Thanks to my friend Simon Holt for this quote by Jürgen Moltmann on the busyness of humanity, the contemporary ‘distress of time’ and the advent of ‘homo accelerandus’.
The ‘he’ in this statement should stand for ‘he’ and ‘she’:
“He has a great many encounters, but does not really experience anything, since although he wants to see everything, he internalizes nothing and reflects upon nothing. He has a great many contacts but no relationships, since he is unable to linger because he is always ‘in a hurry’. He devours ‘fast food’, preferably while standing, because he is no longer able to enjoy anything; after all, a person needs time for enjoyment, and time is precisely what he does not have.”
Link
Simon Holt, Finding Life in Ministry, Simply Simon, 14 October 2009. This is taken from Moltmann’s introductory chapter in Moltmann, Wolterstorff and Charry, A Passion for God’s Reign: Theology, Christian Learning and the Christian Self. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1998, page 39.
Dr Geoff Pound
Geoff can be contacted by email at geoffpound(at)gmail.com on Facebook and Twitter.
Image: “s/he is unable to linger because s/he is always ‘in a hurry’.”