Arsène Hodali

web novels, poetry, prose.

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Patience: A Rant On How It Was Lost (And Why It Needs To Be Found)

I’d like to start by applauding you, yes you (don’t look surprised). I’m applauding you because you by some miracle have had enough patience to even read this current string of words (yup, this one right here, and this one, and this… you get the point). I’m applauding you because with the social conditioning present around us, we should (by their calculations) have the attention span of a dog.

For example ask yourself how long are commercials? How long are YouTube videos? How long are regular blog posts? Do you think that all these things by some chance just happened to take up less than five minutes of your time? If you do, then you need to dig deeper into the matrix that you live in. Because, (here’s the shocker) big businesses (like Google & YouTube) have conducted “surveys” and “experiments” and have deducted that you (yes you as an individual) have the attention span of a dog and/or cockroach, pick the one that sounds nicer to you, makes no difference because the matter of the fact is that they DON’T think you have the attention span of a HUMAN, which you are… hopefully (if not, send me your pictures, I won’t send them to the government for big sums of cash… promise :)).

YouTube sends memos to all it’s partners informing them to not go over 5 – 10 minutes. Commercials become so straight forwardly simply and quick they basically all say “BUY OUR SHIT!” Blog posts become so simple they resemble Twitter posts. Reality television shows show people coming from “poor” to “rich as fuck” in one hour. Movies show people’s lifetimes in less than two hours.

And in all this do you know where we, as humans, end up? With us losing our sense of patience.

Our minds are constantly told “quick riches, quick fixes, quick, quick, quick” that anything not QUICK just doesn’t make the cut. Anything worthwhile, such as a long and loving relationship, a fulfilling career, HARD WORK AND PERSISTENCE is thrown out the window.

We become so impatient that when we see a book we “wait for the movie to come out”. We become so impatience that the moment you have that fight with your loved one, you instantly hit the break-up/divorce button. We become so impatient that movies and lottery sales are at an all time high. And maybe the worst of all, we become so impatient that we don’t have time to spend with our children/parents/friends/family even for an hour a day.

What we are never told by these big companies is that that 1:30 hour movie you just saw took over 5 years to film; that that thought provoking but only 5 minutes long YouTube video that has over 10 million views took hours to think of, hours to implement, hours to film and edit, and hours to market; or shown that all those “instant-stars” actually spent many sleepless nights up promoting themselves and what they do/did in order to get to where they are.

We are constantly shown the magic trick, and not the wires, that we take the act for the real thing.

We need to realize that in order for us to become the people we want to be, the people who one day others look up to, we will need a lot of PATIENCE. And in our current times, we have to realize that our generation will have the hardest time keeping it (compare it to virginity in the 70s, very easy to lose). We have to realize that if we don’t (re)acquire our lost patience we will be the most failed generation of them all.

But, as I said, applaud yourself, because if you have taken the necessary time needed to read this whole post, then you have just proven to the world, that you DO NOT have the attention span of a dung-beetle. You have just proved the world wrong. You have just silently told all those big corporations FUCK YOU, and for that I applaud you.

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13 Comments

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  1. Inflatable_Twerp says:
    05.08.11 at 5:53 pm · Reply

    So I took the time to read this. I was going to keep stumbling, but I figured that’s exactly what this article is crying out for us not to do, so I clicked back a couple times and read the whole thing. I have to say, being a young adult in the age of iPhones, instant downloads & Facebook, you got it spot on.

    People see pieces of work such as movies or music and they just don’t make the connection between that and the years of gruelling labour and actual WORK that goes into it. They expect to be able to sit at a keyboard and upload their ideas without any effort whatsoever. We’re shown images of these sub-human geniuses, and we assume that the things they produced were like second-nature to them and hardly ever consider that even a genius needs to sit down and make an effort before anything starts to show.

    We’re a generation that needs instant gratification, else it’s not worth the time and effort, and it’s completely the wrong attitude to be teaching ourselves. After all, we’re going to be here for a good seventy – eighty years if we’re lucky, so there’s no rush.

    Anyway, thanks for writing this article. I may put a bit more patience into what I’m doing from now on.

    • Arsene Hodali says:
      05.17.11 at 8:29 am · Reply

      Wow, I should be thanking you. This is one of the best comments I’ve ever seen. So glad the post did justice to what I was trying to put across, and again… wow, thank YOU.

  2. em says:
    11.18.09 at 10:40 pm · Reply

    … parents are only someone you can learn from. wether their impact is positive or negative. we are always learning.

  3. em says:
    11.19.09 at 3:40 am · Reply

    … parents are only someone you can learn from. wether their impact is positive or negative. we are always learning.

  4. em says:
    11.18.09 at 10:38 pm · Reply

    That just delves into a whole history of industrialization. Where, basically the means of production have increased rapidly, due to new forms of communication. First it was in the form of books, then transformed to newspapers, then to internet ( bid jump but u get the idea). The means of communication has basically snowballed, thus explaining how science and technology had increased so rapidly in the past 3 years.

    Your completely correct, the solution is to do it yourself, but they will not simply fuck off. Unfortunately now, our whole culture depends on corporations. There is not one moment of your life that isn’t ‘branded’ (as my critical issues class would say, if only wednesdays were as interesting). The only solution is to use your knowledge to your advantage. Use the way’s that this new speed in communication to sift through information that is relevant and interesting to you.

    For example, instead of reading about how your friends current status is, subscribe to a blog and read on a specific topic.

    Patience is a lost art. I, personally, can be patient about certain things ( my art, reading, web design, design, tenting, etc). Although a lot of the time, other areas of my life become unimportant and I therefore rush to get through them. Welcome to time management. There are consequences to this naturally, but I know what is important to me, and I use these ‘big corporations’ and communication to my advantage.

    • Arsene Hodali says:
      11.18.09 at 10:50 pm · Reply

      lol Yahh, let’s not jump into the whole industrialization topic, at least not now. My post, and hopefully, this blog’s goal is to be one of those few blogs that people turn to for “correct” information, from all sides of the argument. Hence, the part where I’m absolutely thrilled with this short lived debate we just had. Basically, give dancePROOF the chance to be the blog that teaches you how to “do it yourself”.

      As you just said

      Patience is a lost art.

      But rarely few people, you excluded, understand that they’ve lost it (or even had it). Just trying to open up their eyes that much more.

      At least if we can’t escape the matrix, let us see it for what it is.

      And in your quest of using “big corporations” to “your advantage” realize that they can more than easily use you to their advantage, and much more subtler.

  5. em says:
    11.19.09 at 3:38 am · Reply

    That just delves into a whole history of industrialization. Where, basically the means of production have increased rapidly, due to new forms of communication. First it was in the form of books, then transformed to newspapers, then to internet ( bid jump but u get the idea). The means of communication has basically snowballed, thus explaining how science and technology had increased so rapidly in the past 3 years.

    Your completely correct, the solution is to do it yourself, but they will not simply fuck off. Unfortunately now, our whole culture depends on corporations. There is not one moment of your life that isn’t ‘branded’ (as my critical issues class would say, if only wednesdays were as interesting). The only solution is to use your knowledge to your advantage. Use the way’s that this new speed in communication to sift through information that is relevant and interesting to you.

    For example, instead of reading about how your friends current status is, subscribe to a blog and read on a specific topic.

    Patience is a lost art. I, personally, can be patient about certain things ( my art, reading, web design, design, tenting, etc). Although a lot of the time, other areas of my life become unimportant and I therefore rush to get through them. Welcome to time management. There are consequences to this naturally, but I know what is important to me, and I use these ‘big corporations’ and communication to my advantage.

    • Arsene Hodali says: (Author)
      11.19.09 at 3:50 am · Reply

      lol Yahh, let’s not jump into the whole industrialization topic, at least not now. My post, and hopefully, this blog’s goal is to be one of those few blogs that people turn to for “correct” information, from all sides of the argument. Hence, the part where I’m absolutely thrilled with this short lived debate we just had. Basically, give dancePROOF the chance to be the blog that teaches you how to “do it yourself”.

      As you just said

      Patience is a lost art.

      But rarely few people, you excluded, understand that they’ve lost it (or even had it). Just trying to open up their eyes that much more.

      At least if we can’t escape the matrix, let us see it for what it is.

      And in your quest of using “big corporations” to “your advantage” realize that they can more than easily use you to their advantage, and much more subtler.

  6. em says:
    11.18.09 at 9:38 pm · Reply

    So I am sure you have a point, but your wrong to make it so black and white, if it were as simple as blaming the ‘big’ corporations, there would be very little to no problem at all. Ya sure, their aim is to sell absolutely everything to you, sure this is getting ridiculous but, the main point your missing is ‘how’ they choose to ‘advertise’ to you and get you to actually buy that product.

    First. the way today’s big advertiser’s choose to advertise, is by conducting survey’s in the way society communicates today, finding out where their target market is, and how to advertise to them. Note the google bar on the side>>>

    Second. this basically tells us that the way they advertise was, essentially, created by us. following?

    Third. as everyone knows, the internet has completely changed the speed in which information ( or the opposite) is communicated. The big companies, of course, have picked up on this.

    Fourth. With so much information coming at us (some truth some lies), how are we to know what’s important and what’s not, so basically we skim through our lives.

    So basically, you and I just created another bit of ‘information’ that can be spread in a matter of seconds. Contributing to societies lack of ‘patience’.
    Congradu-fucking-lations!

    • Arsene Hodali says:
      11.18.09 at 10:06 pm · Reply

      My view on the lack of patience was not to “completely” blame corporations. I wrote it as a post to show to people that (1) they are impatient, (2) it is not “completely” there fault.

      I get how in my haste to deflect the blame off the “people” I ended up blaming the big corporations more than deserved. But blame me for thinking that a big corporation is not generally smarter and more informed than the average person, and thus (through all their research and data collection) able to realize that the average person, their consumer, is basically screwing themselves. Blame me for thinking that a corporation has a moral duty to, at the least, inform the people on how stupid/impatient they are getting and that in the long run this is not good for anyone at both ends.

      I see the corporation as the “parent” and the regular consumer (us) as the “child”. Of course we children want candy “media/tv/movies/etc” as much as possible, but we, being kids, are not as informed as the parents to the dangers. So is it not therefor their responsibility to (1) limit the candy, (2) feed us vegetables (increase our patience) and (3) inform us of the consequences of our actions as “parents”?

      But then this whole thing starts to make a big cycle all over again when one thinks of the fact that the main goal of a corporation is to make as much money as “fast” as possible which in turn makes THEM impatient with how they earn money. They generally tend to go for what earns more money. Thus, my disagreement is with the “fast” in their motto. Corporations are smart enough to realize that their “let’s give them what they want rather than what they need because it pays more faster” approach is not sustainable and purely based in greed. Them realizing this, yet keeping the cycle alive, is the reason I say blame the big corporation.

      Thus, through realizing that the corporations are going to look after their own interest of earning money, even at the expense of making the problem you had (impatience) larger, the only solution I see to you becoming patient is for you to, mildly speaking, fuck them and do it yourself.

  7. em says:
    11.19.09 at 2:38 am · Reply

    So I am sure you have a point, but your wrong to make it so black and white, if it were as simple as blaming the ‘big’ corporations, there would be very little to no problem at all. Ya sure, their aim is to sell absolutely everything to you, sure this is getting ridiculous but, the main point your missing is ‘how’ they choose to ‘advertise’ to you and get you to actually buy that product.

    First. the way today’s big advertiser’s choose to advertise, is by conducting survey’s in the way society communicates today, finding out where their target market is, and how to advertise to them. Note the google bar on the side>>>

    Second. this basically tells us that the way they advertise was, essentially, created by us. following?

    Third. as everyone knows, the internet has completely changed the speed in which information ( or the opposite) is communicated. The big companies, of course, have picked up on this.

    Fourth. With so much information coming at us (some truth some lies), how are we to know what’s important and what’s not, so basically we skim through our lives.

    So basically, you and I just created another bit of ‘information’ that can be spread in a matter of seconds. Contributing to societies lack of ‘patience’.
    Congradu-fucking-lations!

    • Arsene Hodali says: (Author)
      11.19.09 at 3:06 am · Reply

      My view on the lack of patience was not to “completely” blame corporations. I wrote it as a post to show to people that (1) they are impatient, (2) it is not “completely” there fault.

      I get how in my haste to deflect the blame off the “people” I ended up blaming the big corporations more than deserved. But blame me for thinking that a big corporation is not generally smarter and more informed than the average person, and thus (through all their research and data collection) able to realize that the average person, their consumer, is basically screwing themselves. Blame me for thinking that a corporation has a moral duty to, at the least, inform the people on how stupid/impatient they are getting and that in the long run this is not good for anyone at both ends.

      I see the corporation as the “parent” and the regular consumer (us) as the “child”. Of course we children want candy “media/tv/movies/etc” as much as possible, but we, being kids, are not as informed as the parents to the dangers. So is it not therefor their responsibility to (1) limit the candy, (2) feed us vegetables (increase our patience) and (3) inform us of the consequences of our actions as “parents”?

      But then this whole thing starts to make a big cycle all over again when one thinks of the fact that the main goal of a corporation is to make as much money as “fast” as possible which in turn makes THEM impatient with how they earn money. They generally tend to go for what earns more money. Thus, my disagreement is with the “fast” in their motto. Corporations are smart enough to realize that their “let’s give them what they want rather than what they need because it pays more faster” approach is not sustainable and purely based in greed. Them realizing this, yet keeping the cycle alive, is the reason I say blame the big corporation.

      Thus, through realizing that the corporations are going to look after their own interest of earning money, even at the expense of making the problem you had (impatience) larger, the only solution I see to you becoming patient is for you to, mildly speaking, fuck them and do it yourself.

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