Editor's Introduction

Abstract

Editor's Introduction Arien Mack we are privileged to be publishing this issue, guest edited by one of our longtime editorial board members. It is an oddly important subject, because patience seems like a very old-fashioned value and one not much esteemed in our contemporary world where speed is king. In the US we have Instacart and Amazon Prime that promise instant gratification by delivering goods almost as soon as we have ordered them, and each new version of our computers offers faster and faster processing so that we seem to be able to know more and more in less and less time—but at what cost? What have we lost in canonizing speed, the bosom companion of impatience? As you will read in these pages, patience, as our guest editor suggests, may not be the objective correlative of impatience, and, perhaps most tellingly, patience is demanded mostly of the poor (who are forced to wait for almost everything), while impatience is a gift to those who have much. It may be that impatience has become our golden calf. I urge you to take the time to read on to get a better sense of this and much more. [End Page ix] Copyright © 2023 The New School