Buscar: 

The vicious circle of speed and distance

There exists a perverse effect of speed, an effect that attacks the basis of its advantage: speed moves everything further away. It is an observable phenomenon in nature, but still more in modern society. If we compare the snail’s life cycle and the one of a migratory bird like a wild duck, we observe that the first animal lives in a few squared metres, perhaps does not cross fifty linear metres throughout its whole life. On the contrary, the second one flies from the north of Europe to Africa every autumn, and returns every spring. The duck’s life cycle covers an enormous distance due to the fact that it can cross that distance flying in a few days. This is a natural adaptation to seasonal changes, a way of life, sustainable by nature, for which the animal’s body has been prepared by an evolution of millions of years.

Something very different occurs with speed in human life. Let’s now compare the population of a village at the beginning of the 19th century to its current descendants. We’ll locate it around the city of Oviedo. A person who wanted to travel from there to Madrid then took several days on horseback or in a carriage. Nowadays with five hours on the motorway or in less than one hour by plane he/she can make that journey. Speed has multiplied in fabulous way.

However, human life, like that of the snail or the wild duck, is not based on abstract journeys  from place A to place B, but on living journeys, concrete routes linked to the development of life. We people travel habitually from our home to our work place, or to a relative’s or friend’s home, or to the shop where we buy, or to our place of leisure.

This type of journey is the one that we must compare between the village population from two centuries ago and the current population. We will try to use the average in both scenarios.

Let’s first study the distance between residence and work place. What happened as a rule then? A high proportion of the population worked in the surrounding fields and travelled there by walking or on some type of mount or in a carriage. Sometimes they crossed long distances which took more time, but there is no reason to doubt that short distances and times were common. Let’s add that many homemade, artisan and administrative works existed that were undertaken around the home or, in any case, within the same town.

Evidently, we are not valuing other aspects of life here, such as hardship, insecurity or poverty. We only study the average time between the home and the place of work. Nowadays the great majority of people go to their place of work by car, motorcycle, bus, metro or train at a much more greater speed than their ancestors, but taking more time, because the distance from home to work has grown.

And what can we say of distances in human relations? Between parents and children, between boyfriend and girlfriend, between brothers and sisters, friends… The marriages of people from different populations, from different countries, even from different continents are more and more common. This supposes that at least one of the spouses is far from his/her family and a great part of his/her friends. The distance between parents and children also multiplies often for reasons of study or work. The couple of German pensioners who reside on the Mediterranean coast, far from their sons, daughters and grandchildren, for reasons that are no longer even for study or work, but instead for the way of life, isn’t rare.

Everywhere is further and further away: places for shopping, leisure, holidays… Everything is reached with more speed, but not sooner. We could enunciate a law to explain the phenomenon with these terms: The faster the speed reached on a route, the longer are the itineraries that use it.

The same happens with freight trips. Many habitually consumed foods have crossed hundreds or thousands of kilometres to arrive at our table. Diverse clothes, footwear, electric home appliances and vehicles cross the planet to arrive from their manufacturer to their user. The phenomenon is so evident that it does not need more examples. Speed opens the door to distance, and distance comes in without being invited.

If we consider again the emigration of the wild duck, we said that is an adaptation to seasonal changes, sustainable by nature and in agreement with the animal’s body. Does the injection of speed and distance into human life satisfy such requirements? It is an adaptation to some vital imperative? It is sustainable by nature? Are the human body and mind adapted to such circumstance?

Let’s look one by one at the possible answers.

The distance of relations and products does not arise from any vital imperative. Mankind has always lived self-sufficiently from our surroundings regarding basic relations and provisions. However, it seems that modern economic and cultural development entails the requirement of major distance. It is even possible to consider that, given humanity’s self-destructive capacity by means of the nuclear weapon, the interrelation between populations of different countries, cultures and religions to moderate the group instincts so prone to declaring wars given any conflict of interests is very opportune. In this sense, the injection of distance to the planet by means of speed could be understood as an adaptation to the nuclear era.

Is it sustainable by nature? With great difficulty. Mankind has already been very well warned that greenhouse gases are altering climates all around the earth, and that this phenomenon may result in disastrous consequences. The effect of the modern way of  life on a planet with more than six billion inhabitants is too intense. The factors of consumption that cause any deterioration of the atmosphere are many, but without doubt the consumption of distance and speed is one of the main guilty ones.

Are human beings adapted to the progression of speed in our lives? From an evolutionary point of view, the human body and mind have not had time in two or three generations to change. One of the words that better defines the influence of way of life, accelerated in a few decades, on a human condition with millenarian roots, is the word stress. Our nervous system suffers, it is an unquestionable fact. The ideal of quality in human life entails a certain activity physical, manual, regarding relations or entertainment, et cetera; but not in excess. Nor too conditioned by external factors like the clock or the calendar.

There is another issue to consider before responding to the last question: Even the smallest sign of humans’ adaptation to loneliness does not exist. Thousands of generations spent living in a family, a clan, a tribe, have imposed on us the necessity to live in contact with other people and to maintain close links with them. Relational distances are only partially replaced with the means for long-distance communication.

We can continue these reflections on the injection of speed and distance into human life in one way or another, but in every case we will reach the conclusion that speed may be considered a useful means in some circumstances, not an aim in itself. We will not live better nor will we communicate better by developing  great speeds. It is not worth paying any price, as much in an environmental sense as in a purely economic one, to increase speed.

Perhaps the developed societies of the 21st century will seriously consider a certain self-control against the excessive proliferation of distance.

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