Unknown parts of history & practices to slow down

Fish don't know that they are in water.

It is hard to see the system you are in until you step out and look at it from the outside.

Most people think it is normal to get up before the sun, contradicting their cardiac rhythm.

Most people think it is normal to spend 8+ hours on a screen and come home with an exhausted brain.

Most people think it's normal to constantly override their needs to work longer or harder.

But that is not normal.

We used to live in tune with the cycles. Morning sun woke us up.

The 8-hour workday is a relic of the past.
In today's knowledge work environment, less is more.
Our brains need to rest to make new connections.

We used to care more for each other, helping us meet our needs and supporting the community.

Productivity, the measure of making more out of the time available, only became a value in the last 500 years, with the rise of capitalism.

Most people don't know this part of history:

Capitalism didn't seamlessly start after the end of feudalism. There was a time in Europe between 1350 and 1500, which historians have described as "the golden age of the proletariat".

Free peasants began to build a clear alternative to feudalism: an egalitarian, co-operative society rooted in the principles of local self-sufficiency.

Wages rose, rents declined, food became cheap, and nutrition improved.

Since self-sufficient people didn't need to earn so much money, they worked less. Less "supply" for work led workers to negotiate shorter work weeks, weekends off, and benefits like meals at the job.

During the revolutionary period, peasants' work followed a rhythm that, from the perspective of industrialists, appeared to be irregular and undisciplined: it depended on weather and seasons, on festivals and feast days.

Life was organised around the principles of sufficiency and desire: people would work as much as they needed, and the rest of the time they spent dancing, telling stories, drinking beer .. having fun.

Holiday time in England takes up around 1/3 of the year. In Spain, holidays were 5 months per year

Let that sink in.

Peasants during that time had more freedom and lived more in tune with their needs than we do right now.

Why do we need to be so productive nowadays?

The "enclosures" happened. The commons were fenced off and privatised for elite use. They became "property". Peasants were forced of their lands and for the first time in history commoners were denied access to the most basic resources necessary for survival. People were left without homes and food. They had no choice but to sell their labour for wages, not to earn a bit of extra income, as under the previous regime, nor to satisfy the demands of a lord, as under serfdom, but simply to survive.

Capitalism is hardly a natural and inevitable process. There was no gradual 'transition'. Capitalism rose on the back of organized violence, mass impoverishment, and the systematic destruction of self-sufficient subsistence economies.

It did not put an end to serfdom; rather, it put an end to the progressive revolution that had ended serfdom.

People rebelled against it, making the period between 1500 and 1700 among the bloodiest, most tumultuous times in the world. Real wages declined by as much as 70%. Some of the worst famines happened. Populations declined. Average life expectancy fell from 43 in 1500 to the low 30s in 1700.

The first few hundred years of capitalism generated misery to a degree unknown in the pre-capitalist era.

The growth of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution hinged on commodities that were produced by enslaved workers, on land stolen from colonised people, and processed in factories staffed by European peasants who had been forcibly dispossessed by enclosure.

- Adapted from Jason Hickel - Less is More (Highly recommended book)

Now, 325 years later, it has gotten to the point that you feel bad when you are just chilling. (That's, of course, only if you are privileged enough to be able to chill.)

This is what is called internalized capitalism.

Internalized capitalism is the idea that our self-worth is directly linked to our productivity. You can't feel value in yourself just for being alive – just for being a human being.

You have to be a 'human doing' to have any value.

Internalized makes you feel guilty when you rest, undervalues your achievements, and prioritizes work over well-being. It makes you say, "I should be doing more," or "I should be farther along."

That's life in the 2020s. But more and more people get fed up with this.

It might be my bubble, but more and more people choose to get out of their cushy corporate jobs, starting projects on the land with the goal of becoming self-sufficient.

We need to be part of capitalism mainly to pay rent and food.

But rent (at least in cities) is getting more and more unaffordable, and the food you can buy in a supermarket has little nutrition. Plus, Corona has shown that food supply chains are not resilient.

So how fast will we spin this wheel? We already live in a burnout society. When do we stop?

It remains to be seen.

Until then, there are some ways to counter the artificially fast speed of life we are experiencing:

Spend time in nature

Forrest bathing is a thing. Recent scientific research underscores the profound impact trees have on mental well-being. Researchers found that individuals living in areas with a higher density of trees exhibited fewer signs of depression, anxiety, and stress than those with fewer trees.

Apparently, nature can replenish our exhausted cognitive resources, too. A simple experiment where participants were given memory and attention tasks pre- and post-nature exposure found that those who spent time around trees performed markedly better.

So if you feel overwhelmed, depressed, stressed, or anxious, a walk in the park or forest can help.

Frame rest as rebellion

Internalised capitalism makes us feel bad when we rest.

But if we frame it as rebellion against the system, rest becomes powerful.

In a world where you are expected to constantly produce, doing nothing is a rebellious act.

Take a sick day, spend Sunday mornings in bed, or just sit on a bench in the park observing what happens around.

Be a rebel.

Control your digital media intake

Life becomes fast if we let thousands of stimuli into our brains at all times. But we can take control.

Turn your phone on "do not disturb" only letting calls and messages by your loved ones through.

Enjoy quiet mornings and leave your phone on flight mode until after breakfast.

Put stoppers on the consumption: turn off autoplay on Netflix or YouTube, or use apps that remind you if you are mindlessly scrolling social media.

Always remember, you are in control of slowing down how others access your brain.

Consciously slow down with mindfulness practices

An antidote to the speed of life: engage in a mindfulness practice.

A mindful session of yoga or a meditation practice can have a profound effect on how you go through the day.

The popularity of yoga and meditation in the West can be explained as coping mechanisms to the increasing speed we experience.

Try a 30-minute yoga practice for beginners. Here is one of my favourites.

Or check out my favourite meditation app here.

Whatever works for you.

It's not easy to live a slow life in a fast-paced world.

You shouldn't feel bad if you rest and don't produce.

I hope these practices provide some inspiration.

How do you deal with internalized capitalism? What practices ground you?

Happy regeneration,
Jonas