hammer, the handsaw the shovel.

The existing paradigm almost denies the hammer, the handsaw and the shovel and their near extinction from the human landscape has, in an environmental sense, cost humanity dearly and as we adapt to a changing climate through the Four-Hour Work Day we will see their return to former value.

A lost job and a confusing vision

Nicholas Sarkozy proposed austerity to save France and it cost him his job.

Oddly it was a Socialist Francois Hollande who is now France's new president after winning a majority of votes in his defeat Sarkozy last week.

The new leader of France, Socialist
Francois Hollande.

Sarkozy, from the conservative Union for a Popular Movement and had been the president since 2007, had gone into the election arguing for severe austerity measures to enable France to endure the tribulations of a tumbling economy.

Hollande, by contrast, had promised to re-negotiate the European Union’s "fiscal pact," which had set tight budget rules.

Sounding a little like most of the world’s conservative thinkers, Mr Hollande had gone the polls calling for a "growth pact", which he argued would stimulate stagnant economies and add new jobs.

Maybe French politics are different from those of other developed western nations and maybe they are not.

Just like here, for argument’s sake, they are inherently confusing – Sarkozy, who had been derided by many for his allegiance to the wealthy has worked to protect those of his social class – something he felt could be achieved through national austerity, instructing his key ministries to create appropriate plans. 

Mr. Hollande equipped with a sharper understanding of the French electorate, celebrated victory, saying a change was coming that would answer the desires of people with an end to austerity and the repair of “broken and burnt” France.

The intelligence of the masses is mostly a cause for celebration, but in this instance, it sadly reflects what author Charles Mackay discusses in his 19^th century book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”.

Austerity measures that simply solidify circumstances that favour a few and ignore the majority are distasteful and deserve punishment at the polls; a punishment handed out to Mr. Sarkozy.

Mackay's 19th
century book.

However, the platform of Mr. Hollande that promised a “growth pact” to stimulate the economy and create new jobs is a wonderful idea, but one which overlooks the reality that the world of tomorrow will not need growth, a stronger economy or jobs, rather the reverse.

A visionary leader able to stand comparison with history’s greats is urgently needed; a leader able to stand aside from those who, despite their protestations, are not able to rid themselves of the growth and consumption mindset.

That leader, whoever he or she might be, will help the people of the world understand and with charisma demonstrate the need to slow down global warming, we'll either have to put the brakes on economic growth or transform the way the world's economies work.

The solutions are not of the Hollande-type rather, they arise from understanding countless studies and undeniable scientific fact indicating we need to untangle the complexity of life and embrace a simpler and slower life.

by Robert McLean

A complex discussion that will lead to happiness and contentmentt

by Robert McLean

Most people are unable to understand or comprehend an entirely different way of living: a way of living rooted in a comprehensively different infrastructure, one applied both publically and personally.

Amory Lovins of the Rocky
Mountain Institure.

We are so addicted to present endeavours, physically, psychologically and practically, that we are unable to escape the present paradigm that is targeted at igniting our wants and making the fulfilling of our needs a seemingly incidental by-product of answering those wants.

Of course they are not, and if we continue to fulfill those wants in a blasé market driven fashion, our ability to answer even the most basic human needs will be severely eroded.

The Four-Hour Work Day is not about a Luddite-like attack on the existing capitalistic system, although it is interpreted by many as such, rather it is about injecting time back into our lives and conservatively halving the amount of time we devote to industrial growth: growth that is robbing humans of the conditions in which they enjoy life the most.

It is really about understanding what is important to us; what personally enriches our lives; and, within that, understanding and truly appreciating what it is that makes us better people.

None of those things are unconditionally answered by working long hours each day in the employ of another to ensure that person’s access to wealth goes on unabated.

It’s a complex argument as work has many worthy personal and social values and although many of the world’s market-driven companies invest to enhance them, the unacknowledged implication is that they pilfer both the energy and time of workers that could more advantageously be applied to the wellbeing and so resilience of their neighbourhoods.

The growth-mandate of the market system hinges on daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual budget disciplines that in themselves are honourable, but in being directed toward ever increasing profit pay little, or not attention, to the fact that success of those budgets implicates every aspect of nature – considered a common good by most – and considers irrelevant the fact that those budgets can only be achieved through the exploitation of even more of earth’s finite resources.

The Four-Hour Work Day if employed correctly would halve that consumption, make the community fundamentally financially poorer, but socially incredible rich – our neighborhoods would be more vibrant, alive, interesting and so rewarding place to be.

It was Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, in discussing a plan he has for energy said: “The future is not fate, but choice”.

Working endlessly to ensure the profit of another is not our fate, it is our choice.

The unspoken goal is to maintain life as it is

Every time people gather to discuss an adaptation, or response to climate change, the unspoken goal seems to be the maintenance of the world as we know it.

The Four-Hour Work Day is the
 among the first steps in
 responding to climate change.

That is honourable and warrants applause, but it seems to avoid the reality that if the causations of climate change are not attended to then circumstances will become so difficult that life as we know it will erode.

That is not what I want and what I certainly do not want is more discussion, more imaginary strategies or more research for we haven’t the time. The time to contemplate our response, and act, was ideally 30 years ago.

However, understanding then little about what damage we were doing to our atmosphere, we did nothing and continued with business as usual and so actually worsened the situation.

The time for talk and the seemingly endless oscillation as to whether or not humans are responsible and beyond that how we respond is past.

We now need a decision; we need courageous and bold leaders willing to put their careers at risk as they guide Australia through the tribulations that will evolve from a changing climate.

We need invasive social surgery; surgery that will slow down our carbon dioxide emissions and such surgery can only be orchestrated from the “top-down”.

We need an innovative process that will slow down society; lift its foot off the throttle; ease back, consider, contemplate life and pull over into the rest area.

Sounds easy, but doing that will be both complex and difficult, but a first step will be to embrace the Four-Hour Work Day.